The Iron Ship (46 page)

He looked down at his collar.

“It does look better,” he said.

“I can do it. And I promise to stop teasing you. Really. You know how I am. I’ve always enjoyed making you squirm a little.”

“Like that time at Midfrozmer when you kept dropping hints into the conversation about what exactly we had been doing?”

She made a face of innocence, much like the one she had worn at the occasion Trassan mentioned. “Your father is deaf to innuendo, or I would not have done it.”

“A bloody good job too, Ils, or I would have been doing a lot more than squirming when we got home. He would have beaten the crap out of me.”

She poked him above his heart. “He would have got the servants to do it.”

“It would still have hurt.”

“I suppose so. But I can get you the money. And I want to.”

“Ils, I can’t marry you. I am sorry, but...”

“Shut up. It’s not about that. We’re still family, even if you bound yourself to some engineer’s floozy daughter.”

“She’s not a floozy.”

“Poor you.”

“Ilona!”

She smirked at his discomfort. “There is a condition.”

“That is?”

She rested both her hands on his chest.

“You have to take me with you.”

“Are you mad?”

“I am not mad.” She sighed and turned away. “I should be. You’ve no idea.”

“What are you talking about?”

“And you with a sister like Katriona.”

“You are losing me here.”

“I will make it simple for you cousin. Remember when we played at dragoons and dragons as children?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Tell me. What is the principal difference in the game for girls and boys?”

Trassan frowned. “None. You and Katriona wouldn’t let there be. We were all dragoons. I remember the one time we tried to get you to be the damsel.”

“When we played those games, you did so with the certainty that you could, if you really wanted to, become a dragoon or a knight or a magister. Katriona and I cannot.”

“But the world has changed Ilona. You could become a magisterial aide, or a nurse. Or you could—”

“Have you noticed, they are all the roles of assistant, and never the leader?”

“There are women who are not assistants.”

“Oh really? Like who?”

“Well,” he said, “there’s Lucinia of Mogawn. And Katriona. I did meet a very eminent family of lens makers last year, who were led by the most formidable matriarch.”

“Exceptions. What do they say about the Hag of Mogawn? I’ll give you a hint, it’s in the name they’ve given her. How long do you think it will be before dear cousin Katriona ends up with a similar label, onerous as a millstone to carry, and one that she will never be able to set down? I don’t want that, Trassan. Why don’t I get to be a dragoon?”

“The world just isn’t like that.”

“And there you have my point. Well done,” she said bitterly. “My mother talks to you about your career, and your prospects. She talks to me about marriage, because that is all there is for me.”

“I never became a dragoon either,” he said weakly.

“Rel did. Who knows what adventures he is having?”

“Knowing Rel, I am sure he is having a perfectly miserable time.”

“But he gets to go! And you, so you are not a dragoon. Did you want to be one?”

“No...”

“So you had a choice?”

“Some...”

“There you are. You instead are the great engineer, building a technological wonder that will fetch back the secrets of the ancients to better the lot of all Karsans! If that is not a hero’s role, then what is? Nobody rides dragons any more, Trassan. But heroes remain. The steeds change, that is all. What choice is there for me? To become a wife or a whore.”

“Now you’re being ridiculous.”

“Am I? So, I pursue my own ambitions, and get called, why, a whore, whether I am or not. I bed a man I want to and get found out. What am I? I am a whore! I’d be better off becoming an
actual
whore, because at least then I’d be paid for the insult. I want to be a wife, Trassan,” she looked pointedly at him, “but on my own terms. I don’t want to be a whore.” She smiled. “Well, not all of the time. What I do want is to ride dragons, like the old knights. Fuck what people say I should be. Yes. Fuck. I’ve heard you say lots worse, cousin. And are you censured for it? Of course not, because you’ve got a fucking cock. So you can say what you like.” She grabbed for his crotch. She was quick and he fended her off only at the last moment, losing much dignity in the process. “To add injury to the vast insult of my sex, I am forced to remain cooped up in this hellhole with that mad old tyrant until some droopy jawed halfwit with a title pays my mother enough to marry me.”

“It’s not like that anymore.”

