Inversions

'Yes. I like to take the air from the roof.'

'I must remember not to position myself here next time I want to think.'

'I vary my route, DeWar, There is no certain escape in any public part of the palace. The only safe place might be within your own chambers.'

'I shall try to remember.'

'Good. I trust you are happy now?'

'Happy? Why would that be?'

'There has been an attempt on the Protector's life. I understood you were there.'

'Ah, that.'

'Aye, that.'

'Yes. I was there.'

'So, are you happy now? The last time we talked you expressed dismay that there had been so few assassins recently, taking this as incontrovertible proof that we must be entirely surrounded by them.'

DeWar smiled ruefully. 'Ah yes. Then, no, I am no happier, my lady.'

'I thought not.' The lady Perrund rose to go. DeWar stood as she did. 'I understand the Protector visits us in the harem later today,' she said. 'Will you be joining us then?'

'I imagine so.'

'Good. I'll leave you to your thinking.' The lady Perrund smiled, then made for the door which led to the roof, followed by the eunuch guard.

DeWar watched her and the guard go, then stretched and yawned.

The palace concubine Yalde was a favourite of General YetAmidous and was often called to his home in the palace grounds. The girl could not speak, though she appeared to have a tongue and everything else required for speech, and understood imperial well enough and the local language of Tassaseni a very little. She had been a slave. Perhaps there was something that had happened to her during that time which had addled whatever part of her brains would normally have granted her the power of speech. Still, she could whimper and moan and shout when she was being pleasured, as the General never tired of telling his friends.

Yalde sat on the same vast couch as the General, in the principal receiving room of his house, feeding him finger fruits from a crystal bowl while he played with her long black hair, twisting and untwisting it in one large hand. It was night, a bell or so after a small banquet YetAmidous had thrown. The men still wore their dining robes. Present with YetAmidous were RuLeuin, UrLeyn's brother, BreDelle, the Protector's physician, Guard Commander ZeSpiole, the Generals Duke Simalg and Duke Ralboute and a few aides and court juniors.

'No, there are paper screens or something,' said RuLeuin. 'He must have burst through those.'

'It was the ceiling, I tell you. Think. It would be the best place. Hint of danger, and — whumpf! Straight down. Why, you could just drop a cannon ball on whoever was causing the trouble. Quite easy, really. A fool could do it.'

'Nonsense. The walls.'

'ZeSpiole should know,' YetAmidous said, interrupting RuLeuin and Simalg. 'ZeSpiole? What do you have to say?'

'I wasn't there,' ZeSpiole said, waving a goblet around. 'And the painted chamber was never used while I was chief bodyguard.'

'Still, you must know of it,' YetAmidous said.

'Of course I know of it,' ZeSpiole said. He stopped waving his goblet round long enough for a passing servant to fill it with wine. 'Lots of people know of it, but no one goes in there.'

'So how did DeWar surprise the Sea Company assassin?'

Simalg asked. Simalg was a Duke with vast lands in the east, but had been one of the first of the old noble families to declare for UrLeyn during the war of succession. He was a thin, ever-languorous-looking man with long straight brown hair. 'The ceiling, was it not. ZeSpiole? Do tell me I'm right.'

'The walls,' RuLeuin said. 'Through a painting, a portrait in which the eyes had been cut out!'

'I can't say.'

'But you must!' Simalg protested.

'It's a secret.'

'Is it?'

'It is.'

'There we are,' YetAmidous said to the others. 'It is a secret.'

'Does the Protector say so, or his smug saviour?' Ralboute asked. A stout but muscled man, Duke Ralboute had been another early convert to UrLeyn's cause.

'You mean DeWar?' ZeSpiole asked.

'Does he not seem smug to you?' Ralboute asked, and drank from his goblet.

'Yes, smug,' Doctor BreDelle said. 'And too clever by half. Or even more.'

'And hard to pin down,' Ralboute added, pulling his dining robe more loosely over his huge frame and brushing some crumbs away.

'Try lying on him,' Simalg suggested.

'I'll lie on you,' Ralboute told the other noble.

'I think not.'

'Do you think DeWar would lie with the Protector?' YetAmidous asked. 'Do we think he really is a lover of men? Or are these only rumours?'

'You never see him inside the harem,' RuLeuin said.

'Would he be allowed?' BreDelle asked. The court physician was only allowed to make professional calls to the harem when its own female nurse could not cope.

'Chief bodyguard?' ZeSpiole said. 'Yes. He could pick amongst the household concubines. The ones dressed in blue.'

'Ah,' YetAmidous said, and stroked under the chin of the dark-haired girl at his side. 'The household girls. One level beneath my little Yalde.'

'I think DeWar does not make use of that particular privilege,' Ralboute said.

'They say he keeps the company of the concubine Perrund,' RuLeuin said.

'The one with the wasted arm.' YetAmidous nodded.

'I have heard that too,' BreDelle agreed.

'One of UrLeyn's own?' Simalg looked aghast. 'You don't mean that he has her? Providence! The Protector would make sure he could stay in the harem as long as he liked — as a eunuch.'

'I cannot imagine that DeWar is that foolish or so intemperate,' BreDelle said. 'It could only be courtly love.'

'Or they could be plotting something, could they not?' Simalg suggested.

'I hear he visits a house in the city, though not often,' RuLeuin said.

'A house with girls?' YetAmidous asked. 'Not boys?'

'Girls,' RuLeuin confirmed.

'I think I'd ask for double fare, if I were a girl who had to accommodate that fellow,' Simalg said. 'He has a sour smell about him. Have you never noticed?'

'You may have a nose for these things,' said Doctor BreDelle.

'Perhaps DeWar has a special dispensation from the Protector,' Ralboute suggested. 'A secret one which lets him bed Perrund.'

'She's crippled!' YetAmidous said.

'Yet still, I think, beautiful,' Simalg said.

'And it must be said that some people have been known to find infirmity attractive,' Doctor BreDelle added.

'Cleaving the regal lady Perrund. A privilege you enjoyed, ZeSpiole?' Ralboute asked the older man.

'Sadly not,' ZeSpiole said. 'And I do not think DeWar does either. I suspect theirs is a meeting of minds, not bodies.'

'Too clever by twice,' Simalg muttered, beckoning more wine.

'What privileges do you most miss from the post DeWar now has?' Ralboute asked, looking down as he