Crown of Smoke Page 7

  “How many times do I have to tell your employer, I will not be summoned like some ordinary consumer. New products shall be delivered to be assessed at my leisure.” The tone is haughty, cold, the word “ordinary” dragged out long enough that a whole sentence could have been spoken in its place.

  Sireth.

  Daughter to Malmud, Eraz of Aphorai Province.

  Perfume aficionado.

  And desperate to become the Aphorain representative on the Council of Five when Prince Nisai finally assumes the throne. And he will, if I have anything to do with it.

  I don’t trust Sireth. She’s far too ambitious to be trusted. But she’s smart enough to be useful. Very useful. A kind of knock-off version of someone else I know. Someone for whom I have the utmost respect.

  Me.

  Sireth and the Chief Perfumer have an understanding that goes back more than a turn now. On the surface, it’s all business. Sireth gets to indulge her predilections for the latest and best of all of Aphorai’s fragrances, and the cover to venture out from under her father’s nose and into the city on “shopping” expeditions whenever she desires.

  I, on the other hand, get gossip from the capital – the fashions and fads of the Ekasyans I might otherwise miss when “out of town” – filtered through the Aphorain courtiers, ambassadors, visiting merchant elite. I’ve been relying on civilian informants, and so had Sephine, since the Emperor refused to appoint another Scent Keeper. It’s not perfect. But what truly is, in the clandestine information game?

  Sireth enters the room, shrugs off her crimson silk cloak and lets it fall to the floor like a pool of blood. She unceremoniously sweeps a ledger and several scrolls off the divan. The ledger thuds hollowly on the ancient floor tiles, and the scrolls roll away in several directions.

  My fingers twitch at the mess. Disorder walks hand-in-hand with danger in my line of work. But I keep my expression bland as Sireth flops down in place of the trappings of bureaucracy.

  She looks to an upper corner of the room, as if she’s addressing the point at which the limewashed walls meet the reed-woven ceiling. Her nose wrinkles. “Is that lemon balm?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Feeling a little nervy?”

  “It’s not for my benefit. You were rather … shrill out there.”

  She huffs and dangles a hand languidly over the back of the divan. The other twirls a necklace of winking rubies around bejeweled fingers. “You seem to keep forgetting I’m not one of your employees. One of these days I won’t accept your thinly veiled summons. Then where will you be?”

  I lean back in my chair and cross my ankles on my desk. “You couldn’t stay away if you tried.”

  This old game. Sireth relishes the performance, and gets petulant if I don’t oblige. I’ve long suspected her true delight derives from how bored it makes me to go through the same asinine motions.

  “Any day I could refuse.”

  “And forego an excuse to escape Daddy Dearest’s estate?”

  She drops the pretense. “More like any excuse to get out from beneath the slimy gaze of that letch Radreth.” It’s warm in my office, but she shudders as if cold water had spilled between her shoulders.

  “The Ekasyan ambassador is still on the estate? I thought Malmud would have cleared the decks after the … diplomatic incident.” It’s the understatement of the turn, perhaps the century, referring to the poisoning of one prince and the lockdown of the province capital by another as a mere “incident”.

  She waves that away. “He’s keeping the perfume in the bottle for now at least. Our easterly neighbours are getting tetchy. Seems they’re even less impressed with the Second Prince’s so-called Regency than we are. But to sever all ties with the capital … that will mean more than a diplomatic incident.”

  Indeed.

  Los Province lies to the east. They’ve never really trusted the Empire. I suppose I’d also nurse a certain slightedness if half of my territory had been consumed and cursed in the Shadow Wars. The Wastes of Los stretch from the Aphorain border in the west of the province all the way to the Trelian border in the south, robbing the Losians of most of their arable land aside from the thin strip along the coast.

  Of all the pre-Imperial kingdoms, Los was by far the strongest. And proudest. It paid the price for both of those traits, though never truly relinquished either. Which is why, given the excuse, it might be the first to shake off the yoke of imperial rule. Founding Accord or no Founding Accord.

