Yama told Tamora, “Please listen to me. Brabant set up a charade, making sure that Pandaras overheard it, and then he lured me to a place where I could be taken. Prefect Corin tried to kidnap me, Tamora. He has been looking for me, and he almost caught me. The ruffians who ambushed us were part of it.”
“Well, Brabant is dead,” Tamora said, “and you escaped.” She turned to Eliphas. “If you’re a friend, go up with Pandaras and keep watch. That way, I won’t have to worry about you.”
“Because while I keep watch, the boy will keep watch on me?” Eliphas smiled. “I understand completely. But you do not have to worry, Tamora. Yama’s interests coincide with mine.”
“Then we’ve much to talk about,” Tamora said. “And we will, when this is over.”
Yama said, “You do not have to do anything here, Eliphas. This has nothing to do with helping me find my people.”
“I will enjoy it, brother. Like my friend Kun Norbu, all this excitement makes me feel young again.”
Tamora helped Yama to assemble his patchwork armor. “This is how it falls out,” she said. “Syle is talking with the clients and keeping them entertained until the ceremony begins. What he’s really doing is finishing off the business of finding out as much as possible about them. He told me how it works. The clients have to submit their questions two decads in advance of the ceremony, which gives him plenty of time to research them. He employs spies and bribes clerks, that sort of thing. He says that it is to provide the pythonesses with as much background information as possible, but I reckon that he doesn’t really believe in the pythonesses’ powers of prediction. He finds out what kind of answers his clients want, and makes sure that’s what they get.”
“He believes that Daphoene can see into the future. And there is something strange about her, Tamora. As if her head is full of ghosts.”
“Grah, I’d say it was mostly full of air. She says little, and because of her position her few words seem important. But they’re not. They’re nothing but simple-minded babble. But I know you don’t listen to me.” Tamora knelt to tighten the buckles of Yama’s greaves—the greaves he had won by killing the one-eyed cateran, Cyg. She looked up. “There’s something wrong about this place. It’s nothing to do with your funny feeling about Daphoene. It’s as if they all hold knives at each other’s throats.”
“In a few days they will be under attack, and they are already under siege. You must listen to me, Tamora. There is no intrigue except that of Prefect Corin. He found out where I was and used Brabant to lure me away. If there is an assassination plot, then it is also the work of Prefect Corin.”
“Then why are they at each other’s throats? Luria has told me to watch Syle, and Syle took me aside after Brabant went out of the window and said that there is a conspiracy that goes deeper than one foolish thrall.”
Yama hesitated. He knew that Tamora did not believe in his powers. Did not believe, or refused to allow herself to believe. Although he had tried to explain how he had awoken the Thing Below in the Temple of the Black Well, and how he had killed Gorgo, she had merely scoffed and told him that the blow to his head had given him delusions.
He said, “Syle knows what I am, Tamora. He knows that I am one of the Builders. He asked me to use machines against the forces of the Department of Indigenous Affairs. I refused, of course.”
“So he betrayed you to Prefect Corin?”
“This was after Pandaras overheard Brabant. But I suppose that Syle might think of selling me now.”
“Your brain is still bruised from the ding you got at the gate. No more talk about magical powers, or I’ll begin to regret I took up with you.”
“I know you do not believe me, Tamora, but I raised up the feral machine in the Temple of the Black Well, then woke the guards which destroyed it. It was that fight which set fire to the temple.”
“It was the assassin who did that, to cover his tracks. You’re brave enough, Yama. You got the priests out of the burning temple. Don’t spoil it with silly stories.”
“I killed Gorgo. You did not see it, but thousands of others did.”
“If he isn’t dead, he deserves to be. He will be, when I finish here. I’ll make sure of it.”
“My fireflies, then. I left here with one, and I have returned with five.”
“You’ve been on the roof. Your firefly left you then, and you got a new set when you came back inside.”
Yama laughed. She was as stubborn as an ox. “Forget your fantasy, Yama, and concentrate on what you are. Which is what I am, a cateran hired to defend this miserable place.” Tamora prowled around Yama, stepped in to tighten a strap of his cuirass, stood back and gave him an appraising look. “You should have kept Cyg’s sword, if only for show.”
“That was all it was good for. My knife serves me well enough.” Yama realized now that the real reason he had rejected the sword was because it had been wielded against him, and saw that Tamora had understood this from the beginning. He said, “I do not look much like a soldier, do I?”
Tamora said, “There’s nothing to it. The rat-boy is on the roof with an arbalest, and your new friend will help him keep watch. The clients have brought their own guards, and I reckon that’s where any trouble will come from. If there are any more traitors amongst the servants, they’ll choose a less public time. A knife or a strangling cord in the dark, or poison—that’s the style of this place. All we have to do is stand on either side of the platform and look fierce. If there is trouble, we’ll get the thralls between the stage and the clients. Those gray-skinned rockheads can’t do much, but at least they can get in the way of anyone who tries to hurt the fat one or the airhead. Promise you won’t try any heroics. None will be needed.”
Tamora clapped Yama between his shoulder-blades and added, “Don’t doubt yourself,” and went off to shout at the thralls, ordering them to get back into formation.
When Yama and Tamora marched out of the main doors of the Basilica and came down the steps leading a double column of thralls, the people who had gathered at the foot of the platform fell silent and stared at the spectacle. There were only three clients, each sitting in a plain chair with a small entourage of advisers, clerks and bodyguards behind them. No more than a couple of decads of men in total, and a scattering of old women who had no doubt come for the entertainment. Yama went right and Tamora left, each leading a line of thralls. Yama halted at the place where the rear edge of the platform butted the stairs, and the thralls marched past him and turned out one by one, forming a neat arc down the long, shallow staircase.
Tamora really had done wonders with their drill. Their metal caps shone and they had tied long red ribbons beneath the double-edged blades of their partisans.
Yama did not feel nervous now that he was in place. As with the public ceremonies he had attended with his stepfather, the Aedile of Aeolis, he found that the worst thing was the entrance, when the audience had nothing better to look at and was full of anticipation, so that any mistake by the participants was most obvious.
A small procession made its way across the wide plaza toward the Basilica, led by a herald who blew a braying brass trumpet. The people below the platform turned to watch. In better times, Yama supposed, the trumpet would have been necessary to clear a way through the crowd, but now it sounded small and plaintive, and its echo came back from the rock walls and made discords. Behind the herald came a tall figure in a cloud of red—it was Syle, in a long robe of red feathers that fluttered with his every step. He marched solemnly ahead of the palanquins, carried on the shoulders of bare-chested thralls, on which the pythonesses sat. Both women wore white gowns and were crowned with wreaths of ivy. Luria’s jowls were rouged and her eyes were accentuated by gold leaf; Daphoene’s face was as bloodless as ever, and she ceaselessly worked her narrow jaw as if chewing something. The senior servants of the household walked behind the palanquins. They were led by Rega, stately as a carrack, in a dove-gray silk dress with a full skirt and a high collar trimmed with pearls.