Inversions (13 page)

‘Not the sails, they’re invisible and the heat goes straight through them. But the wooden hulls scorch and blacken and burst into flame if they go too close, of course.’

‘How far is it to the suns?’

‘I don’t know, but people say that they are different distances away, and some clever people claim that they are both very far away indeed.’

‘These would be the same clever people called mathematicians who tell us the world is a ball, and not flat,’ Perrund said.

‘They would,’ DeWar confirmed.

A travelling troupe of shadow players had come to court. They had set up in the palace’s theatre, whose plaster windows had shutters which could be closed against the light. They had stretched a white sheet very tightly across a wooden frame whose lower edge was just above head height. Below the frame hung a black cloth. The white screen was lit from behind by a single strong lamp set some distance back. Two men and two women manipulated the two-dimensional puppets and their accompanying shadow-scenery, using thin sticks to make the characters’ limbs and bodies swivel. Effects like waterfalls and flames were achieved using thin strips of dark paper and bellows to make them flutter. Using a variety of voices, the players told ancient stories of kings and queens, heroes and villains, fidelity and betrayal and love and hate.

It was the interval now. DeWar had been round the back of the screen to make sure that the two guards he had stationed there were still awake, and they were. The shadow players had objected at first, but he had insisted the guards stay there. UrLeyn was sitting in the middle of the small auditorium, a perfect and stationary target for somebody behind the screen with a crossbow. UrLeyn, Perrund and everybody else who had heard about the two guards behind the screen thought DeWar was once again taking his duties far too seriously, but he could not have sat there and watched the show comfortably with nobody he trusted behind the screen. He had stationed guards by the window shutters too, with instructions to open them promptly if the lantern behind the screen went out.

These precautions taken, he had been able to watch the shadow players’ performance from the seat immediately behind UrLeyn with a degree of equanimity, and when Lattens had clambered over the seat in front and come and sat on his lap demanding to know more about Lavishia he had felt sufficiently relaxed to be happy to oblige. Perrund, sitting one seat along from UrLeyn, had turned round to ask her question about mathematicians. She watched DeWar and Lattens with an amused, indulgent expression.

‘Can they fly under the water, too?’ Lattens asked. He wriggled off DeWar’s lap and stood in front of him, an intent look on his face. He was dressed like a little soldier, with a wooden sword at his side in a decorated scabbard.

‘They certainly can. They are very good at holding their breath and can do it for days at a time.’

‘And can they fly through mountains?’

‘Only through tunnels, but they have lots of tunnels. Of course, some of the mountains are hollow. And others are full of treasure.’

‘Are there wizards and enchanted swords?’

‘Yes, enchanted swords by the cistern-full, and lots of wizards. Though they tend to be a trifle arrogant.’

‘And are there giants and monsters?’

‘Plenty of both, though they are all very nice giants and extremely helpful monsters.’

‘How boring,’ Perrund murmured, reaching out her good hand and patting down some of Lattens’ more wayward curls.

UrLeyn turned round in his seat, eyes twinkling. He drank from a glass of wine then said, ‘What’s this, DeWar? Are you filling my boy’s head with nonsense?’

‘There would be a wonder,’ said BiLeth, from a couple of seats away. The tall foreign minister looked bored with the proceedings.

‘I’m afraid I am, sir,’ DeWar admitted to UrLeyn, ignoring BiLeth. ‘I’m telling him about kind giants and pleasant monsters, when everybody knows that giants are cruel and monsters are terrifying.’

‘Preposterous,’ BiLeth said.

‘What’s that?’ RuLeuin asked, also turning round. UrLeyn’s brother sat beside him on the other side from Perrund. He was one of the few generals who had not been sent off to Ladenscion. ‘Monsters? We have seen monsters on the screen, haven’t we, Lattens?’

‘Which would you rather have, Lattens?’ UrLeyn asked his son. ‘Good giants and monsters, or bad ones?’

‘Bad ones!’ Lattens shouted. He drew his wooden sword from its scabbard. ‘So I can cut their heads off!’

