The Fell Sword (36 page)

Harmodius made a fresh, desperate effort.

Yahadut scholar!

The man halted.

We need your help!

It is blasphemy for two souls to occupy one body
, the old man said. But the sheer rarity of the thing caught his interest.
I see. Ahh – I see. Your body is dead?

It is
, Harmodius said.
I need to leave my host. I’m killing him.

So I see
, said the scholar, now fully intrigued.
Ah! You are Harmodius?

I am.

Yosef ben Mar Chiyya, at your service. You know Al-Rashidi . . .

I do. I was his student. And you?

We correspond. Your host is not so badly wounded. I regret to confirm you are the source of the problem. You must leave him.

I felt it. I seized control—

This is evil! You must not!

—to save him. And myself, of course. Yosef – I am powerless in here. Can I be moved to an artefact?

Never. The soul is too complex. Only to another host. Surely you know this?

If Harmodius had had a corporeal body, he would have shrugged and sighed, too.
I have such reasons to live!

Yosef ben Mar Chiyya’s eyes opened, and he turned back to the Red Knight’s body. In the comfortable, slightly shabby sitting room of his great library-palace, he fell into an armchair.
I am well armoured against you, daemon. Come and sit.

I am no daemon.

Anything that seeks to seize control of a man’s body is a daemon. But you will not tempt me. I’m too old for temptation. Who is the woman who burns like the sun?

Mag. A seamstress. She has a natural talent.

By the horns and drums of Judea, she is like an angel of fire. Unlike you, daemon. You must die.

If I must, so be it. Wait – wait. What if you drugged him? Can drugs help?

They can help – but you will still be there.

Damn it! Rashidi would find a solution!

Rashidi is ten times as powerful as I, and would yet say that the solution is easy – you will simply not accept it. Let go. Die!

I will not.

The Yahudat took a deep shuddering breath and muttered an invocation, hand on the amulet at his chest. There was a flare of pure white light.

The Captain’s eyes opened.

He met the eyes of the old scholar. Took a deep breath as his friends crowded around the bed.

‘He’s gone,’ whispered the Red Knight.

The scholar shook his hand. ‘Not hardly, the wicked old thing.’ He put a hand on the Red Knight’s brow. ‘I simply forced him down for a while. Listen – I will make you a drink. A posset. It will help for now.’ He frowned. ‘But in truth, you must rid yourself of this troublesome guest.’

Mag leaned forward. ‘What is he talking about?’

The Captain’s eyes fluttered. ‘He’s babbling, Mag,’ he said.

The doctor met the seamstress’s eyes – in an eternity of no time, they both
knew.

‘Ah, I see,’ Mag said.

An hour after the Captain drank off the posset, he was up, and possessed of ferocious energy.

He reviewed their arrangements, heard about the various attacks in the night, and paced his room until Nell brought him fresh clothes and a basin in which to wash.

Nell drew the water herself, brought it to the room, and Mag heated the water hermetically.

He sent Ser Michael – who was barely able to stand from fatigue – to inform the Captain of Ordinaries that he could meet the princess at her convenience. He exchanged a handclasp with Harald Derkensun.

‘Mag says I owe you for the excellent doctor and the warning, too. I’m sorry for your man.’ He met the Nordikan’s eyes.

The other man nodded. ‘There is much you should know,’ he said. ‘You are the Megas Ducas of the Emperor. I have eaten the Emperor’s salt and owe fealty to no other. No matter what their blood tie.’

The Captain heard the Nordikan out, and at the end, said, ‘You have given me much to think on.’

‘Blackhair knows,’ Derkensun said. ‘And Giorgios Comnena of the Scholae.’

The new Megas Ducas leaned against a wall. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Thanks. Forewarned is forearmed, they say in Westwall.’ He seemed far away, then rallied. ‘What can you tell us of this Aeskepiles? The Emperor’s magister?’

Derkensun shrugged. ‘Little. Some men call him Vulcan. He was a smith, or a jeweller, before he came to power. Or so I have heard.’ He shrugged. ‘In truth, we Nordikans hate witches.’ He smiled a little. ‘We hate what we fear.’

‘You seem well informed to me,’ the Megas Ducas said.

