The Gentleman Bastard Series (56 page)

A galley was sliding out of the Arsenal gate, between the brightly lit towers—one of the swift little patrol vessels called “gulls,” for the winglike sweep of their oars. A gull carried twenty oars on a side, rowed by eighty paid men; on its deck it carried forty swordsmen, forty archers, and a pair
of the heavy bolt-throwers called
scorpia
. It had no provisions for cargo and only one mast with a simple, furled sail. It was meant to do just one thing—close with any ship that threatened the city of Camorr and kill every man aboard, if its warnings were not heeded.

Smaller boats were putting out from the northern edge of the South Needle; harbor pilots and crews of yellowjackets, with red and white lanterns blazing at their prows.

On the opposite side of the long breakwater, the gull was just getting up to speed; the rows of graceful oars dipped and cut white froth in the black sea. A trail of rippling wake grew behind the galley; a drumbeat could be heard echoing across the water, along with the shouts of orders.

“Close, close,” muttered the watch-sergeant. “Going to be close. That poor bastard don’t sail well; might have to get a stone across the bows before she slows up.”

A few small dark shapes could be seen moving against the pale billow of the plague ship’s sails; too few, it seemed, to work them properly. Yet as the vessel slid into Old Harbor, it began to show signs of slowing down. Its topsails were drawn up, albeit in a laggardly and lubberly fashion. The remaining sails were braced so as to spill the ship’s wind. They slackened, and with the creak of rope pulleys and the muted shouts of orders, they too began to draw up toward the yards.

“Oh, she’s got fine lines,” mused the watch-sergeant. “Fine lines.”

“That’s not a galleon,” said the younger watchman.

“Looks like one of those flush-deckers they were supposed to be building up in Emberlain; frigate-fashion, I think they call it.”

The plague ship wasn’t black from the darkness alone; it was lacquered black, and ornamented from bow to stern with witchwood filigree. There were no weapons to be seen.

“Crazy northerners. Even their ships have to be black. But she does look damn fine; fast, I’ll bet. What a heap of shit to fall into; now she’ll be stuck at quarantine for weeks. Poor bastards’ll be lucky to live.”

The gull rounded the point of the South Needle, oars biting hard into the water. By the galley’s running lamps, the two watchmen could see that the
scorpia
were loaded and fully manned; that the archers stood on their raised platforms with longbows in hand, fidgeting nervously.

A few minutes later the gull pulled abreast with the black ship, which had drifted in to a point about four hundred yards offshore. An officer strode out onto the gull’s long bow spar, and put a speaking trumpet to his mouth.

“What vessel?”

“
Satisfaction
; Emberlain,” came a return shout.

“Last port of call?”

“Jerem!”

“Ain’t that pretty,” muttered the watch-sergeant. “Poor bastards might have anything.”

“What is your cargo?” asked the officer on the gull.

“Ship’s provisions only; we were to take cargo in Ashmere.”

“Complement?”

“Sixty-eight; twenty now dead.”

“You fly the plague lights in real need, then?”

“Yes, for the love of the gods. We don’t know what it is.… The men are burning with fever. The captain is dead and the physiker died yesterday! We beg assistance.”

“You may have a plague anchorage,” shouted the Camorri officer. “You must not approach our shore closer than one hundred and fifty yards, or you will be sunk. Any boats put out will be sunk or burned. Any man who attempts to swim to shore will be shot down—assuming he makes it past the sharks.”

“Please, send us a physiker. Send us alchemists, for the love of the gods!”

“You may not throw corpses overboard,” continued the officer. “You must keep them on board. Any packages or objects somehow conveyed to shore from your vessel will be burnt without examination. Any attempt to make such conveyance will be grounds for burning or sinking. Do you understand?”

“Yes, but please, is there nothing else you can do?”

“You may have priests on shore, and you may have freshwater and charitable provisions sent forth by rope from the dockside—these ropes to be sent out by boat from shore, and to be cut after use if necessary.”

“And nothing else?”

“You may not approach our shore, on pain of attack, but you may turn and leave at will. May Aza Guilla and Iono aid you in your time of need; I pray mercy for you, and wish you a swift deliverance in the name of Duke Nicovante of Camorr.”