‘That’s the boy!’ his father said.

‘Indeed! Indeed!’ BiLeth agreed.

UrLeyn shoved his wine goblet at RuLeuin and then reached over to pull Lattens up off his feet, depositing him in front of him and making to fence the child with a dagger still in its sheath. Lattens’ face took on a look of great concentration. He fenced with his father, thrusting and parrying, feinting and dodging. The wooden sword clicked and clacked off the sheathed dagger. ‘Good!’ his father said. ‘Very good!’

DeWar watched Commander ZeSpiole get up from his seat and shuffle sideways towards the aisle. DeWar excused himself and followed, meeting up with the other man in the privy beneath the theatre, where one of the shadow players and a couple of guards were also making use of the facility.

‘Did you receive your report, Commander?’ DeWar asked.

ZeSpiole looked up, surprised. ‘Report, DeWar?’

‘About my and the lady Perrund’s trip to her old hospital.’

‘Why should that occasion a report, DeWar?’

‘I thought it might because one of your men followed us there from the palace.’

‘Really, who was that?’

‘I don’t know his name. But I recognised him. Shall I point him out the next time I see him? If he was not acting on your orders you may wish to ask him why he has taken to following people going about their honest and officially sanctioned business in the city.’

ZeSpiole hesitated, then said, ‘That will not be necessary, thank you. I’m sure that any such report, supposing it had been made, would state only that yourself and the concubine concerned paid a perfectly innocent visit to the said institution and returned without incident.’

‘I’m sure it would, too.’

DeWar returned to his seat. The shadow players announced they were ready to begin the second half of their show. Lattens had to be calmed down before it could be resumed. When it did, he squirmed in his seat between his father and Perrund for a while, but Perrund stroked his head and made quiet, shushing, soothing noises, and before too long the shadow players’ stories started to reclaim the boy’s interest.

He had the seizure about halfway through the second half, suddenly going rigid and starting to shake. DeWar noticed it first, and sat forward, about to say something, then Perrund turned, her face glowing in the screen light, shadows dancing across it, a frown forming there. ‘Lattens . . . ?’ she said.

The boy made a strange, strangling sound and jerked, falling off his seat at the feet of his father, who looked startled and said, ‘What?’

Perrund left her seat and sank down by the boy.

DeWar stood up and turned to face the rear of the theatre. ‘Guards! The shutters! Now!’

The shutters creaked and light spilled down the banked rows of seats. Startled faces peered out of the sudden light. People started looking round at the windows, muttering. The shadow players’ screen had gone white, the shadows disappearing. The man’s voice telling the background story halted, confused.

‘Lattens!’ UrLeyn said, as Perrund started to set the boy into a sitting position. Lattens’ eyes were closed, his face grey and sheened with sweat. ‘Lattens!’ UrLeyn lifted his child up into his arms.

DeWar remained standing, his gaze flitting about the theatre. Others were standing too, now. A bank of worried-looking faces were arranged before him, all looking down at the Protector.

‘Doctor!’ DeWar shouted when he saw BreDelle. The portly doctor stood blinking in the light.

Master, I thought it right to include in my report mention of the events which took place in the Hidden Gardens on the day Duke Quettil presented Geographer Kuin’s latest map of the world to the King.

We had arrived at the summer palace of Yvenir in the Yvenage Hills on schedule and were happily settled into the Doctor’s quarters, in a round tower of the Lesser House. The view from our rooms took in the scattered houses and pavilions set within the wooded lower slopes of Palace Hill. These buildings gradually increased in number while the distances between them shrank until they merged against the ancient walls of Mizui city itself, which filled the flat bottom of the valley immediately beneath the palace. On the valley floor to either side of Mizui could be seen numerous farms, fields and water meadows, while behind these climbed gently forested hills, themselves surmounted by the round, snow-covered mountains in the distance.

