City of Bones (18 page)

When the Heir had spoken her name, the woman below had stopped, and now her head tilted deliberately up toward the window, as if she had heard the other woman thirty yards away and over the noise of the gathering.

“Careful,” Riathen murmured. Moving to the window, he drew the Heir gently away. “Don’t speak her name again.” Meeting her puzzled stare, he only said, “I’m aware of her … conversion. I had offered her a Warder’s robes last year, offered to make her one of my personal apprentices even, and she refused me. I was not surprised when I learned she had sworn herself to Constans. Do you know how many others there are? Men and women with the spark of the Old Knowledge in them who could have taken their places as Warders? And some do not declare themselves as openly as she.”

They don’t know what we are, what happened to us
, Constans had said. The woman below moved on, cutting a path through the crowd.

Frowning, Riathen said, “She isn’t wearing a painrod, at least. I have reason to suspect Constans has found a cache of them, though I thought I knew of all the rods left intact in the city. He is evidently using them for the lowest purposes, even as bribes for pirates. Where has he gotten them?”

The Heir shook her head, her mouth set in a grim line. “Perhaps my beloved father the Elector procured them for him, somehow. Would that surprise you? Do you think my father would refuse him anything?”

No one answered this rhetorical question aloud. Khat wondered if the Heir realized that whenever she said “My beloved father the Elector” the venom in her voice was so intense she might be in danger of poisoning herself with her own saliva. Once they were out of here he should probably tell Riathen about his meetings with Constans, or at least the first encounter out in the Waste. Aristai Constans was mad, all right, but not mad enough to bribe pirates with rare painrods and then hunt them down through the Waste. Or at least Khat didn’t think so.

The Heir turned back to Riathen. “If you find these relics, you will support me when the time comes for my acclamation?”

“I have sworn it.” If Riathen had repeated that as many times now as Khat thought he might have, the old man didn’t show it.

The Heir’s dark eyes regarded the Master Warder intently, and Khat was sure she was on the verge of giving him whatever permission or blessing he needed from her and they would all be able to go.

But then she shook her head and said, “How can I know you will find these relics after they have been missing so long? And have you not tried to look for them before?”

Riathen nodded to Khat, who felt the lowering of doom. “I have other resources now. This man has experience with the lower-tier relic markets, which have previously been closed to my inquiries.”

“Really.” The Heir turned her intent stare on Khat. Normally that kind of concentrated attention from such a beautiful woman would have been gratifying, but Khat suddenly realized he didn’t like her much. Then she said, “Lower the veil.”

Khat hesitated, and hated himself for it. Veils were uncomfortable and unnatural, he had never had one on before today, and now suddenly he was reluctant to remove it. And simply knowing what it meant as a symbol in Charisat’s bizarre social scale had nothing to do with it. It was the way the Heir had said it: possessively.

In a way she did own Khat and everyone else in Charisat, or she would when she was Elector, since having absolute power over something was equal to ownership. But usually there were buffers between someone in Khat’s lowly position and that ownership; powerful Patricians, Trade Inspectors, even Warders, all had to be gotten over or around or through before the word of command actually got down to noncitizen krismen relic dealers on the Sixth Tier. Hearing it so plainly now, so personally, was like feeling the tug of a leash.

Uneasy that his slight hesitation had revealed his thoughts, Khat jerked his veil down. The Heir studied him, her slight smile never wavering. If she was hoping to see Khat blush from self-consciousness, she would be disappointed. Even if he did it would probably be impossible to detect past brown skin and yesterday’s bruises, and anyway Elen, waiting forgotten against the wall like a piece of furniture, was doing enough blushing for both of them.

Over her shoulder to Riathen, the Heir observed, “He’s krismen. How extraordinary.”

Of course she could tell. He had met her eyes. He could have kicked Gandin for being right. After another long, warm stare, she asked, “And who are you?”

He couldn’t tell if she was asking for his name or his importance in Riathen’s quest. He said, “Nobody important.”

“Oh?” One perfect brow lifted at the challenge.

Gandin started to speak, perhaps to answer the Heir’s question, but Riathen silenced him with a look.
So that’s how it is
, Khat thought.
Let the lady play with the new toy without interference
.

