Irona 700 (24 page)

“The king of Genodesa's personal orchestra is in the city,” she remarked.

“I wish,” Veer muttered, with his nose very close to his spatula.

“I'm invited to a concert at the Castovets',” she said. “But I have no one to escort me.”

Pause … Then Veer's left eye scowled around the edge of the panel on the easel. “Is that an offer or an order?”

“Which do you want?”

“Either. But what happens when some grande dame asks, ‘And what do you
do
, citizen?' What then?”

“Say you're an artist.”

“Why not say I'm a drain cleaner?”

“Wouldn't be true.” Irona knew she was grinning and didn't care. “Besides, I'm looking forward to her reaction just as much as you are. Tomorrow evening? I'll send a chair to pick you up. Sevens get the best seats in the house.”

His behavior at the concert was very close to perfect. He did knock over one statue but managed to catch it before it hit the floor. His lack of jewelry was understandable when Irona wore none.

When she arrived at his yard two days later, he let her see what his second attempt had produced. It was complete, all smooth and perfect. It was breathtaking. Her chin was raised, her lips tight together, so the lioness was not truly roaring, but the glare in her eyes ought to have melted the wax right off the wood—there were hints of flame in the background. Her neckline was far lower than she ever wore it, which showed up the jade collar, and Caprice herself could not have seemed more terrifying.

It would dominate the entire Treaty Hall, now and forever.

Irona stared for a long time, and finally whispered, “It's … it's incredible! I really look like that?”

“Sometimes. I could paint you as a mother, talking of your child. Or just a very beautiful woman, laughing. Or a seductress to drive men out of their minds.”

She was aware that he was standing very close. He had performed a miracle for her, and sunlight sprinkled his big arms with gold dust.

“I don't think I have that much bosom.”

“Yes, you do. What I would really like to do is to paint you in the nude.”

“Go ahead,” she said. “I'll be interested to see what you've got.”

He held her gaze for one beat to make sure he understood. Then he grabbed his smock with both hands and hauled it off over his head.

“Couldn't ask for more,” she said. “I assume you have a bed where I can pose?”

He ran to open the door to the shed. The slave's work showed, for it was not the pigpen she had feared, but clean, tidy, simply furnished, and decorated in excellent taste. Thick stone walls had kept it comparatively cool. The bed was narrow for two, but that was not going to matter. She shed her tunic and sandals.

“How do you want me?”

His face was flushed scarlet, but he was grinning. “I prefer to be on top, but you decide.” He wrapped those big furry arms around her and kissed her. By the end of that kiss, they were both on the bed and he was on top.

It had been a long time for her, but she hadn't forgotten how.

“I needed that very much,” she murmured eventually. “In fact, I need it often. I can offer you a studio in my house.” She pushed herself up on one elbow to look down on him. “Or build one on the grounds.”

“Wouldn't work. I go crazy if anything keeps me from my work.”

“And I could not tolerate a consort who kept trying to use my power to do favors for his friends and relatives. But you have your own career and I have mine. I offer you a home, a workplace, and the best food I can buy. My only claim on you would be that you do what you have just done frequently, and sometimes escort me to concerts, balls, temple services. We can set a limit on how many evenings I claim.

“I'm not asking for a gigolo,” she added, suddenly worried. “It would be a partnership of equals.”

He nodded, still doubtful. “I'd hold you to that. I won't be made to feel like a servant.”

“You feel like a great hunk of man,” she said. “And if we're equal partners, it must be my turn on top.”

Late in the fall, when Irona had caught up with her duties, she was able to deal with a few things she had been putting off. One of them required a private audience with the First.

Knipry received her in a private sitting room she had never seen before. A fire crackled on the hearth although the sun shone in the windows and the air was not especially chill. His appearance shocked her, for he seemed to have shrunk in the three days since she had last seen him. His face was pasty, his collar hung loose on his neck. He noticed her reaction and smiled without comment.

