The Astrologies

Chapter 7: Cadras' Morning In Merendir

Cadras was still groggy from the effects of the laced cigarette. Deep blue encroached on the night sky from the east, snuffing out the stars as it went. He was vaguely aware of Stanton and a palace guard chattering beside him as they made their way through the third ring of the Imperial Palace, where the offices of the bureaucracy were housed in plain brick buildings, seeming plainer still for their proximity to glorious marble spires of the inner rings. There was still at least an hour before sunrise. He and Stanton had just been interrogated for two hours by the Captain of the Gaurd himself, Althurre Barwell, in a grimy airless chamber that smelled of snuff and stale tea. It had gone well. Stanton had been eager to do the talking. He told the Captain that they had been bewitched into a dreamless sleep and that Halvered had turned into a fog and vanished. It was the most excited that Cadras had ever seen Stanton. Cadras had confirmed Stanton's story, but pointed out that they had no way to tell how Halvered had escaped, because they had been asleep at the time. This had not changed Stanton's conviction about the fog. The Captain, who seemed tired, was not put off by Stanton's obviously inconsistent story.

Cadras had spoken little, sizing up their interrogator. Since Cadras had begun his service in the City Guard, he had laid eyes on the Captain several times, but had never spoken to him. Althurre Barwell had always seemed to be a reasonable man-- fair, strict, and uninspired. Now, meeting him in person, Cadras immediately distrusted Barwell. The Captain spoke in a measured way, but his eyes were evasive, sizing up Cadras and Stanton only when he thought they were not looking, and darting back to his papers whenever they returned his gaze. There was something oily in the captain's manner, almost fawning. Cadras thought that Barwell cared nothing for Stanton's story, and little for Halvered's escape. Cadras had assumed a dull countenance and fixed his eyes on the corner of the desk, while his mind raced to figure out what Barwell wanted from him, until the Captain stood and announced officiously, "You may go."

Cadras could not help sneering slightly as he left. The Captain was a santimonious, unimaginative, insecure man. Aside from learning this, the previous two hours had been a complete waste of Cadras' time.

Althurre Barwell had not cared much for what he saw, either. Stanton was a fool, that was obvious, but it was Cadras who had interested him. Cadras was an arrogant youth, enthralled with his own cleverness. He was a second rate thief and confidence man, hiding in plain sight behind a uniform. Cadras was a member of the officially outlawed, if tacitly tolerated, Poorman's Union. Barwell knew that Cadras had had a hand in Halvered's capture. Cadras was mostly quiet during their meeting, no doubt sullen at having been outsmarted by Halvered-- an older, more clever, thief. Much as Barwell disliked him, Cadras was exactly the man he sought.

When the interrogation ended, Barwell composed a letter to Mardis Dantley, the Captain of the Hidden Guard, praising Cadras' intelligence and discretion, acknowledging the disreputable aspects of his past, but nevertheless recommending enthusiastically that he be removed from his position as a Gaoler and promoted to a position within the Hidden Guard. There— and this was not included in the letter— Barwell was confident that Cadras could be easily bribed by certain important associates.

Cadras started and stumbled when he nearly collided with a streak of blue cloth and black hair flying from a doorway. A young woman also stopped, startled. She looked Cadras full in the face, and then she turned and ran. Her feet made mismatched scuffing and slapping noises on the cobblestones as she fled, and Cadras bent to pick up a single slipper, beautifully made from dark satin. He would not soon forget her face. She was terrified, and there only pleading in her eyes.

"The Princess Celani." The palace guard said this as if he were introducing her. Cadras watched as she disappeared from sight, puzzled by her apparent lack of escort.

"The Imperial problem child." Stanton made this proclamation with satisfaction, as if his knowledge of the Imperial court marked him as a man of importance. "Ever since she was a small child, she's been getting into trouble."

"Problem child, nothing..." the guard lowered his voice and beckoned for Stanton and Cadras to lean in close. "She's a witch."

"Witch or no," whispered Stanton, enjoying their little conspiracy immensely, "I'd take her to bed."

