The Silver City, page 6
‘Because I am a woman?’
‘Because you are a woman, and there is only one of you as yet. Like it or not, Zithiriani — especially here at Court — still tend to think of the female sex in purely decorative and reproductive terms. I feel it is only fair to tell you that you will take them somewhat by surprise.’
For the first time, Halthris felt a touch of amusement. She fought it back, and said tartly, ‘I had not expected anything else. And that being the case, it’s surely better for you yourself to tell the King about the Ska’i. You’re much more likely to be believed than I am.’
‘Am I?’ said the Lord Ansaryon, and a curious smile briefly crossed his face. ‘I doubt that, somehow. I would probably be accused of spreading false and terrifying rumours for my own devious and despicable ends. If at least one live Tanathi can stand before the King and swear that every word of the warning is true, then there is a very faint chance that he will believe it.’
Halthris realized suddenly that this Prince of Zithirian seemed to be almost as much of an outsider at his own Court as she was. The insight did not make her warm to him, but she wondered, with a mixture of curiosity and repulsion, why he should be so alienated from the people around him, even his own family. She thought of her brother Abreth and her sister Tarli, their closeness and their support for each other, and, more distantly, the wisdom and love of their father. It was impossible to imagine any of his three children thinking or speaking of Charnak with the contemptuous tone of disrespect which Ansaryon had used to refer to his own sire. But from snippets she had picked up on her brief meetings with the people of Zithirian, it seemed that many thought, similarly, that His High Mightiness was neither high, nor mighty. Again, she could not envisage such a situation arising amongst the Tanathi, where each clan elected its chief by popular consent, and removed them from office in the same way. Charnak occupied his position because he was liked, respected and an intelligent leader. The King of Zithirian, by contrast, sat on the throne purely because he was his parents’ eldest son, and not because he was peculiarly fit for the task. And if Abreth was right, and the Ska’i were planning to attack Zithirian, then to have a derided incompetent in charge was to invite disaster.
She began to hope that, when the Ska’i did appear, she and Abreth and all the other Tanathi would have long since fled to the comparative safety of the inhospitable Northern Mountains.
With some difficulty, she dragged her mind back to his last words. ‘Then I hope that you and my brother and I between us can convince him, because if the Ska’i attack Zithirian when it is unprepared … ’
‘Then our heads will adorn their trophy-lances,’ said Ansaryon, so exactly describing the horrible picture in her mind that the hairs rose on her arms. ‘Don’t worry — I have no intention of allowing that to happen. I believe you, and I will do all in my power to convince the King and his ministers of the urgency of immediate action — but I will need your help to do it.’ He smiled suddenly, and she was almost persuaded that it was genuine. ‘I shall skirt around the issue three times with abundant euphemisms and circumlocutions, in typical Zithiriani style. Then you and your brother can come in with the bludgeon of brutal truth and finish them off.’
By now, exhaustion was fogging her brain and dragging her eyelids down, and she knew that sleep was imperative. She got to her feet, stifling a yawn, and said firmly, ‘Our plans will have to wait until tomorrow, when I have rested. Is there a room for me somewhere?’
‘My servants have prepared one already, off my courtyard. Unless you would prefer to sleep in the open, under the stars?’
She might be a lowly and uncivilized barbarian, but she was not going to give him the satisfaction of seeing her prove it, however much she was perturbed by the thought of sleeping enclosed by four walls and a ceiling. ‘That will not be necessary,’ she said coldly.
‘I didn’t think it would be,’ said the Lord Ansaryon, his voice dry. ‘My thanks to you, Halthris of the Tanathi. I hope that you will sleep well, and I have high expectations of a further fruitful converse on the morrow.’
A servant had appeared, presumably in answer to a summons she had not noticed, and stood waiting for her by the open door. Too tired to indulge in further courtesies, she turned and followed him from the room.
And she was too weary even to notice that the ceiling above her soft, warm bed was a delicate, pale shade of blue, woven across with painted vines and flowers and birds, instead of the familiar flickering pattern of stars that had looked so kindly down on her in summer months, all her life long until this night.
*
‘Madam?’
