The City (28 page)

She nodded and whispered politely, ‘It is … pretty.’

The merchant smiled broadly at the first words he had heard from her. ‘It is indeed. It was built more than five hundred years ago for a companion of the emperor. She loved all beasts and birds and creatures of the sea, and you will see many throughout the house. It is called the House of the Creatures of the Earth.’

Em was delighted by the name and the merchant, pleased, led them through another doorway guarded by porpoises into an inner courtyard replicating the outer one, then through a third porpoise door into a hexagonal parlour lit by lamps. It was dark in there, and cool. The merchant glanced upwards, then looked quizzically at Emly. She craned her neck. The roof of the parlour was of glass, she was surprised to see, obscured by a riot of greenery and white flowers.

‘In the summer we permit plants to grow across the roof to keep the room cool,’ the merchant explained. ‘In winter they are cut back to allow the sun in.’

There was no one else in the room. Em sat in a corner of a comfortable upholstered sofa with running cats carved into the wooden arms, and Bartellus and the merchant discussed the news of the City. Em was quite at ease, her father at her side, until the room started to fill with guests.

Then Bartellus arose. ‘I must go and help Frayling,’ he told her. ‘Stay here and I will find you when I can.’

He ignored her pleading eyes and vanished out through the door, struggling a little against the crowd pressing in. The merchant was greeting people and laughing, and Em sat back in her seat and tried not to be noticed.

For a while she was ignored and she sat, head down, tracing the lines of the carved cats with her fingers, wondering how long it would take for the craftsmen to fix the marine window in place, how long she would have to stay there.

‘Miss. May I get you some more water?’

She looked up and saw a servant standing respectfully at a distance, his head bowed. She shook her head.

To her relief he went away, but he shortly came back with a plate of food – pink shrimp on small pieces of bread. She shuddered at the sight, thinking of the living shrimps frolicking on the ocean floor in her window.

The servant bent his head to her and whispered confidentially, ‘They are serving squid and leviathan next.’

She looked up at him, appalled, but he was smiling and she realized he was teasing her and smiled back nervously.

‘May I sit down?’ he asked.

She glanced about her, for she was afraid he would get into trouble, then she realized the servants moving among the guests bearing trays of food and drink were all dressed in cotton smocks. This young man was wearing handsome silk clothes and shiny leather boots. She felt foolish, and before she could react he had sat down beside her, one arm at her back, saying, ‘I am Tolemy, and this house belongs to my father.’

His face was close to hers, and she ducked her head and tried to lean a little away from him, but he only leaned in and she could smell wine warm on his breath. His features were pleasing, handsome even, but his eyes were bright with drink and his speech was slightly slurred.

‘I have just seen your sea window,’ he said. ‘It is a marvel that such a girl could make so fine a work. Your hands must be very cunning.’ He slid his hand across one of hers. His palm was hot and damp and, repelled, she moved her hand away.

‘My father told me you were a girl of few words, Emly,’ he said. ‘He also told me you were a beauty, but it is hard to tell underneath that pretty veil. Will you not take it off for me?’

She shook her head, looking round, wishing her father would come back. The guests standing around them in groups all had their backs to Em, making a wall in front of her, and she felt she and this man were alone. She decided to go and search for her father, or the merchant, but when she tried to stand she found that Tolemy was sitting on her skirt, which had spread across the sofa. As she struggled to get away he laughed.

‘Take your veil off and I will let you go,’ he whispered, pressing in towards her, one hand creeping around her waist, then up to her breast, cupping the softness, then pinching the nipple hard.

She tore the veil off and thrust it at him, and he sat back and laughed out loud, releasing her skirt. She jumped up, just as the merchant came into view, staring suspiciously at the flustered girl and his laughing son.

‘Are you all right, my dear?’ he asked her, glowering at Tolemy.

She nodded, aware she was flushed and dishevelled. ‘Father?’ she asked.

‘They are nearly ready. Would you like to come and see your window?’ He held out one hand to guide her away. She nodded gratefully.

