She let him in, went back to the skirt she was embroidering, using this bit of handiwork to calm her nerves and pass the time. He looked around. Except for them the room was empty. “Seen Brann?”
“She went out with the changekids this morning early. Excited about something.” Harra narrowed her eyes. “That’s your go-see-the-massa outfit.”
“The Imperial Hand sent a slave to fetch me.” His eye twitched, he put his hands behind him, not as calm as he wanted to appear. “I’m letting him stew awhile.”
“Don’t let it go too long. But you don’t need me telling you that. Think it could maybe be about Brann?”
“I don’t know. He asked for me, Jassi says.”
“Ah. Then it’s either very good news and we’re on our way to the Court or it’s very bad news and the Hand’s going to be asking you questions you don’t want to answer.” She paused a moment. “Last doesn’t seem likely. If he was going to be asking nasty questions, he’d send an empush and his squad to fetch you, not some slave.”
“Right. Here. You keep these.” He gave her the troupe’s papers and the credeens after separating out his own. “In case.” A wry smile, a flip of his hand. “In case the Hand is sneakier or crazier than we know. Get Negomas and Linjijan back to Silili.”
“And Brann?”
“If I donTeome back, be better if you keep as far from her as you can. You know why she’s here.” He moved his thumb over his own credeen, slipped it into his sleeve. “Well, I’ve killed enough time. I’d better get downstairs.”
“Keep your cool, dancer.”
“I’ll try, mage-daughter, I shall try.”
TAGUILOA FOLLOWED the silent slave through the West
Gate onto the broad marble-paved avenue fronting the lake, thinking about the year he and Gerontai had come here. They’d got to the lower levels of the Temuengs, the merchants and magistrates and minor functionaries, but the powerful had ignored them and they made their way back to Silili without getting near the Emperor’s halls. Meslar Maratullik was the Emperor’s Left Hand, running the Censors and the Noses, head of security about the Emperor’s person. Hope and fear, hope and fear, alternating like right foot, left foot creaking on the gritty marble. Following the silent sneering slave, he walked along that lakeside boulevard, past walls on one side, high smooth white walls with few breaks in them, only the massive gates and the narrow alleys between the meslaks; The lakeside was planted with low shrubs and occasional trees, stubby piers jutted into the lake, with pleasure boats, sail and paddle, tied to them. The lake itself was quiet and dull, the water reflecting the gray of the clouds gathering thickly overhead. No rain, just the grayed-down light of the afternoon and a steamy heat that made walking a punishment even in these white stone ways as clean and shining and lifeless as the shells on an ancient beach. Now and then bands of young male Temuengs came racing down that broad avenue on their high-bred warhorses, not caring who they trampled, whooping and yelling, sometimes even chasing down unhappy slaves, leaving them in crumpled heaps bleeding their plebian blood into the noble stone. Taguiloa’s escort had a staff with Maratullik’s sign:on a placard prominently displayed so they escaped the attention of the riders.
Maratullik’s meslak was a broad rolling estate on the lakeshore with a riding ground, a complex of workshops and servant housing, extensive gardens, self-sufficient within the outerwalls should some disaster turn the meslak into a fortress. Taguiloa followed the slave through the gates into the spacious formal gardens with their fountains and banks of bright flowers, the exquisitely manicured stretches of grass; he looked around remembering the noisy rat-ridden Quarter and knew if he was absolutely forced to choose between the two, he’d take the rat-home not this emptiness, but such a choice was most unlikely; what he was determined to ensure was a less radical choice, staying out of the slums, keeping himself and Blackthorn (if it came to that) in reasonable comfort after his legs went and his body would no longer do what his mind desired. What he had now suited him very well, the silence, meditation, comfort of his small house on the hillside, the noise and excitement of Silili nights.
It took twenty minutes to work through the gardens and corridors to a small glassed-in garden with a gently plashing fountain in the center, falls and sprays of miniature orchids, some rare kinds Taguiloa had never seen before, one huge tree encased within the bubble, fans worked by ropes and pulleys from outside by slaves who never saw the beauty they maintained. There were wicker chairs scattered about, singly and in small clusters, but he was not tempted to sit despite the two-hour walk and his aching feet. He moved his shoulders, tightened and loosened his muscles to calm himself. There was no point getting angry at the Temueng and there were a lot of reasons he shouldn’t. He knew he had to control his irritation. He didn’t take easily to groveling, had lost the habit of it the past five years, but all that he’d won for himself in Silili meant nothing here.
The Meslar Maratullik Left Hand Counsellor to the Emperor came into the garden with a feline grace and the silent step of a skilled hunter. He was short for a Temueng, though he was more than a head taller than Taguiloa; his face was rounder, less bony, the features more delicate than most Temuengs’. He wore a narrow robe of heavy dark gray silk, finely cut, arrogant in its simplicity. As Taguiloa bent in the prescribed deep obeisance, he went cold with the thought that perhaps there was Hina blood somewhere in the Hand’s ancestry. If that was true, he was in a doubly perilous position; he’s seen too often what happened if a Hina in an important family was born with Woda-an characteristics, how that man made himself rigidly Hina, rejecting everything that would dilute the ancient Hina culture, how that man overtly and in secret tormented any Woda-an unfortunate to fall into his hands. And how often such a man ended up in a position like the Hand’s where he had a great deal of power over the lives of others, especially those he hated so virulently. Taguiloa could trip himself up here without ever knowing precisely what he’d done to bring the mountain down on his head. Care, take care, he cautioned himself. Don’t relax till you’re out of here and maybe not even then.
Maratullik acknowledged Taguiloa’s presence with a stiff short nod, crossed to the fountain, settled himself in one of the wicker chairs and spent some moments smoothing out the heavy silk of his robe. He lifted his head, his dark eyes as dull and flat as the silk, beckoned Taguiloa forward, stopped him with an open palm when he was close enough.
Taguiloa bowed again, then waited in silence, eyes lowered. A game, that’s all it was, a game with bloody stakes. Yielding just enough to propitiate this Temueng that rumor made a monster, yet not enough to lose his self-respect, walking the hair-fine ridge between capitulation and catastrophe. He waited, his hands clasped behind him so they wouldn’t betray his tension.
Maratullik was silent for a long time, perhaps testing the quality of Taguiloa’s submission, more likely taking a bit of pleasure in making him sweat. “We have heard good things of you, Hina.” The monster’s voice was a high thin tenor.
“I am honored, saх jura Meslar,” Taguiloa murmured. He could feel sweat damping the cloth under his arms; he fought to keep his grasp on himself, telling himself the Hand expected such signs of nervousness and would he suspicious if he failed to see them. The two silences stretched on. Taguiloa’s head started to ache. There was no way he could get anything like respect from this Temueng, but making a doormat of himself would only incite the man to stomp him into the ground.
“You have foreigners in your troupe.”
“Yes, saх jura Meslar.” Taguiloa lifted his eyes just enough to catch glimpses of Maratullik’s hands. At the word foreigner, the fingers twitched toward closing, opening again slowly and reluctantly. At Taguiloa’s mild and noncommittal answer the fingers stiffened into claws. Taguiloa sweated some more. Trying to play safe was less than safe in this game. Should he amplify his answer or would that further antagonize the Temueng? After a few moments of harried thought, he elected to wait for the next question and see how a more extended answer affected those hands, hoping all the time that Maratullik didn’t know how thoroughly his small and delicate fingers betrayed him.