‘I have a friend who is a warlock,’ Derkensun volunteered. ‘He would be rid of the smith. That is, Aeskepiles. We try not to say his name.’

An hour later, all of the night watch were abed. He’d left the apartments in the palace – the former Duke of Thrake’s apartments, of course.

He followed Toby and Nell all the way out of the labyrinthine corridors to the Athanatos barracks, where he found that Mag – prescient, as always – had kept him an officer’s suite of three rooms – sitting room, bedroom, orderly room. She already had it furnished with his camp furniture. And she was yet awake.

He took her hands and kissed both cheeks. ‘You are—’

She laughed. ‘I try to think ahead. Someone has to.’ She leaned over and

Entered his palace. Harmodius is alive! s
he said.

Yes,
he admitted.

She smiled.
Oh good – I liked him.

He makes a restless companion – like a bad housemate, except inside my skull. The Yahadut’s drugs are to suppress him.

Oh!
she said.
Tell me if I can help.

Her paramour, John le Bailli, handed his Captain a pair of wax tablets. ‘Here’s the billeting arrangements as best I understand them. Things got chaotic at the end, and this place is incredible – there’s a legionary eagle over the mess hall. The building must be more than a thousand years old.’ He held out a scroll. ‘We caught a pair of spies, and Tom killed ’em.’

‘Of course he did,’ the Captain agreed.

Sauce came and leaned in the doorway of the orderly room. ‘People are saying we’re to call you Duke.’

He grinned at her. ‘I like it. It outranks earl.’

‘Duke Gabriel?’ she asked, greatly daring.

His grin faltered.

She came into the orderly room, where Toby had his field desk open on a table and his sealing wax hot. He had a stack of parchment scrolls on one side of the desk and a couple of hides’ worth of cut parchment on the other side.

‘It’s not like the old days,’ Sauce said. ‘Gavin – is on your side. A fair number of people know, or suspect – Alcaeus, for one. And if he knows, the princess knows.’ She shrugged. ‘When it was just you, me, and Jacques . . . then things were different.’

He leaned back. ‘Once, it was just me and Jacques,’ he said.

Mag took her man’s elbow and dragged him out of the room. She waved over Sauce’s head.

Meanwhile, Sauce blew the newly minted Duke a kiss. ‘You don’t scare me. I’m a knight.’ She shrugged. ‘I hear you had a bad night. We all did.’

‘Actually, I got the best night’s sleep I’ve had in two weeks. Go and lie down, woman.’

She shook her head. ‘Can’t. Michael tagged me for this watch, and I’m the duty officer.’ She grinned. ‘Duty officer. Think I’ll ever tire of it?’

‘No,’ agreed the Captain. ‘How’s reading and writing?’

She winced. ‘Not so good.’

The Duke pointed at the stack of scrolls at his side. ‘See all those? The duty officer and the corporals should be handling most of this, but Michael and I are doing almost all of it right now. Reading and writing are not optional for company officers. Clear?’

She saluted. ‘Yes, my lord Duke.’ She giggled. And got out the door.

Ser Michael returned. He fell into a stool. ‘Now, if you can do it,’ he said.

The Duke nodded. ‘Fetch the officers. Leave Sauce here – we could be attacked at any time and I want a good officer on duty. I know, you already took care of it, I’m just enjoying having my mind work again.’

Ser Jehan cursed and Ser Milus looked his true age, but they came – in armour. With their pages and squires, they crossed the Outer and then the Inner Court, climbed two staircases and clanked and scraped their way along a corridor that seemed as the whole road from Lissen Carrak. Finally, they paused outside a pair of oak doors, the old dark wood richly carved.

There were two Nordikans on guard at the doors. They raised their axes and clashed them together, smiling through their long beards.

‘Ave, Imperator!’ they said together.

Taken aback, the Duke looked over his shoulder before he realised that they meant him.

‘I, too, am something of a scholar, my lord Duke,’ said a light voice from inside the room.

The Emperor’s daughter sat on a low-backed oak chair set in ivory. She wore a long scarlet kirtle with an overdress of silk that seemed to change colour in the light – between dark red and pale green. She had three peacock feathers in her hair and a veil of nearly transparent silk. Her almond-shaped eyes were rich and dark like thick velvet, and her hair shone like black brocade in the light of so many candles that the room itself seemed to be on fire. The Duke realised that every double pair of candles hung in front of a bronze mirror that reflected the light over and over in a ruddy-gold profusion. It wasn’t like daylight – it was like the light in the last moments of a magnificent summer day.

