“I’ll go for that,” Rap said.
Minds innocent:
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage.
Lovelace, To Althea from Prison
ELEVEN
Day will end
1
“Another piece of cake, Lord Umpily?”
“Most kind of you, ma’am.”
The cake was delicious. It could hardly be otherwise at the residence of Senator Ishipole, who was celebrated for her exquisite taste. She was reported to have originated the epigram “Only quality is necessary.” She was also rumored to be the third richest woman in the Impire, but Umpily rather doubted that—she spent too lavishly to be that rich. It was possible, though. Her family owned a couple of toll gates on the Great South Way, and she had been a marquise before she blackmailed her way into the Senate. So there was never any shortage of anything around Ishipole, and everything was always of the finest quality.
He sat on a quality silk divan and sipped quality tea from a quality china cup. The salon was a sumptuous room. Winter sunshine gleamed through high windows and was warmed by the ivories and yellows of the quality decor and the russet fire of her gown. In summer she would be surrounded by cool blues and greens. He hoped she would soon offer him yet another piece of that mouth-watering almond cake. Or even the chocolate one, which was almost as good.
The lady herself was no longer of the quality she must have been fifty years ago, when she had reportedly valued quantity as well as quality, at least in affairs of the heart—both Emshandar and his father had been mentioned in the same whispers. She was rumored to have been the model for the famous masked nude that hung in the Throne Room, although whatever likeness there might have been once would no longer be detectable. Now all the flesh had faded from her bones, except on her face, where it had sagged in soft folds like wax on a candle. Her mouth drooped in a permanent disagreeable pout and the bags under her eyes would hold the Julgistro apple harvest. No quantity of paint and diamonds could hide the ugly truth that Ishipole was truly ugly. Perhaps even the third ugliest woman in the Impire, he wouldn’t wonder.
“And who is to be the new mistress of the robes?” he asked, adopting an expression of false innocence that would not deceive the old crone for one second even if he wanted it to, which he didn’t.
Ishipole and he were old, er . . . sparring partners might be a better term than friends.
Some of his earliest memories were of eating cakes at Aunt Ishi’s. His skill in gossip-mongering had been learned at her knee. For years the two of them had sought to outdo each other in the pursuit of scandal, the tearing down of hypocrisy, the savaging of reputation. This private little chat was quite like old times, just the two of them in her private salon, except that now it was extremely dangerous for him.
“She has made a complete about-face, you know!”
Ishipole was commenting on the size of the impress’s clothing bill. She pursed eggshell lips in silent stricture. “When she was only a princess, she spent hardly a groat on dressing herself! Her ladies were driven to despair! You must know that! And now? Ha! They say if the numbers were known, she outspends the Imperial navy. Another piece of cake? And she can’t wear any of them with the court in mourning.”
“Have you heard any word of her sister, ma’am?”
The senator shrugged with distaste. “Why should I want to?” The reaction was not surprising. Umpily had already established that the impress’s sister had vanished from the memory of the court. No one recalled seeing her for months. She was assumed to have returned to rural obscurity. Even household servants’ minds had been wiped. Zinixo himself might not be so thorough, but his votaries would further his cause scrupulously.
Official mourning would continue for many months yet. This season the social scene was bereft of the great functions at which the gentry normally displayed their finery and tattled gossip. In some ways that had been a help to Umpily. The social espionage he had achieved in the last couple of months would not have been possible in normal times. Even under present conditions it was a miracle that he had remained at large so long.
And now he was growing reckless. He had scavenged as much information as he could about the court and its imposter imperor, but he had uncovered no trace whatsoever of Olybino. The problem of the missing warlock had become almost an obsession with him. If any mundane knew the answer, it would be this old hag. He dared not put the question directly; he must lead up to it with great caution.
Meanwhile, he had confirmed that the fake impress was lavishing state funds on clothes. That sounded exactly like Ashia, and she would undoubtedly display Eshiala’s gorgeous face and body magnificently. Shandie had already been informed of the clothes rumor via the magic scroll, but it was nice to have Senator Ishipole’s testimony, which added mass. It was no trivial matter, for if Ashia had enough freedom of will to indulge her own personality like that, then how much did Emthoro have? Who was running the government—the fake imperor Emthoro, or the sinister dwarf Zinixo? How long a string was the puppet allowed?
For example—and Umpily could well imagine Shandie himself arguing this point at a council of war as he had done so often in the years of glory—Dwanish was rumored to be preparing an attack. Zinixo dealing with the war himself, employing sorcery, would produce a result very different from Emthoro striving to react as the real Shandie might react. Did the dwarf have any loyalty to his own kind, or—
“And yourself, my lord?” Ishipole was supposedly almost blind now. Her eyes were dull orbs of amber, and yet they still saw more than most. They seemed to be sizing Umpily up, conveying a sense of getting down to business.
“Me, your Eminence? A well-earned retirement!”
“You quarreled with his Majesty, or so it is said.” The withered senatorial hand offered the cake plate again. “You had a disagreement. ”
“Not at all! One does not disagree with imperors, ma’am! One merely agrees less vehemently.”
“You have not been seen at court.”
Umpily swallowed a morsel of cake with difficulty, his mouth strangely dry. He had held this same discussion many times of late, but Ishipole would be much harder to deceive than most of his acquaintances.
He sighed. “I never held an official position, you know. I was Shandie’s advisor—and also friend, I hope—while he was a prince. When he ascended the throne he automatically inherited the whole Imperial bureaucracy. It seemed a good time for me to make way for the professionals, and younger men. We parted on excellent terms! Not parted, I trust—I was merely relieved of my unofficial duties, at my own request. That would be a better turn of phrase. Quite amicable.”
“You see him sometimes, then?”
“Certainly. Just private functions, of course, because of the mourning, but—”
“You’re lying,” she said. “He denies it. You vanished. At first the word was that you’d been dispatched to Guwush on some fairy-tale secret mission, and he denies starting that story. But you were soon observed skulking around Hub—”
For a mad moment Umpily considered taking Ishipole into the great secret and explaining that the imperor she had met was not the real imperor, the impress was not the real impress, that an invisible sorcerer, who might not be a sorcerer in his own right, had stolen the whole Impire, dethroned the wardens, and usurped the ancient rule of the Protocol—but that road led to shackles and straightjackets. He could never dare reveal the truth except to a sorcerer, who would know it already anyway. “Skulking, ma’am? Really!”
“Like today,” she snapped. “We haven’t spoken since before the old imperor died and yet today you just drop in. Just passing by, you say. No invitation, no note to warn me. Very unorthodox! So now we just have a nice little chat and you just drop out again, is that not so?”
Umpily took a sip of tea to give himself a moment to think. “It’s the pattern of your behavior ever since Emshandar died,” she insisted, amber eyes studying him glassily—apparently as lifeless as a statue’s, yet seeing much more than they revealed. “I have been finding the winter weather a little hard on the joints, I confess, and not getting around as much as I could wish. ” He did not think he could deceive the old witch, and he certainly could not trust her. “I’m told that bands of eel skin worn around the ankles will draw the poison . . .”