The Shadow of Tyr Page 4

  He went to stand, but she leaned forward slightly, holding her hand out, palm upwards. There was a gemstone there, as yellow as a citrine. He thought she wanted him to look at it, but when he reached out to pick it up, he realised it was set into her skin. Even as he watched, it started to glow and with it, her whole skin took on a golden sheen.

  Panic leaped into terror, a gut reaction to something he could not understand.

  ‘Watch, Arcadim.’ She held her open hand over his goblet. Light sprang out of her palm, hit the goblet and the pewter melted. The goblet collapsed into a misshapen mound in a pool of wine that hissed and steamed where it came into contact with the metal. She said softly, ‘I can kill with this.’ The Altani still lounged on his divan, picking at a bunch of late-season grapes.

  Arcadim sat dumbly, staring at what was left of the drinking vessel. ‘Are you—are you threatening me, Domina?’

  ‘No, Master Arcadim,’ she said, and he thought he detected a wisp of sadness in her reply. ‘Gods, no. I am trying to show you the power available to the rebels.’ She crossed to a side table and returned with a sword, the short blade of which looked as if it were made of frosted glass rather than metal. ‘Arcadim, my friend, of all the statues in this room, which would you find hardest to sell?’

  He pointed at one without hesitation. ‘That one. It’s a poor copy of the Pelotonius discus thrower at the stadium. And it’s poorly painted, too.’

  ‘I kept it for sentimental reasons, because General Gayed liked it. But that’s a sentiment that has lived past its time.’ Casually she raised the sword and it began to glow, with the same strange golden light that still brushed her skin with colour. When the tip of the blade pointed towards the marble statue, a beam of light joined the sword and the head of the discus thrower like a ray of sunlight. And the head exploded. Marble chips scattered across the floor in a circle of debris, some of them skidding as far as Arcadim’s feet. Marble dust hung in the air; they all coughed. Wordlessly, Brand rose, fetched another goblet and poured some more wine for Arcadim. The moneymaster gulped it gratefully.

  ‘Arcadim,’ Ligea said, her tone deceptively soft, ‘I have power that you can’t even dream about. I could walk into Bator Korbus’ palace right now, and assassinate him in his own bedroom.’

  ‘Is that what you are going to do?’ he asked, meeting her gaze. ‘Assassinate the Exaltarch?’ His fingers gripped one of his strings of beard pearls. He silently recited the family genealogy it represented, anything to give an appearance of calm. It didn’t help.

  Almighty God, he thought, and it was a prayer, not a blasphemy, help me. Show me she is not something beyond the beliefs of my fathers. That she is not something I am not permitted to believe in…

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘There is more to a successful rebellion than killing one’s predecessor, as well you know. If he were to die now, there would be another scrambling to step into his sandals. Like Devros of the Lucii. Or Laurentius, the Prefect Urbis. There could be chaos and a civil war as highborn families fought over the Exaltarch’s seat for one of their own. The barbarians at our borders would take advantage of the confusion to sack our cities. Bator will die, yes, but in our time, when we are ready to replace him with a stable government.’ She leaned back. ‘So, Arcadim, will you continue to be my moneymaster and help me lead the Exaltarchy to a more gracious future?’

  He swallowed and seized on the one word that struck him as the most incongruous. ‘Gracious?’

  She said softly, ‘I am sure you have read the philosophies. Didn’t Cassenes the Wise say that the best government is one that rules graciously? By which he meant a council or senate or ruler who bestows on all under their power, not the force of legions, not the strength of the sword, nor even the disinterest of the Law, but the grace of their equality as men.’

  His thoughts seethed, and out of their tangle he pulled the one that bothered him most. ‘Are you a goddess? Or an immortal?’ Please don’t tell me that all I have ever believed in is a lie.

  ‘That is something you will have to decide yourself, Arcadim. Give me your decision tomorrow. If you wish to continue as my moneymaster, bring all the papers I must sign for you to sell all my property and I will give you the details of what I want done. I will want you to make certain purchases, and to set in place a method by which we can communicate in secret.’

  ‘You—you would trust me not to betray you?’ By this time he didn’t care that they both noticed the way his hands shook.

