Jordan became aware that the jolting of the cart they rode had stopped. He blinked and looked up. He didn’t remember much of the past day; all he could see was the startled face of that man in the tomb, as an arm that seemed to be Jordan’s own pushed the spike through his throat. And then the ticking footsteps to the stone shaft, and up and out into bright starlight.
Armiger was walking in the world again. Jordan could hear the creaking of his dry joints, as if the dreams had begun to infect his waking life. If he closed his eyes, he could even see the afterimage of some other place, a field or clearing. Armiger’s steps fell like the beat of a metronome, far past human confidence. Steady and fast, day and night, he was going somewhere.
He hadn’t told Lady May much. She knew Armiger was out and moving, and that he still seemed to be dead. In the dream Jordan had looked down at himself, and awkwardly buttoned up his jacket to cover the hole in his chest. The skin of his fingers was taut and black, but in the last day it had turned an awful yellow, and become more flexible.
A horrible thought had come to Jordan this morning. Surely Armiger could see what Jordan saw; wouldn’t he know that Calandria May was after him by now? He had asked Calandria, and she had said, “The changes I made to your implants are supposed to prevent him from receiving you.” All Jordan heard of that was the phrase supposed to.
He was sure Armiger was coming after them. If Armiger had power over life and death, how was Lady May going to destroy him? She seemed gay and unhurried. The only reassurance he had was the memory of her apparent invulnerability during the fight with the mechal butler at the manse.
He was numb by now from fear and horror, so he said nothing. He’d only spoken once or twice, when Lady May pressed him for details of the countryside Armiger moved through, and when he had asked her, “Are you like him?”
“No,” she had answered vehemently. “I am flesh and blood like you.” She took his palm and put it her cheek. “I’ve sold nothing of my self to gain the powers I have. Remember that.” She smiled in her quietly confident way.
Now she was smiling in that same way, looking at the stone posts of a large gate they had come to. The road ran on, but the track through those gates was well-rutted, as if from much recent traffic. This belied the impression given by the dead ivy thronging over the posts and the verdigrised metal gates, which seemed frozen open.
“Where are we?” he asked weakly.
Her arm encircled to hug him quickly. “Refuge,” she said. “We’ll meet Axel here. Then we’ll decide how to eliminate Armiger.”
She flicked the reins, and the horse obediently turned through the gates. They’d bought this cart and the horse in a village yesterday. Lady May had paid the startled ostler well for it, foregoing the usual haggle over price and quality. Although she treated the horse well, Jordan had the feeling she took her ownership of it lightly, and would cheerfully abandon it and the cart the moment she ceased to need it. Jordan would have to work two years at Castor’s to afford such a beast.
They passed down an avenue of trees. Gaps to the right showed well-tended grounds, much more extensive than Castor’s. At first no one was visible, then Jordan spotted three children in bright clothing running across a lawn. The path wound down, and Jordan revived a little at the sight of warm shafts of sunlight piercing the green canopies, one lighting a stone trough by the road carved with well-worn images of the Diadem Swans.
Two giant oaks signalled the end of the grove. In the bright sunlight beyond, Jordan could see green grass and the beige stone of some vast mansion in the far background. But nearer, a few yards past the oaks, a table had been planted on the lawn. A clean white cloth draped it, held down by bowls of fruit and meat, plates and cups and tankards. Three people dressed in white livery stood by, gathering up platefuls of food. Now he could hear a continuous murmur of voices, laughter and the thud of hooves, coming through the remaining screen of trees.
As they passed beneath the twin oaks, two attendants appeared from behind them. They bowed, and one took the bridle of the horse.
Jordan barely noticed them. He was staring at the beautiful lawns, where a party was taking place.
Tall beribboned poles had been planted in the ground at wide intervals. At least six tables were scattered around the field, each piled high with food. Servants ran back and forth between knots of people—and the people, when Jordan turned his gaze on them, were amazing. They were brown-skinned, white-skinned, dressed in bright colors, or sombre black, or barely dressed at all. Sunlight flashed off jewels at the throat of a laughing woman. Nearby, a man with iron-grey hair patted his hands on his velvet trousers, and tried again to mount a pair of stilts held for him by two long-faced jugglers. A small knot of red-skinned men were having an archery competition, their target a melon on top of one of the poles.
