The Gentleman Bastard Series (68 page)

“Sofia and I have been coming here since we were children,” said Lorenzo. “Every year, on this day. It’s only overwhelming the first ten or eleven times you see it, believe me.”

“I shall have to take you at your word, my lord.”

Attendants in black and silver livery, with rows of polished silver buttons gleaming in the sunlight, held the cage door open for them as Locke followed the Salvaras onto the embarkation terrace. A squad of blackjackets marched past, in full ceremonial dress, with rapiers carried over their shoulders in silver-chased scabbards. The soldiers wore tall black fur hats with medallions bearing the crest of the Duchy of Camorr just above their eyes. Locke winced to think at how those must have felt, marching back and forth beneath the sun’s merciless consideration for hours on end. His own clothes were working up a healthy sweat, but he and his hosts had the option of moving inside the tower at will.

“Don Lorenzo and Doña Sofia? My lord and lady Salvara?”

The man who approached them from the edge of the crowd was very tall and wide-shouldered; he stood a full head above most of the Camorri present, and his angular features and singularly fair hair were the mark of the oldest, purest sort of Vadran blood. This man had roots in the far northeast, in Astrath or Vintila, the heartlands of the Kingdom of the Seven Marrows. Curiously, he was dressed in Nightglass Company black, with a captain’s silver collar pips, and his voice was pure upper-class Camorr without the hint of any other accent.

“Why, yes,” said Don Lorenzo.

“Your servant, my lord and lady. My name is Stephen Reynart; Doña Vorchenza, I believe, should have mentioned me to you.”

“Oh, of course!” Doña Sofia held out her hand; Reynart bent at the waist with his right foot forward, took her hand, and kissed the air just
above it. “So pleased to make your acquaintance at last, Captain Reynart. And how is dear Doña Vorchenza this afternoon?”

“She is
knitting
, my lady,” said Reynart, with a smirk that told of some private joke. “She has commandeered one of the duke’s sitting rooms for herself; you know how she feels about large, noisy gatherings.”

“I must, of course, find her,” said Sofia. “I should love to see her.”

“I’m sure the feeling will be mutual, my lady. But may I presume? Is this Master Fehrwight, the merchant of Emberlain I was told you would be bringing?” Reynart bowed again, just the neck this time, and in heavily accented Vadran he said, “May the Marrows run sweet and the seas run calm, Master Fehrwight.”

“May the Hands Beneath the Waves carry you to good fortune,” Locke replied in his own much smoother Vadran, genuinely surprised. He switched back to Therin for the sake of politeness. “One of my countrymen, Captain Reynart? In the service of the duke of Camorr? How fascinating!”

“I am most definitely of the Vadran blood,” said Reynart, “but my parents died when I was an infant, on a trading mission to this city. I was adopted and raised by Doña Vorchenza, the countess of Amberglass—the bright golden tower over there. She had no children of her own. Although I cannot inherit her title and her properties, I have been allowed to serve in the duke’s Nightglass Company.”

“Astonishing! I must say, you look exceedingly formidable—the image of the kings of the Marrows themselves. I’d wager the duke is only too pleased to have you in his service.”

“I hope with all my heart for that to be true, Master Fehrwight. But come; I’m holding you up. I beg pardon, my lord and lady Salvara; I am hardly a worthy topic of conversation. Let me show you into the tower, by your leave.”

“By all means,” said Sofia. She leaned close to Locke’s ear and whispered, “Doña Vorchenza is a dear old thing, something like a grandmother to all of us Alcegrante ladies. She is the arbiter of all our gossip, you might say. She is not well—she is more and more distant with every passing month—but she is still very close to us. I hope you will have the chance to make her acquaintance.”

“I shall look forward to it, my lady Salvara.”

Reynart ushered them into the tower of Raven’s Reach itself, and the sight that met Locke’s eyes drew an unwilling gasp from his mouth.

From the outside, Raven’s Reach was opaque silver. From the inside, at least on the levels he could see, it was nearly transparent. A smoky haze seemed to live within the glass, cutting out the glare of the sun, reducing it to a plain white circle overhead that the naked eye could easily bear to regard. But in all other ways it let in the view as though it were not there at all. The hilly countryside and the wide Angevine lay to the north, while all the islands of the lower city lay spread like illustrations on a map to the south. Locke could even make out the thin black shapes of ships’ masts bobbing past the southern edge of the city. His stomach fluttered with the thrill of vertigo.