The King had indeed fallen off his mount while hunting near Lep-Skatacheis (though it had been on the last day of our stop there, not the first) and had been hobbling round since then on a badly twisted ankle. The Doctor had strapped the ankle and done what she could, but the King’s duties were such that he could not rest the limb as much as the Doctor wanted him to, and so it took a while to heal.

‘You. Yes, more wine. No, not that stuff. That. Ah. Adlain. Come and sit by me.’

‘Majesty.’

‘Wine for the Guard Commander. Come on. You have to be quicker than that. A good servant acts to carry out a master’s wishes even as the wish is still being formed. Isn’t that so, Adlain?’

‘I was about to say that myself, sir.’

‘I’m sure you were. What news?’

‘Oh, mostly the woes of the world, sir. Hardly fit to be revealed in a fine place like this. It might spoil the view.’

We were in the Hidden Gardens behind the Great Palace, almost at the summit of the hill. The red, creeper-covered garden walls hid all but the highest towers of the palace. The view from the little hanging valley which contained the gardens led the eye down to the distant plains, which were blue with distance and faded out into the light of the sky at the horizon.

‘Any sign of Quettil?’ the King asked. ‘He’s supposed to be giving me something or other. All has to be arranged of course, being Quettil. Can’t just happen. No doubt we’re due to get the full pomp.’

‘The Duke Quettil is not one to murmur when a shout might attract more attention,’ Adlain agreed, taking off his hat and setting it on the long table. ‘But I understand the map he intends to present to you is a particularly fine one, and long in the making. I expect we shall all be most impressed.’

Duke Quettil occupied the Duke’s Palace within the grounds of Palace Hill. The Province and Dukedom of Quettil, of which the city of Mizui and the Yvenage Hills were but a modest part, was entirely his to command, and he was, by repute, not shy about imposing his authority. He and his retinue were due to enter the Hidden Gardens shortly after the midday bell to present the King with his new map.

‘Adlain,’ the King said. ‘You know the new Duke Ulresile?’

‘Duke Ulresile,’ Adlain said to the thin, sallow youth at the King’s left side. ‘I was sorry to hear about your father.’

‘Thank you,’ the boy said. He was barely older than I, and less substantial, more wispy. The fine clothes he wore looked too big for him, and he appeared uncomfortable. He had, I thought, yet to take on the look of a powerful man.

‘Duke Walen,’ Adlain said, bowing to the older man, who sat to the King’s right.

‘Adlain,’ Walen said. ‘You look as though the mountain air suits you.’

‘I have yet to find air that does not, thank you, Duke.’

King Quience sat at a long table set within a shady pergola, attended by the Dukes Walen and Ulresile, a smattering of lesser nobility and various servants, including a pair of Palace serving girls who were identical twin sisters and to whom the King seemed to have taken a particular shine. Each had gold-green eyes, yellow-white tangles of hair and seemed to be almost but not entirely in control of tall, sinuous bodies that in places appeared to defy the law of gravity. Each was clothed in a cream-coloured dress edged with red piping and ruffled with lace, which, if not exactly what a rustic shepherdess might wear, was perhaps what a famously handsome and well-endowed actress might have worn if she was taking part in an expensively produced Romantic Play which featured rustic shepherdesses. One such creature might have caused a normal fellow’s heart to melt into his boots. That there were two such beauties capable of occupying the same world at once seemed unfair. Especially as both seemed quite as taken with the King as he did with them.

I confess that I had been unable to take my eyes off the two golden-brown globes which bulged like swollen fawn moons at the lacy cream horizon of each girl’s bodice. The sunlight poured down over those perfect orbs, highlighting the nearly invisibly fine down there, their voices tinkled like the fountains, their musky perfume filled the air, and the King’s very talk and tone taunted and teased with the implication of romance.

‘Yes, those little red ones. Some of those. Mmm. Delicious. How one does enjoy those little red ones, eh?’

The two girls giggled.

‘How’s it looking, Vosill?’ the King said, still smirking. ‘When can I start chasing these girls?’ He made to lunge at the shepherdesses and tried to grab them, but they yelped and danced out of the way. ‘They keep getting away from me, dammit. When can I start hunting them properly?’