  “And Ekasya?” I enquire.

  She gives me a doe-eyed gaze. “It’s approximately four days’ ride and then half again on a barge if the weather holds and you have the funds to acquire a decent rowing cr—”

  “Sireth,” my voice is flat.

  She pouts. “You’re no fun today. But yes, there has been some interesting news. A rumour, really. But even rumours have a price in times like these.” She sits up, reaches an arm tinkling with bracelets to the bundles of test incense on the edge of my desk, and gives one a derisive sniff.

  It’s a cheap shot, and I don’t reward it. “Yesterday or tomorrow, the fee is the same.”

  She shrugs and lazes back on the divan again. “Seems there’s some sort of gambling ring that’s sprung up among the courtiers in the capital. I mean, I can’t blame them, the Emperor never holds court any more, let alone stages any of his legendary parties – what it would have been to have seen those, don’t you think? Anyway, the nobles are bored. Apparently, a few of them have joined in on some racket where they’re pitting prisoners against each other in the catacombs beneath Ekasya Mountain. Making wagers on the potential victors.”

  Prisoner against prisoner? Would such a disgrace truly spring from the minds of the idle rich? Or did they have particular inspiration?

  Sireth waves a hand. “It could be flights of fancy. But how am I to know? I’m never getting to the capital at this rate.”

  “I wouldn’t lament that, the heir isn’t your type, anyway.”

  “He is a little short, I’ll grant you that. But that half-smile of his can be quite disarming.”

  “You know you’re not his type either.”

  “Because I’m his second cousin?”

  “Because you’re a girl.”

  “He puts all his ingredients in one perfume?” Her eyes widen in mock innocence. Then they’re just as quickly narrowing. “I’ve been thinking about that, actually. I certainly have no problem with an arrangement that suits us both. Even if I’m appointed to the Council, it’s such a temporary position in the grand scheme of things. It could be quite convenient if our families stayed closely linked but we didn’t have to—”

  “And don’t even think about whether you could have a son and get him adopted. You know the line of inheritance can’t go to the same province twice in sequence.”

  “Well…” She goes back to twining her necklace between her fingers. “That older brother of his could be an alternative. He’s deliciousness personified.”

  “Rigid and uptight, too, if his handling of the situation here was anything to go by. And now he’s at least in part responsible for the single biggest political upheaval we’ve witnessed since before the Great Bloom. Is there any connection between him and this gambling ring?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I swing my feet down from the desk and sit forward, businesslike.

  “Truly,” she insists. “I only get snippets, remember? Gossip. Though there is something else you might like.”

  I raise an eyebrow.

  “Rumour has it, one of the prisoners they have fighting is my cousin’s old Shield.”

  “Impossible. All reports said they executed the poor wretch.”

  She shrugs languidly.

  I keep my features impassive. I’m not about to let Sireth know this is the most important piece of information she’s given me in the entire duration I’ve known her. She may think it only a rumour. For me it’s of greater value. Corroboration.

  “What about yo
ur father, what does he make of all of this?”

  “He raged and blustered when he found out Nisai was no longer in the capital. Then aunt Shari sent word that he had been healed, and that calmed Father down a little. Still, he’d just as like to go marching to Ekasya demanding answers about the so-called Regency. My cousin is the first hope in over a century for an Aphorain Emperor, and Father wants him on the throne. But with the dahkai plantation gone, the province is poorer than ever. Hardly the time to fund a war.”

  “You sure he’ll sit tight?” I take a long, slow, calming breath.

  Lemon balm. It was a good choice.

  “Aunt Shari will calm him down. She’s sent word she’s coming home. The Regent has ‘temporarily relieved the Council of Five of their duty’, whatever that’s supposed to mean. I never knew their jobs included vacation time.”

  A chill goes through me. It means Iddo Kaidon has the audacity – either from arrogance or ignorance – to go against the Founding Accord. Once the Accord is broken, the Empire will begin to crumble. The northern provinces have been on edge for turns, watching for a slight from the capital, waiting for a reason to revolt.

