Mother of Lies (6 page)

“What is he talking about?”

The youth smiled the typical sad smile of a Nulist. He had mastered that at least, even if he was only a second-string beginner given a try at night duty when the dogaressa wasn’t around to notice. “Nothing, my lady. It is only babbling.”

He murmured something to the patient and patted his hand. Piero fell silent.

Oliva did not know—probably no extrinsic knew—how much of the Nulists’ comfort came directly from the goddess and how much the cultists themselves controlled. “Were you
making
him do that? How dare you!”

“Not
making
him, my lady.
Letting
him, perhaps. It seems to help him.”

“Leave us. I will speak to your superior later.”

The boy carefully laid the patient’s hand on the bedding and rose. The light fell on his face for the first time and she saw that it was wet with tears, his eyes raw with weeping. Shaken by that, she took the stool he had vacated and put her lamp on the table. He bowed and withdrew.

“Where have they gone?”

Piero’s quiet whisper startled her, it was so clear. His eyes were open, but still unfocused.

“Bring them back!” He frowned at her—puzzled, dazed.

“Bring who, dear?”

The Mutineer was in the city, but Piero could not advise her now. At first one brief Nulist treatment a day had sufficed to hold the pain at bay, but now he could only snatch a few lucid moments before it returned. She should not have come here to trouble him. Yet if she had not come, she would not have stumbled upon that
boy
engaged in whatever foul experimentation he had been up to.

“The children!” Piero closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them he was conscious, smiling at her. “Dreaming. I was dreaming the children were coming home.”

Unlike the Nulist, she had no tears left to shed. “I’m sure they won’t be long now, dearest. It must be a year since Stralg promised to send for them.” Only an incorrigibly bewildered imbecile would trust a word that monster said.

“They are all grownup now, you know.”

She nodded. Twelve have mercy! Fifteen years gone. Fifteen years lost. Even if they still lived, what would they care for Celebre? Or Florengia? Or her. “Fabia must be a young woman?”

“A beautiful one.” He sighed.

“What did she look like—in your dream?”

“In my dream … very like you, my dear, at her age. Your fierce eyes. I always liked your eyes.”

“That wasn’t what you told me you liked.”

“In public I said eyes.” He smiled. “You should see Benard! So strong-looking.” He smiled. “Just a dream, but vivid! They were coming in a boat, can you imagine? Over the Edge in a boat! Benard was always the artistic one. He’s a sculptor now, got his shoulders chipping marble, he said. In my dream he did, I mean. Remember we used to say Orlando was the fighter?”

No, she just remembered the terrible day when they had been stolen—Stralg holding out his hands to the toddler and Orlando, too young to understand evil, going to him. Dantio had been staring in horror, Benard hiding his face in her skirts, Fabia fretting, wanting to suck. She could not imagine Fabia as an adolescent, nor even Dantio as a grown man.

“Brass collar,” Piero muttered, frowning. “And Dantio … great sorrow there, my dear. Great wisdom. I always said he’d make a fine
tégale
player, remember? They were speaking with me. Asking …” He winced. His face was so shrunken and skeletal that it seemed to be all teeth and gaping eye sockets. He drew a deep breath. “Asking who was going to …”
Gasp!
“… succeed me.”

“And who did you tell them?”

The dead man’s vote, they called it. A doge’s designation of his heir counted as one vote in the council, no more, no less, but only very rarely in the history of Celebre had the elders overruled the dead man’s wishes. Piero had made no testament because he did not know which, if any, of his children still lived. He shook his head, unable to speak. His skull face shone with sweat. The pain was back already, tearing at him.

She rose and went from the room, almost running into the young Mercy in the corridor, waiting for the call. He hurried over to the bed, clasping the patient’s hand even before he sat down. In a few moments Piero was sleeping peacefully again.

In a few more moments the Nulist was able to glance around at Oliva, who stood by the door.

“I am sorry I spoke harshly,” she said. “Your name?”

“Luigo, my lady.”

“Thank you, Brother Luigo. Whatever you were doing made him very happy. Please continue.”

