The sky over Chrysopolis had turned a vivid blood-red, long before the sun even kissed the distant horizon. Hesperos found themself wishing they knew more of the gods, enough to know whether that was a good omen or ill. And perhaps enough to know who to pray to.
The feast of Tertalia was about to commence, and every senator, every man or woman of wealth and influence and all of their entourages were preparing for one of the rgest showing-off opportunities of the year. That, apparently, included Shirrin and her staff. To prepare for the feast, they had even been granted the use of a side chamber, small but blessedly equipped with a window. Staring out that window at the cherry-red sky was the only thing that had prevented Hesperos from fainting.
“Helen! Helen! You have deft hands, I need you to help me with this damned neckce!”
Hesperos’s awareness gged behind their mind, the name “Helen” not registering as theirs. When they realized, they moved at once. “Sorry, very sorry.”
Frasalu turned her back to Hesperos, handing them the thin ends of the gold neckce she held in either hand. Gold was the order of the day at Tertalia, symbolically representing the ripe grain of the harvest and practically showing off the wealth of those who owned it. Only on Tertalia would servants be decked in gold.
“I don’t know how the well-to-do manage it,” Frasalu said. “All of this jewelry and pageantry, every day of the year.”
“I presume through much practice,” Hesperos said. An unkind thought rose to the surface about the reputed brutishness of Trabakondai, but they bit their tongue against it. Shirrin was Trabakondai, and she was as dextrous as they came.
“You presume?” Frasalu said. “I thought you were…” She shook her head, which nearly made Hesperos drop the neckce entirely. After a moment it was secure.
“You thought I was what?”
Frasalu, realizing that Hesperos’s hands had left the back of her neck, immediately turned around. Her eyes narrowed. All at once, Hesperos could see the knife-sharp face of the street-thief hidden behind the courtier’s softness that Shirrin had granted Frasalu. They shivered as Frasalu scanned down their body.
“Shirrin changed you too, didn’t she?”
Hesperos nodded wordlessly, suddenly terrified that Frasalu had figured out everything.
“I don’t know what it is with her and making sure all the women in her employ have curves. I still haven’t gotten used to mine, but if it helps at all, keep your knees close together. That stops the rubbing.”
Hesperos pced a hand on their chest, calming their heart. Frasalu had no way of knowing; and even if she did, what was she going to do about it? Would she even care?
“Thank you for the advice,” they said.
“Think nothing of it.”
And that was the end of that. There was still much preparation to be done before the feast began, as each of Shirrin’s servants had their own variation on the autumnal theme. Some wore silks dyed yellow or orange, others white but with a golden trim. Jewelry took a hundred different forms, wheat-stalk pendants and topazes and heavy bracelets of solid brass. Hesperos in particur had spent endless minutes perfecting the arrangement of a certain paste, applied to the brow and cheeks and eyelids, which shone with gold dust.
This was far from the most eborate set of outfits which would be seen at the feast, of course, and if Shirrin had made use of her magic to its fullest extent she could have outshone them all. But a foreign sve, no matter how high her rank, upstaging the wealthiest men in Chrysopolis was an excellent way to attract negative attention. So they were restrained.
“Besides,” Shirrin had said, “Abderus is not the sort of man who is overly attracted to wealth outside of the physical pleasures which it can buy him. A degree of humility may prove attractive.”
And that thought was what utterly stifled Hesperus’s ability to enjoy what might otherwise have been a wonderful evening. All the pageantry, all the dressing-up, all the fancy clothes and singing, for them, had the sole aim of seducing a stranger. Seducing him so that he could ter be maniputed into rising up in rebellion against his own Emperor, at that.
Hesperos was on the brink of vomiting when Shirrin finally arrived. She was dressed simirly to the members of her staff, but with just a hint more extravagance: her clothing was dyed and gold-edged, her jewelry was heavy and embellished with leaf charms, and she had added the extra touch of turning her hair a brilliant golden yellow. Dying one’s hair was one way of celebrating Tertalia, but Hesperos had the feeling that Shirrin had accomplished it using magic as opposed to more chemical means.
In next to no time at all, Shirrin had arranged her entourage into their marching order, this being something that must have, at some point, been practiced. Hesperos was excluded from all of this, and hadn’t the faintest idea of where they would be until the very end, when Shirrin took their arm and pced it in the crook of her elbow. Hesperos was entering the feast-hall right at Shirrin’s side, and in a position she recognized well.
“What is happening?” Hesperos whispered. “You’re having me act like a family member.”
“Mmm, almost,” Shirrin replied just as quietly. “Honored guest, is more like. It just about passes muster that a high-ranked sve might invite a disgraced foreign princess to a feast.”
“Disgraced foreign princess” was the cover story Hesperos and Shirrin had agreed upon. The character of Helen had once been of high station in some tiny kingdom far to the west, and fled for her life when it was conquered by the Sarraniai. It expined why she was unknown in Chrysopolis, how she knew politics and bureaucracy, and why she was of high enough station to be an acceptable invitee while still being forced to rely upon the generosity of a sve.
