The ambassador did as he was bid, and I seldom saw a man move so fast. In less than a minute he was gone, box, servants, and escort of jerdiers, right to the Fox Gate, and very glad to get there.
Bailgar and Yashlom, in some unspoken agreement, had walked off along the colonnade, and the bitch hound, aware of trouble, had come to Sorem and leaned on his boot anxiously.
He looked sick with anger, and his hand shook when he reached down to quiet the dog. My own temper was cooling already; I could see something of the joke of it.
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“He’ll pay dearly for that jest of his,” I said. “Let’s not get as riled as he would wish us to.”
“Let’s not,” Sorem said. He did not look at me but played with the ears of the dog. “One thing I deduce from this token of his is that Basnurmon knows the Citadel is spoiling for a fight. The sooner Hessek finds its yeast, the better. We’re losing ground.” He glanced around and called Yashlom back. “Meanwhile, my mother would do better here than in the Emperor’s city. Till this evening I thought her safer there, not implicated in these intrigues of mine, but now-” Yashlom had approached, and Sorem said to him, “The lady Malmiranet. Take two of your men, and go and get her. She’s aware that a quick departure from the Palace may be imminent and will make no delay. Use the Cedar Stair, and give her this ring. It’s an agreed signal between us.”
To say I had not mused on Malmiranet since that solitary meeting of ours would not be quite true. I would have remembered her more often, if other items had not come in the way.
Yashlom was about to depart.
“I elect myself for your two men, Yashlom,” I said to him, and to Sorem, “If the wasp prince means business, a sorcerer might be of more use than a pair of heroes.”
Sorem stared at me a second. He spread his hand.
“I perceive you’ve sworn an oath to put me in your debt.”
“Say that when your empress-mother is safe.”
I reckoned he might be glad of my help, and, in any case, I was curious as to the byways of the Heavenly City. The memory of Malmiranet had flared up in me, too, reaction against webs and tombs, the plot and the waiting.
Perhaps I would discover her differently tonight, eating sweetmeats like the baker’s wife, starting up distrait with alarm, that strange voice of hers (indeed I recalled her very well) rising to a shattered shriek. Well, let me go and see.
Yashlom had paused for me to catch him up. We went across the barrack hall toward the stables, with no chat.
More disguises. There seemed a wealth of them in this place. This time the gear of clerks, plain dark breeches and jacket and short cloak, and a pair of dusty little horses to mount on, absurd after my white Arrow, and fractious to boot.
Yashlom was familiar with the path he would take, and told me, before we rode out in silence, what I needed to be
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aware of. We left not by the Fox Gate but a back door of the garrison in case of watchers.
The sky was growing red behind us, and silver flecked with birds rising from the prayer-towers at the sunset hymn.
There was a pleasant tightness in my guts; I did not visualize that she would start up shrieking, after all.
2
Two miles of terraces rose toward the high walls of the Heavenly City, crowded below with the Palm Quarter and all its lights, clothed toward the top with groves of cypress, mountain oak, and the bluish larches of the south. They said often in Bar-Ibithni: As easy as to get in the Heavenly City, when they meant a woman was not to be had. But in fact, as with most impregnable fortresses, there will always be some way.
There were patrols of Imperial soldiers in the groves, but busy with gossip and counter games and wine; we got by them easily, having left the horses about half a mile below, tethered outside a small temple.
The walls were sixty feet high, in some spots more, black as ink, with purple guard-towers and gold mosaic horses set in along the top. Superb and unbreachable they seemed, without unevenness or crack, the only entrance being the huge gates on the northwest side facing overcity to the harbor, which from here looked as little as a pool, afloat with lanterned dragonflies for shipping. All Bar-Ibithni was visible from the high terrace beneath the wall, a jewel box of colored lamps well worth staring at, if I had had the leisure.
Yashlom had picked us a track around to the east. A stream splashed out here from the rock that underlay the terrace, with a massive cedar, centuries old, leaning above it from the roots of the wall. In the shadow of the tree was a dry well down which we climbed. It had footholds in plenty if one had a guide to indicate them, though it was dark as the pit. Presently, the luminous evening sky a sapphire thumbnail pinned above onto the black, and our feet in sponges, slimes, and disturbed frogs, we had some play with a trick door and got into a passage. Yashlom struck a flint to show me its
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length and the steep stairway at its end, then blew out the flame (with the proper Masrian apology to his god for using naked fire) and we crept on and scrambled up the stairway blind as two moles. I did not relish this, imagining sentries at every cursing step. But, it was proved clever to travel lightless, for the stairway surfaced in the Emperor’s grounds, next to the inner wall and with no camouflage but wild thickets of red mimosa.
So I entered the Heavenly City for the first time, and understood nothing of it, catching only a jumbled impression of dagger-leafed trees, pale pillared walks and mounting lawnss far-off lights and twang of music, and everywhere the smell of night-blooming flowers and the vacuum enclosure of a vast private garden.
A path ran between poplars and through an avenue walled in by hedges higher than a man. Somewhere near a lion gave a throaty growl and had me almost out of my skin.
Yashlom said quietly, “The Emperor’s beast-park is close by. That one is safety caged.” The lion gave another sulky grumble as if to bemoan the truth of the statement.
The avenue opened onto a wide court, which fell away at its northern end in steps. There were five men here, lounging by a tank of ornamental fish, trying to catch them for sport. These imbeciles wore the deep red and gold of the Crimson Palace, Hragon-Dat’s Imperial Guard. As Yashlom and I crossed the wide space, our hooded clerks’ heads modestly bowed, they yapped out ribaldries concerning our supposed calling and our destination. Yashlom had informed me earlier that Malmiranet, trained by her father as a prince would have been to intellectual learning, frequently employed clerks, historians, and similar scholars. These men were seen coming and going about her apartments at all hours, for she was forever at something, reading and dictating notes upon this tome or that, or having herself taught some obscure tongue of the southern backlands. She spoke Hessek, Yashlom had told me, and all the seventeen dialects of the east. Hence, two gray clerks hurrying to her rooms would not excite undue speculation. It had seemed to me a dry occupation for a woman of her appearance, and I had concluded it doubtless an excuse and cover for other pursuits, less dry. As apparently the Imperial Guard had also concluded, judging by their noise. They did not molest us, however. We got down the steps and came to a cluster of buildings of stucco and white stone on a sloping lawn.
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The great wall was out of sight in distant trees, but it was there. I wondered, as I had before, how she had got free of this pretty jail to search me out that night. Surely not through the portal of the slimy well, in those elegant clothes and with a carriage and horses?
Yashlom broke his silence to murmur, “Those in favor with the Emperor live close to him.”
Malmiranet, self-evidently, was as far from him as she or he could get her, in this tiny pavilion. But its convenient proximity to the Cedar Stair had struck me. Probably she had chosen her home with that in mind. There were acacia trees in a cloud about the unlocked gate of the first court. A guard sat there on a marble bench, and I could tell at once that he was tame. A jug of liquor, a cup, and a plate of fine food. He had loosened his belt, and, noting us, only gave a greasy smile and waved us on. It occurred to me that she had been oiling him against such an hour as this.