Beta paranella was a colourless, tasteless alchemical powder also known as 'the night friend'. It was popular with rich people of a nervous disposition, who took it to ease themselves into deep, restful slumber. When mixed with alcohol, beta paranella was rapidly effective in tiny
quantities; the two substances were as complementary as fire and dry parchment. It would have been widely used for criminal purposes if not for the fact that it sold for twenty times its own weight in white iron.
'Gods, that woman had the constitution of a war-galley,' said Locke. 'She must have started ingesting some of the powder by the third or fourth hand ... probably could've killed a pair of wild boars in heat with less.'
'At least we got what we wanted,' said Jean, removing his own powder reservoir from his coat. He considered it for a moment, shrugged and slipped it into a pocket.
'We did indeed ... and I saw him!' said Locke. 'Requin. He was on the stairs, watching us for most of the hands in the middle game. We must have aroused a personal interest.' The exciting ramifications of this helped clear some of the haze from Locke's thoughts. 'Why else send Selendri herself to pat our backs?'
'Well, assume you're correct. So what now? Do you want to push on with it, like you mentioned, or do you want to take it slow? Maybe gamble around on the fifth and sixth floors for a few more weeks?'
'A few more weeks? To hell with that. We've been kicking around this gods-damned city for two years now; if we've finally cracked Requin's shell, I say we bloody well go for it.'
'You're going to suggest tomorrow night, aren't you?'
'His curiosity's piqued. Let's strike while the blade is fresh from the forge.'
'I suspect that drink has made you impulsive.'
'Drink makes me see funny; the gods made me impulsive.'
'You there,' came a voice from the street in front of them. 'Hold it!'
Locke tensed. 'I beg your pardon?'
A young, harried-looking Verrari man with long black hair was holding his hands out, palms facing toward Locke and Jean. A small, well-dressed crowd had gathered beside him, at the edge of a trim lawn that Locke recognized as the duelling green.
'Hold it, sirs, I beg of you,' said the young man. 'I'm afraid it's an affair, and there may be a bolt flying past. Alight I beg of you to wait but a moment?'
'Oh. Oh.' Locke and Jean relaxed simultaneously. If someone was duelling with crossbows, it was common courtesy as well as good sense to wait beside the duelling ground until the shots were taken. That
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way, neither participant would be distracted by movement in the background, or accidentally bury a bolt in a passer-by.
The duelling green was about forty yards long and half as wide, lit by a soft white lantern hanging in a black iron frame at each of its four corners. Two duellists stood in the centre of the green with their seconds, each man casting four pale-grey shadows in a crisscross pattern. Locke had little personal inclination to watch, but he reminded himself that he was supposed to be Leocanto Kosta, a man of worldly indifference to strangers punching holes in one another. He and Jean squeezed into the crowd of spectators as unobtrusively as possible; a similar crowd had formed on the other side of the green.
One of the duellists was a very young man, dressed in fine, loose gentleman's clothing of a fashionable cut; he wore optics, and his hair hung to his shoulders in well-tended ringlets.
His red-jacketed opponent was a great deal older, a bit hunched over and weathered. He looked active and determined enough to pose a threat, however. Each man held a lightweight crossbow-what Camorri thieves would call an alley-piece.
'Gentlemen,' said the younger duellist's second. 'Please. Can there be no accommodation?'
'If the Lashani gentleman will withdraw his imprecation,' added the younger duellist, his voice high and nervous, 'I would be eminently satisfied, with the merest recognition?
'No, there cannot] said the man standing beside the older duellist. 'His Lordship is not in the habit of tendering apologies for mere statements of obvious fact.'
'... with the merest recognition? continued the young duellist, desperately, 'that the incident was an unfortunate misunderstanding, and that it need not?
'Were he to condescend to speak to you again,' said the older duellist's second, 'his Lordship would no doubt also note that you wail like a bitch, and would enquire as to whether you're equally capable of biting like one.'
The younger duellist stood speechless for a few seconds, then gestured rudely toward the older men with his free hand.
'I am forced,' said his second, 'I am, ah, forced ... to allow that there may be no accommodation. Let the gentlemen stand ... back to back.'
