The Promise of the Child (37 page)

“And that now he intends to march on Echmiadzin,” the boy continued. “Do you think he will? Then he'd only be a few days away.”

The girl, Silene, shook her head emphatically. “There's nothing worth taking at Echmiadzin. And anyway, those Jalan cowards wouldn't risk a fair fight by telling anyone where they're going.”

“Stop interrogating our guest and let him eat something,” chided Jasione gently, pouring Lycaste some hot wine. He took the conical cup uncertainly, passing it under his nose.

“Now you know our names, sir,” said the woman, “would it be inappropriate to ask yours?”

“Onosma,” Lycaste said uncertainly, blurting the first thing that came to mind. It was the name of his favourite strip serial, the story of a boy and his pet monkey, hopefully local only to the Lower Provinces and Kipris.

“Onosma.” She nodded thoughtfully. “I hope you'll excuse me, but that doesn't sound much like a Second name.”

“Neither does his accent,” whispered Silene to herself, finishing her bowl.

“Well …” Lycaste looked off towards the edge of the orchard, where the animals were studiously eavesdropping. “In truth I'm not an
actual
Plenipotentiary … I'm a Plenipotentiary's assistant.”

No one appeared to know what to say. Silene coughed into her second helping of stew.

“What happened to your master?” asked Ulmus, confused.

“He went missing. I was on my way home, to wait for him there.” They continued to stare at him silently. “I became lost on the Artery,” Lycaste added.

“Well,” said Jasione, appearing to choose her words carefully, “we're honour-bound to put you up with us until your master comes for you.”

“I'm sorry for the misunderstanding.”

“Not at all,” she said, glaring at Silene, who was barely stifling a giggle. “You're very well coloured for a mere equerry. Lots of people must have made the same mistake?”

“A few, yes.”

Silene scowled, her giggle at last subsiding. “How did you manage to get lost on the
Artery
?”

“I don't know.” He glanced back at Jasione. “You're very kind, but I can make my own way.”

“I have to insist, Onosma. We are required to, by the law.”

“And you might get lost again,” added Silene with a sly smile. “Ulmus says there's dangerous Cherries about.”

The boy glowered at her. “It's true.”

She peered at Lycaste and whispered to Ulmus in a stage-aside, “Onosma looks a bit like a Cherry himself—do you think that's why he was spared?”

Lycaste looked at her, barely concealing his dislike. “What's a Cherry?”

“The
Melius
, downcountry,” she explained, as if to a child. “Ulmus says they've started attacking people on the Artery, stealing from them.”

The boy nodded vigorously. “They
have
! I saw some!”

“The cheek of it,” scoffed Silene, running her piggy eyes over Lycaste. “They come this way now, if they're being sold.” Her voice took on note of genteel disdain. “Some are more than passably handsome, I'll admit.”

“You should tell your master about the robberies when he comes for you,” said Ulmus.

“My master? Ah, yes, I'll do that. He would be most interested.”

Jasione appeared to remember something. “A Plenipotentiary came through here last year, didn't he, Silene?”

“Last year, Mother,” said Silene, quickly taking another bowl for herself before Jasione could put it away.

“
Yes
, that's what I said. Do you remember his name?” She turned back to Lycaste. “He didn't stay more than a day, his business was elsewhere.” She considered him as she spoke. “But he had no … equerry, no one else with him.”

She had a shrewd face, the mother. Lycaste didn't think he had any more energy for deceit. He'd been fiddling with the drawstring of his pack nervously while they stared at him and now reached and pulled it open. The ring would be more than enough to threaten them until he could get away. Nobody needed to get hurt. The bag leaned over under the weight of his rummaging hand, spilling an armful of silk. Ulmus and Silene gasped. Jasione's expression grew shrewder still.

“He's richer than Chaemerion!” exclaimed Ulmus, wide-eyed.

“He's richer than anyone,” said Silene quietly.

Lycaste froze, looking at the bundle of colour. He pulled a shimmering strip of blue from it and handed it hesitantly to the woman. “For everyone I meet on the Artery.” Their eyes widened further. He gave another, shorter ribbon of yellow to the girl, which she snatched with a shrill laugh.