The Heir asked, “And you are certain you can find these mythical relics?”

“No,” Khat said. He shifted the ball back to the Master Warder without compunction. “He is.”

But Riathen smiled as the Heir turned to him. He said, “I suggest a test.”

She hesitated a beat. “Very well.” She raised a finger, and a robed female servant materialized from a curtained doorway and, after a low-voiced instruction from the Heir vanished back through it. The Heir turned an amused gaze on Riathen. “It isn’t a good idea to wager against me, you know. I’m a noted gamester.”

If it was an attempt to lighten the heavy air of tension in the room, it didn’t succeed. But Riathen bowed, smiling self-deprecatingly. “As am I, Great Lady.”

These people smile too much
, Khat thought. All this teeth-showing would not be reckoned polite where he came from, not that the Master Warder and the Heir meant it to be taken for courtesy anyway. At best, they were uneasy allies. He made the mistake of glancing at Elen, who communicated her feelings on the matter by allowing her eyes to glaze over and cross, as if the courtly sniping was causing her to drift into catatonia. Khat looked away quickly. It would take less effort to maintain the proper paranoia toward Warders if it wasn’t so easy to like Elen.

The servant entered again, this time carrying a lacquered paper tray with a scattered collection of relics on it.

All were worked
mythenin
fragments. Some were rounded lumps incised with leaves or the long-dead fauna that had once inhabited the Waste; some were formed into the shapes of birds, strange human faces, fish and other sea creatures, not unlike the one the woman in the marketplace had shown them. They might be jewelry, gaming tokens, ornaments.

The Heir said, “One of these is not a relic but a clever fake. Choose it.”

A careful and dedicated forger could do just about anything, even hide an unlicensed forge equipped to attain the high, even heat necessary to form an unworked lump of
mythenin
into a more valuable relic. The servant placed the tray on a low table of jade, and Khat knelt next to it and picked up each relic, rubbing it gently between his fingers and trying not to think. Whoever kept that unlicensed forge in operation would be very clever indeed, but there was a place where knowledge and guile left off and instinct took over. When he came to the one that didn’t feel right, a flat, round piece with a delicate carving of a flowing fountain, he set it aside, not thinking twice about it. “That one.”

He sensed Riathen shift position; undoubtedly the Master Warder was smiling his carefully respectful triumph at the Heir again. Still, Khat checked the remaining three pieces and found the catch: the last one, a bird with a loop for a chain to be run through, felt wrong as well. “And this one.”

He held it up to the Heir, and she took the graceful piece and turned it over in her fingers. “Very good,” she said, looking down at him. “Those are excellent forgeries. Not one relic expert in the shops of long and august reputation on the Fourth Tier could have made the choice. Where did you come by your knowledge?”

At the moment, Khat didn’t care whether she actually wanted to know or was merely sparring again. He had decided some time ago not to tell her anything. “Not on the Fourth Tier.”

Her lips twitched in amusement. Of course, she would enjoy an occasional rebuff; it happened so seldom. And she would especially enjoy it from someone as effectively helpless as he was. When it became apparent that that was all the answer she was going to get, she turned back to Riathen, and said, “Very mysterious. I suppose you knew this business would pique my curiosity? Well, I agree to give you the time you need. I will keep my beloved father the Elector from naming Constans Master Warder in your place, at least until you can produce these relics. Then you must fend for yourself, because I will need all my resources to defend my own position. Will that suit?”

“It will suit most excellently, Great Lady.”

She nodded in dismissal, already moving away to the window. Riathen had bowed and turned for the door, and Khat had had time for the first breath of relief, when she said suddenly, “One thing more. I would like to speak to your relic expert in private. Perhaps you could leave him here.”

Riathen turned to regard his relic expert thoughtfully, and Khat felt something lodge in his throat. It was panic. In a low whisper he said to the old Warder, “You leave me here and you can make plans to burn my bones to tell fortunes, because that’s the last help you’ll get from me.”

“You are overreacting,” Riathen said, and took a step nearer, his voice cautiously low.