The two opponents walked toward one another - the older man
marched with vigour while the younger still stepped hesitantly - and turned their backs to one another.
'You shall have ten paces,' said the younger man's second, with bitter resignation. 'Wait then, and on my signal you may turn and loose.'
Slowly he counted out the steps; slowly the two opponents walked away from one another. The younger man was shaking very badly indeed. Locke felt a ball of unaccustomed tension growing in his own stomach. Since when had he become such a damned soft-hearted fellow? Just because he preferred not to watch didn't mean he should be afraid to do so ... yet the feeling in his stomach paid no heed to the thoughts in his head.
'... nine ... ten. Stand fast,' said the young duellist's second. 'Stand fast... Turn and loose!'
The younger man whirled first, his face a mask of terror; he threw out his right hand and let fly. A sharp twang sounded across the green. His opponent didn't even jerk back as the bolt hissed through the air beside his head, missing by at least the width of a hand.
The red-jacketed old man completed his own turn more slowly, his eyes bright and his mouth set into a scowl. His younger opponent stared at him for several seconds, as though trying to will his bolt to come flying back like a trained bird. He shuddered, lowered his crossbow and then threw it down to the grass. With his hands on his hips, he stood waiting, breathing in deep and noisy gulps.
His opponent regarded him briefly, then snorted. 'Be fucked,' he said, and he raised his crossbow in both hands. His shot was perfect; there was a wet crack and the younger duellist toppled with a feathered bolt dead in the centre of his chest. He fell onto his back, clawing at his coat and tunic, spitting up dark blood. Half a dozen spectators rushed toward him, while one young woman in a silver evening gown fell to her knees and screamed.
'We'll get back just in time for dinner,' said the older duellist to nobody in particular. He tossed his own crossbow carelessly to the ground behind him and stomped off toward one of the nearby chance-houses, with his second at his side.
'Sweet fucking Perelandro,' said Locke, forgetting Leocanto Kosta for a moment and thinking out loud. 'What a way to manage things.'
'You don't approve, sir?' A lovely young woman in a black silk dress regarded Locke with disconcertingly penetrating eyes. She couldn't have been more than eighteen or nineteen.
'I understand that some differences of opinion need to be settled with steel,' said Jean, butting in, appearing to recognize that Locke was still a bit too tipsy for his own good. 'But standing before a crossbow bolt seems foolish. Blades strike me as a more honest test of skill.'
'Rapiers are tedious; all that back and forth, and rarely a killing strike right away,' said the young woman. 'Bolts are fast, clean and merciful. You can hack at someone all night with a rapier and fail to kill them.'
'I am quite compelled to agree with you,' muttered Locke.
The woman raised an eyebrow but said nothing; a moment later she was gone, vanished into the dispersing crowd.
The contented murmur of the night - the laughter and chatter of the small clusters of men and women making time beneath the stars -had died briefly while the duel took place, but now it rose up once again. The woman in the silver dress beat her fists against the grass, sobbing, while the crowd around the fallen duellist seemed to sag in unison. The bolt's work was clearly done.
'Fast, clean and merciful,' said Locke softly. 'Idiots.'
Jean sighed. 'Neither of us has any right to offer that sort of observation, since "gods-damned idiots" is likely to be inscribed on our grave-markers.'
'I've had reasons for doing what I've done, and so have you.'
'I'm sure those duellists felt the same way.'
'Let's get the hell out of here,' said Locke. 'Let's walk off the fumes in my head and get back to the inn. Gods, I feel old and sour. I see things like this and I wonder if I was that bloody stupid when I was that boy's age.'
'You were worse,' said Jean. 'Until quite recently. Probably still are.'
5
Locke's melancholy slowly evaporated, along with more of his alcoholic haze, as they made their way down and across the Golden Steps, north by north-east to the Great Gallery. The Eldren craftsmen (Craftswomen? Craftsthings}) responsible for Tal Verrar had covered the entire district with an open-sided Elderglass roof that sloped downward from its peak atop the sixth tier and plunged into the sea at the western island's base, leaving at least thirty feet of space beneath it at all points in between. Strange twisted glass columns rose up at irregular intervals, looking like leafless climbing vines carved from ice. The glass
ceiling of the Gallery was easily a thousand yards from end to end lengthwise.