The Benesh were fatalistic about death and generally spoke of it as the ebb tide, because they gave their dead to the sea. Some poets sang that the tide would return them in another incarnation, others that it would bear them to a better land. The bulk of the people just seemed to trust their goddess to do whatever was best for them.

“Purple suits you, my dear. Sit, sit!”

“Thank you, but what I want to show you, Your Reverence, would be seen best on a table.”

“Well, I haven't quite washed away yet,” he said, and heaved himself out of his chair. It was clearly an effort, though, and he kept a hand on her shoulder as he shuffled across to the table. A Chosen's life, supported for many years by Source Water, ebbed in a riptide.

A servant entered with the bowl Irona had requested, followed by another with the jug of water. They put the bowl on the table and filled it, and then they departed. Knipry watched with interest.

“I am intrigued,” he murmured. “Party tricks? Proceed!”

“When I went to Udice,” Irona said, “in the dead of winter, some of our little boats were scattered by the wind. That happens, but almost all of them turned up safe in the end. When I was coming back from Vult in one of the navy's best galleys, we spent four days on a beach and almost starved. Because of fog.”

He waited, smiling at her recital.

“My father was a sea hunter. Sea hunters and fishermen know a secret that the navy does not.”

“Indeed? I assume you have convincing evidence?”

“Watch!”

She produced the crude little wooden boat that she had made. Veer had tried to help her and inevitably had cut his finger. She laid the model on the water and it slowly turned through a right angle. She turned it back again. It repeated its trick.

Knipry was showing his teeth in a grimace of fear. “A fix!”

“No, Reverence! This does not come from Vult or the Dread Lands. There is a little island called Kadowan, west of Vyada Kun. The fishermen pick up black pebbles there. They call them ‘mating rocks' and they play some odd tricks, but a black stone is just a black stone, like copper ore, nothing to do with Maleficence.”

She had brought along a few pieces to let Knipry play with, but his reaction was not what she had expected.

“It's a fix! Maleficence!”

“Your Reverence, the sea hunters use it in boats! Fixes won't work over water.”

“Ha! Prove that. I never believed that and I don't believe it now. Get rid of the horrible—” His voice broke off in a spasm of coughing.

“It does good!” she protested, feebly. “It saves hundreds of lives. Every sea hunter and I suppose every fishing boat, carries one of these little floats with a scrap of the black rock inside it, and it always points to the north! That is how they can find their way in the dead of winter, when they cannot see the sun or stars.”

“Put it away!”

“But the navy needs—”

“No! No! No! Put it away. Show that around Benign and they will send you to the sea death, Chosen or not. Even a Seven!” Then he fell to coughing horribly.

If Knipry 640 could not believe, then there was no hope. The men whose lives were at stake might feel otherwise, but it was people like Knipry who made decisions for the fleet.

That was the last time she saw him.

She had never wept in public before, but the wind was sharp and would have put tears in her eyes on any occasion. Grief did the rest. Knipry had been more than a patron to her. At her first assembly, he had given her a breakwater for Brackish. He had promoted her career more than Trodelat or Ledacos had. He had recognized the hand of the goddess upon her.

In the mouth of the bay, centered in Main Channel, the state barge rocked and tugged impatiently at the anchor cable slung over its stern. The motion was clumsy and made Irona queasy. Waves slapped at it, and another rainsquall was sweeping in around the Mountain across the bay. All the Chosen were aboard, paying their last respects, and dozens of other craft had braved the weather to join in the farewell.

The ebbing tide had turned the barge to face seaward, eastward, so the time had come. Rasny 650, the most senior Seven, and likely to be the next First, gave the captain the signal. Drums and trumpets struck up a slow march as marines lowered the coffin over the bow, then tossed the cords in after it. It floated, but Irona knew, as few people did, that it was designed so that it would sink in an hour or so.

The current drew it seaward, rocking gently in the lead-gray waters, bearing Knipry out to sea for the last time, to the waiting arms of his goddess. When it was out of sight, the crew raised the anchors, dipped oars, and the state barge headed back to the city.