  There’s only one sure outcome of the Empire fracturing.

  War.

  If we go down that road, thousands will die. And the Order will have failed in their mission to maintain balance. To preserve peace. I would have failed.

  I do not take failure lightly.

  “Hello?” Sireth waves a manicured hand in my line of sight. “You haven’t sniffed one too many of your own concoctions, have you?”

  I give myself an inward shake. Good informants are hard to find. Sireth has thus far been true, and I’ve no reason to think she’s turned sour with the latest events. I’d trust her dirt as much as the next. But I need to know more. There’s no room for speculation. Only certainty.

  I rise from my desk.

  The action sends a clear message. This meeting is over.

  “Don’t forget your samples,” I remind her as she retrieves her cloak. “I’m sure you’ll find they’ve been packed with the usual care.”

  And the usual coin in the lining.

  She scowls, but it doesn’t stop her lightly placing a farewell kiss on my cheek as she passes.

  I don’t blame Sireth for not having the full story. That doesn’t mean I’m any less irritated. I loathe going to the capital. That foreboding black-stone monstrosity where half the court thinks bathing once a week and spraying themselves down with perfume the rest of the time is good hygiene.

  It seems, however, there’s nothing else for it.

  If the Shield is alive, I have a duty to the Order to find him.

  I cross to the window and throw open the shutters. The temple dominates the Aphorain skyline. The great five-sided stepped pyramid, crumbling at the edges, casts its shadow over the sectors beyond, including the neighbourhoods a Chief Perfumer would never be seen in but which only a few turns ago I frequented. Out there awaits myriad back alleys, the rows of shacks bordering the tanning yards, and most of all the colonies of Afflicted that are growing like one of their ulcerous wounds, the disease seeming more virulent with each passing turn.

  There’s only one thing more important than the primary tenet – balance is all – of those who follow Asmudtag: Mercy until maturity.

  The very tenet I’ve lived by since swearing allegiance to the Order. Find as many children in Aphorai City who were of the right age and didn’t go through the naming ceremony at birth. Find them before the Blazers can find them. Bring them to the Scent Keeper. Because it was only Sephine who could salvage them, take away their corruption, lock it away within herself. Ever since the Shadow Wars, magic shouldn’t have been in the world.

  But “shouldn’t” is a pale defence against “is”.

  The dark magic is there, lurking in some and not others. There’s always been the superstition. Children who came into this world during the Days of Doskai, the brief time every six turns when there’s an occultation in the night sky – Doskai’s moon blocking Kaismap’s moon from view – all shadows thrown by the Lost God’s gaze. I’d watched some of the infants born on those nights, and there was no way to tell which would have it in them and which wouldn’t. Sephine had her theories. Most of them revolving around the scent of death. Those who drew their first breath from another human’s end. They were the ones who fell under the shadowed god’s influence, latent instruments of a war he wished to revisit upon the world. Even if it weren’t causation, it was correlation. We found more of them living in poverty than among those who could afford a naming ceremony. More whose first scent would be of ulcerated flesh. The Affliction that promised death.

  A theory, Sephine said.

  A likely truth, I thought.

  But there was one thing that Sephine was adamant about. Magic, light or dark, cannot be destroyed. Only transferred. Absorbed. Until the night she channelled too much.

  Mercy until maturity.

  How many young ones did I take to Sephine? How many did she treat, giving them sultis and letting them go before they knew anything other than they’d got lost in the back alleys of what was to them a labyrinthine city? They’d return to their families, no longer any more of a danger to them than the next person. No longer fighting themselves.

  But now it’s not Sephine’s words reverberating between my ears, it’s my uncle’s, who trained me in a much different life skill. Trust your nose if you want to survive, he said, right before they finally carried him off for operating the longest-running unregulated dreamsmoke den in Aphorai City.