  ‘Ah, Arcadim, your terror and your disbelief and your distress leak into the air around you like wine from a cracked jar, but I see no intention to betray. There is nothing you can hide from me.’

  Words came unbidden to his mind: And there is nothing thou canst hide from the One True God…He stood up and sweat trickled down his neck to soak his robe. Eternal truths, that’s what he needed. There are no such things as goddesses. The whole pantheon of Tyrans is the heresy of idolaters. Aloud he said, ‘Very well.’

  She nodded as she stood and gestured for him to precede her to the door. She didn’t speak again until they stood together in the entry hall. ‘Arcadim, I wish—I wish I had the time to sit with you and persuade you to my way of thinking with words. I do want your choice to be free of fear. You have my word: I will not harm you in any way if you ask me to take my business elsewhere.’

  ‘And if I dare to tell the Magister Officii all that you have said here this evening?’ No sooner had the words escaped his mouth than he wished to take them back. Was he mad that he bandied words with a—a what? Some kind of supernatural being? But the Holy Writ says: ‘There are no gods but Me…’

  She smiled. ‘Even then. There will be enough deaths to lay at my door without yours being one of them. Arcadim, if you do not support me in this, there will come a day when you will rue your short-sightedness simply because of the lost opportunity. The grace of equality, Arcadim. Think about it.’

  The slave woman came into the hall to fasten his sandals for him. He sat on the entry stool, wishing she would hurry. He wanted to leave as fast as he could. As he sat there, he glimpsed the Altani in the room they had just left, sweeping up the marble chips. A freed slave. He glanced at the woman kneeling at his feet. And noted only then that she, too, did not wear a slave collar.

  Ligea smiled at him. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s right.’ She touched the woman on the shoulder. ‘Leave us, Dini, please,’ she said. When the woman had gone, she knelt at Arcadim’s feet and tied the remaining sandal herself.

  Arcadim sat where he was, staring at her, trying to absorb the enormity of the idea that was flooding his senses. ‘Almighty God,’ he said at last. ‘You want to end slavery.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Have you any idea of what that will do to Tyrans? To our wealth? To our agriculture?’

  ‘Not really. That’s one of the reasons why I need you. But equality means more than just the end of slavery.’

  ‘The vassal states,’ he whispered.

  They stared at one another for a long minute as she continued to kneel there, her task finished, in the position of a supplicant. Yet there was nothing demeaning in her posture, and he knew she did not consider herself to be humbled. His breath caught in the back of his throat. She knows the Assorian love of symbolic gestures, he thought. Oh God, she is a dangerous woman. She has played me like the strings of the lute. This whole conversation…She is a compeer of the Brotherhood. She had access to everything the Brotherhood ever knew about Assorians. What a fool I have been.

  Almost in echo to his thought, she said softly, ‘When Tyrans invaded Assoria, your youngest brother was one of those who resisted. He was eighteen, a handsome, hot-headed lad. He was taken alive and sold as a slave, you found out that much. But a slave loses his name when he is enslaved, and is given another of the slaver’s choosing. So those who try to trace him through the records can never find out what happened…’

  ‘His name was Athenqal,’ he whispered. ‘His Assorian name. We were t
old to mourn him, as if he really had died. We didn’t have a body to offer to the sacred crocodiles, so instead we burned his clothes and threw the ashes into the sacred river. His name was written into the Book of the Sundered at the Temple.’ He raised his eyes to meet hers. ‘I don’t know what you are. But I do know what slavery does to an Assorian enslaved to one outside his faith. It’s the expunction of a living man. His elimination from records. His separation from the Law. His sundering from God.’ He drew himself up, squared his shoulders. ‘I don’t know who you represent, but if what you do will free my country from its vassalage to the Exaltarch, or even just free Assorian slaves from non-believers, I will be your moneymaster.’

  She stood up too, serious. ‘I will do my best to see that you profit by this. And likewise with every other Assorian moneymaster you bring to our side as time goes by.’