Calandria May looked puzzled. “What’s the occasion?” she asked the servant leading their horse.
He looked back, arched his eyebrow, and said, “Aren’t you family?”
She hesitated almost imperceptibly. “Guests,” she said. “Of Inspector Boros. Our arrangement was made some weeks ago, but we were delayed, I fear. It seems we’ve arrived at an unfortunate moment.”
The servant smiled arrogantly. “We have plenty of room.” He gestured to the manor.
This place put Castor’s to shame. Massive fluted pillars framed the entranceway, iron lamps perched upon their capitals. They did not hold up a roof, but were open to the sky. The building’s facade was of tan stone, filled with windows, each framed by pillars. Statues posed on the rooftop corners, and more stood in niches in the walls. Three storeys were indicated by the windows, and by the width of the place it must sprawl around a central courtyard large enough to hold Castor’s mansion.
Behind the profusion of chimneys on the roof, a bleak grey fortress tower rose incongruously. Its sides did not curve smoothly, but in juts and acute angles; it seemed to have been built of stone triangles. Black stains like tear tracks wove down its sides.
As the cart passed near a group of revellers, a tall woman in severe black and scarlet excused herself and walked over. The servant stopped them as she approached, and Lady May hopped down from the cart and curtsied to her.
“Good grief, are you a boy or a woman?” laughed the lady in a deep voice; Calandria was still dressed in buckskins. The lady made a fluttering gesture with her hand near her breast. Silver chain in her hair glinted as she cocked her head. “And which side of the family are you from?”
Lady May curtsied again. “Neither side, I fear, Madam. I am Lady Calandria May, and this is my charge, Jordan Mason.” Jordan started at the sound of his own name. He stood awkwardly and bowed. “I wrote asking for the hospitality of the house some weeks ago, and received it,” Lady May went on. “If we have come at the wrong time, please let us know.”
“Nonsense,” said the lady. “Make yourselves at home. I am lady Marice Boros. My husband is, alas…” she smiled for the first time as she looked around, “missing. You see, we are having the first family reunion in a full generation, and the clan has grown to unmanageable proportions. These are all my kin.” She swept her hand to indicate the throng, then turned and frowned at the vista. “Oh dear, they are, aren’t they? Well, no matter, we will accommodate you. Alex,” she said to the man holding their horse, “put them in the tower.” She nodded sharply to Lady May. “I trust you will join us for dinner? I’m afraid we shan’t be able to give you too much attention today; I’ve not spoken to some of our family members yet, and will be doing that at dinner.”
“We understand. Though I hope we will be able to converse at some point, your obligations are clear,” Lady May said. “Oh—we were to rendezvous here with an acquaintance. Sir Axel Chan. Has he by any chance arrived?”
“Chan. Ah, of course.” Lady Marice’s eyes narrowed. “I think you can find him right over there.”
Jordan and Lady May followed Marice’s pointing finger. In a clear area of grass, two men circled each other. One wore a sky-blue silk uniform with winglike feather epaulets. The other, shorter man wore black leather. They were surrounded by a small crowd of young men, who either sipped delicate glasses of wine or negotiated bets among themselves. Abruptly the man in black stepped forward, took the wrist of his opponent and, without appearing to move, flipped him over to land with a thud audible all the way to the cart. Scattered laughter and jeers drifted over.
Lady May sighed. “I was afraid of that. I will take him off your hands, Lady Marice.”
“Thank you.” Marice curtsied, and walked away. Lady May started in the direction of the fight, and Jordan stepped down to follow.
The youth who’d been flipped stood up angrily. “—Slipped!” he shouted. Two of his friends shook their heads as they paid the ones with whom they’d bet.
The man in black grinned like a gargoyle. He was not tall, slighter than his black jacket and leggings tried to suggest, but broad-chested. His features were strange—flat, with a broad triangular nose and dark hooded eyes. His hair was a black tangle kept tied back in an unruly pony tail. But when he smiled, his teeth were perfect, and he smiled very broadly when he saw Calandria.