A few minutes later the sleek black ship settled into its plague anchorage with furled sails, yellow lights gleaming above the black water of the Old Harbor, and there it rocked, gently, as the city slept in silver mists.

INTERLUDE

The Lady of the Long Silence

1

Jean Tannen entered the service of the Death Goddess about half a year after Locke returned from his sojourn in the priesthood of Nara, with the usual instructions to learn what he could and then return home in five or six months. He used the assumed name Tavrin Callas, and he traveled south from Camorr for more than a week to reach the great temple of Aza Guilla known as Revelation House.

Unlike the other eleven (or twelve) orders of Therin clergy, the servants of Aza Guilla began their initiation in only one place. The coastal highlands that rose south of Talisham ended at vast, straight white cliffs that fell three or four hundred feet to the crashing waves of the Iron Sea. Revelation House was carved from one of these cliffs, facing out to sea, on a scale that recalled the work of the Eldren but was accomplished—gradually and painstakingly, in an ongoing process—solely with human arts.

Picture a number of deep rectangular galleries, dug straight back into the cliff, connected solely by exterior means. To get anywhere in Revelation House, one had to venture outside, onto the walkways, stairs, and carved stone ladders, regardless of the weather or the time of day. Safety rails were unknown to Revelation House; initiates and teachers alike scuttled along in light or darkness, in rain or bright clear skies, with no barrier between
themselves and a plunge to the sea save their own confidence and good fortune.

Twelve tall excised columns to the west of Revelation House held brass bells at the top; these open-faced rock tubes, about six feet deep and seventy feet high, had slender hand- and footholds carved into their rear walls. At dawn and dusk, initiates were expected to climb them and ensure that each bell was rung twelve times, once for each god in the pantheon. The carillon was always somewhat ragged; when Jean thought he could get away with it, he rang his own bell thirteen times.

Three initiates plunged to their deaths attempting to perform this ritual before Jean had passed his first month at the temple. This number struck him as surprisingly low, given how many of the devotional duties of Aza Guilla’s new servants (not to mention the architecture of their home) were clearly designed to encourage premature meetings with the Death Goddess.

“We are concerned here with death considered in two aspects: Death the Transition and Death Everlasting,” said one of their lecturers, an elderly priestess with three braided silver collars at the neck of her black robe. “Death Everlasting is the realm of the Lady Most Kind; it is a mystery not intended for penetration or comprehension from our side of the Lady’s shroud. Death the Transition, therefore, is the sole means by which we may achieve a greater understanding of her dark majesty.

“Your time here in Revelation House will bring you close to Death the Transition on many occasions, and it is a certainty that some of you will pass beyond before you finish your initiation. This may be achieved through inattentiveness, lassitude, ill fortune, or the inscrutable will of the Lady Most Kind herself. As initiates of the Lady, you will be exposed to Death the Transition and its consequences for the rest of your lives. You must grow accustomed to it. It is natural for living flesh to recoil from the presence of death, and from thoughts of death. Your discipline must overcome what is natural.”

2

AS WITH most Therin temples, initiates of the First Inner Mystery were mostly expected to train their scribing, sums, and rhetoric to the point that they could enter higher levels of study without distracting more advanced initiates. Jean, with his advantages in age and training, was
inducted into the Second Inner Mystery a bare month and a half after arrival.

“Henceforth,” said the priest conducting the ceremony, “you will conceal your faces. You will have no features of boy or girl, man or woman. The priesthood of the Lady Most Kind has only one face, and that face is inscrutable. We must not be seen as individuals, as fellow men and women. The office of the Death Goddess’ servants must
disquiet
if those we minister to are to compose their thoughts to her properly.”

The Sorrowful Visage was the silver mask of the order of Aza Guilla; for initiates, it bore a crude resemblance to a human face, with a rough indentation for the nose and holes for the eyes and mouth. For full priests, it was a slightly ovoid hemisphere of fine silver mesh. Jean donned his Sorrowful Visage, eager to get to work cataloguing more secrets of the order, only to discover that his duties were little changed from his month as an initiate of the First Inner Mystery. He still carried messages and scribed scrolls, swept floors and scoured the kitchens, still scurried up and down the precarious rock ladders beneath the Bells of the Twelve, with the unfriendly sea crashing far below and the wind tugging at his robes.