Beyond the Great Gallery, on the lower layers of the island, was the Portable Quarter - open-faced tiers on which the miserably destitute were allowed to set up squatters' huts and whatever shelters they could construct from cast-off materials. The trouble was that any forceful wind from the north, especially during the rainy winter, would completely rearrange the place.
Perversely, the district above and immediately south-east of the Portable Quarter, the Savrola, was a pricey expatriate's enclave, full of foreigners with money to waste. All the best inns were there, including the one Locke and Jean were currently using for their well-heeled alternate identities. The Savrola was sealed off from the Portable Quarter by high stone walls and heavily patrolled by Verrari constables and private mercenaries.
By day, the Great Gallery was the marketplace of Tal Verrar. A thousand merchants set up their stalls beneath it every morning, and there was room for five thousand more, should the city ever grow so vast. Visitors rooming in the Savrola who didn't travel by boat were forced, by cunning coincidence, to walk across the full breadth of the market to travel to or from the Golden Steps.
An east wind was up, blowing out from the mainland, across the glass islands and into the Gallery. Locke and Jean's footsteps echoed in the darkness of the vast hollow space; soft lamps on some of the glass pillars made irregular islands of light. Scraps of rubbish blew past their feet, and wisps of wood-smoke from unseen fires. Some merchants kept family members sleeping in particularly desirable locations all night... and of course there were always vagrants from the Portable Quarter, seeking privacy in the shadows of the empty Gallery. Patrols stomped through the Gallery tiers several times each night, but tliere were none in sight at the moment.
'What a strange wasteland this place becomes after dark,' said Jean. 'I can't decide if I mislike it or if it enchants me.'
'You'd probably be less inclined to enchantment if you didn't have a pair of hatchets stuffed up the back of your coat.'
'Mmm.'
They walked on for another few minutes. Locke rubbed his stomach and muttered to himself. 'Jean - are you hungry, by chance?'
'I usually am. Need some more ballast for that liquor?'
'I think it might be a good idea. Damn that carousel. Another losing hand and I might have proposed marriage to that gods-damned smoking dragoness. Or just fallen out of my chair.'
'Well, let's raid the Night Market.'
On the topmost tier of the Great Gallery, toward the north-eastern end of the covered district, Locke could see the flickering light of barrel-fires and lanterns, and the shadowy shapes of several people. Commerce never truly ground to a halt in Tal Verrar; with thousands of people coming and going from the Golden Steps, there was enough coin floating around for a few dozen nocturnal stall-keepers to stake out a spot just after sunset every evening. The Night Market could be a great convenience, and it was invariably more eccentric than its daytime counterpart.
As Locke and Jean strolled toward the bazaar with the night breeze blowing against them, they had a fine view of the inner harbour with its dark forest of ships' masts. Beyond that, the rest of the city's islands lay sensibly sleeping, dotted here and there with specks of light rather than the profligate glow of the Golden Steps. At the heart of the city, the three crescent islands of the Great Guilds (Alchemists, Artificers and Merchants) curled around the base of the high, rocky Castellana like slumbering beasts. And atop the Castellana, like a looming stone hill planted in a field of mansions, was the dim outline of the Mon Magisteria, the fortress of the Archon.
Tal Verrar was supposedly ruled by the Priori, but in reality a significant degree of power rested in the man who resided in that palace, the city's master of arms. The office of the Archon had been created following Tal Varrar's early disgraces in the Thousand-Day War against Camorr, to take command of the army and navy out of the hands of the bickering merchant councils. But the trouble with creating military dictators, Locke reflected, was getting rid of them after the immediate crisis was past. The first Archon had 'declined' retirement, and his successor was, if anything, even more interested in interfering with civic affairs. Outside guarded bastions of frivolity like the Golden Steps and expatriate havens like the Savrola, the disagreements between Archon and Priori kept the city on edge.