‘Properly, sir? How would that be?’ the Doctor asked.

The Doctor and I were there tending to the King’s ankle. The Doctor changed the strapping on it every day. Sometimes she changed it twice a day if the King had been out riding or hunting. As well as the swelling from the sprain, there was a small cut on the ankle which was taking its time to heal, and the Doctor was scrupulous in keeping this cleaned and treated, nevertheless it still seemed to me that any common nurse or even chamber-servant could have performed this function. However, the King appeared to want the Doctor to do it each day herself, and she seemed quite happy to acquiesce. I cannot think of any other doctor who might have made an excuse not to treat the King, but she was quite capable of it.

‘Why, properly in the sense of having a decent chance of catching them, Vosill,’ the King said, leaning forward towards the Doctor and using what is, I believe, called a stage whisper. The two shepherdesses laughed tinklingly.

‘Decent, sir? How so?’ the Doctor asked, and blinked, it seemed to me, more than the flower- and leaf-shaded sunlight called for.

‘Vosill, stop asking these childish questions and tell me when I may run again.’

‘Oh, you may run now, sir. But it would be most painful, and your ankle would probably give way within a few dozen steps. But you most certainly can run.’

‘Aye, run but fall over,’ the King said, sitting back and reaching for his wine glass.

The Doctor glanced at the two shepherdesses. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘perhaps something soft would break your fall.’

She sat at the King’s feet with her back to Duke Walen, cross-legged. This odd and unladylike position was one she adopted often, seemingly without thinking, and which made her adoption of men’s clothes, or at least some part of them, almost a necessity. For once, the Doctor had changed out of her long boots. She wore dark hose and soft pointed shoes of velvet. The King’s feet rested on solid silver footstools topped with plump cushions, vividly dyed and patterned. The Doctor washed the King’s feet as usual, inspected them and, on this occasion, carefully trimmed his toe-nails. I was left to sit on a small stool at her side, holding her bag open while she lost herself in this labour.

‘Would you break my fall, my lovelies?’ the King asked, sitting back in his chair.

The two girls dissolved into laughter again. (The Doctor, I think, muttered something about being most sure to if he landed on their heads.)

‘They might break your heart, sir,’ Adlain observed, smiling.

‘Indeed,’ Walen said. ‘With one to pull in each direction, a man might suffer terribly.’

The two serving girls giggled and fed more little pieces of fruit to the King, who made to tickle them with a long feather from a fan-tailed tsigibern. Musicians played on a terrace behind us, fountains plashed melodiously, insects hummed but did not annoy us, the air was fresh and full of the scent of flowers and freshly tilled and watered earth, and the two servant girls bent and leant to pop fruits into the King’s mouth, then squealed, jumped and jiggled when he lunged at them with his feather. I confess I was glad I did not have to pay too much attention to what the Doctor was doing.

‘Do try to keep still, sir,’ she muttered as the King stabbed at the two girls with the tsigibern feather.

Chamberlain Wiester came panting up the path beneath the flowers and vines, his splendidly buckled shoes glinting in the sunlight and crunching on the semi-precious path stones. ‘Duke Quettil, your majesty,’ he announced. A blare of trumpets and a clash of cymbals sounded from the garden gates, followed by the roaring scream of what sounded like a fierce and angry animal. ‘And retinue,’ Wiester added.

Duke Quettil arrived with a bevy of maidens scattering scent-crushed petals in his path, a troupe of jugglers tossing glittering clubs back and forth across the path, a band of trumpeteers and cymbalists, a pride of chokered, growling galkes each with its own grim, oiled and muscled handler straining to keep his charge in order, a school of identically dressed clerks and retainers, a clutch of beefy-looking men clad only in loin cloths supporting what looked like a tall thin wardrobe on a bier, and a pair of tall, pitch-skinned Equatorials holding a tasselled parasol over the Duke himself, who was transported on a litter glittering with precious metals and cut stones by an octet of toweringly statuesque golden-skinned balnimes, each bald and naked save for a tiny cache-sex and accoutred with a huge long bow slung over their shoulder.