I could get your tongue cut out for that, Cadras thought, but he did not say anything, choosing to enjoy the notion privately. They were nearing the gates. Cadras was tired of Stanton and the guard, and he had more business to attend to before dawn. He handed the slipper to the guard and picked up his pace, leaving the two men behind.

Outside the palace, the city was beginning to wake. There was a warm salty breeze, and Cadras turned into it, winding his way through the back streets toward the bay. This part of the city was packed tightly together, but the buildings were well-built, and the waste was nearly contained in the runoff ditches. Short houses with orange tile roofs stood shoulder to shoulder with two story brick buildings with wrought iron balconies. Through the windows on the top floors, Cadras saw merchants beginning to stir, having their tea before climbing down to their shops. Soon the street would be full of citizens discussing the prices of this thing or that, or the upcoming horse races. They would call to people who passed, trying to lure them in for a look at their wares. Cadras could smell the brewing tea, dark and acrid, and more fashionable than the sweet, herbacious stuff that he drank in the Valley.

Nearer to the docks, the streets narrowed and darkened. The buildings pressed together and loomed above him, cracked and augmented with layers of cloth and pieces of wood. The smells of fish and brine were pervasive. Trails of smoke rose here and there, occassionally from a chimney, but more often haphazardly from cracks and make-shift smoke holes. A pair of cloaked men, hoods up, ambled lazily uphill toward Cadras. Cadras gave them a mocking salute and one of them laughed, or maybe just coughed. They were Poorman's Union.

The street wound back toward the east, and Cadras could see the docks were already bustling. The bay was the shape of a half moon, waning just a bit, and tilted so that one corner stretched almost to the horizon, while the other was not very far from Cadras where he stood. The bay was partially enclosed by rocky fingers jutting out from the chalky cliffs. The stout Sea Wall ran along these bars of rock and extended far into the water, leaving only a narrow a gap, as wide as three or four galleons, into the bay. The far reaches of the Sea Wall ended in gate houses, from which the iron gates could be extended to seal the bay entirely. The gate houses were topped with mighty beacons, the amplified lights of which could be seen miles out to sea.

The Sea Wall, like the inner rings of the Imperial Palace, far exceeded modern ambitions in engineering. The masonry was smooth and precise, and even after the fiercest storms and the changes of a hundred thousand tides, never so much as a crack had appeared in its facade. The gate was treated with some lost chemical that defied the salt and the sea. The Philosophers' manuscripts held no clues to the wonders, and Cadras had read them all. Cadras smiled widely, since nobody there to see him. Soon, he might know the secret of the Sea Wall.

At the far end of the bay sat most of the Imperial Navy-- five galleons and some thirty long ships, all in a deep red wood foreign to the Empire. They had been built twenty years ago by legendary shipwrights in the Far East, at the behest of Emperor Lushar III. He had directed the naval conquest of the Southern Isles, at a massive cost to the empire and to his health, before dying of madness and consumption. The Elder General Malhorren had finished the campaign, bringing a flood of spices, tea, exotic goods, and refugees into Merendir. Now most of the navy sat unused in the bay, while the occassional patrol went out to curtail the piratical ambitions of certain disaffected Islanders.

A few ships had arrived during the night and dropped anchor beyond the sealed gates of the Sea Wall. In the gathering light, the gates had opened, and now the vessels glided across the bay toward the massive docks, which teemed already with longshoremen, Assessors, and merchant crews preparing their own vessels to set sail.

Cadras came to a jumble of wooden stalls built near the piers where small fishing boats were coming in from the bay with the morning catch. Fisherfolk wrestled nets full of writhing shapes off of the boats, heaving them up against their chest and dumping them into barrels. Cadras approached a stall of grey wood. A sinewy man with hollow cheeks and a deeply creased face was sorting fish into troughs built into his counter. A pipe burned next to him, neglected as he stood elbow deep in barrels of brine and wriggling fish.

"Hello, father." Cadras said, and the fisherman looked up and nodded. "How about a game of stones?"