“A gift from my master, for whom I'm afraid I must continue searching, despite your kind offer,” he said, presenting another piece that was immediately torn out of his hand by Silene. Lycaste placed his hand over his bag, beginning to see for himself the changes money could make in people, still unsure what he was doing.

Jasione retrieved the ribbon unceremoniously from the girl. “You are too generous, Onosma.” Silene whined for her taken piece. Jasione held the ribbon away from her. “Stop it! Or you won't have that first one, either!” She looked at Lycaste sharply. “I see you can pay for your stay—we're glad, but we don't need gifts.” She glanced at the servants, who were scrupulously working away, and stuffed the money into one of her picnic hampers. “Silene, have the spare bedchamber aired.”

*

He'd spent the first few days keeping mostly to his cramped room at the top of their house on the outward edge of the redoubt, awkwardly passing people on landings and in quiet rooms without any real idea what he was supposed to do next, effectively imprisoned by law. Approaching it from the Artery, the citadel of Koyulhizar—in which he was now an unwitting guest—had looked quite unassuming: a series of stout walls and keeps painted with huge, gaudy murals, overlooking the boundary between the Fifth and Seventh Provinces. Turrets on the outer walls climbed a storey here and there—houses or larders for the sixty or so people who lived inside the city—looking out over walled kitchen gardens and wooded hills. His own window opened down to a terrace of fan palms and the garden beyond, home to a russet marmoset with black ears that stared unblinking up at him from the leaves as it chewed. Leaning out of his window to peer north, he could just make out a line of iron grey—his first glimpse of the Black Sea, if it wasn't his imagination. The air was almost imperceptibly colder, thickening his skin just after he'd felt the tang in the wind. As long as his disguise succeeded it was a fine place to stop for a while, far more comfortable than the Artery. For a quarter of a ribbon a day, it ought to be.

Silene's father, Eremurus, was a thoughtful and softly spoken man who spent much of the day alone in his garden. He had accepted Lycaste with a warmth he hadn't felt in a long time—almost certainly kindled by the prospect of a rich tenant and any possible favour Lycaste's stay might generate with the Second—though he appeared to be a genuinely kind man, from what little Lycaste saw of him.

They called Lycaste for meals in the late afternoon, apparently eating only one a day, unless there were others he wasn't invited to. The supper always involved the sort of revoltingly hot cuisine he'd been subjected to at the picnic, and Lycaste learned not to arrive at the table with high hopes. Ulmus, he discovered, was not Silene's brother but the nephew of Koyulhizar's Patriarch, one Hamamelis, and so lived in the centre of the citadel with his large extended family. It left Lycaste with only the three of them—Jasione, Silene and Eremurus—sitting together in the long chamber, the conversation from Eremurus's side wilting before it could reach Lycaste's end of the polished table.

At his first dinner, Lycaste was offered more of the hot wine in a metal cup. The rich, fruity smell of the drink made his guts turn over, as did most of the slop served up by the head helper bird, Luma. She was more attentive than he could bear, smiling encouragingly while Lycaste tried to swallow whatever it was she'd given him in grimacing silence. There were twelve courses that first day, each less edible than the last, and he wasn't sure how much longer he could leave his planned escape, fearing that dramatic weight loss was almost a more pressing danger than being discovered as a fraud.

Talk at the table was mostly gossip about their friends and neighbours within the walls of the citadel and any local politics that might stray close enough to matter, though the greater
Troubles
outside the Province cropped up whenever Eremurus had drunk more than a cup or two of wine. He didn't share the Patriarch's optimism that the troubles would spare them and their extended families, nor that it would fizzle out before getting anywhere near the Inner Provinces, citing examples of the past and the strength of support for the opposition abroad. He scoffed at rumours mentioned by Silene of unusual people on the smaller roads and sightings of machines and spies, claiming them too babyish to discuss in company, but nevertheless dissected anything new she'd heard each mealtime with obvious interest. To Lycaste, such grand talk of politics and war sounded like little more than high-minded paranoia, a way of grumbling about the world without being thought petty and childish. The state of affairs, whatever they might really be, affected him only in the citadel's new tendency to bolt all of its gates at night and post hired guards on the ramparts—precautions which, even if he managed to leave the house at night, kept him totally imprisoned until he could devise a better escape.