Her hearing and reactions sharpened by years of living on the steppe, Halthris came awake instantly and then wished she hadn’t. Every muscle ached far worse, surely, than if she had spent the night on the cold hard ground. She sat up rather gingerly, and saw a young woman, clad in bright servants’ blue, with a laden tray in her hands. The girl ducked her head with a gesture of polite subservience. ‘Madam’s humble servant, Kerrardi, trusts that Madam has slept well, and that her dreams were propitious?’
In fact, Halthris couldn’t remember dreaming at all, but she nodded.
‘I am joyed to hear of it,’ said the maid. ‘If Madam will permit this humble servant to present her with a simple repast which it is hoped will do something to assuage her hunger — ’
‘Oh, for Hegeden’s sake, just put it down and go!’ Halthris said, exasperated. ‘Or we’ll be here all day.’
In the next instant, she regretted giving vent to her feelings, sharpened by ravenous hunger at the sight of the food, for the little servant gasped and turned white. She put the tray down on the floor with a clatter and made a sign exactly like the warding gesture the Tanathi used to turn aside evil. Too late, Halthris remembered that in Zithirian, Hegeden and Sarraliss were heathen deities, and their worship strictly forbidden.
But she was not going to admit her error: only to Abreth and Tarli would she ever confess that she was in the wrong. She gave the girl a friendly smile, and said, as if nothing had happened, ‘Thank you very much. That will be all.’
Her hands freed, the maid clasped them to her breast and bowed still more subserviently. ‘As Madam wishes. Would Madam require the services of her humble servant Kerrardi in the preparation of a bath?’
‘A what?’ Startled, Halthris stared at her in bewilderment.
Then she remembered that the peculiar Zithiriani, their city admittedly awash with water, liked to immerse themselves in it at regular intervals, wallowing in their own dirt. Tanathi also bathed frequently, washing away grime in rivers and lakes far cleaner and fresher than the streams which flowed through the pipes and conduits so cunningly laid under the streets of the city.
Nevertheless, it would undoubtedly be more than pleasant to soak away the dirt and dust of her journey. She smiled again at Kerrardi. ‘That would be nice. Thank you.’
‘It is pleasing to Madam’s humble servant to grant Madam’s wish,’ said the maid, with another bow. ‘If Madam will allow her humble servant to enter the bathing room, she will draw the water for Madam. Would Madam desire her bath hot, or warm, or cool, or cold?’
‘Warm, please,’ said Halthris, and saw a look of surprise on Kerrardi’s face. Was ordinary courtesy really so uncommon here in the Royal Palace?
Left in peace at last, she devoured soft, warm white bread, spread with some very savoury, salty black paste from a small pot, and washed down with the crushed scarlet juice of some fruit whose fragrance she vaguely recognized, but whose name she could not recall. Like her supper the previous evening, it was a meal at once simple, tasty and extremely satisfying.
The bath, too, proved wonderfully refreshing. She lay full length in an oblong marble tub, revelling in the warm silky water, surrounded by the aromatic odour of sweet herbs, and watching the dust of the steppe swirl around her in a gritty brown scum. She had dismissed the maid, finding her presence unsettling, and enjoyed now the luxury of being alone, with a full stomach, an alert mind and, at last, the opportunity to think in detail about what lay before her.
She knew from past experience that Abreth and the horses could not be expected until tomorrow at the very earliest — if, if they managed to avoid the band that had killed Urdray, or any other Ska’i that might be lurking across the route to Zithirian.
And the wheels of Palace protocol seemed to grind excruciatingly slowly. If they treated Abreth with the same ludicrously elaborate courtesy, she and her brother would not have the chance to give the King their warning in person for at least another two days, and more likely three, or even four. By which time, the Ska’i camp, even one so vast, could have packed its tents and its wagons, saddled up its horses, and be riding on inexorably towards its prey.
