Page 17 of Play of Shadows
I gave her a small bow. ‘Lady Shariza, allow me to declare that meeting you has been, without question, the highest pleasure ofthis entire evening.’
She leaned closer to the bars, allowing me to see through her gossamer veil to the dark copper skin of her cheekbones as she smiled. ‘That,I do believe,’ she said. ‘And for the sincerity of your compliment, along with the other small amusements you provided on our journey, I will offer you one piece of advice: no matter what you have seen or heard tonight, no matter how congenial his Grace or I may appear to you,neverassume that the danger has passed– because from this moment forth, Damelas Chademantaigne, nowhere in this city is safe for you, and the stage least of all.’
Chapter 8
The Royal
The apartment Beretto had graciously shared with me since our first meeting a year ago had little to recommend it. In winter it was too cold, in summer too hot, thanks to the paper-thin walls, which also meant you could hear a man farting two floors down. Late at night, an innocent could learn of every possible sexual position and style without leaving the comfort of his own living room, simply by listening to the running commentary accompanying the endless grunts, growls and groans drifting through the building.
And the smells. . .
Saint Shiulla-who-bathes-with-beasts,the smells!
I often wondered how the sign-carver engaged to make the plaque bolted to the front of the building had managed to stop laughing long enough to inscribe the wordsThe Royalupon it.
Our pitiful tenement did, however, have two virtues of note: first, a dumbwaiter system that ran from basement to roof, doubtless intended for the original kitchen staff in the basement to provide hot meals to their masters in the above-stairs apartments. Those long-ago cooks had since been replaced by a singularly foul-tempered, if crafty, woman who insisted her lodgers call her ‘Mother’. She lived surrounded by an array ofdevious traps to keep out anyone fool enough to try to filch her supplies, which she would, for a price, supply to the denizens of the Royal. These included the occasional roast chicken (if we were lucky) or some kind of pigeon- or rat-based stew if we weren’t. Alongside these– or perhaps because of them– Mother offered large quantities of dubiously obtained liquor and pleasure drugs.
When I’d first moved in, Beretto had introduced me to Mother’s ‘system’, which involved first opening the dumbwaiter door to sniff whatever was wafting up the shaft to assess what was on the menu that night. Next, you would place on the wooden platform the appropriate fee – in a flagon, if we wanted liquor, a saucer for dreamweed, or a bowl, if rat stew was the dish of choice. How much of the requested goods came back up the dumbwaiter was based on how generous we’d been and how irritable Mother was feeling that night.
Mostly we used the dumbwaiter to buy booze after a bad night at the theatre. Beretto tended to get us better deals than our fellow Royal tenants on account of his willingness to bellow outrageous sexual propositions down the shaft. Mother apparently found these endearing.
The second virtue of our apartment was that while the rooms were horribly cramped, those on the top floor were arranged around a single long hallway that made a surprisingly good fencing piste.
‘Tits up!’ Beretto called out amiably as he knocked the point of my blade out of line.
‘Tipsup,’ I corrected in response to his reminder that I had yet again let my point fall too low. ‘You seriously think the solution to my problems is to challenge Duke Monsegino to a duel?’ Panting from exertion, I kicked off my back heel and attempted another lunge.
‘Not the way you fence,’ Beretto replied, easily batting asidemy clumsy attack with the strong forte of his own weapon. All the while, he drank from the flagon of red he’d inveigled out of Mother. I watched despondently as my roommate tossed his fencing sword into the air, swapped the flagon to his right hand while catching the grip in the other, and proceeded to fight me left-handed.
‘And how exactly is showing me up supposed to help?’ I asked, struggling to parry the flurry of dainty, almost lazy attacks Beretto sent my way.
‘Stoppretendingto fence and just fence, Damelas,’ was his customary slurred rebuke, followed shortly thereafter by the sloshing of the flagon.
Whoever scored a point had to keep drinking until the other scored on him. The longer you held the flagon, the drunker you got and, presumably, the sloppier your technique became, thus offering more opportunities for your opponent to score.
Beretto tended to get very, very drunk during these bouts.
‘You’re actually a good swordsman, you know,’ he said.
I attempted an envelopment, bringing the point of my weapon around Beretto’s blade in a semicircle to attack against his outside line. ‘I’m a terrible swordsman,’ I said as Beretto turned his point to follow mine, thus disabling the envelopment and allowing him an easy thrust to the inside of my forearm.
‘No, no. You’re good. Or you could be good, if you’d stop pulling your attacks at the last instant. You’re not going to hurt me with a blunted tip, Damelas.’
‘I’m not holding back!’
‘You’re a good actor, too,’ he went on, batting away my protestations as casually as he was parrying my thrusts, ‘but you overthink everything. You keep trying toplaythe part instead ofbecomingthe character. You let the script control you, when the lines should be no more than servants to your performance.’
‘I doubt anyone thinks I let the lines control me tonight.’
Beretto stopped suddenly, dropping his own point entirely. ‘You must’ve stumbled onto something, Damelas– something about the vendetta between Pierzi and Corbier that our new duke doesn’t want made public.’
Seeing an opening, I tried a quick lunge, only to have my blade disdainfully knocked away. My grandmother would have clipped me upside the head for falling into such an obvious trap, followed by a lengthy recounting of her own duels as a Greatcoat. I could almost imagine her there, leaning against the wall behind Beretto in her long brown leather coat, watching my eyes, searching within for some spark of the daring that had made her famous.
I’m sorry I was never able to live up to your expectations of me, Grandmother.
‘What could the duke possibly fear in the fumbled lines of a failed actor?’ I asked Beretto. ‘I’m no Veristor.’
‘Neither’s Abastrini, but that doesn’t keep him from getting laid three times a night.’ A lurid grin came to Beretto’s bearded face. ‘Speaking of which, tell me more about this entrancing Black Amaranth of yours.’
