Ilario, the Stone Golem (40 page)

earth.

‘The King-Caliph Ammianus sees fit to send me a warning.’ Ty-

ameny’s eyes glinted. ‘It is my intention now to send a warning back!’

She lifted her arms, and I automatically stood and came to take

196

Onorata from her. The Queen of Constantinople knelt down by the

map-table, like a beggar-child playing at marbles in the street. I moved to

watch over her shoulder.

A little frown making a fold of skin between her brows, Ty-ameny

said, ‘The Admiral Zheng He and I are debating an agreement. I will

loan him a pilot, and charts, to help him regain the ocean sea, and find

his fleet, if they’re not sunk. My captains suggest it will have been a

storm around the West African islands; those are dangerous waters.’

The thought of more war-junks, no matter how few more there might

be, made me shudder. Jian thought nothing of his crew numbering five

thousand Chin men, as I knew from speaking to him. There are armies

in the Frankish lands made up of fewer men than that. If they should

decide to conquer a kingdom and stay here . . .

A little too intuitively for my liking, Ty-ameny remarked, ‘I think the

Admiral truly anxious to get back to his Emperor – this is not the first

voyage they’ve made to foreign waters, and they’ve found only

“barbarians” wherever they sail. Zheng He’s words.’

The little smile curved her lip.

‘We rank as civilised, having a proper eunuch bureaucracy. Although

he cares very little for having a woman and a heathen on the throne.

However,’ she added briskly, ‘he will agree to visit the port of Carthage,

on his voyage back to the ocean sea.’

‘Carthage?’

She gestured irritably for me to sit down, a moment before I realised

that she had no desire to crick her neck looking up. I set Onorata

cautiously into her sling around my neck (for which she was almost too

large, now) and sat beside Rekhmire’.

‘Zheng He will replenish his ship at Carthage,’ Ty-ameny said. ‘And

while there, he will let it be thought that Alexandria has himself and his

ship as an ally.’

Rekhmire’ smiled: I supposed at my expression.

‘For this, the Queen is prepared to lend her best pilot,’ he observed

cheerfully. ‘And Carthage is not to know a pilot is guiding the Admiral

out
of the Middle Sea. For all the King-Caliph knows, the war-junk will

be roaming the sea on our behalf indefinitely.’

He exchanged a smile with Ty-ameny.

‘A theoretical Zheng He may be a great deal more useful as an ally

than a material one, given that he can never change his mind and seek

other alliances!’

The Pharaoh-Queen lifted her bare shoulders in a shrug, tracing

routes on the blue- and gold-inked map. ‘I understand from Admiral

Zheng He that his country has contact along the Silk Road with the Rus,

the Turk, and the Persians; Carthage is not an important ally for them.

He’s willing to show himself under our banner.’

She sat back on her heels, glossy hair sliding away to show her face.

197

‘And then there is your home, Ilario.’

Head tight with effort, I strained to keep up with her thought. ‘Aldro,

you think Zheng He should sail to Taraconensis?’

Her thin finger traced a course. ‘Taraconensis, before Carthage. I see

it thus: it is imperative Carthage has no excuse to send legions into

Taraconensis this year. War will begin if that happens, and it will draw

all of us in. As the Franks cannot be allowed to think they can invade

your northern frontier, so Carthage cannot be allowed to provoke them

into an invasion, by putting a Carthaginian Governor into Taraco.’

Her words were only my thoughts spoken aloud, and no more than a

natural consequence of the discussion with Rekhmire’ – but I felt it all

suddenly made more real.

Onorata stirred in her sling; I tried by force of will to quiet my

pounding heartbeat.

‘Will the Admiral agree to this, Aldro?’

‘He sees the desirability of having an Alexandrine pilot.’ Her grin was

almost brutal. ‘And he understands the necessity for trade. There must

be some degree of trust – there’s little to prevent him from kidnapping

my pilot and attempting to leave the Middle Sea on his own. But I think

he desires to leave a good name with us, as a civilised man in a world of

barbarians.’

Worlds have turned on stranger things. I felt myself dizzy, not only

from the humid heat.

Ty-ameny made fists of her hands, like bunches of knucklebones, and

stretched; breaking the position to reach out and touch Rekhmire’’s arm.

‘Admiral Zheng He will also be carrying a humble book-buyer, along

with my pilot – which, naturally, will have nothing to do with what

impression the Carthaginians gain of relations between Alexandria and

Chin.’

Naturally
not
. I would have answered in the same manner, but I couldn’t speak.

‘If you agree,’ Ty-ameny concluded, looking at me, ‘you will go to

Taraco with them.’

The unexpected constriction in my throat kept me silent for an

embarrassing minute.

I managed, finally, to croak, ‘My family owes you a debt.’

Ty-ameny rose in one graceful movement, not putting her hand to the

floor. ‘Pay me by doing what you would in any case do – have your King

Rodrigo Sanguerra summon Pirro Videric back as his first minister.’

The small woman looked at me, and at Rekhmire’, in turn.

‘This
must
happen. By any means possible.’

198

Part Three

Herm and Jethou

1

‘“
Caò
nıˆ zuˆxian
shı´ baˆ
dai
.”’ I pronounced the sounds as closely to Jian’s as I could manage, ignoring the plainly undisguised amusement on his

face. Tracing ink deftly onto my paper, I continued in the haphazard

mixture of bad North African Latin which Zheng He’s crew appeared to

have picked up on the West African coast, and scattered words from

Alexandrine Egyptian. ‘And this means . . . ’

‘“I am honoured beyond measure to meet you.”’