While she lay here wallowing in decadent and civilized luxury, the guest of a very dubious person indeed, even if he was a Prince, even if he did believe her story, Abreth could at this moment be lying dead in the long brown grass of autumn, or fighting for his life against Ska’i who knew nothing of kindness, or decency, or mercy, for whom her beloved brother was nothing more than a head to be severed from his neck, a battle trophy to advertise a warrior’s prowess to the rest of his savage tribe …
Halthris ducked her head under the cooling water and emerged streaming and blinded by a curtain of soaked red-gold hair. She shook herself like a dog and stepped out onto the smooth, tiled floor. There was a pile of large fluffy cloths in which to wrap her wet body, and she pulled one round her, wondering at the feel of it: however did their weavers manage to achieve such softness? She rubbed herself briskly dry, and then pulled on her finest clothes, the garments she had wanted to wear yesterday for her entrance to the city: the blue silk tunic with the overlapping, chiming gold discs sewn at neck and cuffs and hem, and the stags in vivid scarlet and yellow leaping extravagantly across breast and back and arms. The green woollen trousers worn underneath, decorated with a single band of intricate gold braid down each outside seam, appeared almost plain by comparison. She buckled her best red leather belt round her waist, and dampened one of the smaller towels in the bath water, using it to rub the dust of her soft deerskin riding-boots. Then she attached two rows of looped golden chains to their upper edge.
The last and most important task was upon her: to reduce her wet, tangled mass of hair, the colour of hot new flame, to the six neat braids, plaited with gold and silver ribbons and thread, that were customary for all Tanathi to wear on ceremonial occasions. She took her silver and tortoise-shell comb from her pack, and began, with a certain nervousness fumbling her usually deft fingers. She did not want the maid Kerrardi, or any other servant, or, worst of all, the Lord Ansaryon himself, to walk in and discover her with her hair loose. It was a situation of such intimate privacy that to say ‘They unbound their hair for each other’ meant that two Tanathi had become lovers.
But no one entered, and she tied the last knot of gold ribbon on the last braid, with a little golden amulet, in the shape of a horse, hanging from the end. Now she was protected six times over, with a horse, for Sarraliss; an eagle, for Hegeden; a hunting-cat, for Sayni, the guardian spirit of her clan, and also for Fess; Emmesar, the swift-running hare; a deer to represent the faithful, loving Djarna; and a leopard, fierce and powerful, for Immith. It was an unusual collection of talismans for a woman: but even amongst the Tanathi, Halthris was not an ordinary woman.
Now she was dressed and confident in her finery, ready to face the King of Zithirian in all his high mightiness. But no one came, and her brusque manner seemed to have frightened the maid away altogether. She put all her belongings neatly back in her pack, checked her hair by running a hand down each braid, and added a couple of blue lapis lazuli bracelets to the three of chased gold already encircling her wrists. Then, bored, she got up and paced about the room, examining the carved wooden intricacies of the bed; the richly embroidered wall hangings, depicting, probably, scenes from the Life of Tayo; the table, the chairs’, the wooden chest covered with painted birds in scarlet and orange and crimson, and the ceiling pictures that she had been too tired even to notice last night. Belatedly curious, she went next into the inner room, where she had taken her bath. Where had the water come from?
Out of a spout set in the wall, seemed to be the answer, and there was a handle beside it which, when pushed down with some effort, yielded a gush of cold, clear water. There was a half-empty cauldron, which had presumably supplied the hot, sitting on a smouldering hearth in the corner. She delved under the scummy surface of the bath, released the bung, and watched the cooling remains pour out along a gutter running across the blue and white tiled floor and under the wall into unknown territory. She wondered where it would go. Presumably, since the Palace occupied the high ground above the Kefirinn, her dirty water would end up polluting the river.
Strange people, the Zithiriani. She grinned to herself, and went back into the main room, her gold discs and amulets, chains and bracelets, chiming together in soft harmony as she walked. She was not going to skulk in this luxurious prison any longer, waiting like some nervous supplicant to be brought into the Royal Presence as though she were being done a vast favour. If they would not see her, then she would go, and find Ennim, and ride out of the city to wait for Abreth and the others, and for Fess.
She picked up her pack, strode out of the door, and stopped, staring. Last night, led to her room so tired that she had barely been able to put one foot in front of the other, she had not noticed this courtyard, around which the rooms of Ansaryon’s apartment, like all Zithiriani houses, had been built. It was large, perhaps thirty paces in either direction, not including the colonnaded walkway on all four sides. As everywhere in the city, plants and flowers grew in profusion, twining up the slender stone columns, tangling together in a mass of colour over the tiled roof, and spilling over tubs and troughs.