“My lady,” he shouted, spreading his arms and stepping forward to embrace her.
Lady May shifted her weight slightly and shrugged. Axel Chan flew over her cocked knee and onto his face.
The crowd erupted in laughter. The young man whom Axel had humiliated smiled, and bowed to Lady May as Axel picked himself up.
Jordan’s attention wavered between Axel and Calandria May. As she had before, now she changed before his eyes, her mobile face taking on a rakish smirk as she played up to the young men. “Dear sir,” she said, “Our friend is not well known to you; he is to me. Hence, you can be forgiven for not being prepared for him. I, however, am surely ready for any meeting with Axel Chan.” She put a hand on Axel’s shoulder and shook him lightly. Axel grinned stupidly.
“Axel, you will show your worthy opponent what you did to him—later. For now, I need your ear. Get yourself cleaned up and I will meet you in your quarters.”
Axel winked at the youths. “In your dreams, Axel,” added Lady May, as she turned to go.
Jordan stayed where he was. After a moment, Axel noticed him, and his expression became serious. He waved away the questions from the other men, and came to stand before Jordan, hands on his hips. He smelled of wine and sweat.
“Well. Mason, isn’t it?” He stuck out a grimy hand. “Axel. I met your sister.”
Jordan wasn’t sure he liked the idea of this rogue coming anywhere near Emmy. “How is she?”
“Fine.” Axel glanced after Lady May, who was remounting the cart. “Don’t tell her ladyship there, but I told Emmy what’s up. I have a letter she wrote you.” He grinned at the way Jordan’s face lit up. “Don’t do that! She’ll figure it out. This is between you and me. I’ll let you have it later, whenever we can escape from her clutches for a minute or two.”
Jordan opened his mouth, countless questions crowding for expression. Axel gave him a friendly shove. “Be on your way, boy. She wants you. We’ll talk later.”
Jordan nodded, and practically ran back to the cart. He remounted it next to a scowling Calandria. “…About as inconspicuous as a tart at communion,” she was muttering. “He’ll be the death of us all.”
They were led to the main doors of the manor, where they dismounted. Another servant preceded them into the giant rotunda of the place, and through a wide greeting hall to a glass-walled chamber which let out onto the central courtyard.
The manor wrapped almost all the way around the courtyard, which was packed with statues like a forest of stone. The neat procession of pillared windows and beige wall was broken at the far end by the strange angles of the old tower. The manor seemed to have grown out of one of its corners.
Jordan marvelled at the workmanship of the statues. They depicted men and women, mechals and desals and other fabulous creatures, and one or two were attempts at modeling the Winds themselves. He paused before one of these, which was a human form made of tortured folds of cloth carved in marble. It looked realistically windblown. The servant noticed him looking and said, “Lady Hannah Boros, six generations ago now. This was her workplace. She made all our statues,” he added proudly.
One statue near the dark entrance to the tower was missing its head. The blond stone in the wound was fresh; Jordan could see a few chips half-covered by grass at its feet. “What happened to that one?” he asked.
“Hush,” said Lady May. “Be discreet.” The servant pretended not to have heard them.
Jordan was still puzzling over that exchange when they were shown their chamber. It was squarish and about six meters on a side, but the ceiling was a spiderweb of buttresses. One narrow window looked out over the courtyard. There was only one bed, but the servant told them another would be brought up. Other than that, the place held only a dresser and wardrobe, and a small writing desk. Sheepskins were scattered about the stone floor; it smelled of camphor and woodsmoke here.
Lady May thanked their guide. “I need clothes,” she said to him on his way out. “Can you send me a tailor?”
“We have the best here, lady. Dinner is at six.”
“Thank you.” He left, and she collapsed backwards onto the bed. “Whew.”
“Why are we here?” Jordan asked. He was admiring the stonework. This place was very solid, much more so than the manor house itself. It might even be strong enough to keep Armiger out.
