“Because Redvers isn’t going to sit and wait for the man with the dagger,” Esmond said bluntly. “Listen.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “This morning . . .”
* * *
“Admit the Emerald,” a voice said from beyond the doorway.
The guards weren’t Redvers family slaves, Esmond saw. They were Confed Army veterans, grizzled stocky men with legs and arms like knotted trees. Not the smooth athlete’s muscle Esmond wore, but perfectly servicable . . . and the assegais that glittered in their hands had seen plenty of use.
“Sort of a tall, tow-haired one, looks like a pansy with a sword, sir?” one of the veterans said, grinning and leaning on his shield. “Give us a kiss, pretty boy.”
“Admit him, I said, you oaf!”
“Shall we take his sword, sir?”
“Admit him!”
The veterans straightened to a braced attention. “Sir, yessir!” the other barked. They slapped the blades of their assegais across the bosses of their shields. “Pass, Emerald!”
Esmond straightened his shoulders and walked through the fretted-bronze doors. He’d never been in to Redvers private apartments; they were less gaudy than he’d expected . . . although that was probably his wife’s taste. High coffered ceilings, decent murals—by an Emerald artist, of course—and geometric-pattern floors. Pillars gave out onto balconies overlooking a courtyard of rosebushes and palms, with fountains in the shape of seagods. A dozen silk-cushioned couches of silver-inlaid bronze surrounded a table with cherries, figs, and ewers of wine; a dozen Confederate nobles lounged at their ease. The only thing missing was the bodyslaves who should have been hovering behind the couches, ready to fill cups or fan away a fly or run an errand.
The Emerald brought a fist to his chest and bowed. “Lord,” he said, suddenly conscious of his native accent. “You summoned me?”
His eyes flicked across the assembled nobility. A good ten or twelve million arnkets around the low table . . . but at least twice that in debts. Young Mark Silva, who’d managed to assemble the slowest stable of racing velipads in Vanbert, and bet the family estates on them. Johun Audsley, a famous general and famously bitter former associate of Ark Marcomann, an even more famous general who’d died in retirement and not left a thing to his right-hand man. Tows Annersun, who’d run for every elective office and managed to offend so many highly-placed people that he’d won none of them, despite a fortune in bribes and games and free wine . . . and his esteemed patron Wilder Redvers himself, ex-governor of Solinga Province for the Confederacy, extortionist and thug. A fleshy balding man just on the wrong side of fifty; muscled like a bull greatbeast when he was young, and now with a great sagging belly and wobbly undersides to his arms.
But not entirely a fool, Esmond reminded himself. He’d even been a competent general once, in the western wars a decade back.
He’d also spent every penny he’d wrung out of his province on trying to be elected Speaker of the Popular Assembly, one of the two magistrates who ruled the Confederacy, as much as anyone did. Virtually every well-established noble family in and around the city must have thrown their influence and clientage against him, for him to have lost after spending that kind of money.
And without the opportunities of a Speaker, he was doomed. If his creditors didn’t get him, the lawsuits of the provincials would—they’d be able to attract more than enough patrons in the capital, anxious to bring Redvers down and feed on the estates that would go on the block.
“Do sit down, over there, Esmondi,” Redvers said. “Pour me some wine, and yourself, my boy.”
Little Esmond, the little Emerald, Esmond thought, grinding his teeth as he smiled and obeyed.
“We’ve brought you here to discuss a little matter of politics,” the Confederate noble said.
Esmond managed not to choke on the wine. Politics were for Confederate citizens—rich Confederate citizens, if you went beyond the level of the dole-feeders selling their Popular Assembly votes. Vision took on the clarity of desperation, the same bright hopping focus he’d had before the Five Year Games. One or two . . . no, three of the guests weren’t what they appeared. Purple-edged tunics and robes, yes, but those hard furtive eyes didn’t have the lordly arrogance of the nobles beside them. Gang bosses, he thought. The type who could deliver a ward for a patron, or see that the other side’s canvasers hurt bad or just disappeared. Some of them were as powerful as many Justiciars or generals . . .