Apparently, not every pantry had been looted. The day ended with a dinner of spit-roasted meats, bread, and beer, which my famished stomach accepted with gratitude.
Afterward, I made my way back to my groom’s straw bed at the Spellman home, and paused in the square for a moment to sniff the fresh, cool wind hunting down from the north. For a moment, I felt a sensation of soaring delight; and then I thought of the wind muttering around the Shaype tomb, and the scent of ash as I laid my family to rest, and for a moment the wind seemed to blow bitter through the empty hollow of my chest, and to freeze to my eyelids the tears that rose unbidden to my eyes.
I had always known that I would leave Ethlebight, but I had been in no hurry to do so—I had been content to live with my family, amuse myself as an apprentice lawyer, and spend my free time in pursuit of women and love.
But now my boyhood had gone in a single blazing night, and with it the security and support of my family and city. The catastrophe had thrown me into premature independence, reliant in the war-ravaged world entirely on my own gifts. To my former self, my talents had been toys, baubles for my own amusement; but now the game had turned grim, and the stakes were life and death.
If I did not seek my fortune, fortune would abandon me in the ruins of my past.
* * *
The Warriors of the Sea did not dance on the first day of the Autumn Festival, and the Mermaids did not sing. The actors didn’t perform their plays, and the guilds did not parade. Instead, a small crowd watched as a pair of priests prayed outside the great old temple north of the city, and sheep were sacrificed along with a white heifer. The rump council and the members of the Embassy Royal, followed by me, came into the temple for a personal interview with the god.
The temple was built in the old annular style of the Empire: round, with a double row of columns, a dome, and a peaked portico. Embedded in the white limestone were remains of the god’s own creatures: skeletal fish, sea lilies, sharks’ teeth, the spiral shells of nautili. The dome was covered in bronze scales that had corroded to shades of sea green, and looked as if a piece of the ocean had been captured under a glass bowl.
The azure-skinned god stood atop a plinth in his sanctuary, five yards tall, pieced together of ivory, bronze, and a glittering array of blue stones: lapis, kyanite, turquoise, blue sunstone, chalcedony, iolite, and aquamarine, with eyes of blue opal that shifted subtly in the light, at times bright, at times somber, at times pensive and withdrawn. A net of copper wire dangled from one hand, filled with jeweled fishes; and the other held a gold-tipped trident.
The light of sacrificial fires glimmered in the eyes of the god as I entered on the heels of the Embassy. Standing quietly behind the others, dressed in my robe and cap, I bowed to Pastas on his plinth, and politely voiced to the deity my hopes for a journey to the capital.
The grandly named Embassy Royal would travel to the capital of Selford, and petition the throne for aid for survivors, protection against the reivers, and ransom for the captives. If, that is, they were able to catch King Stilwell before he departed for the winter capital of Howel.
The embassy consisted of the alderman Gribbins, who had somehow dithered himself onto the delegation, and Richard Hawtrey, who because his father was the Count of Wenlock, bore the courtesy title Lord Utterback. Utterback was a saturnine young man of twenty-four years, dark-browed, scant of speech, and careless of manner. He had ridden into Ethlebight two days after the sack, leading a company of thirty men, all well equipped out of his father’s armory. And though his martial bearing had won a degree of popular regard, he hadn’t been nominated to the delegation on account of his ability to command men, but rather the letters patent that ennobled his father, which would guarantee him a hearing in the capital.
If, that is, Utterback could be persuaded to speak at all. So far, he showed little inclination.
Judge Travers, alas, would not make the journey. He had assizes to conduct, not just in Ethlebight but elsewhere in the southwest, and he held no real authority in the city. He did, however, provide me with a letter of introduction to an advocate in Selford, from whom I might be able to find employment.
There was certainly none to be had in Ethlebight. Even if I were willing to act on behalf of Lawyer Dacket’s clients, none were left. Mr. Trew, whose river had been stolen by Sir Stanley Mattingly, was now a captive on Cow Island. So was Alec Royce, who had cut a fern tree in the King’s forest, and had been freed from his jail cell not by the judge but by the reivers who had come to enslave him.
The council and the delegates bowed their heads before the statue of Pastas, and the priests asked for the god’s blessing on the journey. Their voices echoed beneath the dome. Sacrificial firelight ran up the golden trident as the Embassy Royal promised to conduct their business for the benefit of all, without partiality or favor. After which the formal part of the ceremony was over, and the group broke up. I saw Utterback and Gribbins together, and approached.
“I have arranged for us to travel in a carriage of some magnificence,” Gribbins said. “We shall not be out of place in the capital, I assure you.”
“Didn’t bring a carriage myself,” Utterback murmured.
“I hope your lordship will approve of my choice. It is the carriage used by the Court of the Teazel Bird to carry their King, and is ornamented with allegorical carvings and the armorial bearings of the court’s members.” Gribbins smiled with the pleasure of his own self-regard. “We will have no reason to be ashamed of our equipage, my lord, not in the capital or anywhere else.”
“It’s very fine, I’m sure,” Utterback said. “You will excuse me?”
He turned, took a pace, and encountered me, who stood as ever with my stylus and wax tablet ready, and my attentive-courtier face fixed firmly to his visage.
“I beg your pardon,” I said, and took a step away to allow Utterback to pass. As the count’s son walked on, frowning at the floor, I followed.
“My lord,” I said, “it’s clear that the mission of the Embassy Royal will require a large correspondence, both with the court and with those here in Ethlebight. I wonder if you are considering a secretary to manage these affairs.”
Utterback’s frown deepened, and he halted. He looked at me briefly, then returned his gaze to the floor.
“I write my own letters,” he said.
“Of course, my lord, but—”
Lord Utterback looked up again. “Write my own letters,” he said, with more emphasis, and turned to walk on.
I saw little point in pursuit. Instead, I turned back to Gribbins and asked the same question.
“So irksome will be your correspondence,” I said, “I wonder if the Embassy should employ a secretary.”
Gribbins smoothed his beard with ringed fingers. “The town has not seen fit to vote the Embassy a secretary,” he said, “greatly though it would add to the dignity of our emprise. Alas, we will have to write our own petition to the throne.”
“Ay, you must,” said I, “if you know the form.”
Gribbins looked up sharply. “The form?” he asked.
I put on my pompous-magistrate face and affected a sniff. “Boors and rustics may scrawl their petitions on scraps of paper and push them through the crack beneath the palace door,” I said, “but the Embassy of a great city would be expected to know the proper form for a royal petition, the modus sanctified by protocol, usage, and the custom of centuries. Everything from the choice of the calfskin to the arrangement of the seals must respect the proprieties.” I looked at Gribbins in alarm. “Surely, you do not want the petition rejected because some chamberlain turns up his nose at deficiencies in the punctilio, or a lawyer points out infelicities in the phrasing!”
Gribbins clutched at the purfled border of his robe. “Indeed I do not!” he said. “Where can I find this form?”