There was a moment of balance. I felt the situation teeter and tip. Ekan deflated, and something died in his eyes. I'd won. He'd accepted his fate.
'Go,' he said to his consort. He was trembling. 'Go on. It'll be over in a moment.'
Biting back tears of bitter fury and helplessness, the consort retreated, pushing the child ahead of her. The door slammed, and the girl began to wail in earnest.
I pushed Ekan around so that he faced the desk, forced his forearms flat onto it. I swept aside the tally charts and accounts that he'd been keeping. That done, I stabbed my shortblade into the desk and drew out a thick strip of leather.
Ekan stared at it. 'What's that for?'
'Tourniquet,' I replied. I bent closer. 'Which is your least favourite hand?' It was a long way to travel home on foot, but I walked everywhere if I could. I enjoyed the peaceful emptiness in the air, the roomy, quiet streets. The last bell of the turn had just sounded, the pause for breath before the city stirred again. Soon a new turn would begin, down here where there was no day or night, and the streets would begin to fill.
The Tangles were on the poleways edge of the city, up against the wall of the cavern. Here, dwellings were not built but carved into the gigantic roots of mycora, the immense fungi that grew on the surface, their discs spreading shade across the plains. Reitha talked about them often. Like much of the world above, their existence was only dimly comprehended by those races than hid in the endless passages of the underground. The surface was an alien place, of little interest to most. All they saw of mycora were the enormous root-systems that burrowed vast distances through the earth and rock. In the Tangles, the roots had broken through the cavern wall in a slither, and the rich had built their homes in them.
The Caracassa mansions were a mountain of dimly glowing windows, fashioned in many shapes, tracing patterns along the length of the roots. Ceramic domes and stubby towers rose from the cradling grey arms of the mycora. Small gardens and courtyards were carefully integrated into the organic flow of the structure. The whole edifice appeared to have been poured rather than built, a towering cone fashioned from points of light, imposing and beautiful in the dark.
The tips of two roots formed an enclosure at the base of the mansions, framing gates of solid brass, their surface rich with detail. They stood open, attended by four guards in red-and-black Caracassa livery, carrying double-bladed pikes. The guards knew me by sight, and let me pass with a curt acknowledgement.
I made my way across the enclosure, where gardens of crystalline plants and multicoloured fungi were laid to either side of a driveway. A small block of stables lay off to one side. Servants were cleaning a rickshaw nearby, preparing it for departure.
Inside, the mansions were warm and snug in contrast to the unwaveringly cool temperature of Veya. The corridors were large and tunnel-like, lined with polished panels of rootwood and dimly lit with lamps that hung from the ceiling. Paintings and objects of art were everywhere, including several of Rynn's grandfather's smaller sculptures. Red-robed handmaidens whispered past me, their faces hidden by veils. It was too late for much of the household to be awake.
I headed through corridors and up spiral stairways to my family's chambers. When I got there, they were in darkness. I went to the large round window that overlooked the living area, and gazed through the swirling metalwork to the city below. We were high up here, and the view over Veya was mesmerising.
I thought about what I had just done. My duties for my master were manifold, but intimidation and punishment were the tasks I liked the least. Still, Ekan knew the rules.
Potions – tonics for all ills, in a society whose people ran on chemicals – were a relatively small part of Clan Caracassa's industry. Their usual business was the manufacture of medicines and unguents tailored for frontline troops: healing salves, anti-infection medication, hunger suppressants, painkillers, rage enhancers. But even so, Ekan had to be stopped. His little racket might have been insignificant now, but there was no space for tolerance or conscience in my line of work.
I was Cadre. I was selected for this task because I was the best at it. It was my duty to serve. That was all there was.
I went into our bedroom. Something massive shifted in the shadows. Rynn turning over beneath the sheets. He mumbled something in a register too low for me to hear.
'It's me,' I said.
He woke a little more.
'Where've you been?' he muttered.
I walked over to the bed, shedding clothes as I went, and slid in beside him. He encircled me drowsily.
'Out,' I replied, but he was already asleep.
33
I returned from our family-vacation-cum-manhunt more restless than when I left. Jai was back at military school and Rynn had been tasked with bodyguard duty for an important official on a Borderland visit, so there was nobody to greet me on my return. Not that I minded; I do alone very well.
Ledo had told me about a particularly elusive apothecary called Ekan who was undercutting his business with cheap potions. I'd asked Keren to track the man down while I was away, and upon my return I found a message from him. He had something. I sent him one back, requesting to meet him later that turn.
While I waited for his reply I had time on my hands, so I wandered the Caracassa mansions restlessly, eager to be getting on with something. The matter of Jai's upcoming graduation filled me with unease, so I traced familiar routes, seeking old reminders, finding comfort in reminiscence. In time, inevitably, I came to the central atrium of the mansion, and to the greatest sculpture that Rynn's grandfather ever produced. His greatest sculpture, and his greatest mistake.
It was a circular courtyard, dominated by the enormous monument in the centre. The sculpture rose out of a round pool, from which stone channels led to ornamental fountains. Lush fungal gardens were arranged around the atrium, a profusion of yellow, purple, green and pink. I found I could identify them all, from the tiny sprays of puffballs to the different species of dwarf mycora, with their many-branched stems and flat caps spreading high overhead.
The discovery pleased me. Must have picked up their names from Reitha. I was getting to be quite the amateur naturalist.
There were people here, lounging beneath the arbours or walking slowly. Others sat on the elaborately wrought balconies that ringed the chamber, to provide a better view of Venya Ethken Asta's masterpiece. The chamber echoed with the quiet susurrus of voices.
I traipsed idly along, enjoying the feel of the place. Paths were pleasantly lit by lamps. Powerful lanterns hung in the upper reaches of the chamber, their shinestones glowing, magnified manifold through glass shaped by master artisans. Light, like heat, could be controlled: by coloured panes, by angles, by the arts of the chthonomancers that ignited the shinestones and made them burn like miniature suns. It was as important to architects and designers as wood or stone or metal.
I found my favourite spot to contemplate the sculpture. It was a bizarre piece, shapeless and organic in form. Many types of stone and ore were fused together to create patterns which led the eye. Here, a bright red cluster of prismatic vanadinite; there, a long vein of blue-green chrysocolla. Bubbles of botryoidal malachite warred with scratches of silver and frills of celestine. And in among them, rarer minerals, raised from the depths of the earth where only the Craggens could go. At first sight it was ugly and chaotic, but its form had a mesmerising quality that drew viewers in. It was easy to become lost in the swirls and jags and curves. There was a puzzle there, a challenge hard to resist.
It meant something different to everybody, but to me it meant more than to most. Here were the shackles that bound the man I loved. Rynn was in Bond to Clan Caracassa just as I was. His grandfather, Asta, had borrowed the money from Caracassa to create this colossal piece for an eminent merchant; but when the patron was bankrupted by the machinations of the Eskaran markets, Asta found himself impoverished, all his money tied up in a half-finished sculpture that no one wanted. Caracassa claimed the lifedebt for three generations, and his first task was to finish the sculpture he began.