A string quintet was bowing away pleasantly in one of the upper galleries, and all the visible fireplaces had huge kettles for tea and coffee bubbling before them. Curtained tables held thousands of glass bottles, and enough decanters, flutes, pitchers, and tumblers to blind every eye in the city with the force of their reflected light. Locke blinked several times and turned his attention to the men and women flowing into the room.
“This is already well more than a hundred and fifty,” he said.
“These things happen,” said Nikoros, giggling energetically as though at some private joke. “We plan with s-such restraint, but there’s so many people we can’t afford to offend!”
Locke peered at him. Nikoros had changed, somehow, in the few minutes between their room and the party. He was sweating profusely, his cheeks were flushed, his eyes darted around like little creatures trapped behind glass panes. Yet he wasn’t nervous; he was beatific. Gods!
Their straight-arrow trade insurer, their liaison to the Deep Roots upper crust, was a taker of Akkadris dust. Locke smelled the sharp pine-like odor of the stuff. Damn! Akkadris, Muse-of-Fire, the poet killer. Liquor soothed and loosened wits, but dust did the opposite, lighting fires in the mind until the dusthead shook with excitement for no discernible reason. It was an expensive and incrementally suicidal habit.
“Nikoros,” said Locke, grabbing one of his lapels, “you and I need to have a very frank discussion about—”
“Via Lupa! Via Lupa, dear boy!” A ponderous old man with a face like a seamed pink pudding bore down on them, witchwood cane tapping the floor excitedly. The man’s white eyebrows fluttered like wisps of smoke, and his lapel badge was polished jade. “Nikoros of the wolves, so-called for his profit margins. Ha!”
“G-good evening, Your Honor!” Nikoros used the interruption to extricate himself from Locke’s grasp. “Oh! Gentlemen, may I present Firstson Epitalus, Konseil member for Isas Thedra for forty-five years. Some would call him the, ah, f-figurehead on our political vessel.”
“So I’m a figurehead, am I? A helpless woman splashing about without the good sense to cover my tits? Do I need to send a friend along to require an explanation of that remark, young fellow?”
“Leave the poor boy alone, First. It’s quite clear that you dohave the good sense to cover your tits.” A lean, grizzled woman took Epitalus by the arm in a friendly fashion. She looked a lived-in sixty to Locke, though she had lively eyes and a mischievous smile. She, too, wore a jade badge, and as she and Epitalus burst into laughter Nikoros joined in nervously, louder than either of them.
“And allow me to also present … ah—”
It was only a momentary lapse, but the woman seized upon it eagerly.
“Oh, say the name, Nikoros, it won’t burn your tongue.”
“Ahem. Yes, ahem: Damned Superstition Dexa, Konseil member for Isas Mellia and head, ah, head of the Deep Roots Committee.”
“Damned Superstition?” said Locke, smiling despite himself.
“Which it is,” said Dexa, “though you’ll note I play firmly by the rules anyway. Hypocrisy and caution are such affectionate cousins.”
“Your Honors,” said Nikoros, “please, please allow me the p-pleasure of introducing Masters Lazari and Callas.”
Bows, handshakes, nods, and endearments were exchanged with the speed of a melee, and once all the appropriate strokes had been made, Their Honors immediately relapsed into informality.
“So you’re the gentlemen that we’ve discussed so often recently,” said Dexa. “I understand you smoked some vipers out of our midst this very afternoon.”
“Hardly vipers, Your Honor. Just a few turds our opposition threw into the road to see if we were minding our feet,” said Locke.
“Well, keep it up,” said Epitalus. “We have such confidence in you, my lads, such confidence.”
Locke nodded, and felt a flutter in his guts. These people certainly hadn’t read a single note on the fictional exploits of Lazari and Callas. Their warmth and enthusiasm had been installed by the spells of the Bondsmagi. Would it last forever, or dissolve like some passing fancy once the election was over? Could it dissolve beforethen, by accident? An unnerving thought.
Nikoros managed to herd their little group toward the gleaming mountains of liquor. While his heart-to-heart with Nikoros had been postponed by the circumstances, Locke did feel more comfortable once he’d secured a drink. A glass in the hand seemed as much a uniform requirement as a green ribbon on the chest for this affair.
Epitalus and Dexa soon went off to tend to the business of being important. Nikoros whirled Locke and Jean around the room several times, making introductions, pointing out prodigies and curiosities, Committee members, friends, cousins, cousins of friends, and friends of cousins.
Locke had once been used to mingling with the aristocracy of Camorr, and while the upper crust of Karthain lacked for nothing in terms of wit and pomp, there seemed to be a distinct difference in character that ran deeper than mere variations of habit between east and west. It took half an hour of conversation for him to finally apprehend the nature of the contrast—the Karthani gentry lacked the martial quality that was omnipresent in the well-to-do of most other city-states.
There were no obvious battle scars, no missing arms within pinned-up jacket sleeves, no men and women with the measured step of old campaigners or the swagger of equestrians. Locke recalled that the army of Karthain had been disbanded when the magi took up their residence. For four centuries, the ominous Presence had been the city’s sole (and entirely sufficient) protection against outside interference.
Introductions and pleasantries continued. “Now, who’s that fellow over there?” said Locke, sipping at his second Austershalin brandy and water. “The one with the odd little hat.”
“The natty-hatted gentleman? Damn … his name escapes me at the moment.” Nikoros took a generous gulp of wine as though it might help; whatever aid it rendered was not instantaneous. “Sorry. But I do know his particular friend, the one at his shoulder. One of our district organizers. Firstson Cholmond. Always claims to be writing a book.”
“What sort?” said Jean.
“History. A grand historical study of the city of Karthain.”
“Gods grant him a paralyzing carriage accident,” said Jean.
“I sympathize. Most historians have always struck me as perpetrators of tedium,” said Nikoros. “He swears that his book is different. Still—”
Whatever Nikoros might have said next was lost in a general uproar. Firstson Epitalus had ascended to one of the upper galleries, and he was waving for something resembling order from the crowd, which had by now soaked up a good fraction of its own weight in liquor.
“Good evening, good evening, good evening!” yelled Epitalus. “Good evening!” And then, as though anyone in the audience might conceivably remain unenlightened as to the quality or time of day: “Good evening!”
The string quintet ceased its humming and twanging, and the general acclamation sank to a tipsy murmur.
“Welcome, dear hearts and cavaliers, devoted friends, to the seventy-ninth season of elections in our Republic of Karthain! Take a moment, I pray, to reflect with pity on how few of us remain who can remember the first .…”
Good-natured laughter rippled across the crowd.
“Even those of you still moist behind the ears should be able to recall our heroic efforts of five years past, which, despite furious opposition, preserved our strong minority of nine seats on the Konseil!”
Curiously raucous cheers echoed across the hall for some time. Locke winced. Strong minority? Was he missing out on some bit of Karthani drollery, or were they really that incapable of admitting they’d lost?