Kushiel's Avatar (Phedre's Trilogy #3)

Kushiel's Avatar (Phedre's Trilogy #3) Page 41

"I'm coming," I said, and sighed again, hauling myself off the bed. I felt a mess, salt-stained and travel-weary. I smoothed my garments—I was wearing the celadon green silks—and silently blessed Favrielle nó Eglantine for her irascible genius.

The dining-hall was a vast open space with vaulted ceilings, punctuated by slender columns. Fretted lamps cast a gentle glow, and white-clad attendants moved on hushed feet. The whole of the space was dominated by a single table, where a large party sat, flanking a man who was obviously its leader. He sat with his head bowed, both hands fisted in his curly hair, while his companions sought to give him counsel.

It was not until we entered the room that he looked up and I recognized him.

"Phèdre nó Delaunay," Lord Amaury Trente exclaimed. "Thanks be to Blessed Elua! I thought you'd never get here."

THIRTY

fadil chouma was dead.That was the story that emerged over the course of an hour as the Menekhetan servants brought out plate after plate of rich, spicy food— grilled eggplant, broad beans, lamb with onion and parsley, pickled limes, chickpeas and sesame, fish in a sharp garlic sauce, all served with flat bread and a honey-sweetened barley beer.

Although I had not thought myself hungry, my appetite manifested unexpectedly and I ate with good will as Lord Trente told his story.

The delegation had had a swift, uneventful journey from Marsilikos and arrived a scant week before us. Raife Laniol, Comte de Penfars, was Ysandre's ambassador in Iskandria. He had bade them fair welcome and arranged for lodgings for the party with the lady Metriche. She was a widow of mixed blood, Menekhetan and Hellene alike; there was, I understood, an unofficial caste system at work in Iskandria, and native Menekhetans are reckoned of less worth than those descendants of Hellas.

Comte Raife had quickly grasped the sensitivity of the situation, and aided in negotiations with Pharaoh's Secretary of the Treasury, presenting the offer of Alban trade-rights as an alluring opportunity. Amaury Trente made a pretty presentation of the tokens they had brought: a chest of lead, brooches and armrings of intricate gold knot- work, and cleverest of all, potted seedlings of native Alban flora, for the Pharaohs of Menekhet were long known to be eager for exotic botany.

It had all gone remarkably well, and the delegation was presented to Ptolemy Dikaios, Pharaoh himself, who expressed his delight with the gifts and a keen interest in opening trade with Alba. Amaury Trente cited the interests of the Cruarch—linen flax, dates, wheat—mentioning as a casual aside a fancy of the Cruarch's to assuage his wife's whim, and retrieve a young D'Angeline boy mistaken sold into slavery in the city.

I have only the word of Amaury Trente and his companions by which to gauge, but I have no reason to doubt it. By all accounts, he managed it with a subtlety that would have satisfied Melisande. Pharaoh heard it with half an ear and waved his bejeweled hand, ordering his Secretary of the Treasury to ensure that this trifling matter was done, and returning to the more serious matters of flax and dates.

Well and so, it would have been done. The Secretary of the Treasury put one of his senior clerks on the matter, disdaining to sully his own hands, and the clerk found out the slaver Fadil Chouma's residence in the Street of Crocodiles. Invoking his master's name, he enlisted a squadron of the Pharaoh's Guard and presented himself at Fadil Chouma's residence, prepared to demand the return of the D'Angeline boy in the interests of the state, compensation to be, of course, negotiable, with death as an alternative.

But Fadil Chouma was already dead.

And the D'Angeline boy long since sold.

I understood better why Lord Amaury Trente clutched at his own hair. Although Chouma's household remembered the boy, there was no record of Imriel de la Courcel's sale—and Fadil Chouma had kept exacting records. There was, perhaps, a reason for it. Doubtless the D'Angeline boy was a piece of goods Fadil Chouma had sooner forget. It was Imriel, after all, who had killed him.

It was a fluke accident, in a way, although I daresay the boy in tended it. It had happened in the kitchen—Chouma's women had cos seted the lad, owing to his beauty, and allowed him thence to feed him sweetmeats and the like—where Imriel had turned like a flash, faster than anyone could have reckoned, and seized a knife the cook had been using to debone a chicken. He sunk the knife into Fadil Chouma's thigh.

To be sure, 'twas no mortal wound; Chouma bellowed like a bull, the knife was removed and the wound bandaged. Imriel was beaten, and within two days, sold. Fadil Chouma, his mouth compressed in a tight line, would not say to whom. Already his wound festered. In four days, the leg was hot and rigid with swelling, red streaks making their way upward.

"He wouldn't let the chirurgeon take his leg," Amaury Trente said grimly. "I was told he died screaming, and I wasn't sorry to hear it. But no one knows what he did with the boy.”