She took no pleasure in the presentation of the sea window. Its placing, in a high wall where the morning sun would shine through it, was well judged. The guests in their silks and rich jewellery applauded and praised the workmanship, and the merchant made a speech, congratulating both Emly’s work and his own discernment. But she could still feel Tolemy’s hand crawling on her, and inside she railed at herself for being such an innocent. Bartellus stood beside her, his head high, proud of her and her work, but he quickly saw the anxiety in her eyes. Mistaking its cause, he said quietly, ‘It looks wonderful, little soldier. Don’t you think so?’

She nodded and raised a smile for him, for it was true, it did, and he told her, ‘In a few moments we can go home. Away from all these people. I’m so proud of you.’

He patted her shoulder and she wanted to throw herself into his arms. But she knew she could not tell him about the merchant’s son, for he would be angry and feel the need to protect her. And that reminded her of the watcher again, and she was afraid.

It was only when they were safely in the carriage, and well on their way back to their home in Lindo, that she realized she had left her precious veil behind.

DAWN WAS JUST
a faint pink light in the east of the city when Bartellus let himself out of the House of Glass into the new morn. He locked the door and put the great iron key in his pocket. Limping slightly on his painful knee, he walked up to Blue Duck Alley and sniffed the air. There must have been a fall of rain in the night, after they returned from the merchant’s, and the morning felt newly washed.

He headed off briskly towards the library. He wanted to put distance between himself and the House of Glass before the world awoke. He had left instructions to Emly and Frayling not to answer the door to anyone.

The Great Library was just opening as he arrived, its east doors groaning apart to let in the low rays of the sun. Bartellus made his way through the yellow-green light to his habitual table. He sat down and wondered what he was going to do all day. He was surprised Carvelho had not returned the latest pile of documents.

A docent, a thin old woman with a shuffling walk, came slowly over and handed him a message, resentment on her face. ‘This has been waiting for you for three days,’ she told him. It was from Carvelho, to say his wife was ill and he would not be at Bartellus’ service. Bart frowned. His ordered life was being disrupted on all sides. He crumpled the note up and threw it on the table, and stared at the pile of documents in front of him: old books, their leather bindings
hanging off, rolls of dry ancient paper, each with a dangling name tag, and sheaves of documents in brown folders. He realized he had no interest in reading about the City’s architecture that day.

Instead he pulled towards him the book
Cryptic Codes: Formal and Informal Insignia among Armed Men
. He turned to the back, then the front, for an indication of how they were arranged, but there was no index. He sighed and started at the beginning.

Almost immediately he found one of his own tattoos – the green serpent with a rat in its coils, symbol of the Fourteenth Imperial infantry, the Ratcatchers, long since disbanded. Fell would have the same tattoo, he reflected, and Astinor Redfall, if he lived.

Another custodian came by, and raised his eyebrows at Bartellus, perhaps commenting on his early arrival. Bart gave him a stern look: none of your business, and the man went on his way.

Over the course of the morning the old man tracked down three of the smaller tattoos he remembered on the corpse’s body, and found that the soldier had served with the Twenty-fourth Vincerii, and two decades before the Emperor’s Rangers, who then called themselves the Lepers, and he had fought at the Second Battle of Edyw. A distinguished service, indeed, although there was little to stop any fool of an impostor having the tattoos inscribed. But Bartellus remembered the many old wounds on the man and believed his tattooed friend was an authentic soldier. He uncrumpled Carvelho’s message and wrote the names down on the paper, confident he would not remember them the next day.

At last, flipping idly through the pages, he came to the one he was seeking near the back of the book: the rampant goat with flickering red tongue. He sat back in surprise, then looked again. It was surely the same tattoo; it could not be mistaken for any other. He turned to the start of the chapter; it was called ‘Allies and Tributaries’. Then he turned back to the tattoo and the inscription beside it:
Royal bodyguard, under Matthus III, last ruler of Odrysia, king of the Little Sea
.

