Children of Earth and Sky (7 page)

It could make a man of any spirit at all just a little bit angry to also now be fleeing from whatever noblemen—who never smelled of dyeworks (who had probably never
smelled
the dyeworks!)—were pursuing him.

He took this route all the time to and from the bookshop. He knew the bridge he was sprinting towards. And he knew something else. There would be an empty wine barrel at this end: a blind beggar sat on it every day. He'd recognize people by their tread, call greetings, tell you gossip he'd heard if you stopped to talk. Pero would give him food when he had some, small coins if he'd been paid.

The beggar slept somewhere else, he wouldn't be here now.

The barrel would be.

Skidding to a halt, Pero reached out in the dark, clutched the upper rim, tilted and shifted the barrel into the middle of the cobbled street, which narrowed at the bridge.

Then, pretending to stumble, crying out, he went past it. He slowed on the bridge, as if hurt, swore loudly. Then he waited. And a moment later heard the extremely satisfying sound of his pursuer crashing—at speed—into a wine barrel in the street.

What he did next might not have been wise, either. He didn't feel like being wise. He had
reasons
for being angry. This was his city, he was a citizen of the Republic of Seressa, and whatever arrogant sprouts of overbred lineage these bastards were . . .

He dropped his sketchbook on the wooden planks. He drew his sword from beneath his cloak. If they were going to chase him, there would be one less man doing so. He'd never had sword-fighting lessons, an artist's son didn't do that, but you didn't need expertise for everything. A blade was a blade.

He ran back, saw the downed man clutching with both hands at a knee, crying out in pain—and Pero bent and stabbed him in the chest.

His blade hit metal. It was turned aside.

You could be afraid, and then terrified. Not the same thing.

This was beyond frightening. If men wearing armour at night were pursuing him, they weren't thieves, nor were they noblemen looking for amusement. This was a soldier or a guardsman.

Pero fled. Again. His delay had allowed the lagging pair to draw closer, but the fastest man was down. He hadn't been killed, obviously. Pero didn't know if that was good or bad now. He didn't understand any of this.

He'd left his sketchbook on the bridge. No help for that. He continued to shout for help as he ran. He was on familiar ground now, cutting diagonally through the square in front of the Sanctuary of the Victims. He thought about dashing in, hoping a cleric was awake, begging protection, but, for good or ill, he kept running, trying to put distance between himself and those behind.

There were lights now, spilling from cheap wine shops he knew. He recognized two women on a corner. Had his pursuers been the sort of men he'd thought they were he'd have joined these two, taken them into a drinking place, been safe among a crowd.

Men in armour wouldn't care, he thought. It wouldn't stop them.

He knew these streets and alleys; the smell told him he was home. He could lose pursuers. He cut to his right up a leather-workers' laneway, the shops shuttered and dark, then left along a smaller, fetid alley as fast as he could, then out again at the far end into a little, untidy square where ramshackle buildings on all sides housed many of the indigent artists of Seressa, including the son of Viero Villani, currently being pursued.

And awaited.

There were many lights here, far more than there should have been. Torches in hand, half a dozen men in a livery he knew stood before Pero's own building. They looked at him as he burst into the square.

He stopped, breathing hard.

“What did I do?” he shouted. “
What did I do?
”

No answer. Of course, no answer.

In silence they came and surrounded him and took him away with them. A neat formation, well-trained guards, an artist in the middle. They took his sword. He didn't resist. What was the point of resisting? He was finding it difficult to breathe and not just because he'd been running. He hoped some of his friends were watching, at windows or in doorways. There had been none in the square. There wouldn't be, not with armed guards of the Council of Twelve here among them in the night.

S
ome days—or nights—seemed to point themselves towards vexation, difficulty, obstacles, the Duke of Seressa found himself musing. He thought of images that applied: headwinds, lawsuits, dried ink clogging, burnt food, flooding, ambitious councillors, constipation.

Ambitious councillors causing constipation.

This windy night in spring was becoming such a time. Braced as he was for the unexpected after years in office, it was not especially startling to learn that the woman before them was quicker, and much more alert to what they were doing, than the man beside her.

The doctor, it appeared, was a step-by-step fellow. Perhaps useful in a physician but awkward just now. His grasp of matters appeared to be stuck like a gun-wagon on a road after heavy rain. (The duke was briefly pleased, he was arriving at excellent phrases tonight, if nothing else.)

The woman was otherwise. She had been investigated, interviewed twice, only then recruited to the service of the republic from one of the sequestered retreats of the Daughters of Jad. She was of
an aristocratic family (from Mylasia down the coast), was obviously intelligent (too much so?), and sufficiently high-spirited as to have
required
being placed with one of the religious houses, for the usual reason. She'd delivered herself of an inconvenience there. It had been relocated to one of the foundling hospitals and then to some family somewhere.

She was now, it appeared, willing to accept an opportunity to leave the contemplative life for something more adventurous. Such women were rare, and could be important. Seressa had made use of them before, to variable effect. They could cause difficulties. Intelligence and spirit came with their own challenges.