On the level of the tower just above them, the Sky Garden began; there were said to be a hundred tons of rich earth in the pots and troughs atop that roof. Vines cascaded down the sides; well-tended bushes and fullsized trees sprouted from the apex of the tower—a little round forest in miniature. In the branches of one of those trees, facing south to the Iron Sea, was a wooden chair that was regarded as the very highest point in Camorr any sane person could reach. The Sky Garden would be full of children; it was where all the youngest nobles would be released to amuse themselves while their parents tended to the business of the court beneath their feet.

The floor they stood on did not cover the full hundred-foot width of the tower; it was a hemisphere, covering only the north half of the tower’s diameter. Locke grasped a rail at the southern edge of the floor and looked down; there were four other hemispherical galleries beneath them, each about twenty feet below the one above, and each one full of men and women. The vertigo threatened to swallow him again. Staring down at least eighty feet to “ground,” with the transparent side of the tower and that mind-twisting southern view spread out before him, he felt almost as though the world were tilting on its axis. The hand of Don Salvara on his shoulder brought him back to the present.

“You’ve got Raven’s Reach disease, Lukas,” the don laughed. “You’re clutching that rail like a lover. Come have some refreshments; your eyes will sort out the views in time, and it will all come to seem perfectly normal.”

“Oh, my lord Salvara, if only that should prove to be the case! But I would be glad to visit the banquet tables.”

The don led him through the press of silks and cottons and cashmeres and rare furs, nodding here and waving there. Sofia had vanished, along with Reynart.

The banquet tables (or perhaps these were merely the appetizer tables; the light afternoon refreshments at a feast like this could rival the main course from any lesser occasion) were laid out with silver-trimmed linen cloths, fifty feet from end to end. Guild Chefs—the masters of the Eight Beautiful Arts of Camorr—stood at attention in their cream-yellow ceremonial robes and black scholars’ caps with hanging gold cords behind their ears. Each chef, male or female, had intricate black tattoos on each of the four fingers of their hands; every design representing mastery of one of the Eight Gourmet Forms.

At one end of the banquet table were desserts (the Fifth Beautiful Art): cherry cream cakes encased in shells of gold leaf that were intended to be eaten; cinnamon tarts painstakingly assembled with honey-paste glue into the shape of sailing vessels, a whole fleet of little ships with white marzipan sails and raisins for crewmen. There were hollowed-out pears, their cores replaced with cylinders of river-melon fruit or brandy creams; there were shaved river-melons, their green exteriors scraped down to reveal the pink flesh inside. Every exposed pink face bore a relief sculpture of the crest of Camorr, and alchemical globes set within the melons made them glow with an inviting pink light.

At the other end of the table were meats. Each one of the silver platters held a
phantasmavola
: an Impossible Dish, an imaginary animal formed by joining the halves of two separate creatures during preparation and cooking. Locke saw a roast boar with the head of a salmon, resting on a pile of black caviar. Nearby there was a pig’s head, complete with a marsh apple in its mouth, with a roast capon for a body. The whole affair was covered in brown caramel sauce and figs, and Locke gave in to the growling sensation at the bottom of his stomach. He let one of the chefs slice him a fair portion of the pig/capon, which he ate from a silver dish with a little silver fork; it came apart in his mouth with the texture of butter, and the flavors set his head whirling. He hadn’t tasted anything so magnificent in weeks, and he knew that it would have taken all of his powers, with the help of the Sanza brothers at their peak, to prepare something so fine in his old glass cellar. But that thought stole some of the savor from his meal, and he finished quickly.

The bullock’s head with the body of a squid, he was happy to avoid.

At the center of the banquet tables was the crowning glory (of this particular level, at least). It was a massively unsubtle subtlety, eight feet in length: an edible sculpture of the city of Camorr. The islands were baked sweetbread on little raised metal platforms; the channels between those
platforms ran deep with some blue liquor that was being ladled out in cups by a chef at the right side of the diorama. Each major bridge in the city was represented by a crystallized-sugar replica; each major Elderglass landmark was given a tiny analog, from the Broken Tower in the south to the House of Glass Roses to the Five Towers overlooking everything. Locke peered very closely. There was even a tiny frosted chocolate galleon little bigger than an almond, floating on a brown pudding Wooden Waste.

