signals.
“You’re popular, Commander.”
He broke off eye contact with Saghat and found that Dazil was almost pressing against his arm, having appeared closely behind him.
“Service is the only honour, my lady,” he said, stepping back to make a formal bow, and to get a clearer view of her.
She had dressed for the feast in the most magnificent of traditional warrior queen’s outfits, an elaborate, impenetrable shell of gleaming leather and metal with boots that didn’t end and a cloak of swirling dark red fabric. Only her hands and her face were bare; her fingernails were painted gold, her lips, blood red. It was impossible and delicious to imagine that there was a soft body inside that carapace.
“Let the festival begin!” cried Carral, and there was uproar as the crowd surged towards the tables of food. “Jhaval, take Dazil down there and make sure she gets something to eat before that mob devours it all,” he added, sinking back onto the throne and waving to the attendant servant for more glyn juice. It was clearly his intention to preside, warlord-like, for a while longer.
“It will be an honour, sir.” Jay held out his hand to her and she took it, with a dark sideways glance. Jay did not return the look. It was not necessary. Almost no verbal communication was. He could feel the tension in her fingers as she pressed them into his hand, he could sense her excitement sharpened to a pitch of terror. As they approached the table he deliberately let her hand drop away from his.
“Glyn juice?” he offered, dipping the ladle into the central bowl.
She shook her head. “I don’t drink it.”
“Well, don’t tell the men, but nor do I.”
She smiled slightly. “I know that. I’ve noticed before.”
It occurred to him that before the night was very far advanced, nearly everyone around them would be in an intoxicated stupor. It was good to have established between themselves that he and Dazil would not be.
“So what does Lord Carral think of your abstemious habits?” he said. “Knocking back glyn juice seems to be an obligatory act of warriorhood here.”
“As I said before, Lord Carral doesn’t consider it appropriate for the lady of Car’a’vil to behave like a swordbearer.”
“You know, in other parts of the Empire most swordbearers want a warlike wife. It’s a mark of status if your wife can go several rounds with your clan rival.”
“How about you, Commander? Is that the kind of wife you want?”
“I’m quite content to remain unmarried for now, my lady, so I haven’t got round to thinking about specifics.”
She had taken some of the stuffed melth, and was using the spoon to mash it flat.
“I honour all women,” he added. “The choice would be difficult.”
“All women would return that honour, I’m sure. Choice is not always in our power.”
“Choice is the strength of the heart. It’s a Priest Caste saying.”
“How do you know it?”
“For one, on other worlds, the castes mix more freely together. And if I tell you something else in confidence, will you promise not to let the men know this either?”
“Of course.”
“My mother was a priest.”
“Your mother!”
“Quieter. Intermarriage isn’t entirely uncommon, on my homeworld. I realise it would be unthinkable here, so I’ve kept it to myself.”
“No wonder,” she said, but he could tell by her tone that she impressed by this exotic information. And she gave him a glance, openly curious now, as if she were studying him to see if his mixed caste origins showed somehow.
He smiled at her, deliberately, once, brilliantly.
There was a clatter from the far end of the room, and the hubbub dipped as everyone looked in the direction of the podium. Carral had attempted to climb down from the throne, apparently to move towards the feasting tables, and had staggered and half-fallen against one of the servants. With an inelegant movement, he lashed out at the man and struck him on the side of the face. The servant tottered and fell back under the force of the blow, but picked himself and Carral’s goblet up uncomplainingly.
Jay felt Dazil freeze at his side. With satisfaction, he helped himself to some melth.
The feast went on late into the night, with new dishes and refilled bowls of glyn juice brought to the tables in lengthy succession. When at last the servants began to clear the tables, Carral called for storytellers, and the men grouped in a loose gathering around the great fire.
This was an element of swordbearer culture which was crystallised into an art form in the civilised worlds, left to specialised performers with desirable qualities such as training and talent. On Car’a’vil, the tradition could still be seen in the raw. The swordbearers, most of them half-incoherent with the effects of glyn juice, would sit in a baying semi-circle and nominate a volunteer to tell a story of some heroic deed attributable either to the narrator or another famous warrior. The resulting performances were predictably unedifying.