“Why,” Leonora Valeri was saying just then, “are we not doing more to simulate being married?”

The duke lifted his head, removed his spectacles, and gazed at her. The light, as always, was on those before the council. She was attractive, undeniably. Small, golden-haired under a dark-green cap, a good smile. He wished, briefly, that he were sixty again, in his prime. (That thought, too, amused him. A little.)

“What are you
saying
?” the physician asked, beside her. “What can you be—?”

“I am quite sure the Republic of Dubrava has people watching Seressa, just as we have men inside their walls. If someone merely checks sanctuary records or civic ones they can determine that we were married on whatever day we are going to say. Or they can discover that we weren't. It would be better, my lord”—she turned to the duke, offered that smile—“if the records reflected our union.”

“But they won't. We didn't . . .”

Doctor Miucci was unhappy. He was said to be a good physician, had been courageous during the last plague outbreak, apparently. He was not well known, was new to Seressa, trying to build a practice and reputation. These were among the reasons he'd been selected for this. The council hadn't required imagination from their choice. Perhaps they ought to have.

The woman, it seemed, might have enough for the two of them.

“They can be caused to reflect such a happy state,” the duke said. He favoured them both with a brief smile. “Signora Valeri is entirely correct. Details implemented or overlooked at the outset often determine success or failure before the end.”

“Eloquently put, my lord duke,” she said. She was flattering him, of course. She was also a little overexcited, he judged. Not a surprise, given the life she had left behind this morning.

“We will also, naturally, prepare in advance documents that will dissolve this temporary union upon your return, leaving you both as you are tonight, free citizens of Seressa—with the republic in your debt.”

“But this cannot be!” said Jacopo Miucci with unexpected firmness. (A man accustomed to being decisive with patients?) “The good lady would be disgraced on our return! Married and then not so, merely for reasons of state?”

“But I am,” the good lady murmured, “already disgraced, doctor.”

Miucci coloured. You could see it by candlelight. It was amusing.

Leonora Valeri added, “Although, may I say I am touched by your kindness, thinking of my well-being already. It makes me trust even more that you will be kind when we are together.”

One of the councillors coughed. The duke found it required an effort not to smile. The physician Miucci, it occurred to him, was likely to have an interesting time in Dubrava.

He wished, again, that he were younger.

He waited for silence. He said, in his decisive, concluding-a-matter voice, “We have an understanding, and it is to be recorded. Seressa is grateful to you both and will assuredly demonstrate as much. Doctor Miucci will be sent as our response to the Dubravae request for a new physician. We note their evident awareness that Seressa is where the best doctors are found. They have indicated they will, as always, house and recompense him, and they have
been generous in the past with physicians we send. The term they request is the customary two years.”

He took a sip of wine, looking closely at the two people in front of him. Miucci's expression wasn't precisely happy, but the duke didn't see anything alarming. They had reviewed a good deal of information on him. The man was a capable doctor from a respectable family, and not much else, it appeared. They didn't need much else. Compliance, competence, and an assumed marriage. The woman mattered more.

The duke added, to make this clear, “Doctor, you understand that you are truly there as a physician. You will not be requested or required to undertake any activities that jeopardize your status among the Dubravae.”

“Except, my lord, to present myself as married when I am not, and to have my so-called wife engage in spying?”

Some asperity there. Perhaps the assessment had been made slightly too soon as to the man's possible difficulty. But Miucci was—the duke judged—being precise, not troublesome. The doctor
wanted
to go to Dubrava, it was a source of both income and status for a physician to do so. Some stayed on for another term. One, memorably, had married a Dubravae woman and proposed to settle there. A breach of understandings, of terms. He had needed, regrettably, to be killed. They had someone in Dubrava who did that for them, when necessary. You could not abandon the Council of Twelve so easily. Not when they chose you for your position, granted it to you, and had requirements. It had been some time ago, but the council was unlikely to forget: it was a reason they sent only married doctors now.

He nodded agreement at the man. “That is so, yes. She will do what she can for Seressa. Signora Miucci, as we must now name her, will use opportunities afforded by your role and stature to observe and converse. With women, and perhaps men, if she can
do so without compromising your dignity. There is no present threat to us from Dubrava, you understand? But there are trade advantages to be gained from grasping their affairs, and you both know the other reason we need people inside those walls.”

“Of course we do. The Osmanlis,” the woman said. “Dubrava pays tribute to the grand khalif.”

It was a presumption for her to be the one answering, but, the duke thought, she
was
the important person of the two, and diffidence wouldn't serve any of them well. He was beginning to believe diffidence was not a manner Leonora Valeri could readily assume.

He signalled assent. “Indeed. Dubrava sends information and bribes to Asharias, and trades there. As we do, of course. The road from their landward gate through Sauradia is a busy one. We live in precarious times. Whatever we learn, whatever we can know, helps ensure the safety of Seressa. It is,” he concluded, “as uncomplicated as that.”

“And if,” the physician said quietly, “Signora Valeri is discovered in this gathering of information, will it be similarly uncomplicated?”

“You are unlikely to be killed, if that is what you mean,” the duke said briskly. He was speaking a half-truth, of course. Half-truths, in his view, were all most people required.