The Duke lowered himself again to the floor – all the way, and lay flat. There was something round and gold wedged under a bookcase behind her feet – which were still encased in the same red slippers.

Her scent was the same.

This room was not as well swept at the throne room – dust had gathered in riotous profusion under the parquetry cabinets – Etruscan work, a meticulous trompe l’oeil of books piles in bookcases, astrolabes, rolled charts and hermetical and scientific tools in gilt and carefully stained wood, so lifelike that a casual observer in the ruddy light would take the parquetry for the real thing.

The newly minted Duke thought it all needed a dusting and a coat of walnut oil.

‘You need never perform the full obeisance to any but the throne, my Lord Duke,’ she said. ‘I am but the Emperor’s daughter – it is arguable that I don’t deserve it even when I sit on the throne.’

‘On the contrary, Majesty, your beauty commands my utter devotion wherever I find it,’ said the Duke.

The woman with the shears clapped her hands.

‘I am sure that flattery will, in fact, leave the
most
favourable impression,’ said the princess, a trace of amusement cutting through her controlled voice.

‘That’s my experience,’ said the Duke. ‘May I rise?’

‘Perhaps I shall measure the full force of my beauty by the duration of your willingness to lie in the dust at my feet,’ she said.

‘Are you by any chance missing a gold button shaped like a hawking bell?’ he asked.

‘Where did you find the word bucellarii
?
’ she asked. ‘The capture of my father made only slightly more stir than your claim to be at the head of your bucellarii
.
’ She smiled, and a slight glow came to her ivory face.

‘But you know what it means,’ said the Duke.

‘I am something of a scholar. And you? Do you know why the Nordikans saluted you?’ She nodded. ‘It will be very difficult to converse with you if you insist on lying on the floor.’

‘If Your Majesty would care to spend a day in armour on an inferior horse, smiting Your Majesty’s enemies, she might find that the floor of the Imperial Library as comfortable as I do.’

Her voice was as controlled, contrived, accented and pitched as an actress’s or a great singer’s. It sounded almost hermetical. ‘Well, as you insist on lying on the floor, I am, in fact, missing one of my favourite buttons.’

The Duke rose slowly, favouring his right hip, and knelt on one knee before her. ‘If one of the Ordinaries could fetch it, I believe it lies under the middle bookcase. If there is a maid responsible for dusting this room, perhaps her eyesight should be checked.’

She smiled at him.

He had difficulty breathing for a moment.

‘Can you defeat the traitor and recapture my father?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said.

He felt the probe of her hermetical enquiry.

The Duke nodded his head. Very, very quietly, he said, ‘In Alba, that would be considered very rude. Or even an attack.’

Her expression did not change. ‘I am quite desperate,’ she said with crushing honesty. ‘Where I sit, there are no rules at all.’

One by one, they introduced their officers – his mercenaries, and her palace officers, military and civil.

‘It is my intention to treat you as my Megas Ducas,’ she said. ‘You are indeed the commander of my armies and navies, which currently consist of a single armed galley at the Imperial mole and the forces you have seen tonight in the palace, with the addition of your own men. And perhaps the Vardariotes?’

‘I took the liberty of paying them a year’s arrears of pay,’ the Duke said. Sitting wasn’t any better for his hip than standing, and his armour felt as if it was a machine built to break his body.

The Captain of Ordinaries and the acting chamberlain both coughed.

The Lady Mary looked at Ser Alcaeus, who gave her a very slight nod.

‘I know that you are Earl Muriens’ son,’ said the princess.

‘I know that you are Ser Alcaeus’s mother,’ the Duke said to the woman with the shears. ‘And the knight at the end of the table, seated by Acting Spatharios Darkhair, is my brother. Just in case all of this becomes a family affair.’

‘You paid the Vardariotes, my lord Duke. I do not have the means to make such a payment – or to repay you. Even if I did, I’d use that money to buy some of my Thrakian lord’s allegiances. I would like to know what you plan to do to defeat the traitor and retake my father.’