“I will try, my lady.”

“Twelve blessings on you.”

“He’s not dead, then?” Stralg said.

The voice behind her was unforgettable—deep and sonorous, but also imperious, very masculine. Like a war horn.

She gasped with shock and spun around so hard she staggered.

She looked up. He seemed taller every day. Still bony, all feet and hands and a boy’s loincloth like a linen flute. On his way to being
very
big. Gold bracelets adorned his wrists and a weighty pelf string laden with silver wisps encircled his neck. He had dark Florengian coloring, but the fierce eagle-beak nose was developing fast. Since his voice broke, Chies had sounded exactly like his father, and now was undeniably starting to look like him, too.

“You sent for me. I thought he must be dead.”

“No. Come.” She pushed past him and did not speak until they had passed through the sanctuary. She nodded approvingly to the senior Mercy and went out into the corridor with her willow-tree bastard slouching behind her.

They walked together with her little lamp throwing bizarre shadows on the high walls. Typically, Chies had not bothered to bring a light. Perhaps young eyes saw better in the dark.

“I wanted to tell you that Master Dicerno is pleased with your progress. He says you are trying very hard. I am happy to hear this, Chies.”

Grunt.
“That’s all?”

Her mind groped for the right answer. Was there ever a right answer when dealing with adolescents? She had no experience. Dantio had been only a child when her first brood was stolen away. She was very old to be learning. Deep breath …

“It is a sign of maturity. As a reward, and as long as you continue to progress, I will let you wear a dagger. You can choose—”

“Why not a sword?”

You could never score when the target kept moving.

“Not until you know how to use one. You’d be a gift-wrapped prize to the first street thug you met.”

“I’d still have my guards with me,” he said sulkily.

“And if you run into trouble, you’ll just stand by without drawing and let them defend you?” But apparently the absence of a dagger was no longer the most important thing in the entire world, no longer a source of eternal shame. It no longer justified suicide, as it had a sixday ago. “Is there something you would rather have?”

“Take girls to my room.”

She needed several deep breaths for that one, but Master Dicerno’s strongest advice had been “Be just, be fair, and encourage him any chance you get.” Better his room than under a bush somewhere.

“Have you taken girls to your room already?”

Pause. “Maybe.”

She knew he had tried twice and the guards had blocked him. But he had not told her a direct lie.
Encourage him
, the preceptor had said.

“As long as you continue to be discreet I won’t mind. I’ll give you a key to the private door.”

She stole a glance. He was pleased.
Very
pleased. Probably quite pink, although it was hard to say in this light. How long before he started giving away palace silverware? How long before the first little hussy cried rape or pregnancy?

“You are almost grown up. At New Year, you’ll start wearing a seal and I shall take Master Dicerno’s teeth out of your leg. You may find your girlfriends’ brothers and fathers coming after you with cudgels, but that will be your problem.”

“By then I’ll be doge.”

“What!?”
The echo of her cry rolled away along the concourse.

He smirked down at her. “It has to be a man of the royal house and I’m the only one. Who else can they choose?”

“Chies, Chies darling … I’ve never lied to you. You know that Piero is not your father.”

“But you lied to everyone else.”
Sneer.
“He accepted me as his. Didn’t want to tell people his wife balled other men.”

Piero could have handled this with a few quiet words. She couldn’t. She warned herself not to start screaming. “Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

He laughed. “The Werists call me ‘the Little Fist’!” Even more than dagger-wearing, his chumminess with the garrison had been a source of family friction. Practicing his Vigaelian, he’d called it. She’d thought they were just loose company. So now she knew better. If the ice devils saw him as the bloodlord’s son they might even start taking his orders, and then Chies would be
dangerous
.

“It’s the council that matters.”

“Piero never denied me!” Chies shouted and stopped walking. “They won’t!”

She turned to face him, feeling as if she were drowning. Why had she never guessed he would aspire to the coronet? Was that why he had been on his best behavior lately?