The Year 719

I
rona did not, as Sazen had predicted, rule the Empire during her first term as a Seven, but she performed well enough to be reelected unopposed as soon as her one-year deferral was up. By then she was recognized as a leader within the inner circle. Running the Empire turned out to be child's play compared to running her child. Podakan did not improve with age except in the sense that he grew better at doing what he enjoyed doing.

Less than two weeks after she completed her third term as a Seven and could look forward to having a little spare time again, the various threads of her life suddenly came together and tied her in knots. Career, motherhood, love, and even the painful memories of her failure as a tutor all seemed to reach out to tangle her emotions.

“The court will come to order,” announced First Rudakov.

Irona raised a hand. “As I was once the accused's tutor and may therefore be considered an interested party, I ask the court to recuse me from this case.”

“This court considers such cases so rarely that we have no precedents to guide us,” the First said, having been warned that Irona planned to raise the matter. “I ask guidance from the other learned judges.”

One of the two Sevens required to sit on the board was Ledacos 692, wearing his sympathetic smile, of course. “It is my understanding that all the charges against the accused relate to the period after her tutelage ended, and therefore the point seems irrelevant. Was she ever our honorable friend's client?”

“Never.” Irona sighed. No one had ever accepted Puchuldiza as a client.

“Then I think the decreed makeup of the court must be preserved,” Ledacos said, keeping most of the snide out of his voice. “An odd number is vital in case of a split decision.”

Four black disks appeared, so it was unanimous.

The First, two Sevens, and two other Chosen: Irona had just completed her third term as a Seven and was therefore a “Six.” The other green tunic on the board enclosed the brawny form of Vakat 716, barely a year out of tutelage himself, a junior to balance all the elders.

“Request denied,” the First announced. “The accused will rise. …”

The Treason Court convened rarely, most often in secret, and always in secret when the Chosen had to judge one of their own. In this case, the verdict was a foregone conclusion, and that evening it was read out by the First at a special meeting of the Seventy in the Assembly Hall. Irona had joined in the unanimous decision. She was present when the verdict was announced, sitting in the front row, which was her right as a Six, but that evening she placed herself at the extreme end.

First Rudakov's face bore an expression of extreme distaste as he rose to address the congregation.

“Pavouk 708 … Vakat 716 … step forward, please.”

The men named had been forewarned and they looked as grim as First Rudakov as they advanced to the front.

“You have been appointed bailiffs to enforce the orders that the court issued in the name of the goddess. You will not fail.”

They shook their heads in glum silence.

“Chosen 711, come forward.”

Swinging her hips, Puchuldiza sashayed out from the shadows at the far side of the hall from Irona. It would be blasphemy to hint that Caprice had made a mistake when she chose 711, but the thought was very hard to shake. During her trial, Puchuldiza had dressed as a demure, wronged maiden, none of which she was. That evening, either because she still expected to be acquitted or just to show defiance, she was playing the tramp to absurdity, with her hair dyed scarlet, her face painted, and flashing half her weight in gold and gems.

Ledacos whispered, very softly, “At least she has the courage of her conviction.” For once, Irona agreed with one of his sneers.

“Chosen Puchuldiza 711, on the First Count, namely that you have deliberately and on numerous occasions failed to perform duties assigned to you by way of absenting yourself from meetings and failing to prepare for meetings, the Court found you: Guilty.

“On the Second Count, namely that you have on numerous occasions appeared in public in an inebriated condition and have in diverse other ways failed to maintain a standard of conduct befitting a Chosen of the goddess, the Court found you: Guilty.

“On the Third Count, namely that you have sold or pawned property of the state, namely jewelry and other valuable items entrusted to you by the Property Commission for your personal use, the Court found you: Guilty.