Bartellus looked again at his
aide memoire
. The Second Battle of Edyw. He had marked it in the book with a fragment of paper. He turned to it, then sat back again, his mind returning to slaughter. The First Battle of Edyw had been a triumph, Shuskara’s armies of the east outnumbering and outmanoeuvring the Blueskin tribesmen. The City companies had settled down in the invaded lands and
achieved a measure of security. This lasted a season, a long, warm spring. But their inevitable reward for success was to be given a more difficult task. Shuskara was ordered to push north and east towards the Little Sea, up the Edyw valley. There were mountain ranges to left and right, peaks confidently held by tribesmen who were on their home territory and eager to take revenge. They sat back in their mountain holes and waited until the City’s supply lines were stretched to breaking point, then they attacked. Thousands of City soldiers died in the first two days. The generals were ordered to retreat, and the ones at the rear were able to. Shuskara had the hideous choice of pulling his forces back to safety, or staying and trying to back up the beleaguered forces in the front line. His troops dug in.

The Second Battle of Edyw, he knew but had since forgotten, was the only time in the history of the City’s armies when veterans of both sides in a battle had adopted the same tattoo. It was a grudging tribute to the other side, a recognition that in a battle in which both armies had fought each other to a standstill, losing more than nine in ten of their men, there was more that united the common soldiers of the two armies than separated them.

So his tattooed friend had fought
for
the City, in infantry regiments, and
against
it, in the bodyguard of the Odrysian king. And he had fought at Edyw, but on which side? The book had raised as many questions as it had answered.

Inevitably his mind turned down well-worn tracks to the veil he had snatched from the man’s neck, the veil which, for some reason, Emly cherished and had worn only the previous day. It was a piece of fine threadwork. Had it also come from Odrysia? He resolved to look at it again when he got home. Bartellus was concerned about Emly. He had hoped the previous day would leave her proud, with her head high. Instead she had been anxious and upset when they returned from the merchant’s house. The day took more out of her than he had expected.

His thoughts were idling when he suddenly realized he was being watched. He looked around. Far across the library a man stood leaning against a desk. He did not appear to be looking at Bartellus, but the old soldier knew in his bones that moments before the man’s eyes had been on him. In the watery light Bart could not see the man well, except that he was tall and rangy, with light hair. A soldier, almost certainly.

He rubbed his tired eyes and when he looked again the man was gone.

Bartellus closed the book and thrust it to the bottom of the pile of documents. Then he grabbed his coat and followed the stranger’s steps. When he reached the spot where the man had been standing he looked around. Ahead of him was the main corridor to the front doors of the library. On either side were several smaller doors, leading he knew not where. Shrugging to himself, he hurried down the corridor. Reaching the high dark atrium, clad with stained and dirty glass, he paused again. There was no one in sight. But the heavy front door was just closing, settling with a soft sound on its familiar iron latch.

Outside he was rewarded with the sight of his quarry disappearing into a side street across the square. Bartellus hurried, almost ran, across the busy square to catch up.

In the shadowy side streets he found it easier to follow, for his prey clearly had no thought he was being pursued. The man stopped and dawdled at a street stall, choosing something to eat. Bartellus closed the distance between them cautiously, ducking behind a wall as the man turned and casually glanced behind him. He was chewing on a piece of fruit, tasting it. Through a broken piece of brickwork, Bart could see him clearly. He was tall and lean, with tow-coloured hair, and he was older than he had first appeared. The man bought a handful of fruit, then carried rapidly onwards.

Before long it became clear that he was heading for Lindo. He was taking the route Bartellus himself took most days: through the north of Burman, across the river at the Serpentine Bridge, then following the winding length of Parting Street and approaching the Armoury from the north-east. It was the quickest way. Perhaps the stranger knew the City as well as he did. Perhaps he had followed Bart before.

Striding along, a little out of breath, he racked his brain to work out who this man was, or whom he acted for. Bartellus’ heart laboured. They would have to leave sooner rather than later. The next day, if possible. He would lose a lot of money selling the house quickly. There was little demand for property in the Armoury. And Emly would be distraught to have to walk away from the House of Glass.