“No. ‘It’s not like that
all the time
, any more.’” She mimicked his voice, ridiculing his mannerisms. “It still is like that quite a lot of the time. You know nothing about it. For you, I will exercise power in one of the few areas open to me, mainly, squeezing a small fortune out of my father. It’ll be hard work, but I’ll put on a performance that would make one of Guis’s actresses look like the rankest amateur.”

Trassan paused. “You’re sure you can do it?”

“He was half-convinced anyway. There’s something sharp lurking underneath the gutless weasel he’s become. All I have to do is make him more worried about upsetting me than he is frightened of my mother. You’ll see. His desire to earn a good return on his money will do the rest. He has to support my mother somehow. All you have to do is get me away from all this.”

“Can’t I do something else for you? There are schools... You could go to the Queendom.”

“I want to be free where I choose, thank you very much. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”

Trassan mulled it over a while. He held out his hand. “You drive a hard bargain.”

“We are all Kressinds.”

They shook.

“Now come on. Mother always kicks up such a stink when she thinks people are having fun without her.”

“Have you thought about not indulging her?”

“Oh yes. And I have decided it’s not worth the trouble not to. Not with my dear old daddy soothing her wounded self-importance and supporting her every lie. She’ll be shaking me awake to drunkenly berate me in the small hours already. But that won’t happen many more times, because you’ll get me out of here. If I do this, and I will, and you even dare to consider leaving without me, I will kick you very hard, right in the balls. So hard, in fact, that you won’t be much use to little miss spanner pants at all.” She smiled dangerously. “I am sure even you can understand that.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Vardeuche Persin

V
ARDEUCHE
P
ERSIN SAT
at his desk eating messily. A jowly man, thick about the waist, his form and his manner of eating suggested that he enjoyed his food. He gobbled impatiently, spilling morsels from his spoon onto the napkin tucked into his collar.

The napkin was richly made, as was his suit of clothes, his furniture, and every other thing. He was not as he first appeared, this gourmand in his rich man’s rooms. If someone were to examine him closely, as many courtesans of Perus had had the opportunity, they would find thick muscle beneath the fat, they would feel that his hands were horny with hard work, and that there was always a trace of oil under his fingernails.

Tall windows looked out over the Marmore district of Perus. On a clear day one could see the soaring dome of the Pantheon Maximale, and to the smaller buildings of the Grand House of the Assembly in its shadow where the Assembly of Nations gathered. Over all hung the titanic disc of Godhome, bigger than the city. It had slipped sideways in the sky not long after Res Iapetus evicted its inhabitants and had remained that way ever since. To the east was the canyon of the Foirree and its elegant steel cable bridges, to the west the green expanse and rolling hills of the Royal Park, a wilderness of uncertain depths.

Like Persin, Perus was a study in contradiction. The most beautiful city in the Hundred, it was caked in industrial grime. The most ancient of capitals, it was full of new buildings.

Perus was once known as The City of the Morning, but for two hundred years it had had another name: Umbra, the City of shadow. The sun still blazed its morning glories upon the city from the east, but for the afternoon the sun could not reach the inner districts, its light blocked by the Godhome.

A portion of the rim of Godhome rested daintily upon the highest hill of the Royal Park, the rest leaned over the city like a giant parasol. There were thus two evenings in Umbra, three when the position of the Twin was just so, and for one day every four years there was no daylight at all. A pall of smoke worsened the gloom. White marble had become brown, the carved faces of ancient heroes and the chased-off gods melted by corrosive rain. Only the monumental mausoleum of Res Iapetus had escaped the worse. His statue still gleamed, while the rest lived in shadow. Beauty bore the burden of power, and it had become ugly. Lights burned in the streets all day long.

Persin had his back to all this. Perus was the past. His office, full of models of his achievements in glass cases, was the future. His fingers were occupied with his food, his eyes with the man in front of him.

“Morthrock, you say?” he spoke Karsarin with a strong Maceriyan accent.

“Yes, goodman,” said Holdean Morthrock.

“Of the Morthrocksey Mills?”

“Yes, sir.” Holdean fingered his hat nervously.