The small boat rocked, despite a calm that had been absolute enough

to becalm the war-junk. I slitted my eyes against morning sunlight and

the ship laying a hundred paces off. Easier to trace the marks Jian had

made for me to copy.

A dozen or more ink studies lay discarded on the thwarts of the

dinghy, careless of sea-water; each a less successful attempt to capture

the war-junk with her immensely tall thin sails spread to catch every

fraction of breeze.

So far, she did not travel so fast that Commander Jian’s men couldn’t

row us back to her. In fact I thought she might not be moving at all.

‘
Caò
nıˆ zuˆxian
shı´ baˆ dai
. . . ’ I thought I heard a noise from one or other of the Chin men on the rowers’ benches, but my suspicions were

centred on Jian’s far too innocent expression.

Twenty days have given me insight enough into him to read at least

the broader emotions. And this game is called ‘get the foreign devil into

amusing trouble’.

‘“Honoured to meet you,”’ I mused, and looked at him brightly. ‘So

this is what I should say to the Admiral when we get back on board?

Then I can ask him to reward
you
for teaching me so well.’

Jian’s square frame went utterly still for a heartbeat.

He lifted his hand, slapped it down on his thigh, and burst into high-

pitched laughter.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the rowers slapping each other

on the back and wiping their eyes, which I thought was just as well; they

showed every sign of rupturing themselves if they’d had to keep quiet

much longer.

I smiled at Jian with deliberate innocence, and traced the lines that

made up the drawn picture-words of Chin. ‘So what does this mean?’

The Chin officer spluttered, waving his hand in plain refusal.

201

I brandished the paper. ‘If I show this around the ship, someone will

tell me . . . ’

Jian was in the habit of treating me as a court eunuch, but I knew the

man smart enough to know it not entirely true.
Yin
yang
ren!
got whispered sometimes when I passed: an impolite version of ‘hermaphrodite’.

I watched Jian tripping himself up on what might be expected

behaviour towards a man, or towards a woman, and let him squirm for a

minute or two before copying him with a thigh-slap and a laugh.

The noise from our boat would frighten sea-birds away for miles, I

thought. When every man aboard found himself permitted to laugh –

and for once to laugh at his commanding officer – it was loud.

Jian solved his disciplinary problem by pointing to the youngest of the

rowers, and firing off a rapid rattle of words that I knew must translate as

‘
You
tell her!’

If he’d been Iberian, the boy would have been blushing; he ducked his

head and rattled off apologies non-stop.

‘Is it rude?’ I asked helpfully.

‘Yes, Lord Barbarian!’

Ruder than ‘barbarian’? I wondered. But none of them seem to think

that word is anything more than purely descriptive.

‘Is it
very
rude?’

The rest of the crew assured me, over the boy’s squirming, that it was

extremely rude, not meant for any man except the vilest of enemies, and

that the great Lord Admiral would flay my skin off and tan it for a rug if I

used it towards him, barbarian ignorance notwithstanding. I’d seen

enough casual brutality aboard to not be completely convinced he was

joking.

Jian seized my paper, and – with the tip of his tongue sticking out of

the corner of his mouth – drew three or four lines that, as I stared hard,

resolved themselves into an image. This—

I turned the page a quarter round, attempting to make out what I was

seeing. ‘Are they doing what I think they’re doing?’

‘Is rude. It means—’ Jian’s hand gesture was fairly universal.

‘“Fuck”?’ I prompted, in several of the languages they might have

heard in Constantinople’s harbour, and there was an outbreak of

nodding and applause.

‘Means, “fuck eighteen generations of your ancestors”,’ Jian

exclaimed, and gave me a smile that made a square and ugly face

beautiful. ‘Not to say to the Admiral, no!’

I smiled and agreed that no, that probably wasn’t wise, and the joke

was repeated backwards and forwards in the boat until I got them to row

me further south simply to put an end to it.

They shipped oars, having turned us into what would have been the

direction of the wind, had it not been dead calm. Jian gave an order,

202

which was evidently to stand down. I smoothed a fresh sheet of paper on

my drawing board, set it firmly on my knees, and went back to

attempting to draw the war-junk well enough that I could paint her at

some time in the future. Who could miss the chance to see this ship,

from a distance, with nothing else around her?

And somewhere on the ship, I thought, narrowing my eyes against the

sunlight off the waves, Rekhmire’ is negotiating exactly how long Zheng

He will anchor off the shore of Taraco.

Because we can’t tell how long it will take to solve this – and I can’t blame Zheng He that he wants to be gone. Our wars aren’t his concern;

he comes from too far away.

And every man I spoke to seemed to take their ‘lost fleet’ for

granted . . .

The wide-bottomed boat rocked. Jian’s men ran up a slatted small sail

without being ordered, steadying us where we stood, forty leagues out of

sight of the North African coast.

There might be enough of a breeze to move our small boat; the war-

junk, I saw – even with tier upon tier of slatted sails raised up on its seven

main masts, and three smaller masts – remained stationary.

Commander Jian leaned over my shoulder, just as the shift of the boat

sent my chalk skidding across the paper. ‘That’s not very good.’

‘
Caò
nıˆ zuˆxian
shı´ baˆ
dai!
’

Even as it came out of my mouth, I was appalled. He’ll truly take

offence—

Jian burst into deep, choking laughter.

His crew decided it was worth applause, too; banging their fists on the