There would never be any public accusation or trial, no formal punishment beyond sending them home, but accidents had happened to Seressinis in Dubrava in the past. The smaller republic was diplomatic, cautious,
crafty
. It watched the winds of the world. It was also proud of its freedoms. The people of Sauradia and Trakesia, all those over that way, had a history of violence and independence going back to when many of them were pagans in the days of the Sarantine Empire, when Sarantium ruled the world.

Sarantium had fallen. The duke remembered when word had come, twenty-five years ago now. Sense of a world ending. The city was named Asharias now, and the man who ruled there amid
gardens where silence was apparently the law on pain of strangulation (the duke often thought wistfully about that) wanted to rule the world. The Osmanlis and their intentions were very much cause for concern for any Seressini spies.

“I don't expect to be discovered,” the woman said, smiling at the man she was to seem married to (and spend her nights with, the duke thought). She turned to the head of the table. “It is an honour to be trusted by the council.”

Was it possible she was
too
poised? He wondered how old she was. It would be in his notes.

“It is intended as an honour,” he said gravely. “We place our confidence in you both. You will prepare your belongings and set what affairs need ordering in such order. You will be advised as to codes and contacts, signora. The doctor need only assemble his medical equipment and make his farewells. The Dubravae ship that will carry you is moored by the Arsenale now. It belongs to a merchant family. One of their sons will welcome you aboard and escort you, we have arranged for this. They wish to depart soon. They are waiting only for you, I believe, and perhaps one other passenger. You may go now, with the council's thanks. Jad shine his light upon you both. You will not regret undertaking this for the republic.”

The doctor bowed neatly. A small, thin man, thinning hair, stern-looking for someone still young. The woman sank to the marble floor in salute with a grace that showed her lineage.

He wondered, suddenly, who had fathered her child.

He knew he couldn't make his last assurance—about their having no regrets—with any certainty. Life didn't allow for that. But it needed to be said to people, he'd learned over the years.

He was tired but that could not be revealed. Not at this table. He had his own dangers. He saw the privy clerk at the far doors make a gesture, one he knew. Finally.

The duke put his spectacles on again and adjusted the papers in front of him. The other matter for tonight appeared to be
upon them. The man had arrived—or been caused to arrive. He wasn't certain which. It mattered, as it happened. There might be delicacy required here. He wondered how he might broach the subject in a discreet fashion, subtly determine this new person's state of mind.

—

“HOW
DARE
YOU
R GUARDS ACCOST ME!
This is a disgrace! My lords, I am a free and honest citizen of the republic!”

Pero had decided at some point during the too-brisk march to the ducal palace that he was still angry, he was outraged, in fact, and he was not going to show fear. It helped, a little, that the guards hadn't handled him roughly. They'd even let him stop to reclaim his sketchbook on the bridge.

That was good, wasn't it?

“Careful,” he'd said. “There is a barrel just ahead.” They'd been carrying torches, didn't need the warning. None of them spoke, but two of them set the barrel back where it had been. Someone knew about the blind beggar, then.

Pero had no idea what to do with that particular insight. He was confused and, being honest, he
was
afraid. You'd be mad as a mountain hermit not to be fearful. The Council of Twelve could take anyone in this fashion, at night, and there was no assurance those who knew or loved them would see them again.

No one alive loved him, he thought. But perhaps his friends, the ones he hoped had been watching as he was taken away, perhaps some of them would ask questions in the morning?

They almost surely wouldn't. Seressinis, especially the poor, perhaps especially poor artists, learned, sometimes painfully, that the Council of Twelve didn't like questions being asked, or discussions taking place.

Seressa was a nominally free, extremely wealthy, cultured, powerful republic. The Seressinis' wealth and culture could be seen in their buildings and squares and monuments, in the endless
activity by the port and in the Arsenale where the ships were built. They had no king or prince tyrannizing them. They elected their leaders (well, the wealthier among them elected themselves as leaders). Merchants had a status here they held nowhere else in the world. You could rise to influence from low birth more readily in Seressa than anywhere.

It was also, however, a mysterious, dangerous, frightening city. And that wasn't just about masks at carnival time or fog swirling about. One didn't walk up to the ducal palace on a spring morning and ask after the whereabouts of an artist friend who had—for some reason—been taken away in the night by the guards.

They'd ask your name. You didn't want that.

The guards had marched him across Jad's Square to a small side door of the palace. Two of them had escorted him up a back staircase, not the Stairway of Heroes with the giant statues of Seressa's founders on either side at the bottom.

Pero and his friends were of the view that the two bearded men rendered there might have been heroes but the sculptor had certainly not been. The carved figures were grotesquely over-muscled and absurdly expressionless. Their eyes were crudely done. It was also a matter of amusement among the younger artists that one of them, Seridas, appeared to have a partial erection beneath his tunic.

If it wasn't partial, one of Pero's wittier friends had declared one night, then the hero lacked heroism below, alas. The prostitutes in their neighbourhood began using the name Seridas to describe a man similarly unprepossessing.