The family attended a banquet with Patriarch Hamamelis once a week, though Lycaste had no intention of staying long enough to be invited. He hardly said a word unless asked a direct question, and even then avoided giving anything but the minimum of information, never elaborating beyond his own story of waiting patiently for his master. The news greatly concerned Eremurus, who had rubbed his smooth double chins and announced that it was very grave indeed, the idea of a Plenipotentiary being in possible danger on the road. He'd suggested forming a search party, offering to leave the very next morning and spread down the Artery to the Fourth. Jasione shook her head after a moment's thought, catching Lycaste's eye with a painted flash, saying that a search would only embarrass the Plenipotentiary, who should be left to find his own way out. Lycaste had swallowed with difficulty and agreed.

Silene avoided speaking to Lycaste directly, engaging her mother and father in conversation but stealing stealthy glances at him while she spoke. She was a precocious, outspoken girl, commanding the conversation at every opportunity. Lycaste disliked her enormously. He managed to see her only when they were supposed to eat together, even though their chambers were on the same floor. Regardless, he was forced to hear her at night, singing, humming and—once—doing something different entirely. Ulmus was not allowed to stay over, and Lycaste had to assume that whatever she was doing, she was doing it alone.

The family coloured only at the table, Silene—apparently without irony—often choosing a clean, pure white. Keeping the exact blend of yellow in tight reserve beneath his own skin required concentration since it dissipated overnight and needed to be remembered anew each morning. The girl was sharp, like her mother, and Lycaste felt her eyes inspecting him closely for any alteration in tone whenever they met.

Silene and Lycaste were finally forced together on the morning of the Patriarch's banquet, when Silene asked him begrudgingly as she stood in the sun-warmed hallway if she could bring him anything before they left, obviously a chore her mother had given her. Lycaste hadn't been invited and was glad of it. He thanked her but said there was nothing he needed, taking her hand quickly before she could withdraw and pushing a ribbon of silk into her palm. She looked at him with a startled gratitude, smiling shyly and dashing out of the door. He wasn't sure why he'd done it, really, but the power of money was new to him; he liked the way people changed whenever a length of it appeared in his hand and had begun to hope that his eventual escape would become a lot easier if she was even fractionally on his side.

That day was the only time he had the house to himself, so he used it to investigate the place as best he could, thinking there might be more to know before he went disappearing blindly off to foreign lands. There appeared no other immediate danger in their quiet, ramshackle house, the awful curried smell of cooked stuff all that ruined the pleasant surroundings. They were themselves clearly well off, perhaps in the employ of this Patriarch or whoever he was, and weren't at all concerned with leaving a wealthy man to his own devices in their home. This unearned trust appeared to be yet another unexpected benefit of having money. Lycaste fancied he could get quite used to it.

The helpers went with them and they had no pets to worry about, and so he was secure in the knowledge that he could go anywhere in the house without being watched. That word Silene had used, Cherry—it troubled him as he stalked about, investigating its rooms and cupboards, making sure he didn't move a single object or book from its place. He sifted through the indexes of obscure metal ring books belonging to Eremurus, examined the girl's toys and drawings of animals and yellow people, but he couldn't find the word or anything like it mentioned anywhere. Investigating the last remaining chamber, where Eremurus and Jasione slept, was especially difficult. Lycaste found himself tiptoeing despite the emptiness of the place, worried that his feet would leave marks on the boards or that he'd forget something crucial when placing ornaments in their old positions. The cool silence of the place appeared to judge him, marking with disdain every jug he lifted and peered into, every print and handwritten letter he examined. He backed out of the chamber, examining the layout critically with narrowed eyes, a painterly technique he'd learned from Pentas. For a moment, the thought of her quickened his pulse, an echo of a feeling. He closed the door softly behind him as he left.