  But that was going too fast for Arcadim. ‘Domina, there is no way Assorian moneymasters will support you if you threaten to outlaw slavery in Assoria. Slavery is part of our culture, our history, our religion. The Great God Himself endorses slavery as a reminder to us of how easily all we own can be taken from us. So that we remember that God alone stands as our salvation.’

  ‘I assure you, when a vassal state is free from Tyr’s rule, it will choose its own path. Its own laws. We have no plans to impose a different set of rules on another empire in place of this one! We merely want to dismantle this Exaltarchy and deal with a single piece: Tyrans.’

  He hoped she would take his quick intake of breath as admiration, and not the gasp of disbelief that it was. He stood and bowed to show his tattoo. ‘I will bid you goodnight, Domina Ligea. I shall return tomorrow evening with the papers for your signature. I believe the Exaltarch’s trade adviser will be more than interested in buying this villa. He’s been after it for years…’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Ligea stood still for a moment as the door closed behind Arcadim. She was worried and felt physically ill. How can I do this? I am only one person and I want to bring down an empire? She sighed and walked back to where Brand was leaning on his broom.

  ‘Well, who’d have thought it,’ he said softly. ‘The way to the man’s heart was to promise the end of slavery—this from an Assorian with one of the largest number of slaves in the whole commercial quarter. Ocrastes’ balls, the man even has a slave whose sole job is to pat his cat!’

  Ligea nodded thoughtfully. ‘Let me guess. They’re all Assorians.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. They are.’ He shot her a sharp look. ‘You’re saying, what, he buys them to save them?’

  She smiled.

  He shook his head at his own obtuseness. ‘Vortexdamn, you had that all planned. You knew he would cave in over the slavery issue. All the other was just the pounding of the steak to tenderise the meat!’

  ‘I had the Brotherhood check out his personal history before I employed him.’

  ‘And you knew he doesn’t hold with slavery?’

  ‘On the contrary. He wouldn’t know what to do without his slaves! The Assorian economy runs on slavery just as much as Tyrans’ does. However, the worst thing that could happen to an Assorian would be enslavement by someone who does not follow the One True God. The slave would then be unable to fulfil the daily requirements of his faith, you see, and would therefore be cut off from God in the afterlife. That’s what is at the heart of Arcadim’s hatred of the slave trade—the idea that Assorians can be owned by non-believers. His brother’s name was expunged from the family records because he could no longer be considered an adherent of the faith. That’s why Arcadim buys so many Assorian slaves: to save them from Hades and give them a chance at eternal life in Elysium.’

  He was startled at the notion. ‘Elysium? Along with all the gods and goddesses of the Tyranian pantheon?’

  She laughed. ‘No. You are missing the point. Assorians don’t believe any of our deities exist. In their eyes, Elysium is occupied only by their One God—and all his deceased followers who have lived according to the rules of their faith. The rest go to Hades, along with the rest of us heathens once the Vortex of Death has done with us. Not, by the way, to be confused with our idea of the seven layers of Acheron. Hades is a much darker place.’

  ‘Ah. A vengeful deity, indeed. Punishes you for something you have no say in, like being enslaved by a non-believer.’

  ‘Worshipping Melete is much easier. But not as cheery in the end, perhaps. Elysium sounds like a better place to live through eternity than Acheron.’

  ‘Boring, I imagine.’

  ‘Perhaps. Were you joking about the slave for the cat?’

  ‘No. But that’s not as bad as that magistrate friend of yours, Pereus. He has a slave whose sole job is to make sure that no bird sings in his garden before he rises in the morning.’

  She snorted. ‘Difficult job, I imagine.’ She tilted her head, considering. ‘You must know a great deal about the households you’ve visited with me over the years.’

  ‘What’s a slave to do except chat to the kitchen maids when his mistress is occupied elsewhere?’

  She stifled a sigh. Would Brand ever stop needling her about her past as a slave owner? She managed a cool, ‘What indeed?’

  He changed the subject. ‘Did Arcadim realise you were expecting a baby, do you think?’

  ‘No. What man ever notices things like that? If you were to ask him about me, he would say I looked appallingly thin.’ She touched the swell below her waist. ‘It’s not that noticeable yet.’