In the exact centre was a stone fountain of astonishing and complicated artistry. Halthris, walking over to examine it, wondered how the water was induced to flow from the very top, in several streams that trickled down into shallow bowls and spouted again from each of them in a fine spray that sparkled in a myriad rainbow colours under the sun. There was no lever, no indication of how it worked. She peered fruitlessly up at the top, higher than a man, and then examined all the bowls, noting the little stone drinking birds carved on the rim of each one, and the fish etched under the surface of the water, so realistically depicted that she could recognize them all: the predatory but delicious pike, fat salmon, spotted trout, and crayfish with their long claws and waving feelers. Marvellous though they were, they offered no clues, so she knelt down on the wet stones and looked up at the undersides of the bowls.
‘It comes from a cistern in the tower,’ said a voice behind her. She leapt to her feet, nearly cracking her head on the curved stone above, and turned to see the Lord Ansaryon, standing watching her a few paces away.
He was wearing black today: the colour of crows and ravens, and of extreme ill omen, no Tanathi wore it unless gripped by inconsolable sorrow, and she shivered. Three servants stood behind him, all in that brilliant blue, and all studying her covertly.
But she had done nothing to make her feel guilty, and she met the Prince’s chilly eyes without flinching. ‘Does it? I wondered how it worked. And how does it manage to flow upwards, then? Sorcery?’
‘Pressure of water,’ said Ansaryon concisely. ‘Now, Halthris of the Tanathi, I trust you slept well?’
‘Very well indeed,’ she told him, and saw the servants exchange glances, presumably noting her omission of his proper title. Well, she was a Chief’s daughter, and surely his equal in rank, if they thought that such things mattered. And she would only give proper respect to those who had earned it. So far, the Lord Ansaryon had not.
‘His High Mightiness King Varathand, Fourth of His Name, bids me inform his supplicant, Halthris of the Tanathi tribe, the privilege of a Royal Audience this afternoon, when the midday meal is ended.’ The Prince’s voice was formal and declamatory. ‘In the meantime, Halthris of the Tanathi tribe is graciously permitted to enjoy the gift of His High Mightiness’s benevolent hospitality.’
‘This afternoon?’ Halthris stared at him angrily. ‘Why not now? I have rested, and bathed, and eaten, and I’m grateful for your kindness, but I am also heartily sick of kicking my heels here. I would rather go and tend my horse — or see the King now.’
The three servants, obviously shocked and affronted, gazed at her in horror. One of them even took a step towards her, as if to restrain her, but Ansaryon stopped him in his tracks with a swift gesture. ‘If you were familiar with the practices and customs of our Court, Halthris of the Tanathi, you would know that His High Mightiness never, under any circumstances whatsoever, grants audience to anyone, not even the Emperor of Toktel’yi himself, before the midday meal has been eaten.’
‘Why? Because he has to stuff his belly before his brain can work?’
As soon as the derisive words were out of her mouth, she knew that she had made a grievous mistake. The servants gasped, but Lord Ansaryon gave no obvious sign of disgust. Instead, he seemed to grow taller, and his silver eyes glittered. She forced herself to stand straight without flinching, unafraid to meet his gaze, although her heart had begun to pound erratically. Images of darkness and despair slid into her mind, and she repelled them desperately, determined to cling on to her pride and dignity, however little she deserved it.
‘Tell me, Halthris of the Tanathi — do you normally make a practice of insulting your host? I would not describe the poorest peasant in such terms, if I had accepted his bread and his shelter.’
She would not apologize, not if he tried threats, or torture, or any of the unspeakable arts in which he was so hideously skilled. And she was beginning to suspect that those extraordinary eyes really could see inside her head — and put things there, too. She said firmly, ‘No, I would not, either. But you forget the urgency of my warning. By the time I do see the King, almost a day will have passed since I arrived here — precious time wasted. And I don’t like to think that all my efforts have been in vain, if the King fails to take me seriously. My friend Urdray did not die so that you could dither and delay while the Ska’i are preparing to attack you in overwhelming strength.’
