Mother of Lies (5 page)

OLIVA ASSICHIE-CELEBRE

sat on her ivory chair alongside the doge’s empty throne and made a valiant effort to attend to city business.

The ancient palace of the doge had been built on a vast scale for comfort in Celebre’s tropical climate. When the noon sun blazed down, its high ceilings and wide concourses offered cool breezes and welcome shade, but such grandiose architecture was less effective against tempests. On that fearsome night, invisible storm giants stalked the galleries, rattling doors, swirling drapes. Even the Hall of Pillars, normally majestic and serene, was clamorous. The spaces between the columns that divided it from the river terrace had been closed off with massive shutters, but even they fluttered in the wind like aspen leaves, continually rattling and creaking. Periodically an especially massive gust would either suck all the air out of the hall and make Oliva’s ears pop, or else push far too much air in and make her ears pop. Water trickled under the shutters to puddle on the polychrome tiles. Thunder rumbled petulantly in the distance.

Oliva’s head throbbed and her ears pop-pop-popped. Her senior scribes, Gienni and Althuse, waited cross-legged at her feet, surrounded by the clutter of their profession—baskets of baked clay tablets, boards with soft clay rolled ready for inscription, pots holding sharpened reed styli. Two tiny oil lamps flickered in the wind, barely illuminating their work, and an apprentice lurked mouselike in the background, ready to attend to the needs of his betters. The rest of the hall was a restless, noisy darkness.

She did not trust either Gienni or Althuse. Gienni had served the doge and his own interests—not necessarily in that order—for many years. He was old and desiccated, a human pinecone wrapped in his official robes, whereas Althuse was newer and much younger, hiding his thoughts behind the compellingly trustworthy eyes of a gazelle. He seemed competent enough, but he had won his promotion to master scribe in Gienni’s bed. They were both in the pay of the great houses, although such disloyalty was traditional and was normally kept within limits by fear of the doge. Regrettably, these two were well aware how little real authority Oliva possessed. She often wondered if some of the letters she dictated were ever sent, and how many other people read them first.

“A letter,” she said wearily. “From our lord doge to Flankleader Jorvark. Usual greetings.”

Althuse started poking the clay with his stylus, but Gienni looked up.

“My lady? Do you wish us to address the Werist that way or give him the state he claims—Governor of Celebre and so on?”

“As I said.” It was absurd to write a letter to a juvenile hooligan who lived on the far side of a narrow street and could not read, but the last time she had sent a runner, the boy had been returned on a litter and had required the services of two healers. Jorvark would have to take the tablet to a public scribe, and they were notorious gossips. Her protest would do no good, but at least it would become public knowledge.

“Begin. ‘The lord doge speaks: Since our last words to you, five sixdays ago, the offenses of which we complained have continued unabated. Hardly a day passes without your men committing rapes, beatings, and thefts, violating guarantees the bloodlord made when we put our city under his mercy, fifteen years ago.’”

She waited for the styli to stop moving. “‘We shall send a full report of your offenses to Bloodlord Stralg and demand—’”

“My lady!” Gienni muttered.

“Write my words! ‘And demand that you be held responsible.’”

She stopped with a sigh. She had no idea where Stralg might currently be, and he rarely acknowledged her letters. It was not impossible that Flank-leader Jorvark would come storming back from the scribe and make her eat her words, clay tablet and all—but even that would shore up her crumbling authority in the city. “Usual ending.”

In a moment the apprentice came to kneel at her feet and proffer the first tablet. She rolled her husband’s seal across the clay just below the writing. Then the archive copy …

At the edge of the shadows, a herald was bowing.

“Yes?”

“Master Preceptor Dicerno, my lady. He craves audience on a matter of extreme urgency.”

Oliva could not recall that most dignified of mummies ever using words like “extreme urgency” before. Whatever had Chies gotten up to this time? It was a good excuse to stop, though.

“Scribes, you may withdraw. We shall seal the covers tomorrow before the letters are sent.” Perhaps a night’s sleep would reveal a better way to deal with the odious Jorvark. “Admit the honorable preceptor.” She sighed again. “And send our son to us.”

They went, leaving her alone on the ivory chair in near darkness, while her ears popped and the storm rattled the great shutters like some monster beast trying to break in. Piero, were he his usual self, would be planning to tour the city on the morrow, viewing damage, giving comfort, and organizing relief. She wondered if she dared try that. She feared that she would be snubbed, or ignored, or mocked.

Fourth daughter of an ancient but decayed mercantile house, Oliva Assichie had seemed fated to wed some prosperous apothecary or master artisan willing to accept noble relations in lieu of dowry. But by the mercy of holy Eriander, or perhaps holy Cienu, at fifteen she had caught the eye of Lord Piero, the widowed and childless doge. Her mother had fainted from joy. Her sisters had never quite recovered.

Four children Oliva had given him, three sons and a daughter, and their life had been an idyll of happiness until the Vigaelians came. Stralg had taken her and the children away. Later he had sent her back to her husband and she had borne a fifth child. Even in her youth she had never been sylphlike, and now she was nothing less than hefty. She was effectively doge of Celebre while her husband wasted away in the torments of the Dark One, but the council put up with her because it was seriously divided on what to do. As soon as it reached a consensus she would be gone.

Even so, running a city was easier than being a mother.

A pale robe shimmered in the shadows. The old man lowered himself carefully to his knees, then folded forward, forehead to floor, just on the edge of the puddle of light the two little oil lamps spilled on the tiles. Everything else under the high ceiling was darkness and the gigantic surging of the storm.

Oliva had several choices. She had once seen Piero leave an unwelcome petitioner crouching like that for half a day until the man must have been near to screaming from cramp. Or she could say, “Approach,” which would mean he had to crawl forward like an insect.