Lady May had stripped off her left boot and was massaging her toes. She peered at him through the window her legs made. “We will be staying here until we know exactly where Armiger is. You have to get hold of yourself now, Jordan. We need you tell us exactly where he is, and where he’s going. When we locate him, we’ll strike.”
“Why should I help you any further?” he asked. “When I tell the Boros’ what you did to me…”
“Do you want the nightmares to stop?” she asked quickly. “When Armiger is no more, they will cease,” she continued. “But only Axel and I of all the people on Ventus can destroy him. You can surely escape us, Jordan, but by doing that you guarantee you will never escape Armiger.
“Well?” she asked after they had glared at one another for a long moment.
“He’s coming here,” Jordan said sullenly.
She dropped her foot and sat up. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, he’s after me!”
“How do you know that?”
“I… I just know.”
She grimaced. “I don’t think so. At least, we’ve seen no evidence that he’s aware that his connection with you is still open. As I told you, we’ve taken steps to disable it so he can no longer see through your eyes. But we’ll determine all of that soon. This is our headquarters now, Jordan. We are also guests here, and I expect you to behave accordingly.”
“What do you mean?” he asked suspiciously.
She patted the bed next to her. He sat on the linen; it was softer than any bed he’d known, except maybe the one in the manse. Lady May leaned over and massaged his shoulders delicately. “I’m going to go talk to Axel. When the tailor comes, I want you to ask him to dress you. Not in servants’ clothing—you are no one’s servant now, you are the equal of anyone in this building. So waistcoat, evening dress, the lot. Do you understand?” He nodded. “And do not wander too far, but please do not enter any of the servants’ areas—when you walk, you will walk in the main halls like the owners. I think this might be hard for you, but it is necessary.”
He frowned. He hadn’t thought about it, but it definitely would be hard. Never in his life had Jordan walked the halls of a manor as if it were his home. He was used to ducking from stairwell to stairwell, never straying beyond areas where he could justify his presence. She was right: his instinct would be to find the back halls, eat in the kitchens and leave the building when night came. He shook his head. “I’ll try.”
“Good.” She rolled off the bed. “I’m off to tackle Axel. Wish me luck.”
He watched her go, and bolted the door when she’d left. Then he went to examine the mortaring around the window, and tried to gauge its strength.
*
Axel had weaseled his way into the main building, naturally. Calandria had no difficulty getting directions to his room; all the servants knew him. He’d only been here two days.
She took the steps up to the third floor two at a time. Despite herself, she smiled as she thought of Axel tossing that fop on his ear. Outside his door she paused, looking down at herself. She still wore ragged outdoors gear. It would have been so much better if they’d arrived first, then she could have met him in a proper gown, with pearls at her ears. She sighed, and rapped on the door.
“Enter.” She stepped into a lavish bedroom. It was huge—and had a perfect view of the grounds. Velvet draperies hung everywhere, over the windows and framing the bed. The bedposts were carved with leaf motifs, and painted gold. Or maybe they were gold. A woman’s slipper lay half-concealed under the bed. Yes, this was Axel’s room all right.
He rose from a writing desk. He had discarded his jacket, and wore a billowing blue silk shirt. “Ho!” He opened his arms as he came to her. “And don’t hit me this time!”
She returned the embrace warmly. He still smelled of wine, but she knew him; he’d have taken a restorative before meeting with her. He held her for a second longer than she’d have liked, but that too was normal. As he broke away he gestured at the room. “Quite a place, no?”
“I expected no less of you,” she said, eyeing the slipper.
It constantly amazed her how well Axel did in situations like this. After all, he wasn’t a professional, like her; Calandria had been trained in espionage and intelligence-gathering by people who made a religion of such things. They had plucked her out of the crude reformatory she had ended in after her mother’s arrest and death, and erased all links with her past and home world. Then they had given her, not a new identity, but a repertoire of identities. Calandria had spent every waking moment since then acting. Only after she had turned rogue on her employers could she behave like something approaching her true Self—and then only with close friends like Axel.