  If I’ve heard anything of the Prince’s Shield, he’s beyond the point of saving. That smoke has long gone to the sky. It’s tragic, really. The Magister’s girl obviously feels genuine care for him. The grief she displayed on the journey to the Sanctuary, the look in her eyes when she recognized the mention of him in the scroll I let her view.

  It seems … distasteful. A waste, even.

  I almost hope he’s not alive.

  Because then I won’t have to be the one to kill him.

  Dawn finds me well rested.

  It’s a skill; the more intense the situation facing me, the better I’m able to sleep. There’s little logic in tossing and turning through the night when you need to be able to rely on your faculties at dawn.

  Admittedly, I had help. I’d venture the innkeeper’s daughter has a spring in her step this morning, too.

  I present myself at the Eraz’s estate, ostensibly to find out if our province governor has any last requests before I journey to the capital as his emissary. I’m greeted by a chamberlain, though “intercepted” is perhaps a more accurate term. The man’s new, and walks with pole-straight carriage, his nose in the air, slightly wrinkled as if he’s stood in something putrid.

  When I request an audience with the Eraz, the chamberlain informs me with unconcealed satisfaction that it’s far too early for Malmud to grace us with his presence. According to the officious sniffling, even the Chief Perfumer will have to take their place in line with the others who have already petitioned for an audience today.

  I feign disappointment and survey the room, letting my expression sink into increasing pensiveness with each appellant my gaze falls upon. “Alas,” I begin, “I was simply after an individual of high enough station to sign off on this shipping notice.”

  “Shipping notice?”

  “Our regular incense consignment destined for the capital. I’d hate it to be late with things … as they have been. One wouldn’t want to contribute further ill to relations with the capital. But I’ll be sure to let the Eraz know you followed protocol when I finally get to speak with him, you needn’t worry.”

  He beckons me to hand over the manifesto, the movement so jerky it’s as if he’s attempting one-handed applause.

  I comply.

  He gives it but a cursory glance and a sniff. “I’ll not have my master weighed down with simple logistics.” He produces a cylinder seal from his sleeve. />
  I produce an ink pot with a flourish.

  And, by the Primordial’s grace, it is done.

  If our esteemed Eraz did rise early, I’d have to convince him to give his Chief Perfumer orders to present himself at the Ekasyan court on his behalf. Instead, the new chamberlain will be explaining why Malmud’s best barge has been commandeered for a trip he hasn’t authorized. An impertinence on my behalf. But if I have to go to the capital, at least I’ll be doing it in style. One can only hope everything else about this journey goes as closely to plan.

  Outside the estate, my litter awaits. I nod to the bearers as I recline on the cushions. “Eighth gate, lovelies.”

  They’ll take me as far as the south trader camp outside the walls. From there, I’ve organized an escort fitting for the province Chief Perfumer’s overland trek to the river.

  There’s a commotion before the gate. Throngs have amassed where it would normally be a bustling-but-orderly thoroughfare. I shift my weight, seeking a better view. Camels are piled high with a variety of goods: open-weave sacks of dried rock figs, stacks of tanned animal hides, racks of mismatched vials and jars – run-of-the-mill essential oils and salves – clinking slightly every time the animal bearing it switches its tail against the flies.

  Men in white robes with a thin purple trim at the hem wave each beast on, jotting down notes with a charcoal stylus.

  Imperial tax collectors.

  “Filthy thieves,” an Aphorain accent calls.

  One of the officials looks up from his notes and down his nose. “These contributions are required for the new imperial army, built by the Regent for the protection of all Aramtesh.”

  The crowd ignores that, instead starting up a chant: “Thief. Thief. Thief!”

  I feel their anger. They’ve watched their taxes go to enrich the capital when their arable land is nothing on what it was when the tax rates were set, especially after the Great Groundshake moved the river several turns ago. Now the tithe they pay is in motley supplies. The last vestiges before even the previously wealthy can no longer feed themselves. They will watch their children starve. I’ve had my fair share of malodourous information, though I’m sure the imminent death of one’s offspring must be a truly terrible prospect.