I don't know if you've read Jaxius Zem, but the patronising old duffer greatly under-sells Tibrafes. 'Deeply offensive' doesn't even begin to describe the stink you get downwind of the tanneries. Dhalooth and Mei-Juin were pale and tight-lipped, and I probably looked the same as we rode down to the banks of the Lemnaha where the tanners work.
We were coming in on five shandix - one each plus two more for Lady Mei-Juin's luggage (clothes, mainly, plus a curious lacquered box of which she seemed highly protective). I had been expecting M'Lady to demand a palanquin or a wicker carriage, but she mucked in with the rest of us low-lifes and saddled up a shandix, riding man-fashion to my surprise (Ladies of Quality aren't usually taught this). She had also changed into less obtrusive coarse silk clothes. She was still obviously rich, but no longer looking like one of those feather-brained handmaidens at the Imperial Palace, hiding behind a screen and giggling at the latest gossip. At the moment, she wasn't talking to me.
A few days back her insistence on addressing me as an inferior ('Humble Vallans') and my insistence on refusing to address her in the exalted idiom (I managed to make 'My Lady' sound as ironic as possible) had sparked off a heated discussion concerning High Imperial grammar. My point of view: Why had our forefathers fought and died to rid themselves of the Imperial hierarchical system when people like her persisted in treating others as inferiors? I may, I'm afraid, have called her a 'pampered brat'. Her point of view: That I was an ill-educated barbarian with no manners or social graces, that my supposed egalitarian views were only because I was jealous of those better than I and that I was obviously blindly repeating the teachings of Manrupashnar. I'm not sure why the last is a bad thing - I have a lot of respect for the old girl even if I doubt that the Immortals (a group more cliquey than my employers on the Llaza Council) would have let her into the Gardens of Heaven. Dhalooth stayed out of the whole thing, smirking at the Funny Humans. I silently swore that I'd get him back; maybe invite all his relatives from Thalsa to stay with him.
So: Tibrafes and still getting the cold shoulder from M'Lady Mei-Juin (or 'Malishi', to use her disguise name). We had arranged to be housed by the local ruler, one Selvista Purchandri. Purchandri was a big nose in the perfume industry that had grown up to disguise the smell of Tibrafes' other major product, and he had ended up as Secretary-in-Chief on the local ruling body of administrators. He was away on business, so we were attended with polite disinterest by a plenipotentiary, whose studied manner of discrete invisibility was so polished that even I can't recall anything about him, and observation skills are paramount in my line of work.
My observation skills did not fail me, however, when I noticed Mei-Juin/Malishi the next day, sitting by a pond in the ornamental garden with her mysterious lacquered box on her knees. She took something out of it. It was a letter, on blue paper with an iris flower attached to it. I may be an ill-educated barbarian with no manners or social graces, but I knew what this combination meant.
'A letter from an admirer?' I asked, stepping out of the colonnade from where I had been watching. Mei-Juin thrust the letter back into the box and slammed it shut with a guilty start.
'Do you always spy on people,' she demanded, embarrassment being covered up by anger.
I shrugged. 'Yes, that's what they pay me for.'
'Not on this journey, Humb...Master Vallans. You are being paid to escort me to The Minister for the Interior in Tibrafes,' she replied tartly. I hadn't missed the fact the she had addressed me as an equal, but her tone bridled me and I replied with some acid of my own.
'Yes, thank you, I do remember,' I shot back before reining in my irritation. A thought struck me. '"This Minister - is he the one sending you blue paper and irises?'
She nodded. 'We are betrothed,' she said, more softly than I expected. I was surprised at this show of vulnerability from somebody who had been as spiky as a hedgehog since Ashoyin. I decided upon the indirect approach in case I blundered in and made the hedgehog curl up again.
'You'll be there in time for the Laburnum Festival then. An excellent time for a wedding,' I added cheerily. Her answering nod was pathetic in its lack of enthusiasm. My employers aren't known to be great romantics. Money and power is more their style, and they have a string of yen where their hearts should be. Somehow I didn't think they'd send me on this job just to see two people happily married. 'This is a political union, isn't it?'
'If we can ally Nirhamsa with my uncle's faction, it will be highly beneficial to Ashoyin,' she replied, staring forlornly at an ornamental fish swimming lazily in the pond.
For a moment, I almost felt sorry for her. Despite her haughty ways she had a heart somewhere beneath that broken glass exterior, and she was being asked to ignore it. I've done morally questionable things for the League before, and I've long since learned to block out any feeling whilst doing my job - it's the only way to cope - but, as I said, at that moment I think I felt some sympathy for poor Mei-Juin.
Until later, when I discovered the truth.
(c) 2006 The Creative Conclave.
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