the Lord Governor’s wife nattered after him from the outside hallway. ‘Do make yourself comfortable, your Grace. Of course, my house staff and servants will eagerly attend to your needs.’
Arithon replied in tones of steelclad politeness. ‘Your kindness is generous. I shall be content to sleep undisturbed.’ The decorative studs that gouged his back impelled him to straighten as he finished his survey of the guest chamber.
The glitter made his head ache. Glass beading riddled the panelled walls, and gilt casements with rose-tinted panes clashed unmercifully with a floor laid out in tiles. These also were patterned, a blaring assemblage of lozenges done in saffron, amber and violet; the furnishings had raised knots in gold, every padded edge decked in silk twist and fringe. Even the carpets sported tassels.
A sortie from the bed to the privy would require lighted candles to forestall hooked toes and whacked shins.
Arithon shut his eyes and wished back the stark hills of Daon Ramon. The windswept ruins there at least kept the tatters of dignity.
‘You haven’t seen the fur quilts, yet,’ Asandir invited drily from the other side of the room. Against the chamber’s blinding opulence, his preferred midnight blue and silver made him grim as an aspect of Dharkaron dispatched to punish mortal vanity.
‘Excuse me.’ Arithon wished only to forget his first sight of Etarra; with copper-clad domes clustered thick as warts behind square bastions, the city resembled a fat toad squatted between weathered slate mountains. He sighed and reopened his eyes. ‘I presume Sethvir brought the records?’
‘If you can make out lettering between the flourishes affected by Etarra’s clerks,’ groused the Warden of Althain. Surrounded by leatherbound ledgers heaped in stacks in an alcove, he looked nothing less than besieged. ‘I hate to pain you further.’ He waved a haphazard scroll-case toward a pair of cherubs whose carved curls sprouted indigo candles. ‘But the lady of the house brought these when I asked for more light.’
‘Burn them, and the archives, too!’ Arithon’s laughter took on a baleful edge. ‘We’d save a lot of bother if we could level this atrocity and build a new city from the rubble.’
Sethvir waggled a quill pen at him. ‘Don’t imagine we haven’t been tempted!’ Then he blinked and looked vague and snapped his fingers: both cherub candles sprouted flame. The wax as it heated gave off a cloying perfume. A casement perforce was unlatched and in the draft, the new light wavered over features shaded toward concern. ‘A nasty night of reading for us both. You won’t like it. Etarran guilds resolve their disputes on the blades of hired assassins.’
Not too exhausted to field subtleties, Arithon hooked off his silver circlet. ‘How many wards of guard did you need to set over this room?’
Sethvir and Asandir exchanged a glance, but neither one gave him answer.
‘Never mind.’ Arithon hurled the royal fillet into the nearest padded chair. ‘If the governor’s council wants a knife in my back, by morning I’ll make them a reason.’
But reason had already been given, as the sorcerers had cause to know. They did not discuss the three paid killers who had earlier been unobtrusively foiled. The viper’s nest of factions that ruled the city stood united in their cause to see the s’Ffalenn royal line killed off. Vigilance over Arithon’s safety could never for a moment be relaxed.
For the rest of the afternoon and well on into evening, the Prince of Rathain and the sorcerers remained in seclusion, poring over old records. Dakar came back. An exhaustive tour of the taverns had affirmed his opinion that Etarra brewed terrible ale. Dispatched, staggering, to the scullery, he fetched back a light meal, chilled wine and candles from the servants’ wing that thankfully did not merit any scent. His errands finished, he sprawled full-length on the fur quilts, the boots he had forgotten to remove sticking through the rods of the bedstead.
At midnight, Lysaer stepped in, lightly flushed, a satisfied smile on his face. He hooked Arithon’s circlet off the chair, set it safely on a tortoiseshell sidetable, and sat. ‘Ath, this room is as overdecorated as the taproom I just came from.’ He sniffed, and grinning added, ‘It reeks in here like a brothel madam’s boudoir.’
Arithon baited blandly, ‘You should have been here when the candles were fresh. They would’ve given you an erection. And anyway, I’m surprised you can tell.’
At Lysaer’s mystification, Sethvir said, ‘You smell as if you bathed in cheap gin. By that, dare we presume you accomplished your assignment and lasted for the duration?’
Lysaer laughed. ‘When I retired, the elect of the guilds were banging their tankards on the table. The foppish- looking fellow who’s commander of Etarra’s guard was singing war-songs offkey and the barmaids were hoisting the Lord Governor into a brewer’s wagon to be delivered to the arms of his wife. Gentlemen, what news I have is good. Tomorrow would have brought foul and secret machinations against our prince, except that the messengers entrusted to spread word of the arrangements met with mishap. Kharadmon has an unsubtle touch, I must say, since one of them slipped in horse dung and apparently broke his elbow. His yelling disrupted half the prostitutes in the shanty district. The names he chose to curse at the top of his lungs were a frank embarrassment.’
‘That must have upset Commander Diegan’s sensibilities,’ Sethvir ventured, his head disappeared behind the pages of yet another yellowed ledger.
‘Oh yes.’ Lysaer forgot his distaste for orange tassels and tipped his head back into the chair cushions. ‘The Lord Commander of the Guard rousted out his head captain, Gnudsog, is it? The squat fellow with the muscles and the scars. He silenced the uproar with a battle mace by breaking the messenger’s jaw. The bonesetters are still busy. To mend appearances Etarra’s council will convene tomorrow morning behind barred doors, to formalize reformed laws to ban the monarchy. The guild ministers already bicker like fishwives. Hungover as they’re likely to become, they’ll lock horns over the language until noon.’
‘Oh dear.’ Sethvir forsook the accounts to jab fingers through a coxcomb of stray hair. ‘Are you saying you got them all in their cups?’
Dakar answered from the bed with his eyes still closed. ‘They were irked enough to dance on the tables, anyway. All Lysaer did was keep them filling their tankards.’
‘Who paid for the gin?’ asked Asandir.
‘That’s the beauty of it,’ Lysaer said, infectiously lapsed into merriness. ‘The tavern was owned by the vintner’s guild, and drinks were declared on the house.’
Lord Governor Morfett set the massive gold seal of the city into puddled scarlet wax. Then, while the guild ministers added their own signatures and ribbons, he shoved his knuckles into a fringe of damp hair and cradled his splitting head. A servant had to touch
