A Thousand Glass Flowers (The Chronicles of Eirie 3) (9 page)

‘It is believed your aunt and uncle were murdered in a crime of theft as money and possessions have been taken, and I can assure yo
u the culprit shall be caught.
An odalisque in the Sultan’s seraglio is a member of the Sultan’s fam
ily, she is the Sultan’s wife.
Her
family is the Sultan’s family.
A crime against her is a crime against the Sultan.  As for your dog, it would appear that one of the odalisques
killed him in a jealous rage.
She is even now being disposed of.’

The Sultan’s law, Lalita knew, was irredeemably final – the cutting off of hands and subsequent ganching for the murderer or the throwing of the woman off the highest tower into the
Ahmad, inside a bag of rocks.
But it meant little.

‘I understand you are almost done with the book and I am going to place a guar
d around you while you finish.
When it is done, you shall enter the Valide Sultan’s apartments and my lady mother shall care for you until I need you for further commissions
.
In her Court, you shall be safe.’

His words were barely intelligible as she swayed on her feet, hearing the river roaring close by.
The river? No, it is not the river.
It is my head that roars.
She realized the Sultan was asking her a question and looked into dark brown eyes sequestered in the face tha
t showed a degree of kindness. ‘I apologise, sire.
I did not hear.’

He repeated himself.
‘Lali
ta, you have had a vast shock. I understand. I asked about the book. Can it be done?
Are you able to finish it by tomorrow, so the bookbinders may finish it?’

Can it be done?
Lalita kept her eyes fixed to the floor
.
If I don’t sleep, don’t have bodily functions and if I don’t allow grief to sweep me along in a muddy current like the
Ahmad in flood.
‘Yes, sire. It can be done.’
She heard no reply, just feet moving away and gates closing and then Salah’s voice, as sharp and bitter as ever.

‘Come Lalita, I must take you home.’

‘Home?’
She laughed
weakly, the tears overflowing. ‘Yes.
Take me home.’

‘Courage,’ she heard the afrit say and felt a familiar breeze like a finger on her chee
ks, taking the teardrops away.
‘Courage my dear.’

Chapter Eight

Finnian

Finnian stared at the waters of Veniche as they flowed around him like undulating threads o
f silk.
Guilt pulled him in one direction, anger and revenge in another, indifference in another still.
What is a Færan but one who has only self-interest at the heart of his life.
I am no different.
The sa
ilor’s death shouldn’t matter.
What do I care for a young boy desti
ned for life without a father.
I managed.

The colours lightened then darkened as he made his way along
canals, alleys and footpaths.
Tints of the Raj pervaded
– watermelon, ochre, apricot.
Even the architecture was reminiscent of the northern desert land, with quatrefoil carvings on the elegant balustrades that overhung canals, arched windows decorated with stone filigree and little humped bridges tha
t reminded him of Raji camels.
But he tired of the smell – a taint of mould and mildew and humid air that thickened one’s clothes and
pervaded every waking moment.
He found a gondolier and bade him paddle around the watery city while he waited for dusk and for the doors of the di Accia palace, museum of the nobility, to close on the la
st curious eyes of the day.
But the gondola’s curtains only shielded him from curiosity and the weather a
nd not from his dank thoughts.
A dozen times he asked himself if the cost of t
he Cantrips might be too high.
A dozen times his most base nature said
‘No’.

At last, when tardy darkness settled, he ordered the gondolier
to deliver him to the palace.
He paid him and then mesmered the man so that the fellow stared bemused at an empty landing stage where mooring poles and channel markers marched out into the middle of the canal in a regimented line.

The door latch clicked and the double entry swung ajar allowing him to ease himself into a magnificent black
and white marble-paved foyer.
Life-sized obsidian and ivory shantranj pieces surrounded the area and carved eyes stared down, a gaze that inspired memories of the cruel games he had be
en forced to play with Isolde.
Mostly he lost and a welter of bruisings would follow and thus he moved carefully amongst the haunting pieces, his mind filled with contuse
d emotions.
Each giant piece was an edifice to glorify the di Accia name, the title of a woman who had in a moment of brilliant madness managed to kill an Other and that Other, Finnian’s brother.
The home of my brother’s murderer.
He tried to drag any sort of grief at his brother’s death from deep inside but realised the grief he had felt for so long had been for himself, a self-indulgence
.
But sadness
is
self-indulgence.
All that matters is that it prompts me to hate Isolde even more and that our lost brotherhood shall be avenged with her death.
He walked to the landing at the junction of the curving double stair, where a massive urn spilled white flowers in a cornucopia of blossom and where twin china cabinets were filled with glistening glassware.