She had met Axel in deep space, on a remote, frozen planet without a mother star. He was a smuggler. They dealt to their mutual satisfaction several times, and each time she was a different person. It took him quite a while to wise up to her act, and by the time he did she had taken a liking to him. When he confronted her, she took the opportunity to chastise him for his inattention. “If I’d been hired to trap you, you’d be undergoing decriminalization now,” she told him. “Count yourself lucky.” He had laughed at that.
Calandria needed her disguises to move through the different societies and subcultures demanded by her work. Axel just seemed to make friends where ever went, without changing one iota of his appearance or style.
“Here, look at these pictures,” he was saying now, as he dragged her to one wall. The walls were hung with large, faded photographs, apparently of ancient members of the Boros clan. “Printed on porcelain,” he said. “So they don’t deteriorate. Good idea, no?”
She arched an eyebrow. “I suppose.” Photography was permitted by the Winds, along with other gentle forms of chemistry; Axel knew that, so why should he care about these examples? They were nothing compared with even the most primitive hologram.
Axel had picked up a decanter of wine. “Oh, do stop,” she said. “It’s not even dinner time yet.”
“I think these pictures are fascinating,” he said. “Especially this one—it’s printed on vellum.” He put the decanter down on an ornate dresser under one, and stretched to grab both sides of the frame. He lifted it off the wall.
An irregular hole was revealed. Set into the plaster was the verdigrised mouth of a large horn. Calandria blinked at it. Axel cupped his hand at his ear. He adopted an exaggerated listening stance. Then he made a talking gesture at her with the other hand.
She cleared her throat. “I wonder how they did that?”
“The porcelain, or the velum?” Axel picked up the decanter, and gestured at the horn. She shook her head.
He shrugged, and upended the decanter into the horn. Red wine gurgled as it drained down into some pipe in the wall, and, she imagined, straight into the ear of whoever might be listening at the other end.
Axel cackled with glee and, grabbing up the silk doily on the table, stuffed it down the horn after the wine. Then he replaced the picture, and dusted his hands. “That was the only one,” he said. “Now we can talk.”
“Oh come now,” she said. “Why would they be bugging us? We’re just visiting.”
“Timing,” he said. He flipped a white, plush-cushioned chair backward and sat in it, leaning his arms on the back. “The whole Boros clan is here, and that’s bad. Old Yuri may think we’re spies.”
“Why? They seem like a friendly enough bunch. Not that I’ve had the time to talk to any of them…”
“Ah, you will. You’re better at this than I am, I suggest we attend dinner and you can tell me who intends to kill whom. They are a murderous lot—did you see a certain statue in the courtyard?” She nodded. “Yesterday night. A duel. I didn’t see who, or who lost, mostly because it wasn’t pre-announced. Ambush, maybe? Who knows.”
“Really.” She sat at the writing desk, and looked out over the grounds. “I’ve never been anywhere quite like this.”
“It’s positively medieval,” said Axel with a nod. “But then, look at their history. Six hundred years ago these people were still scrabbling in the muck, living in mud huts. Only a few warlords had any kind of power. It’s actually pretty amazing how far they’ve come as a society, considering the ancestors of people like the Boros.”
He waved at the grounds. “All this is very European in style. I’m pretty sure people must have raided manse libraries here and there over the centuries. How much would it take, do you think, to build a nation? One book of economics? Another about gardening? They saved very little from the initial disaster, so they must have supplemented it from the manses, but it was obviously hard-won knowledge, or there’d be more of it.”
Calandria pictured a group of soldiers armed with pikes trying to face down several of the golden creatures she and Jordan had seen—battling their way to a manse library, grabbing a few books at random, then bolting with crystalline things at their heels.
That was interesting, but not what she had come here to talk about. “What’s the occasion for this reunion?” she asked.
“Yuri called it—the patriarch, you met his wife. Marice. Good name. There’s some kind of power struggle within the clan, and he wants to resolve it. The Boros are old money in three nations: Memnonis, Ravenon, and Iapysia. The revolt of the parliament in Iapysia has tipped the balance of power somehow, and Yuri wants to make sure it trickles through the family correctly. The Iapysians don’t mind—they get to call in favors to consolidate their position back home. Problem is, there’s two factions represented there—the parliamentarians, and the royalists. If you look you can probably make them out—at opposite ends of the grounds.”
