After that stockings and shoes, bracelets, earrings. (Even a gold bag for this book.) My hair was still damp, but the slave began to arrange it. Parts were plaited, and bits were put up with pins, and some hung down in curls that were made with two heated iron sticks – tongs, she said – and there was a nasty smell of scorched hair – mine.
She made up my face. She put on powder, and dark round the eyes, and blush for the mouth and cheeks.
She even coloured my fingernails with gold, and I had to sit there like an insane sort of tree, holding out my hands, fingers stretched apart to let the stuff dry.
When I got back on the deck, Nemian was standing there in his black and gold, looking regal. He gave me a nod. Which seemed mean after the two hour preparation. He could have said, I thought, How nice you look, or something. Even if only for the slave’s benefit, she’d worked so hard.
The slaves served us yellow wine in tall glasses.
And the City appeared.
I’d been thinking, uneasily, how dreary it all looked, all this flattish greyishness, with higher greyish things – I didn’t know what – starting to poke up. There was a vague rain-mist. Everything looked ghostly.
And then this enormous heap swelled up and closed in all around.
Out of the mist reared a gigantic black statue. It was slick with rain, gleaming. What was it? It seemed to be a frowning man, his head raised high into the mist.
I was still puzzling over it, but other shapes, all completely huge, were now pushing in behind, and the ship-boat floated as if helpless in among them.
High stone banks rose from the river. Up from these piled terraces of dark buildings, stone on stone. And towers loomed in the sky, softened only by the mist. From one or two windows, a faint light seeped. They glistened though, in the wet, like dark snakes.
And everywhere, the gigantic statues, in pale marble, or black basalt. Rearing beasts (lions, bears (?)). A grim stone woman leaned down toward the River so I thought for a moment (terrified) this statue was tumbling and would fall right on the boat. In her upstretched stone hand, a real (vast) mirror, which reflected our upturned faces, small as the faces of mice.
Roofs layered on the sky, vanished in mist and cloud. Everything was so big. So smooth and burnished. So clean and cold and dim and dark.
‘Yes,’ he breathed. ‘I’ve missed this place. Home. My home. Yours. And look there – over there – can you see?’
I gazed where he pointed. And saw a tower that somehow managed to be even bigger than all the rest, and even smoother and dimmer and etc: On the top, a furious black stone thing crouched, snarling, one taloned paw upraised, and a flag in it, dark and limp in the rain.
So I didn’t need him to say to me, in his emotional and exalting voice: ‘The Wolf Tower.’
Perhaps not unreasonably, since Nemian was important, and after all he’d said about a welcome, I’d expected crowds.
There weren’t any. Or, only one.
The ship was guided in to the bank, and there, in a long stone porch that stretched from the Wolf Tower, with its demon wolf, were some people richly dressed, and a group of others, obviously more slaves.
These other slaves lay down on the pavement, in the puddles.
‘Our’ slaves on the ship lay down on the deck, even the one tying us up to the bank, once he’d finished.
The royalty approached the steps, and looked down at us. They wore fantastic clothes, thick with gold and silver, more like armour.
But they were smiling, and waving soft hands.
‘Nemian – Nemian—’ they cried, ‘darling—’
They all looked alike to me, in a funny way. A lot of them had golden hair just like his.
Nemian got ashore and walked up the steps. Then he turned and gestured back towards me, showing me to them. And they clapped and gave little shrill cries.
I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, so just stood there like a twerp.
One of the men said, ‘Your messenger was here before you, Nemian, in good time. The Old Lady will come out.’ Nemian coloured with pleasure. (His grandmother, must be.)
‘I don’t deserve it. I nearly failed you.’
‘No, no, Nemian. We heard how things went wrong. And still you took success.’
They beamed at me. Should I smile too? Or stay ever so dignified? Before I could decide, a horn wailed from somewhere in the tower. They all fell deadly smileless and silent. Their heads all turned towards the door that opened on the porch. It was a high oblong door, of two steely halves.
Two slaves emerged first, holding out their arms, as if to shoo everyone aside. They looked haughty. Then she came out.
Instantly I knew her. Instantly again I didn’t. I wished I hadn’t drunk the wine.
She was tall, thin, smoothed like the buildings. She had their colours or non-colours.
No mistaking her eyes. Black in her dry elderly white face. They were glaring straight at me, as if to strip me to the bones.
The two haughty slaves yapped in chorus:
‘Princess Ironel Novendot.’
And suddenly I knew who she reminded me of, for all her utter unlikeness: Jizania Tiger of the House I’d left behind.
THE LAW: FINDING
Looking around, for the thousandth time, I wonder if there’s any way I can use that window, or that one, or even the door. Or is there anything I can do? I think about the million and one times at the House I got into hot water, and usually got myself out of it again. Maybe with a slapped face or bleeding beaten hands, but nothing too final. However, this is difficult. No. It’s impossible. Argul told me I was trouble, or made trouble, and he was absolutely right. I just wish he was here to say, I told you so. Although I don’t, really, wish he was