The Duke was dressed, as they say, fit to embarrass an Emperor. His robes were predominantly red and gold, and his ample frame displayed them to some effect as the balnimes lowered his litter, a step-stool was placed by his slippered feet and he stepped on to a gold-cloth carpet. Above his round, full, eyebrow-less face, his jewelled head-dress sparkled in the sun and his many-ringed fingers were heavy with gems as he made a sweeping if awkward bow to the King.

The trumpets and cymbals fell silent. The musicians on the terrace had given up trying to compete with the trumpeteers and cymbalists as soon as they’d entered, so we were left with the sounds of the garden itself, plus the galkes’ growling.

‘Duke Quettil,’ said the King. ‘An impromptu visit?’

Quettil smiled broadly.

The King laughed. ‘Good to see you, Duke. I think you know everybody here.’

Quettil nodded to Walen and Ulresile, then to Adlain and a few others. He couldn’t see the Doctor because she was on the far side of the table, still tending to the King’s feet.

‘Your majesty,’ Quettil said. ‘As a further token of our honour at being allowed to play host to you and your court here again for the summer, I wish to make a presentation.’ The oiled muscle-men brought the bier in front of where the King sat and set it down. They opened the richly carved and inlaid doors of the thin container to reveal a huge square map easily the height of a man. Set within the square was a circle, filled with the shapes of continents and islands and seas and embellished with monsters, drawings of cities and small figures of men and women in a huge variety of dress. ‘A map of the world, sir,’ Quettil said. ‘Prepared for you by the Master Geographer Kuin from the very latest intelligence purchased by your humble servant and passed on to him by the most brave and reliable captains of the four waters.’

‘Thank you, Duke.’ The King sat forward in his seat, peering at the map. ‘Does it show the site of Anlios of old?’

Quettil looked at one of his liveried servants, who stepped forward quickly and said, ‘Yes, your majesty. Here.’ He pointed.

‘What of the lair of the monster Gruissens?’

‘Believed to be here, your majesty, in the region of the Vanishing Isles.’

‘And Sompolia?’

‘Ah, home of Mimarstis the Mighty,’ Quettil said.

‘So people claim,’ the King said.

‘Here, your majesty.’

‘And is Haspide still in the centre of the world?’ the King asked.

‘Ah,’ said the servant.

‘In every sense but the physical, sir,’ Quettil said, looking a little discomfited. ‘I did ask Master Geographer Kuin for the most accurate map it might be possible to draw up with the latest and most trustworthy information, and he has chosen one might almost say decreed that the Equator must be the waist-band of the world for the purposes of accurate mapmaking. As Haspide lies some goodly distance from the Equator, it cannot therefore assume the’

‘Quettil, it doesn’t matter,’ the King said airily, waving one hand. ‘I prefer accuracy to flattery. It is a most magnificent map and I thank you sincerely. It will sit in my throne room so that all may admire it, and I shall have more utilitarian copies drawn up for our sea captains. I think I have never seen a single object which contrives to be at once so decorous and yet so useful. Come and sit by me. Duke Walen, will you kindly make room for our visitor?’

Walen muttered that he would be glad to, and servants scraped his chair away from the King’s, leaving room for the balnimes to swing Quettil’s litter round the table and set it by the King. The Duke resumed his seat. The balnimes smelled strongly of some animalistic musk. My head seemed to spin. They retreated to the rear of the terrace and squatted on their haunches, long bows aslant behind.

‘And what is this?’ Quettil said, looking down from his fabulous seat at the Doctor and myself.

‘My physician,’ the King told him, smiling broadly at the Doctor.

‘What, a foot-doctor?’ Quettil asked. ‘Is this some new fashion of Haspide I’ve not heard about??

‘No, a doctor for all the body, as any royal physician must be. As Tranius was to my father. And to me.’