“Hmm.” Calandria did look out. “Dinner will be fun.”
“It gets better. There’s some dispute over Yuri’s position as patriarch. Which side will he support in the Iapysian thing? That’s a touchy question, because the loser might decide to open the old wound of his legitimacy. That’s all happening down there even as we speak.”
“My.” She smiled at him. “We do pick the most interesting hotels.”
“Yeah. Well, we’ll have to be careful not to get involved. Now: how’s Mason?”
“You saw him. What do you think?”
Axel shrugged. “He looks tough. Does he know where Armiger is?”
“If he did we’d be able to send him home,” she said. “No, he doesn’t. That’s our job for the next day or two—locating Armiger. Jordan’s a bit wrapped up in his own misery right now, so we’ll have to show him the advantages of his position. He’s afraid Armiger is coming here.”
Axel frowned. “Is he?”
“I don’t know. That would surprise the Boros, wouldn’t it? I guess Armiger is a walking corpse at the moment, though he may be recovering. We have to know how powerful he is before we face him. I’m wondering how we can get Jordan to find out for us.”
“Yeah, yeah…” Axel chewed on one knuckle absent-mindedly. “We need more power.”
“Political?”
“No, guns, damn it. I don’t like this planet, Cal. The damn Winds are always watching. If you bring anything higher-tech than a wrist watch in here they’ll pounce on you and rip it off. We can’t face Armiger without real weapons—a plasma cannon would do.”
She laughed shortly. “We stick to the plan. When we’ve got him in our sights, the Desert Voice will hit him from orbit.”
“And then the Winds will blow your starship out of the sky!”
She glowered at the table top. “My reading of the Winds is that they have an abysmal reaction time. They let us bring the cutter down, and it got back to the Voice okay. Nothing technological stayed on the surface, as far as they know.”
“Yeah, but they’ll object to Armiger getting nuked. I have another idea.”
She didn’t really like the current plan either, so she said, “Go ahead.”
“We contact the Winds ourselves. Tell them about Armiger. They’re like the immune system for the entire planet; any foreign body gets eliminated eventually. Like we will be, if we stay here too long. I don’t know how Armiger’s lasted this long; superior technology, I guess—”
“Well, precisely,” she pointed out. “He’s more sophisticated than the Winds. Even if we knew how to carry on a rational conversation with the Winds, do you think they’d believe us? I’m sure Armiger’s totally invisible to them. And I doubt it’s going to change.”
“Ventus is a lot more complicated than we thought,” he said. “Some people do talk to the Winds; I’ve heard more stories in the past couple of days—”
“Stories? Axel, this planet breeds myths like fungus! None of the locals have a clue what the Winds are, and if they did they can’t affect them at all.”
“They can—there are ways. Do you seriously believe humans would cohabit this world with them for so long without working out ways to deal with them?”
Calandria looked out over the grounds again. This manor was centuries old, and the civilization that had built it was older still. And the Winds were as constant as their namesake in these people’s lives. Axel could be right. “So how do they do it?”
“It’s actually pretty simple. A couple of their main religions are ecologically based, right? The inner doctrine seems to be emulation of the Winds. If you act like the Winds, they treat you like one of them. And then they’ll talk to you.”
“Sounds too easy,” she said. “And suspiciously mystical.”
He threw up his hands and stood. “Believe whatever the hell you want! But it makes sense, Cal: the Winds are confused about humans to begin with. They don’t know whether we’re vermin or part of their grand design. How do you think agriculture gets done on this world? People placate them. It works. I think we should look into it.”
“All right,” she said. “You look into it. Meanwhile, I’m going to work on Jordan, and find out where Armiger is going.”
Axel frowned. “He really is on the move?”
“Maybe. The Desert Voice located the site of the battle he talked about, but the forces that survived it are dispersed across hundreds of kilometers of territory. I’m going to try to get some more lucid descriptions from Jordan.”
“And what if Armiger is headed this way?”
Calandria looked out at the forest woods beyond the manor grounds. “Then Jordan had better be able to warn us when he’s due.”