“How are you faring, Lukas?”

Don Salvara was beside him again, wineglass in hand; a black-coated attendant plucked Locke’s used dish from his fingers the moment he turned to speak to the don.

“I am overwhelmed,” said Locke, without much exaggeration. “I had no idea what to expect. By the Marrows, perhaps it is well that I had no preconceptions. The court of the king of the Marrows must be like this; I can think of nowhere else that would possibly compare.”

“You honor our city with your kind thoughts,” said Lorenzo. “I’m
very
pleased you decided to join us; I’ve just been around chatting with a few of my peers. I’ll have a serious talk with one of them in about an hour; I think he’ll be good for about three thousand crowns. I hate to say it, but he’s rather malleable, and he’s very fond of me.”

“Lukas,” cried Doña Sofia as she reappeared with Reynart at her heels, “is Lorenzo showing you around properly?”

“My lady Salvara, I am quite astounded by the spectacle of this feast; I daresay your husband could leave me sitting in a corner with my thumb in my mouth, and I would be adequately entertained all evening.”

“I would do no such thing, of course,” laughed Don Salvara. “I was just off speaking to Don Bellarigio, love; he’s here with that sculptor he’s been patronizing these past few months, that Lashani fellow with the one eye.”

A team of liveried attendants walked past, four men carrying something heavy on a wooden bier between them. The object was a gold-and-glass sculpture of some sort—a gleaming pyramid crested with the arms of Camorr; it must have had alchemical lamps within it, for the glass glowed a lovely shade of orange. As Locke watched, the color shifted to green, and then to blue, and then to white, and back to orange again.

“Oh, how lovely!” Doña Sofia was clearly enamored with all things alchemical. “The shifting hues! Oh, those adjustments must be precise; how I would love to see inside! Tell me, can Don Bellarigio’s Lashani sculpt me one of
those
?”

Three more teams of men hauled three more sculptures past; each one shifted through a slightly different pattern of changing colors.

“I don’t know,” said Reynart. “Those are gifts for the duke, from one of our … more unusual guests. They’ve been cleared with my superiors; they certainly do look lovely.”

Locke turned back to the banquet table and suddenly found himself six feet away from Giancana Meraggio, who had an orchid at his breast, a silver plate of fruit in one hand, and a gorgeous young woman in a red gown on the other. Meraggio’s gaze passed over Locke, then whirled back; those penetrating eyes fixed on him, and on the clothes he wore. The master money-changer opened his mouth, seemed to think better of it, and then opened it again.

“Sir,” said Meraggio in a cold voice, “I beg your pardon, but—”

“Why, Master Meraggio!” Don Salvara stepped up beside him. At the sight of a don, Meraggio shut his mouth once again and bowed politely, from the waist, though not very deeply.

“Don Salvara,” said Meraggio, “and the lovely Doña Sofia. What a pleasure to see you both! Greetings to you as well, Captain Reynart.” He dismissed the tall Vadran from his consideration with a shift of his head and peered at Locke again.

“Master Meraggio,” said Locke. “Why, what a fortunate coincidence! It is a pleasure to meet you at last; I have looked for you at your countinghouse, many times, and I am afraid I have never had a chance to pay my proper respects.”

“Indeed? Why, I was just about to ask … who might you be, sir?”

“Master Meraggio,” said Don Salvara, “allow me to present Lukas Fehrwight, merchant of Emberlain, servant of the House of bel Auster. He has come down to discuss the import of a certain quantity of small beer; I’d like to see how those Emberlain ales fare against our native best. Lukas, this is the honorable Giancana Meraggio, master of the countinghouse that bears his name, known by many as the Duke of White Iron, for very good reason. All finance whirls around him like the constellations in the sky.”

“Your servant, sir,” said Locke.

“Of Emberlain? Of the House of bel Auster?”

“Why yes,” said Doña Sofia, “he’s here at the feast as our special guest.”

“Master Meraggio,” said Locke, “I hope I do not presume too much, but do you find the cut of my coat pleasing? And the fabric?”

“A singular question,” said Meraggio, scowling, “for both seem strangely familiar.”