“I know them. Did business with them. Isn’t the old man dead, Horras?” Persin tore a lump of bread from a loaf and mopped gravy from his plate.

“These last five years now, sir.”

“And his son? He was in charge, was he not?”

“Was, goodman. My cousin has been supplanted by his wife.”

“And you are not happy about this turn of events, no?” Persin shoved his plate away, tugged his napkin free and dropped it onto his plate. A servant came forward quietly and removed the tray it was upon.

“No, sir.”

“I know this, you know. All of it.” Persin dabbed crumbs off his desk with the tip of a finger and popped them into his mouth. “I know also that you were embezzling funds from the factory of your own family.” He fixed Holdean with his dark eyes and tutted. “A very big scandal, all over the papers. You have disgraced yourself. And now you have come to me, and offer your services? What kind of man do you think I am that I would consider the employment of someone like you? I, the greatest engineer in the world.”

“The woman, Katriona, she is a Kressind. She is supplying the ship of her brother, Trassan Kressind, who works for Arkadian Vand.”

“I know of these individuals, naturally,” said Persin.

“Any delay to the works there will delay Vand’s enterprise.”

“Of course.” Throughout this discourse, Persin maintained a look of bland disinterest. Holdean sweated.

“You are engaged on a similar enterprise.”

“I am.” Persin paused. “Are you proposing sabotage, Messire Morthrock?”

Holdean’s facial features danced around, unable to find an expression he thought appropriate. “Yes,” he said eventually.

“Good!” said Persin, snapping his fingers. “I do hate a man who will not state his intent. How is such a man to be relied upon. Hm? What do you propose?”

Holdean eyed the chair before Persin’s desk, but the engineer did not invite him to sit. “If I could make it back into the factory, then I might be able to whip up some sentiment against the Kressind woman. The workers there are not all happy to be taking orders from a woman, and she’s showing consideration to the Tyn that the men there will be sure to think unfair. It will not be hard. I did a good job keeping the trade associations out of Morthrocksey. There was a reason for that.”

Persin got up, and looked out of the window.

“This city is no stranger to intrigue, Messire Morthrock. The greatest city of the Morfaan lies buried beneath it. For three thousand years it was the capital of the Maceriyan Empire.” He pointed out of the window, as if these were self-evident truths written in the sky. “Res Iapetus executed the greatest conspiracy of all not two centuries since, driving out the gods and ushering in this modern age, alas much to the detriment to the beauty of my city.”

“Yes, goodman.”

Persin swivelled on one heel. He had a long face, well-fleshed, so much so that his skin was stretched by its own weight. It was heavily folded, somewhat lugubrious, a face similar to those of the dwarf hounds of the Maceriyan Altus, whose purpose was the uncovering of delicate mushrooms in the woods. His eyes seemed similarly sad, but there was a flintiness to them. “This is a poor scheme. If you were found out, could I trust upon one such as you to hold your tongue? I do not think so. Might, could—these terms of ambivalence. They are not good enough. One day the energies of the Godhome might run out, or they might not. Wild Tyn could run still in the depths of the park, they might not. I have heard both these stories, messire. Stories that might be true, but I, Vardeuche Persin, have no time for unsubstantiated tales.”

“I... I am sorry sir, to have wasted your time.”

Persin shook his head. “No, no, no. I did not say that this interview is over. You will go when I dismiss you. I will say if this is a waste of time or not! Do not presume!”

“Yes, goodman.”

“You offer your service. What will pay for it, a pretty pile of coins? Your clothes are well made but shabby. Your reputation on the other side of the Neck is in tatters. There is little for you here; none will take you on. Soon the news will have reached Mohacs-Gravo and beyond. The broadsheets enjoy this kind of story.”

“She intimated that she would tell no one.”

“More fool you for trusting a woman, perhaps? Or is it that your crimes are such the truth will, as your people say, out?”

“I don’t know, goodman.”

“Or did you further stain your own honour by rejecting a kindness, breaking a simple condition that might have saved your reputation?”

“I will not be humiliated by a woman, a Kressind! The Morthrocks are a proud and ancient family, not... not upstarts! Fishmongers! My ancestors fought alongside King Brannon himself!”