Chapter 3 #2
Dahin, I hope you appreciate this, he thought.
He went the other way, down along the wall until it changed from the weathered brown stone of the old fortifications to a stretch that was barely half again as tall as Kai and constructed of much smaller blocks, so new the lines of mortar were still sharp and clear.
He found fingerholds in those lines and climbed to the top.
On the other side was the kitchen garden, clumps of lush growth with a few trees to shade the more delicate planting.
He dropped to the soft dirt and found the paths by feel in the dark.
He brushed through some of the fragrant herb beds and his clothes started to smell like dinner.
The archway that led through into the fire-lit kitchen court was the only way out of the walled garden, but from the talk and laughter the cooks and scullery workers were having their own dinner inside the long building on the far side.
Kai drew the barest wisp of a chimera around him, weaving it out of the ground mist and the scent of the garden.
He stepped into the court as a shadow. It wouldn’t work if someone was actively alert for intruders, but there were too many people whose business took them through this court.
Under the large lighted windows, a scatter of young children played a game with wicker balls and wooden cups.
Three soldiers congregated in the doorway, talking idly, waiting on their own meals.
Kai walked silently and unnoticed past stacked pots waiting to be washed, still-warm clay ovens.
The conversation and clatter of dishes continued unabated as Kai went out through the door into the open service gallery.
He followed the brick path past the big cisterns and wash tubs and the web of drying racks and through another archway into the central atrium.
The Old Palace wasn’t large; long ago Bashasa had told Kai that it had started as a fortified family home, been turned into a fortress, eventually became an administrative center for the ruling Prince-heir, selected by acclaim in a complicated negotiation between the artisan guilds, merchants, the noble families, and the garrison.
When the city assembly had moved to its own purpose-built structure, it had been demoted to family home again, but the bar Calis family archives were still kept here along with those of all the other past Prince-heirs.
This open stone-paved court let air flow through the wide windows and doorways in the three stories of rooms, and was lined with tall pots of flowering jasmine.
Lamps hung from various balconies or flanking archways and doors, but the shadows were deep; the awnings that protected the atrium from the heat of the day were still stretched from the rooftops.
The little lamps around the long rectangular pools in the center had already been extinguished, hiding the cushioned benches and the water lilies.
With the guests leaving, the place was already deeply quiet.
Kai knew how private it could be here, with the extended bar Calis family scattered to duties in different parts of the Rising World.
On the first floor were old assembly chambers that had been turned into spaces for gatherings and meetings.
The big windows into those chambers glowed with light and through the lattices he caught sight of figures in bright fabrics.
A steady but low buzz of conversation and no music told Kai the gathering was winding down.
Above it were two floors of guest suites and to the east the household rooms and the Prince-heir’s offices and the archives.
Kai kept the chimera around him like a cloak and went through an archway on the family side.
He passed a couple of strolling servers, released from their duties for the evening, and started up the stairs.
Two soldiers of Bashat’s cadre were stationed in the first landing, behind a latticework screen.
They were talking quietly and so technically awake and alert, but didn’t notice Kai as he ghosted past wreathed in the chimera.
Nobody tried to kill Prince-heirs anymore and the soldiers chosen for their cadres were picked for diplomatic astuteness or family connections now.
Not like the cadres in the bad old days, who would have been alert to deception and strewn gravel or salt on the stair landings to hear the crunch of footsteps.
Kai had chosen this stairwell because from this direction, the entrance to the archive chambers was twenty good steps before the turn into the first receiving room in the family’s private suite.
The latticed door was fortunately set into an archway, so he was able to open it without the two soldiers in the stairwell seeing it move apparently by itself, which would have broken the illusion.
As he slipped through, the chimera started to fade.
It was built of mist and the life of the kitchen garden, and this far from the ground, it lost its vitality.
Kai let it dissipate and made his way through a shadowy workroom with benches against the walls and writing desks scattered around.
It opened into a foyer and the heavy bronze doors to the archive itself.
The lock was a cylinder set with a code based on the Arike poem The Clash of Hearts; Water Against Rock, which was actually not a romance but something about duty to the people and the land.
Kai had never understood any of the metaphors, but he knew it well enough to open the lock, not that it had really been designed as a serious deterrent.
Coded locks like this had once been meant to bar entry to anyone not a “true” scholar but now they were basic exercises for teaching.
The room on the other side of the door was dark, the air warm and still now that the outside vents were closed for the evening. Kai called an imp from the underearth, its tiny body no bigger than a dragonfly, and set it to light the way.
The tall room was filled with metal shelves that came up to Kai’s shoulder, all decorated with scrollwork.
They held books and ornate metal boxes, each containing papers owned by previous Prince-heirs.
He found the shelves where Bashasa’s notes and journals were stored.
The metal was painted black and chased with gold, something accorded to only a few of the much older, revered founders of Benais-arik.
He read the Arike characters inscribed on the labels and quickly found the right box.
Kai had never been much of a scholar; he learned what he needed to know, and what interested him at the moment, but he had read every scrap of paper on this section of shelves.
He sat on his heels to go through the box, the imp landing on his shoulder to watch curiously.
He tried to read only what he needed to find the right documents; he didn’t want to sink into these words again, that familiar writing, the warm voice.
There was no whisper of surviving scent, just the odor of old paper.
Kai was biting his lip by the time he located the right folio. He tucked it away inside his coat and replaced the box, ignoring the way his hands trembled.
He dismissed the imp before he spun the lock to reseal the inner door, then slipped out to the empty corridor.
He had taken four steps toward the stairwell when a familiar voice spoke and a group of people abruptly turned off the landing right in front of him, barely ten paces away. The man in the lead was Bashat.
He was speaking to the woman beside him, “It’s worth the discussion, anyway. If you could find out if the—” Two cadre soldiers trailed him, along with three other finely dressed Arike. Kai froze like a startled lizard, like a fool.
Bashat glanced up and stopped, in mid-step and mid-sentence, at the unexpected sight of a veiled figure. The guards tensed, the other Arike stared, nonplussed but not afraid.
Kai set his jaw. He could run back down the hall and to an outside window and escape.
It would make him an unknown intruder who had broken into the Old Palace; that would muddy the already dirty political waters as everyone assumed Bashat had been targeted by either the Nient-arik or the Blessed.
The easiest way to avert that was to play to Bashat’s ego. Kai swept his hat and veil off.
There was a moment where Kai saw Bashat wonder if he faced a lingering guest he didn’t recognize or an intruder. As their gazes met, the moment turned sharp and still; Bashat realized who Kai was.
For one unguarded heartbeat he was shocked.
In the next instant, his expression was under control.
He had seen Tahren at the council and heard her report; he knew Kai was in the city, and that Kai no longer occupied his old body.
But he had clearly not expected to be confronted with him, at least not here.
He flicked a hand in a subtle “stand down” signal to his cadre.
Still facing Kai, he said to his companions, “Forgive me. This is an honored guest.”
Kai said, “Am I?” It had always been a relief that Bashat had never had more than a familial resemblance to Bashasa.
He had the classic Arike looks, the dark eyes and warm brown coloring, as Bashasa had, but his curling hair was a finer texture, and he wore it shorter and pulled back at the nape.
The shape of his eyes was different, his nose narrow and straight, his lips thinner.
Bashasa had been a generous man with a generous face; Bashat was not.
He wore the more formal version of traditional Arike clothing, all in black silk heavily embroidered over in red and gold. “I wasn’t invited.”
Bashat said, easily, “Then you mistake me.” To the others he said, “If you would excuse me? I must speak to an old family friend.”