Instead she said, “Welcome, Master Dicerno,” and that was permission for him to rise and walk closer—bowing several times, naturally. They were alone and no one could eavesdrop in a hall so huge. “Well? What has my infamous son been up to this time?”

Chies was already taller than her by a fair amount and absolutely impossible. Master Preceptor Dicerno had the reputation of being able to turn the most obdurate adolescent animals into model citizens, but she would not be surprised in the slightest if he had come tonight to announce that he had met his match at last and must wash his hands of an intractable lout. Then all the tongues of Celebre would wag harder than ever. Blood, as they said, will out.

The preceptor looked blank. “To my knowledge nothing, my lady! I believe he is really trying now. Lord Chies is truly remorseful when he offends you, you know, even if he cannot say so; men of his age have trouble admitting to errors of judgment. If I may presume … a few words of praise from you now would be most helpful. I am very happy with his progress and his efforts.”

Oliva breathed a silent prayer to some god or goddess. No, to
all
of Them. “I shall certainly congratulate him. That is very good news! But if you have not come about my son, why do you venture here in such weather?”

She was surprised to see the haughty old man glance around at the shadows. Paradoxically, he seemed both nervous and even more pleased with himself than usual.

“I come as envoy from an important visitor, my lady. He wished an audience with his lordship, and I explained how that would not be possible. So he begs that
you
will receive him tonight. Here. He specifically asked that the audience be here in the Hall of Pillars.”

She hid an unexpected shiver of fear behind bluster. “Outrageous! To dictate where I will receive him? I doubt if even the Fist himself would presume so. Who is this arrogant knave?” Whoever he was, she was much afraid that she could guess who had sent him. For the last year, the war had been relentlessly moving in this direction.

Dicerno came a pace closer. His voice was soft as gossamer, almost inaudible under the rattling of the shutters. “A man who may now be greater than the Fist.”

If all her blood were drained away and replaced by ice, she might feel like this …. “In person?” she whispered. “Here in Celebre?” Ice, ice! “Are you sure?”

“He was a pupil of mine, my lady. A little older than lord Dantio. I believe he can be trusted. He … he has a warrior’s rough manner at times, my lady, but he is not the bloodlord.”

No. No one else was Stralg. Utter evil could not appear twice in human guise. “What does he
want
?”

“He will not say.”

“Tomorrow, when my advisers—”

Dicerno shook his head. “He swears he will be gone by dawn. My lady, I wager my soul that he can be trusted this far! He … he is a Celebrian noble, remember. My lady, you
must
receive him!”

Piero would not tolerate that word, and Dicerno would never use a word by accident.

Marno Cavotti himself?
She could not imagine what Stralg would do if he found out, and few knew his cruelty better than she did. But what might the Mutineer do if she refused him? She was between millstones. His mother was a councillor, but no friend of Oliva’s—and perhaps not of her own son, either.

Shivering, she nodded. “Bring him. I will receive him here, if that is what he wants.”

On this she must seek Piero’s advice and instructions. As she hurried through the drafty halls, she prayed to holy Sinura that he would be well enough to give them. She went alone, bearing a single oil lamp on the palm of one hand and sheltering its tiny flame with the other. Two years ago she would have moved within an entourage of ladies-in-waiting and flunkies carrying lights, but as Piero’s health had failed, their state had dwindled. That was mostly her doing. She feared all courtiers now, imagining their sneering amusement that Assichie-Celebre thought she could run the city, their hints that the council must appoint a regent in her place, or the blood-lord would soon impose a new doge of his own choosing. Convinced that the people were better off not knowing how near to death their lord was when all rightful heirs were still far away in Vigaelia, she had steadily shed attendants, as if the court itself was dying. At times she felt like the last inhabitant of the palace, or even of the city.

The official ducal sleeping chamber was spectacular, a treasure hall where doges were supposedly born, fathered heirs, and died, but Piero had never used it. It made him feel like an exhibit in a museum, he said. He and Oliva had slept in what were officially guest quarters, and quite opulent enough. One of the larger rooms had now been turned into a sanctuary of Nula and stank of the godswood being burned before holy images. Although at first glance it seemed almost deserted, it contained four Nulists, two nurses, and a trio of palace flunkies, several of whom were stretched out on the great sleeping platform, dozing. Obviously they had not expected the dogaressa to return tonight. The senior Mercy—a large, matronly woman distinguished by a white cowl—knelt in prayer before an altar of holy Nula. The rest were watching a
tégale
game; players and audience scrambled to their feet as Oliva entered. Without comment, she swept on through, into the short corridor that led to more intimate chambers, one of which had been converted into Piero’s sickroom. He had always hated dying in public, he said.

Hearing her husband’s voice, she stopped in the doorway, sudden anger flaring—she had repeatedly stressed that they were to summon her at once if he rallied. The chamber was small and simple, but all the banked flowers along the far wall could not hide a sour scent of death. The dying man lay on rugs on a portable cot, his face ochre in the spectral lamplight. Never a large man, Piero now seemed wizened and discolored like last year’s apples.

Another Mercy, dark-robed and cowled, sat on a stool beside him, holding his hand, listening to his raspy whisper winding on and on. Oliva moved softly closer, straining to hear what state secrets he might be revealing. The words were not in Florengian. Nor, she realized, were they anything like the fragments of Vigaelian she had learned during her captivity.

“What?”

The Nulist jumped and looked around. Oliva was accustomed to Mercies being elderly people, but that might be because they usually sent only their most senior members to solace a doge. The face inside the cowl this time was that of a boy, startled by her silent approach. He looked barely older than Chies.