“The last time Stralg …” She began again. “
Your father
carried me away by force and kept me for seven sixdays as his prisoner and plaything. He raped me, abused me, even stole the babe from my breast. The day he released me he told me that the seers said I was carrying his child and it was a boy. He said he still had my four children as hostage and I was to carry you to term and Piero was to raise you as his own, or else he’d send orders and all four would die.”

Stralg’s son shrugged. “So he hadn’t any choice.”

Why should the boy be grateful?

“Piero? Yes, Piero had a choice, because I never told him what Stralg said. He knew you weren’t his, but you were mine, and you were innocent of the crime, so he let you live. He reared you and loved you. When you were lovable.”

At once she wished she hadn’t said that last thing, but it was too late to take it back. If anything, Chies had been
too
lovable. With the others gone, he’d been all they had, and they had spoiled him horribly. Now their weakness was about to bear terrible fruit.

A stray gust puffed out the flame on her lamp.

“But you just admitted,” Stralg’s voice resonated in the darkness, “that the Fist made me because he wanted me. Obviously he wanted me so I can be doge and rule Celebre for him.”

No. Stralg had just wanted to show his contempt for Piero by sending her home bearing his bastard, but she could never tell Chies that.

He said, “The council knows what’s good for it. They’ll do what my
real
father tells it to do, just like that milksop husband of yours always did.” The hated voice suddenly turned squeaky. “My
real
father will tell them to elect me! And if you
really
try hard and
behave yourself in future
, I may let you take
men
to your room!”

While she was still floundering to find a suitable retort,
any
retort, she remembered that she was on her way to meet with Marno Cavotti. If Chies Stralgson caught the merest hint of a suspicion of a rumor that the Mutineer was in the palace, he would be across the road to the Vigaelian barracks to claim the notorious reward, faster than a thunderbolt.

Without another word, he turned and ran. She caught a brief glimpse of his gangling form against a glow at the end of the concourse as he ran around the corner into the Hall of Pillars.

The storm was moving on. One of the great shutters in the colonnade had been unlatched and moved aside to admit glimmers of gray light and wafts of steamy air. The rain on the terrace outside had dwindled to a drizzle. Forcing herself to move no faster than usual, Oliva swept across to join the three men standing there.

Silvery robe, silver hair—the one holding the lamp was Master Dicerno, and beside him stood Chies in loincloth and glints of silver. He was as tall as the preceptor, but he looked like a child alongside the third man. Werists were chosen for their size in adolescence and kept on growing—a little larger every time they battleformed, it was said.

As she arrived at the group, she was shocked to realize that the third man wore a Nulist robe. The cowl covered his head and shoulders leaving only his face exposed, so it was one of the very few garments that would hide a brass collar, but it seemed especial blasphemy for a Hero to pose as a Mercy. All three knelt to her, Chies just a fraction of a second behind the others. Correct protocol would have been for him to bow only, then present the newcomer.

Dicerno waited an instant for him before saying, “My lady … if I may have the honor … Brother Marno. Brother Marno is a renowned and skillful devotee of holy Nula.”

Marno was a common name, but Oliva wished they had chosen another. One glance at Chies warned her that his mood had changed yet again. He was twitching, excited, unable to keep his eyes off the disguised Werist.
He knew!
She had no idea how he knew, but she was quite certain he did.

Life had become a nightmare inside a nightmare.

“Rise, please, all of you. You are very welcome to our house, Brother Marno.”

“My lady, I thank the gods for giving me the opportunity and honor of attending lord Piero.” The big man spoke in a harsh growl, very unlike Stralg’s sonorous carillons, but his face was completely unlike her expectations of what a notorious rebel should look like—handsome, sensitive, aristocratic, with a strong resemblance to Duilio Cavotti, his long-dead father.

“You will be able to assuage my husband’s distress?”

“Not I, my lady. The goddess.”

“Of course.”

He should have said
my
goddess.

“You are new to our fair city, brother?” Chies making small talk had to mark the dawn of an epoch.

Cavotti must be aware of his Celebrian accent, because he evaded the trap. “I was born here, but I have been away for some years.”