Then there was telling Livak how dramatically our plans had gone awry. There’d be no future for the pair of us as proven man and his lady managing D’Olbriot affairs in some comfortably distant city. So some good had come out of all this, I smiled wryly to myself. The Sieur was right; I’d forgotten just how tedious close attendance on the Name could be. My smile faded. Perhaps he had done me a favour, but I still felt rebuffed. True enough, it was plain things couldn’t have gone on as before, but I wasn’t sure I liked having the decision taken out of my hands like this.
But that’s what swearing your service away does for you, some rational corner of my mind scolded me. Sitting here in the sage-scented calm, I had to admit that submitting to other people’s decisions had been galling me of late. Whatever else I might do, I decided, I wouldn’t be swearing myself to Temar. Swearing service as a young man had been easy, putting my fate into another’s hands a relief. Life had been clearer then, a puppetry tale of predictable characters in stock dilemmas making black and white decisions. As a grown man I’d learned life was far more complicated. My own desires were a mass of contradictions to begin with and I knew full well people around me wore more faces than a masquerader.
Which was all very well as far as philosophical musing went, but what next? My mother had never been one to tolerate indecision. “You can’t buy a bun and still save your penny,” she’d always told us as children. I unlocked the box to see how many buns I could buy with Messire’s assessment of my worth.
“Dast’s teeth!” I could buy my own bakery with the stacks of white gold packed tight with scraps of silk tucked in each hollow. I could buy the land to grow the wheat and a mill to turn the grain to flour and still have silver to squander.
My spirits rose. Messire always said there’s no point repining over what’s already done, didn’t he? Livak and I had set ourselves to his service at the turn of the year in order to earn the coin that would give us choices for our future. Well, I had a whole casket full of choices here, and if Livak had won any aetheric lore from her travels whatever Planir or D’Olbriot owed her could only widen our options still further.
Before I made any decisions, whether to buy that flour mill or outfit a mercenary troop and go off to claim the throne of Lescar, I needed to talk to Livak. I locked my box and tucked it securely under my arm, trying to remember where Casuel had said he was going to be today. He could bespeak Usara, I decided. Usara would know where Livak was and what she was up to. Then I’d go back to the gatehouse and finish off that roster; I could at least take my leave of that duty on my own terms.
The Imperial Menagerie, Toremal
20th of Aft-Summer in the Third Year of Tadriol the Provident
You have a remarkable collection of animals.” Temar hoped this was the right thing to say, and more, that he didn’t sound as bored as he felt. Doubtless polite chitchat with the Emperor was a duty of his new rank but he’d rather be getting on with the five score and one things he had to organise before sailing back to Kel Ar’Ayen.
“Though it’s not quite what one expects in such a nicely Rational garden, is it?” The Emperor tossed a nut at a tiny, white-faced, copper-haired ape sitting quietly in the corner of a cage. It watched the treat land without visible change in its expression. “But it’s become rather a contest between the Houses, to send me some beast never before seen in Toremal, some exotic rarity bought from an Aldabreshin warlord or some hairy curio snared in the Great Forest.”
Temar looked at the morose little ape and it glared balefully back at him. “I will have to see what oddities Kel Ar’Ayen can offer.” Was that what was expected of him?
“That’s one rivalry with the Names on this side of the ocean that I think you could enter into without too much danger.” The Emperor bowed politely at two distant Demoiselles who were looking with interest into an aviary where brightly coloured songbirds flitted above lavishly tailed fowl scratching around the floor. “It’s almost certainly what people will imagine we’re discussing, which is why I asked you to meet me here.”
Temar looked around the gardens, seeing couples, young and old, sauntering between cages and enclosures, veils of lace drawn forward to shade sensitive skin from the sun and feathered fans busy in the heat.
“Some of those birds must be worth ten times their weight in gold, just for the plumes in their tails,” he commented.
The Emperor nodded. “We have the occasional break-in but we give mastiffs the run of the place after dark. It’s a shame we don’t still have wolves to let loose. That would keep the chancers out for certain!”
“You have no such larger beasts then?” Temar wondered when Tadriol was going to come to whatever point he was aiming for.
The Emperor chuckled. “It was a fashion in the days of Aleonne the Gallant for Houses to send the Emperor whatever beast they had on their badge. D’Olbriot sent a lynx, my forefathers a bull, that kind of thing.”
“At least a holm oak will not prove too difficult to catch,” Temar said with heavy humour.
“By all means send me one.” Tadriol waved a hand at a nearby tree laden with long, flame-coloured blossoms. “That was planted by Den Bruern, before they were subsumed into D’Olbriot. No, the whole game fell into disfavour when superstition started running rife. The Sieur Den Haurient died two days after the wolf he’d sent to be reared from a pup dropped dead, and then half the Esquires of Den Somaer drowned when their ship went down not ten days after a flock of their pheasants all died of some cough.”
“So everyone watched the health of their beast as if it were their own?” guessed Temar. Was there some hint he should be picking up in all this inconsequentiality? He really had more important things to do.
“Quite so.” The Emperor walked on, pausing to throw a nut into an apparently empty enclosure. A small furry animal Temar couldn’t identify darted out of a hole and vanished with its prize. “Then some rumour started about the Tor Leoreil fox barking at any woman who wasn’t a virgin and a handful of betrothals were broken off because of it. The final disaster was a wild boar D’Istrac sent down from Dalasor. Some Demoiselle or other tried to stroke it and it bit one of her fingers off.”
“How awful,” Temar said with feeling. He looked round the extensive garden. “There was a menagerie in the Old Palace. Castan the Shrewd drained the moat, planted it with grass and fenced it off into sections. Houses would send him wolves and bears as a sign of Tormalin might taming the wilds of Dalasor, so my grandsire told me.”
“There’s no record of that,” said the Emperor with some surprise.
“Lost in the Chaos, no doubt.” Temar smiled tightly. “Anyway there were no beasts left by the end of Nemith the Last’s fourth year on the throne. He wasn’t prepared to pay for their keep so he had all the animals set against each other in baiting contests.”
“The more I learn about that man, the more I loathe him,” remarked the Emperor.
“It did him no credit, even with his sycophants,” Temar nodded. “And he looked a fool more than once, like the time when nine lynxes refused to attack a bear.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.” The Emperor ate one of his own hazelnuts. “I’ve had Nemith the Last’s example held up as a warning since before I was out of soft shoes.”
“What need have you to learn about such a sorry specimen?” Temar wondered aloud.
“Every boy who might one day lead his Name is taught about Nemith’s reign. It’s an object lesson on how to bring the Empire to its knees by favouring one faction over another, by disregarding the dignity of the Houses, by plundering the wealth of the rich and paying no heed to the trade and labours of the poor that support us all.” The Emperor spoke with evident sincerity, not merely reciting the rote of his youth.