He chafed as the overly cautious curator finished his closure duties, dowsing the lig
hting throughout the building.
The man had worked through each of the three floors, passing Finnian on the first floor landing, unaware of the Other and humming as he took the left descending curve to disappear thr
ough painted and gilded doors.
The man’s footsteps tapped and breaths huffed as candles we
re snuffed, one after another.
A husky laugh slid out from the door into the entrance hall and Finnian leaned over the banister to observe the curator lifting a woman’s skirts, kissing her with passion as his hand ran along her thigh.  The woman was pretty and her skirts were of silk, her stockings white;
that I had half a chance, the chit would know love like she would never have again
but he turned away to look out over a courtyard that was a pool of shadow and silhouette.
Where’s
the thrill in watching them tup?
In the light of one lone torchère, an aged fountain splashed droplets into a scallop shell held by two cherubs and he impatiently tired of the
grandiose largesse of Veniche.
He craved the Raj where a fountain may have been a simple earthenware jar with bubbling water emptying into a rill running the length of a paved garden and where hedges of oleander and bay would be clipped into formality.

A white cat sat with a leg lifted to the heavens as its furry tongue licked and cossetted.  Freedom and revenge, thought Finnian, it’s what I crave.
He bunched a fist and rapped it on the windowsill, each knock underlying his impatience and his desperate need.

The loving moment below stairs finished and the woman left the curator by the door, blowing him kisses as she stepped into a covered gondola.

Oh get you
gone,
woman!
Finnian watched the man from the shadows as the front doors were locked again, the massive keys turned and then withdrawn on their silken cord and sl
ipped over the curator’s neck.
He snuffed out the last of the flames, picked up a lamp and walked to a side-door leading to the courtyard where he crossed the cobbles, the white cat weaving in and out of his legs, and presently lights moved around the small apartment opposite.

Finnian raced up the stair and began his search, running his hand o
ver every di Accia possession.
If there were anything Færan, a
frisson
would surge up his arm, a prickling wave from his fingertip to his armpit, an
d he could examine the object.
As he ran his palms over the contents of the palazzo, he felt his imperative dancing attendant at his shoulder like some messenger of doom.

A bucket of water stood by a door leading onto a balcony and he bent down to splash his face, responsibility taking a bite at his heels as the face of the cabinboy swam before him.
Find the charms and run. Don’t give a toss for a mortal.
He moved on as the water dried on his skin and floor after floor revealed nothing except for scattered pigeon feathers in a room at the top, along with a
pile of shattered bird bones.
A
frisson
hovered amongst the detritus and he wondered if Others
had been in the tiny chamber.
But the
vibration was old and ambiguous.

The dark surrounded him as he had made his way back to the first floor landing to stand in front of the sup
erbly veneered china cabinets.
The moon shone through the large glass windows, lighting
the landing in an ivory glaze.
A thick silk tassel hung from each key and the glass shelves h
eld a display of paperweights.
He turned the first key and it clicked, the doors opening with the li
ghtest touch from his fingers.
He ran his hands over the top shelf – no
frisson.

Then the second shelf… and the bottom.

Dammit!

He threw the door shut and the cabinet rocked against the wall, the paperweights skittering out of their positions, fetching up against each other with a dangerous clatter, but he had already turned to the other cabinet, flicking the key over and dragging the door
open in a fever of impatience.
First shelf, second shelf.

Nothing
.

He pulled his hands away and looked up at the winding staircase with its ornamental railings that twisted in wrought curlicews like Færan runes, and he wondered briefly what would happen if there were
nothing in the whole palazzo.
The moon was slipping fast to the far side of the building and he’d checked every gilded
and painted inch of the place.
He tried to recall anything else from Isolde’s hints but a space yawned back as empty as the celestial Andromeda Darks.