Only now he had the honor of doing all these things in his silver mask, with his peripheral vision partly blocked. Two more initiates of the Second Inner Mystery fell to a firsthand acquaintance with Death the Transition shortly after Jean’s elevation.

About a month after that, Jean was poisoned for the first time.

3

“CLOSER AND closer,” said the priestess, whose voice seemed muffled and distant. “Closer and closer to Death the Transition, to the very edge of the mystery—feel your limbs growing cold. Feel your thoughts slowing. Feel the beating of your heart growing sluggish. The warm humors are banking down; the fire of life is fading.”

She had given them some sort of green wine, a poison that Jean could not identify; each of the dozen initiates of the Second Inner Mystery in his morning class lay prostrated and twitching feebly, their silver masks staring fixedly upward, as they could no longer move their necks.

Their instructor hadn’t quite managed to explain what the wine would do before she ordered them to drink it; Jean suspected that the willingness of the initiates around him to dance gaily on the edge of Death the Transition was still more theory than actuality.

Of course, look who knows so much better
, he thought to himself as he marveled at how tingly and distant his legs had become.
Crooked Warden … this priesthood is crazy. Give me strength to live, and I’ll return to the Gentlemen Bastards … where life makes sense.

Yes, where he lived in a secret Elderglass cellar beneath a rotting temple, pretending to be a priest of Perelandro while taking weapons lessons from the duke’s personal swordmaster. Perhaps a bit drunk on whatever drug was having its way with him, Jean giggled.

The sound seemed to echo and reverberate in the low-ceilinged study hall; the priestess turned slowly. The Sorrowful Visage concealed her true expression, but in his drug-hazed mind Jean was certain he could feel her burning stare.

“An insight, Tavrin?”

He couldn’t help himself; he giggled again. The poison seemed to be making merry with the tight-lipped inhibition he’d feigned since arriving at the temple. “I saw my parents burn to death,” he said. “I saw my cats burn to death. Do you know the noise a cat makes, when it burns?” Another damn giggle; he almost choked on his own spit in surprise. “I watched and could do nothing. Do you know where to stab a man, to bring death now, or death in a minute, or death in an hour? I do.” He would have been rolling with laughter, if he could move his limbs; as it was, he shuddered and twitched his fingers. “Lingering death? Two or three days of pain? I can give that, too. Ha! Death the Transition? We’re old friends!”

The priestess’ mask fixed directly on him; she stared for several drug-lengthened moments while Jean thought,
Oh, gods damn this stuff, I’ve really done it now
.

“Tavrin,” said the priestess, “when the effects of the emerald wine have passed, remain here. The High Proctor will speak to you then.”

Jean lay in mingled bemusement and dread for the rest of the morning. The giggles still came, interspersed with bouts of drunken self-loathing.
So much for a full season of work. Some false-facer I turned out to be
.

That night, much to his surprise, he was confirmed as having passed into the Third Inner Mystery of Aza Guilla.

“I knew we could expect exceptional things from you, Callas,” said the High Proctor, a bent old man whose voice wheezed behind his Sorrowful Visage. “First the extraordinary diligence you showed in your mundane studies, and your rapid mastery of the exterior rituals. Now, a vision … a
vision during your very first Anguishment. You are marked, marked! An orphan who witnessed the death of his mother and father … You were fated to serve the Lady Most Kind.”

“What, ah, are the additional duties of an initiate of the Third Inner Mystery?”

“Why, Anguishment,” said the High Proctor. “A month of Anguishment; a month of exploration into Death the Transition. You shall take the emerald wine once again, and then you shall experience other means of closeness to the precipitous moment of the Lady’s embrace. You shall hang from silk until nearly dead; you shall be exsanguinated. You shall take up serpents, and you shall swim in the night ocean, wherein dwell many servants of the Lady. I envy you, little brother. I envy you, newly born to our mysteries.”