Probably. Even Khat didn’t know what he was afraid of. He raised his voice just a trifle. “You heard me. Do you want her to hear me?”

Riathen turned back to the Heir, unruffled. “I’m afraid that isn’t possible now. Time is too precious to us. You understand.”

The Heir didn’t answer, leaning against the stone window casement, all languid ease. Then she said, “I suppose I do. Very well, you may go.”

Khat held his peace until they were outside the palace and between the high double-tiered arcades of the processional avenue. Then he asked Riathen, “What was that about?”

Gandin hissed at him to lower his voice, glancing worriedly at the passersby.

“The Heir is an avid collector of relics,” Riathen replied, imperturbable.

“I think she collects other things, too.”

Riathen glanced at him briefly, eyes measuring. “Even if she had refused to allow you to leave with us, no harm would have come to you. Surely your own experience would tell you so.”

Khat couldn’t argue with that, low blow though it was. He couldn’t even explain to himself why he had panicked.

That long direct stare would have meant only one thing if it had come from a woman on the street. Riathen had thought so too, obviously, and so had Elen, if her blush had been any indication. The Heir knew he was kris, and she undoubtedly knew the traditional use Patrician women had for krismen men; she could have simply wanted a lover for the long afternoon whom she could use and throw away without having to worry over consequences. The using part was all right, but in her case he couldn’t be sure that she really would throw him away afterward instead of having him killed to stop him telling anyone that she had age tracks at the corners of her eyes.

Maybe her request wouldn’t have worried him so much if Constans hadn’t warned him first—as if Constans wasn’t a liar and mad as well.

But Riathen had been willing to use him as a bribe, maybe trusting to Khat’s stubbornness to avoid any of the Heir’s difficult questions about the search for the relics. And really, he knew nothing that could hurt Riathen. Maybe the old man had wanted the Heir to question him, wanted him to tell her all he knew.

“She also dislikes, and fears, her father,” Riathen added. “Which is a great help to me.”

“Really?” Khat said, putting a little acid in his voice. “I would never have guessed, except for the bit of foam at her mouth whenever she mentioned him.”

“She thinks he killed her mother,” Elen informed him reprovingly.

Riathen frowned down at her. “That is hearsay, and not to be repeated. The primary cause of their disagreement is that she believes he favors the three children of his second wife. The poor woman died only last year, and the Elector’s preference for her children may be merely sentimental. But the Heir feels it greatly, and was disturbed when her father sent them out of the city to their mother’s family in Kirace.”

Khat remembered the funeral rites for the Elector’s last wife. They had gone on and on for days, far longer than custom required. In his wife’s honor, the Elector had free grain and cakes distributed on the lower tiers, and there had been a release of waste water from the First Tier into the sewers, greatly relieving the usual problems of blockages and sickening stench. He winced, suddenly imagining how Sagai would feel if Miram died. He grumbled, “Can’t they talk? Why doesn’t she just go and ask him if he still wants her to be his heir?”

Gandin snorted derisively, and even Elen lifted an eyebrow at him.

Riathen said, “There will be no more discussion of this. He is still the Elector.”

The Master Warder didn’t add “for the moment” aloud, but Khat wondered if the thought had crossed his mind.

“Khat, nothing is going to happen to you. I swear it,” Elen said patiently.

The afternoon sun was hot in the blue and gold court with its stair down to the Second Tier, and Khat was back in his own clothes and very ready to leave. She added, “And Riathen would not have left you there.”

She was saying it to convince herself. “It didn’t seem that way from where I was standing.”

“You’re always thinking things like that.” Elen’s patience evaporated rapidly, possibly due to her recent overexposure to the lower tiers, but more likely to her fear that he was right. “You think everyone is after you for some reason. You’re as mad as Constans.”

And speaking of Constans . .
. But the words didn’t come. The Elector’s mad Warder had him in a very neat trap. Telling Elen about Constans’s presence in the Miracle’s chamber would lead to difficult questions about their prior meeting out in the Waste, and perhaps even more difficult questions from Riathen about Elen’s missing painrod and why he hadn’t spoken up before. And besides, he was too angry to hand out free information.