He moved his hands to the third shelf, the paperweights glimmering in their glassy beauty.
What possessed the woman to collect so many?
He picked one up and held it,
turning it this way and that.
To be sure it was elegant and if he looked closely the design was different to its fellows but there was nothing unique about it.
NOTHING.
He swore and would have thrown the paperweight across the landing had a soprano voice not called from further up the staircase.

‘Half that collection is disappeared, Færan.’

He whipped around and spotted a Siofra, a pretty thing, sitting with her perfect legs crossed and her face held in the cup of her palms, her knees supporting elbows clothed in organdy.

‘And y
ou would know this because…
’

‘I live here and a little less arrogance and bad manners thank you kindly.’

He walked up to
her, juggling the paperweight.
She was lovely, a minikin reaching his hip, perfectly proportioned, her breasts eager to spill from the top of a low-cut gown that hung in k
erchief ends around her knees.
Her shapely legs were clothed in gossamer stockings with flowers patterned all over and her face was as finely drawn as a Færan’s, with lustrous dark hair falling down her back.

‘My apologies,’ he charmed.
‘You surprised me.’

‘You look for somethi
ng rather crucial, I can tell.
Y
ou’re as taut as a bowstring.’
She smiled and her simper settle
d on him like a ray of warmth.
‘Can I help?’

Can you?
‘I doubt it.
I don’t even
know what I look for myself.’
He sat beside her, vexed at time racing.
But racing where?
I only know I must find the charms before Isolde.
He could see her moving around Castello, asking questions, to
rturing those with no answers.
Already
he knew her eye was upon him…

‘Your name is Finnian, is it not?’

He raised his eyebrows.

‘Siofra are Other with certain skills a
nd your fame does precede you.
My name by the way, is Primaflora.’

‘How do you know of me?’
Finnian eyed the woman with suspicion, wondering if despite her beauty and manner, she was a wight as malign as those who had already crossed his path.

‘S
iofra are everywhere, Finnian.
Even at that benight
ed cesspit they call Castello.
Have no fear, if there is a side to be on right now, then we choose to be on yours.’

A side?
He took the hand she held o
ut and brought it to his lips.
‘Your name sui
ts you.
You are the very embodiment of spring in your gown.’

‘Huh, this old thing,’ she fingered the silk
tissu,
‘since
Madama
the mad Contessa disappeared, I h
ave a ready supply of fabrics.
This is nothing, you should see my ball-gowns.’

‘
I can imagine you entice every male in the vicinity.’

She laughed delightedly, a tinkle that reminded him of finches and other tiny birds flirting with each
other in some dawn-lit forest.
‘Severine di Accia
was a hellspawn bitch, Finnian.
Everyone hated her and she ha
ted many people besides.
She thought she was a changeling but just occasionally when reason set in, when she guessed she was only a mere mortal, she set upon this wild desire to be
im
mortal.
She found the Cantrips you know, a form of insurance against her delusions.’

‘You know of the charms.’

‘Indeed, doesn’t everyone?
And
my handsome man,’ she tapped him on the hand, a sensation li
ke the pecking of a tiny beak.
‘I am guessing that’s what
you
search for.’

He held her gaze, unsure if he should invite her into his thoughts, into the necessary hunt, deciding that he could seduce her,
it had worked in the past…

‘Don’t you try and mesmer me with your
charms, Finnian of the Færan. I’m spoken for.
But I shall tell you what I think, shall I, and all becaus
e I like you and you seem… taut as I said.’ She shifted her legs around.
‘She h
ad the Cantrips, this we know.
When you are Siofra and you live here, it is ea
sy enough to know many things.
Obviously she had a plan to hide them because just before the night she
disappeared,
’ a wry laugh punctuated her words, ‘and we all know what happened to
her,
don’t we?
Anyway, as I was saying… before she disappeared she had a visit from the glassmaker Niccolo, a master artisan and maker of the finest paperweig
hts in Veniche.
Signor Everyman in the street would think she merely commissioned him to make something for her collection but I know differently a
s I was close by when he left.
I watched her take four tiny glass rods,’ she measured with her elegant fingers, ‘the centers of what would become her
millefiori
. She rolled the Cantrips…’