“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 peeled a piece of fruit. He shooed away a servant who offered to do this for him.
“I miss being near the Protector every day, but little else. It is an unnerving job. A young man’s job. My present post is quite exciting enough without having to deal with murderous ambassadors.”
“Oh, come, ZeSpiole,” Ralboute said, sucking at his fruit and then spitting out a mush of seeds into a waste bowl before sucking again and swallowing. He wiped his lips. “You must resent DeWar, mustn’t you? He usurped you.”
ZeSpiole was silent for a moment. “Usurpation can be the right course, sometimes, Duke, don’t you think?” He looked round the others. “We all of us usurped the old King. It needed to be done.”
“Absolutely,” said YetAmidous.
“Of course,” RuLeuin agreed.
“Mmmm!” BreDelle nodded, mouth full of a sweetmeat.
Ralboute nodded. Simalg gave a sigh. “Our Protector did the usurping,” he said. “The rest of us helped.”
“And proud to do so,” YetAmidous said, slapping the edge of his couch.
“So you don’t resent the fellow at all?” Ralboute asked ZeSpiole. “You are a child of Providence indeed.” He shook his head and used his fingers to break the flesh of another fruit.
“I no more resent him than you ought to resent the Protector,” ZeSpiole said.
Ralboute was stopped in his eating. “Why should I resent UrLeyn?” he asked. “I honour UrLeyn and what he has done.”
“Including putting us here in the palace,” Simalg said. “We might have still been juniors, out of favour. We owe the Grand Aedile as much as any trader who pins his voting document — what do you call it? Franchisement. His Franchisement high on his wall.”
“Just so,” ZeSpiole said. “And yet if anything was to happen to the Protector—”
“Providence forbid!” YetAmidous said.
“— might not a Duke such as you — a person of high birth under the old regime yet who had also been a faithful general under the Protector’s new order — be just the sort of person the people might turn to, as successor?”
“Or there’s the boy,” Simalg said, yawning.
“This talk’s uncomfortable,” RuLeuin said.
“No,” ZeSpiole said, looking at RuLeuin. “We must be able to talk of such things. Those who wish Tassasen and UrLeyn ill most certainly will not shrink from such talk. You need to think of such things, RuLeuin. You are the Protector’s brother. People might turn to you if he was taken from us.”
RuLeuin shook his head. “No,” he said. “I have risen so considerably on his cloak-tails. People already think I have climbed too far.” He glanced over at Ralboute, who looked back with wide, expressionless eyes.
“Oh yes,” Simalg said, waving a hand, “we Dukes are frightfully against such accidents of birth.”
“Where’s that housemaster?” YetAmidous said. “Yalde, be a dear and go and fetch the musicians back, would you? All this talk is making my head ache. We need music and songs!”
“Here!”
“There! There he is!”