Jay hung back as far as he could without appearing not to participate, searching with his senses rather than his eyes for Dazil as Carral slapped forward one of the older and more garrulous of the warriors into the centre of the circle. After dinner, she had moved away from him rather deliberately. He spotted her out of the corner of his eye, settled in one of the oversized wooden chairs near the fire, draped sideways over the arm with her chin in her hand. She was deep in the company, surrounded by others. There was no way at the moment that they could make contact with each other and slip out unnoticed, though the storytelling might have provided an opportunity.
Impatiently, he looked around behind him and caught a flash of movement which registered somehow as important. He had not seen who it was who had flitted out at the back of the hall, but there was something about the motion itself that he recognised. With one more glance back at Dazil, who this time caught his eye briefly, he broke away from the ring of spectators and went to investigate.
The back of the great hall was in darkness now and snow was drifting against the huge, black windows. He narrowed his eyes against the contrasting light, peering into the gloom. There was a scuffling sound, and then a slight moan.
Hand on the hilt of his sword, he stepped swiftly into the corner and pulled aside one edge of the heavy wall drape.
Paril raised his head from Mareil’s neck and blinked at him, dazed. One hand was clutched round her exposed breast; her armour plate was abandoned on the floor, her tunic was unfastened nearly to her waist.
Jay took hold of him by the collar and hauled him off her. Paril struggled. Jay struck him neatly on the side of the jaw and he tumbled backwards, off balance, thudding onto the floor.
“Come on, Captain,” said Jay briskly. “Pull yourself together.”
Paril rolled over into a half-sitting position, rubbing his jaw. “Mareil,” he murmured, with a slight edge of panic in his voice.
She was lying where she had fallen from under him, motionless on the floor. Jay knelt over her and checked her breathing, which sounded low and shallow against his ear. He patted her cheek gently, but her head lolled loosely sideways. When he lifted an eyelid, he saw only white.
It was clear that she was unconscious, and it was almost certainly an adverse effect of the glyn juice, but he knew nothing about treating people in this condition. Her symptoms seemed identical to those he would expect from a blow to the head. “What have I done to her?” said Paril, in a slurred groan.
“Nothing as yet, fortunately. Now we don’t want to draw too much attention to this, Paril. Who is the healer here?”
“Na – Naghal.”
Jay straightened up and looked over at the roaring crowd of swordbearers at the far end of the room. Mass attention was focussed on whoever was making a fool of themselves in the circle. He fastened Mareil’s tunic up as quickly as he could, rolled her carefully onto her side with one arm propped under her body, and went in search of Naghal.
He found t
he healer stretched out full length on the floor near the fire, dribbling juice into his open mouth from a goblet held at arms’ length. It did not look promising. Jay was hesitating, wondering whether it was worth even attempting to speak to him, when he became aware that Dazil had appeared suddenly at his side.
“Is there a problem, Commander?”
“Yes, there is. Mareil is unwell and that, I’m told, is the healer.”
“Where is she?”
Jay led her to where Paril was now sitting against the wall, his head slumped in his hands. Mareil had not stirred. Dazil felt the pulse in her neck, pulled up her eyelid, then shook her shoulders and said her name in a low, firm voice. There was no response.
“It’s alcohol poisoning,” she said.
“She’s been poisoned?”
“When fruit juice is left to ferment there’s a chemical reaction which creates a poison called alcohol. It affects the brain in unpredictable ways. In most people it depresses motor functions, some people hallucinate, and a fair number of people become disinhibited, dangerous and temporarily psychotic. That’s why it’s illegal.”
“I’ll call the hospital.”
“It’s not necessary. There’s nothing medics can do anyway. She’ll recover on her own, when the poison works its way out of her body. We just have to take her somewhere quiet, and get one of the servants to watch over her to make sure she doesn’t choke. Help me lift her.”
“I think we should call for a proper doctor.”
“Carral won’t have them in the