“The Court therefore sentenced you, firstly, to forfeiture of all property presently entrusted to you other than a necessary minimum of clothing, secondly, to two years' exile on the island of Maasok, and thirdly, to the sea death if you fail to remain in that place until your sentence is completed. Sergeants, remove the prisoner.”

Pavouk and Vakat moved in on her. She tried to back away from their menace, but Vakat seized her and held her as Pavouk methodically unpinned her finery, dropping it on the floor as if it were trash. When he took the jeweled combs from her hair and her coiffure collapsed, she began to scream.

By then Irona had risen and headed out of the Assembly Hall; the rest of the Chosen followed.

A chair scraped on the tiles in the dark, and a male voice made noises appropriate for a man who has just stubbed a toe. Irona rolled over on her back. She had grave doubts about that chair. How often could a man who remembered everything he ever saw down to the tiniest detail keep stubbing that long-suffering toe on that same chair every time he came home late and horny? But what he wanted was probably about what she needed.

“You're very late.”

“Sorry to waken you.” Having lied to her, he scrambled in to lie beside her. In the process, he managed to kick her leg and bang her breast with his elbow. Veer seemed to have no idea of how much space he occupied, and she adored him anyway. They argued sometimes, but never fought. She sometimes wondered how much longer she could have tolerated the unquestioning doggy loyalty of Vlyplatin Lavice.

“I wasn't asleep. Did you get the commission?”

Veer had been negotiating to paint murals for the temple. He had insisted that Irona not meddle, so she hadn't. Much.

“Eventually. Those baldies are crazy. Why are you still awake?”

“Had a bad day,” she said. “What are you going to do about it?”

He wrapped thick arms around her. “In a moment. Tell me what's wrong.”

A second Treason Court case in two days was part of it. A band of drunken juveniles had been caught shouting out seditious lies about the Chosen being tyrants. Standard practice was to flog their fathers. In a doomed quest for mercy, Irona had pointed out that their fathers were all marines and absent from home a lot, serving the goddess. The rest of the court had then voted to whip their mothers instead. Sometimes she thought that being governor of Maasok would be preferable to being a Chosen in Benign.

“Podakan has been beating up Kao Bukit again.”

Veer sighed. “Kao is more than a year older.”

“Pod is bigger.”

“Why tell me? You're his mother.”

But she was no more successful as Podakan's mother than she had been as a tutor for Puchuldiza 711. And it was not hard to imagine Podakan in a gang of blaspheming rebels within a very few years. He would probably be the ringleader.

“I want you to talk to him. You're his foster father.”

“Not if you mean that I put the food on his plate. You do that and he knows it. He had you all to himself until you brought him to Benign and promptly disappeared from his life. Then I came on the scene and he has to share your love with me. I can't talk to him. He hates me.”

“That's absurd! He doesn't even remember Vult. He doesn't hate you.”

“He certainly doesn't listen to me, except to do the opposite. I should tell him to keep after Kao and batter the little shit every chance he gets. He might leave him alone then.”

“That's ridiculous. Stop talking and do something. Give him a baby brother.”

“Then he'd really get homicidal.”

“Just do it.”

The following morning Daun Bukit announced that he and Kanaga were moving to a home of their own, and of course taking their children with them. That was hardly surprising, but it was an inconvenience. Forced to admit that her son was practically running her household, Irona made an appointment to meet with the Heritage Committee.

Heritage was one of the most obscure arms of the government. Its members were appointed by the First instead of being elected and reported only to him; few Chosen outside the Sevens and Sixes even knew that the committee existed, because its sole function was to keep an eye on the next generation. The Chosen prided themselves on being incorruptible, but almost all of them had families, and pressure might be brought to bear on them through their children.
Evil seeks out your weakest point.

It had been the Heritage Committee that had arranged for Podnelbi 681's son, Vlyplatin Lavice, to be articled to a lawyer in the city. It might well have arranged other employment for him when that fell through after his father's early death. Had Vly or his mother even known such a body existed, Ledacos might not have intervened and so brought Vly and Irona together.