Our table had been cleared of dishes. The Menekhetan servants hovered nearby with pitchers of barley beer, clearly hoping we would retire for the evening. Amaury Trente and his delegates looked at me hopefully. I sat wondering to myself, what would Delaunay do?

"You believe Chouma's household was telling the truth?" I asked.

"I have reason to believe as much," Amaury said. "From my un derstanding, Pharaoh's guardsmen asked their questions at knifepoint, and none too gently. He sold the lad in a fury, and none knew where. The clerk, Rekhmire, went over his accounts in detail. Slavers pay taxes in Menekhet, the same as anyone else." He shrugged, his expression showing his distaste. "He'd an entry for the boy's purchase in Amílcar, sure enough, but naught on the other side of the ledger. It never men tioned he was D'Angeline, but the description matched and no mistake. Rekhmire's an industrious sort, especially when it comes to protecting the interests of Pharaoh's Treasury. He's pursued the matter in the last few days, made inquiry at the slave-auctions and among the libertines and pleasure-houses. Nothing. And believe me, my lady," he added grimly, "even in Iskandria, a ten-year-old D'Angeline boy would not go unremarked."

"No," I said. "I suppose not." What would Anafiel Delaunay do? All knowledge is worth having. Delaunay would analyze the situation, I thought. And derive . . . what? Weary with long travel and the sop orific effect of a rich meal, I forced my wits to work. "Chouma," I said aloud, thinking. Fadil Chouma was a clever and exacting man. He had recorded Imriel's purchase; why not his sale? Mayhap because he sickened too quickly. And yet, he had concealed the information from his household, which suggested otherwise. Who knows what he had meant to do? But given the information at hand, I thought it unlikely that he intended to make a full accounting.

Why?

Political reasons, mayhap; surely, there was danger involved in trafficking in D'Angeline flesh . . . and yet not so much that he had feared altogether to record Imriel's purchase. No, it must be somewhat else. Why had he refused to divulge the boy's fate? The most obvious possibility loomed before me, sickeningly plausible. Imriel had stabbed the slaver. If Chouma had killed him in a fit of rage, knowing his household doted on the boy . . . then, he would keep it silent.

No. In an act of will, I rejected the notion, summoning the logic to justify it. Fadil Chouma was a slaver; a merchant. He had laid his plans too well and invested too much to dispose of valuable property out of anger. It had to be true, had to be, or all my searching was in vain, the bitter bargain, the promises made. Surely Kushiel's mighty justice must come to more than this, a small corpse mislaid, a blind alley in an unknown city.

It made me think of Amílcar, and the children there. A twisting alley, the darkened back room. I thought of the Carthaginians, poor stupid brutes, and Mago with his flame-ruined feet, screaming his lungs raw with his confession.

Fadil Chouma had a buyer in mind; one, only one, mind . . .

A merchant's ploy, I'd thought upon hearing it, to get out of a bargain he'd no intention of keeping. And yet. . . what if it were not? Fadil Chouma had had a buyer in mind. He'd hedged his bets, he'd recorded the purchase—but not the sale. Why? On a deep level some where below conscious thought, I felt the pieces of the puzzle fall into a pattern.

"Chouma was protecting his own interests," I announced. "He had a buyer in mind from the beginning, and whoever it was, it's someone dangerous. Dangerous to him; dangerous to be known, dangerous to be named. He was uncertain of the deal, which is why he recorded Imriel's purchase—but it happened, the buyer came through. He would have altered his records if he hadn't fallen ill." I blinked and realized Amaury Trente and the others were looking blankly at me. It had been a long time since I'd spoken.

"And so ... what?" Amaury asked carefully. "What do we do about it?"

"Ask . . . what's his name? The ambassador?" My wits were dull with weariness and exertion. "Raife, yes? Raife Laniol, Comte de Penfars. Ask him, my lord. Pharaoh's a powerful man; powerful men have enemies. It's an ambassador's job to be able to name them. It will give us a starting point, at least."

One of the women among the delegates—Denise Fleurais—cleared her throat. "Ambassador de Penfars' knowledge," she said with a certain delicacy, "is confined to the upper strata of Menekhetan society."

"Hellenes," someone murmured further down the table. "She means Hellenes."

There ensued a discussion about the merits of Hellene civilization versus the native component. I listened with half an ear, watching the hovering Menekhetan servants, jugs of barley beer at the ready, waiting with well-concealed impatient for the D'Angeline guests to take to their beds. "Surely," I ventured, thinking about the polite brown masks of our servants' faces, "Ambassador de Penfars has contacts among the native Iskandrians as well."

A brief silence answered me.

"Not many," the Lady Denise said at length. She had auburn hair the color of new mahogany, and a shrewdness to her face which I liked. "There is the clerk, Rekhmire, or so we gather. But Ambassador de Penfars does not speak the argot of the land."