  ‘I trust the babe isn’t affected by all this use of Magor power?’

  She froze. Had he guessed she was worried sick? She said, ‘I did ask Temellin about that. He said Magor women use their power as usual throughout pregnancy.’ But it’s not usual to become an essensa, or to plunge into the Ravage. Oh, little one, stay with me…

  He looked sceptical, so she changed the subject. ‘Tomorrow, I’ll ask Arcadim to arrange for your back wages to be paid. A transfer of funds to Altan would be best, I think. Then you can be on your way. Before you leave for Altan, though, I want to pick your brains on everything you know about slaves and the houses you’ve been to, and the slave trade.’

  ‘Fine. I’m not leaving for a while, anyway.’

  She had been about to say something concerning booking a berth for him on a vessel to Altan, but that made her frown and say instead, ‘Ah—um, I thought it was settled. You would collect what is owed you, and then go home, a free man. To raise a rebellion, or brats, or goats, or whatever.’ She didn’t say what was in her heart, aching to be said: And I will miss you, dear friend. He had been her slave, her companion, and finally—so briefly—her lover. The idea that he was going to walk out of her life, that she would never see him again, might not have had the tragedy of a death, but it had much of the pain.

  ‘It is settled,’ he agreed. ‘It’s just the timing that’s wrong. I will go after the baby is born, when he is one month old, and not before.’

  She sprawled on the divan and watched him while he resumed cleaning up the marble chips and dust on the floor. ‘You’re of the opinion that you will be of estimable help in the birthing process? How many babies have you delivered, my Altani friend?’

  ‘One has to start somewhere.’

  She laid her hand over her womb. Arrant. Her son. He might be born twisted or deformed, or worse still, not born at all…

  Brand, noting her abstraction, paused in his sweeping. ‘You think about Pinar’s son sometimes, don’t you?’

  Pinar. Remembering, she had to swallow back bile. Her cousin, Temellin’s wife. Twisted by jealousy and increasingly irrational, Pinar had suffered no compunction about seeking Ligea’s death. As a consequence, Ligea felt no remorse at the way Pinar had died. But the child the woman had been carrying?

  ‘He haunts me,’ she admitted. ‘He accuses me in my dreams. Accuses me of turning him into a monster by giving him to the Mirage Makers. In my waking hours my guilty conscience is easy enough to disregard, but at n
ight? It takes on a life of its own to control my dreams, the bitch that it is.’ She paused, then added, ‘When he is grown, I hope I can go back and…speak to him somehow. Find out if he thinks I did the right thing. Stupid, I suppose. How would I change anything if he told me what I had done to him was unconscionable?’

  She shrugged to hide the unease that gnawed at her peace of mind, failed, and turned back to more immediate matters instead. ‘So, why are you so keen to stay here longer? We agreed it was best for you to go home to Altan.’ She could have added, ‘To build a life for yourself separately. So that you can forget your love for me,’ but she left those words unspoken and said instead, ‘It will be increasingly dangerous for you here, and you do not have Magor power to keep you safe. I can pay to have a midwife when my time comes. I do not need you.’

  And it’s just as well you cannot read lies, my friend, for that is a huge one. I need you more than I could ever say, but I have no right to ask more of you. I have stolen eighteen years from you already…

  ‘I may not know much about birthing a child, but I am quite sure that every woman needs a friend at such a time. Besides, Temellin asked me to stay.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. The man is jealous of you! He reeks of it. He would never ask such a thing.’

  Brand raised an amused eyebrow in her direction. ‘And am I in the habit of lying to you?’ he drawled, using the broom again.

  He wasn’t, of course. She knew a lie as easily as most people recognised a smile. She pulled an exasperated face in his direction. ‘All right, all right. So he asked you to stay. This was while we were in Ordensa, I assume? And knowing Temellin, he probably also told you that if you let your thoughts as much as stray in the direction of my bedroom, he’d see you sold back into slavery quicker than you could blink an eye.’

  He grinned at her. ‘Not exactly. It was more along the lines of using his Magor sword for some surgical rearrangement of my body parts. As usual, he had a persuasive way with words.’