The only current member of the committee, Irona discovered, was Azalka 660, who had arranged for her to lease Sebrat House so long ago. The old harpy had never made the inner circle and could barely conceal her delight at having a Six come calling on her in her poky office, nor her contempt for a mother who could not control a ten-year-old boy. She didn't say she had been expecting Irona, but she had probably heard tell of the hellion son and had certainly made Irona wait a few days for the privilege of a consultation.

Having accepted that she must seek help or at least advice, Irona was willing to bare all. “Just this morning,” she said, “we discovered he had somehow broken into Veer's studio and trashed it. He had tipped out boxes of dye powder, so the floor was covered. He had ribbed gouges in completed paintings and smeared them with red ochre. He had even urinated on the mess. Veer estimated the damage, just to the paintings, must be six or seven hundred dolphins.”

Azalka blinked at that news. “The boy admits it?”

“Of course not. He blames the slaves. But his footprints were on the floor and he had wax under his nails. In that sense, he was caught red handed
and
red footed. Now I am worried that someone may tell him about the latest Treason Court decision, in which case Podakan will start running through the streets shouting antigovernment slogans in order to get me flogged.”

Worse even than that was the possibility that Pod, having managed to drive Kao and his parents away, would succeed in getting rid of Veer also.

Now Azalka looked more sympathetic. “I do see that you have a problem. Of course there are many tutors and schools …”

“I have tried them all,” Irona said, and reeled off a dozen names. “The longest any of them stood him was three weeks.”

“The boy was born in Vult, wasn't he?”

“Just what has that got to do with it? Are you suggesting that I send him back there?”

For a moment the old hag looked as if she might, but then she said, “Of course not. There are two other men who come to mind. Fagatele Fiucha has had some success with hard cases. You could see if he's available. He does not come cheap, because he acts as day-and-night jailer, never letting his charge out of his sight—chaining him to the bedpost at night, going to the privy together, and so on. Usually, a few weeks of that will bring them to their senses. Failing Fagatele, there is always Akhtang Korovin, but his methods …” She looked up in annoyance as the door opened unbidden.

One of the First's heralds bowed.

“Begging your pardon, Your Honors, but the Seven are in session and request that Irona 700 attend them.”

“It never stops.” Irona sighed. “Thank you, Azalka. I will follow up on your suggestions. Pray excuse me.” Whatever problems that Sevens' meeting was going to pose, Irona was quite relieved to leave this one.

Two Sevens had left town, leading a punitive expedition against Genodesa, which had been skimping on its manpower levy again, so only six of the eight chairs were occupied as Irona was ushered in to the Sevens' room. First Rudakov motioned her to take one of the others. The mood, she saw right away, was grim.

“Welcome back, 700,” he said. “I know you haven't been gone long enough to catch up on your grocery shopping, but it seems we have a job for you, as I am sure you have already guessed. What do you know about Achelone?”

“I can see its name written all over this table,” she said, regarding the doodles on the slate. “Apart from that, nothing. I've never been that far inland.”

“Achelone is farther from the sea than any of our other allies.”

Irona nodded. An ally was a client state, and Benign's power depended on its navy. A Six was a tried and trusted, all-purpose emissary.

“We depend heavily on Achelone as our main supplier of timber,” the First continued. “And now Achelone is having trouble with raiders from the deserts to the east of it. It claims they are not human and has appealed for our aid.”

As it was entitled to do by the treaty, but at the moment the navy was not available. Irona did not point out that she had strongly opposed the Genodesan mission just before her term among the Seven ended.

“Which you can't supply.”

“We can send Irona 700,” Rudakov retorted, “who is mightier than a thousand marines. Navy?”

“Three galleys only,” said Seven Ranau. “All we can spare at short notice. Small ones, I'm afraid, but they'll have less trouble in the river. Low water in summer.”

Did they think she was Caprice herself, able to work miracles? “How many men does that mean?”

“Less than two hundred.”