took his sister’s arm and they walked towards the open doorway. Amlis disappeared into the servants’ quarters; the other woman in the litter, presumably an insignificant Amdelle girl Celyse was trying to marry off, followed them in silence, five paces behind. Celyse walked slowly, her body very erect to support the weight of a headdress of silver wire and tiny mirrors that chimed and glittered as she moved.
‘And how’s your dear wife?’ asked Celyse sweetly. ‘Not accompanying you? She doesn’t seem to go out so much these days. The last time I saw her, she looked horribly tired. Nothing wrong, I trust?’
‘She’s already here. She’s had a bit of a cold, that’s all.’
‘Oh! What a shame for her. I was worried it was something more than that.’
‘She’s neither pregnant nor dying, if that’s what you’re after. I’d tell you if she were.’
‘Of course you would. So unfortunate for you, Orhan. You make a marriage of convenience that’s really anything but.’
Orhan sighed. Poor Bil. ‘Your own marriage, of course, being so much more successful.’
‘Oh, I’d say it probably is.’ Celyse smoothed her dress with long fingers. ‘I get some happiness out of mine, at least.’
Coloured light broke onto them as they entered the inner courtyard of the House of Silver. A fire burned in the centre of the court, enclosed in a great framework of multi-coloured silks that cast shifting patterns of light over the people around it.
‘Ahhh,’ Celyse said with real pleasure, ‘it’s even prettier than my litter.’ The mirrors of her headdress shone and danced, swirling the colours around her like a cloak. Tasteless, but undeniably striking. She must have found out about it in advance and themed her entire outfit accordingly.
‘Something of a fire risk, I’d have thought,’ Orhan muttered.
Celyse laughed. ‘Eloise has hired a mage, of course, to control it.’
Orhan stared at her. ‘She’s hired a magician to stop her party piece burning down?’
‘You make him sound like a cheap conjuror. He works with the craftsman who makes the things, keeping them fire-safe, protecting them. Made my litter: it has bindings in it, to stop it catching if a candle tips. He did a demonstration before I bought it. Eloise is quite charmed by him, she’s thinking of keeping him.’
The things the high families felt the need to waste money on … Orhan gazed around the courtyard, looking out for friends and enemies. Saw Bil almost immediately, sitting on a low bench on the other side of the court, near the firebox, talking to a young woman with fair hair and a pale face. He ought to at least tell her he was there. He wandered over to her, was half surprised to see her look almost pleased to see him.
‘Orhan,’ Bil said with a bright smile. ‘What a surprise. Landra: my husband, Lord Orhan Emmereth, Lord of the Rising Sun. Orhan: Lady Landra Relast. Her father is lord of a small rock somewhere in the far east. She only arrived here two days ago. I’ve promised to show her around a bit.’
The woman nodded her head in greeting and they exchanged pleasantries. No, she’d only been here a few days, not seen much of the city yet. Yes, the Great Temple was indeed beautiful, she’d seen that. No, she had no particular purpose being here. Just come to … nenenthelesal? ‘Get away from things’? Was that the right word?
Ah, indeed, Sorlost the Golden, city of dreaming, the greatest city on the face of the earth, where people came to wander around aimlessly, gawp, point, laugh!
Her Literan was poor, heavily accented with the soft bell chimes of Pernish. She was young, only in her mid-twenties, but had a hard, tired look to her. Sorrowful. Orhan had to admire the tact with which she readjusted her face after involuntarily glancing at Bil and then back to him.
Bil is a lovely creature, he thought sadly. If you look beyond the skin. She is almost beautiful. Almost desirable. The cruelty in people’s eyes, when they look at her and me. Do I love her despite it? Desire her because of it? Did I marry her for money? Were we plighted at birth? The question was so obvious, there in every eye that looked at them together. Should have it carved on her tomb.
She was dressed exquisitely, as always, in a deep blue gown with a mesh of diamonds in her red hair. Her white arms were bare and painted with spiralling patterns of gold flowers; she wore little gold bells on her wrists that tinkled prettily as she moved her hands. Fingernails an inch long, gilded and studded with pearls.
Yes, she was almost beautiful. Apart from the scars. The gold paint swirled over them, like cracking mud or leprosy. Eruptions of skin. Molten wounds.
If she was Lord Rhyl’s wife, the fashion would be for long sleeves and veils and high necks to cover. Or perhaps women would wear false scars, in clay and paint. All the women of Sorlost would copy every detail of the Nithque’s wife’s costume. But Lady Bilale Emmereth’s husband had no power, thus she must be grotesque and pretend she didn’t care.
A girl approached with a tray of cups. Orhan took one. Cold wine, mixed with snow. Very refreshing in the heat of the fire. More entirely pointless magery: it must have cost a fortune to transport and store the snow and keep it from melting even when being served. House Verneth was undeniably trying to prove something to someone tonight. Eloise would be melting down gold thalers in the candle flames by midnight, the way things were going. There was a story about an Imperial banquet where the food had been crushed gemstones, mixed with wine and honey to make a thick paste and shaped to resemble fruit, meat, bread. The Emperor had insisted his guests eat their fill, gorging themselves on rubies and diamonds until their guts ached and their mouths were cut and running with blood. The story embodied Sorlost: the great houses shat gold and pissed gems. In the version of the tale Orhan’s nurse had told him as a child, the night-soil men had scraped clean the sewers and built themselves great palaces of marble and cedar wood.
Bil fluttered away to stand in the coterie of Eloise Verneth. His sister and her grotesque headdress seemed to have disappeared. The sad-eyed young woman sat silent, watching the shifting colours of the fire-box dance. Orhan sat beside her for a while. The silks fluttered and swirled, alive, spelling out secret words. He thought of the knife-fighter, gleaming black skin and golden hair, the way his eyes had stared as he thrust his blade, the panting breath as he watched his opponent die. The colours beat in his vision, red, green, yellow, blue, red, green, yellow, blue, red, green, yellow, blue, red …
‘Mesmeric, isn’t it?’
Orhan turned round, startled. The handsome, hawk-nosed face of Darath Vorley looked down at him.
‘Mind if I join you?’
‘No … no …’ His mouth tasted dry. The wine was mildly dosed with hatha syrup, he realized, to enhance the effect of the fire and the coloured silks. He had no idea how long he’d been sitting gazing at it. The young woman whose father was lord of a small rock had gone.
Lord Vorley, Lord of All that Flowers and Fades, seated himself beside him and stretched out his legs. Coloured light danced on his copper-black skin.
‘Please don’t tell me you’re surprised to see me here,’ Orhan said after a while. ‘It’s getting repetitive. I’m surprised to see myself here, I don’t need constant reminding of it.’
‘Offended might be a better word. I had a party myself a little while ago. To my inconsolable