“Every eye in the pace will be on me,” said Hesperos.
“Including Abderus’s. If you are to be mistress to an Exarch, you will have no choice but to become used to the attention of the masses.”
And then the time for discussion came firmly to an end, as Shirrin’s entourage entered into the grand space where the feast itself was to take pce. The main hall was too small for the scale of the gathering at Tertalia, and so the tradition had become that every year the main of the pace would have vast stretches of linen cloth suspended over it, producing a tent rge enough to seat half a legion. Rows upon rows of benches and couches had been set up, musicians plied their trade in every corner, and the colonnades all around the edges of the space were packed tight with furtive conversations.
As Shirrin and Hesperos emerged into the evening light, the first order of business was to make a p of the whole courtyard, ensuring that every senator and businessman in attendance would be able to see and mentally rank their costumes. This was the part which had weighed the least on Hesperus’s mind, being as it required they do essentially nothing, and yet it proved to be the most terrifying part of the entire evening.
Hundreds, even thousands of eyes scanned Hesperos as they passed by, each and every one assessing their appearance. Was their dress properly suspended? Was their makeup correctly applied? Were they sufficiently deferential and humble for their status as a total outsider? Or, worse, were those watchful eyes not thinking about Hesperos’s appearance at all? Perhaps they were merely wondering who this woman was and why she dared to associate with a Trabakondai sve. Perhaps Helen’s station had already been ruined by virtue of the company that she kept. If Abderus heard the story of who they cimed to be, surely he would reject the attentions of someone so lowly.
It came as almost a relief when Shirrin leaned over and whispered into their ear. “The round is almost done,” she said. “And I see Abderus already. Do you see him?”
Hesperos searched around, but it was a doomed quest. There were a million costumed men who could have been an Exarch, and they had no idea what to even look for. They shook their head.
“I suppose you don’t know what he looks like, do you? No, you wouldn’t. He’s to the right and a little behind us, in the costume with the antlers, very hard to miss.”
Hesperos could not help but crane their neck over as far as they could in order to get a glimpse. There was, indeed, a man wearing antlers, though from far away and through a massive crowd it was impossible to gather much more about his appearance than that. The procession could not stop until they had completed their p, which they did shortly.
Shirrin turned around to face her staff. “You are now free to go. Make merry, make friends, represent me well. Peleus will come out to begin the feast soon, and I do not expect a single belly to go un-stuffed.”
There was a general sound of appreciation, and all present scattered, aside from Shirrin and Hesperos. She turned to them.
“Find Abderus. It should be early enough in the evening that he has yet to find a partner for the night, so make certain that partner is you.”
“Of course. Where will you be?”
“My first order of business is to take care of Eteocles. This evening is one of the few nights of the year where it will be believable that he drank to excess, so he will not question when he awakens in a ditch tomorrow morning. Once that is done, I shall be with the Empress.”
She said it all so casually, as if she were describing a trip to the shops. Hesperos had never met a person so utterly unshakable, and it filled them at turns with both awe and profound horror.
“I will know where to look for you, then,” they said. “Good luck.”
“Good luck to you as well,” said Shirrin. And that was all; she slipped away into the crowd and, despite her height, rapidly vanished. Hesperos couldn’t bring themself to move until they were absolutely certain they couldn’t see her anywhere.
The first challenge came before Hesperos even spoke to Abderus; that was the challenge of how to conceal that they had intentions toward him. It was not a difficult challenge, the solution came to them easily as they wove through the crowds, but that the challenges started so soon was not a good sign. In what felt like no time at all, Hesperos stood at the edge of Abderus’s circle of influence.
This was their first chance to get a proper look at the target of their seduction. He was a stocky fellow, with the squarish build common amongst soldiers. But there the simirities ended to any soldier Hesperos had ever met, because Abderus openly presented himself in the Philgeoniai style. His beard was bck and thick and tightly coiled, and he let his hair grow simirly long, with a smattering of golden rings to keep the coils in pce. From the roughness of his skin it could be gathered that he was no idle nobleman either; the damage of sun and hard bor was written all across his body.
The same sort of disdain for typical Macarian standards also showed in his choice of costume. In defiance of the general theme of agriculture and excess, the deer’s antlers decorating Abderus’s head were matched by a full set of furs covering his entire body, a great cloak of skin that made him look like a barbarian. The only evidence of gold was under the robes, in a huge neckce of gold and amber spread across his chest.
Hesperos had cut a gap in the circle of Philgeoniai courtiers by their arrival, a gap which Abderus quickly noticed. His eyes fell upon them with a faint sort of confusion; it was time for Hesperos to deploy their pn.
“Is that really a full set of stag’s antlers? You can see it from across the agora!”
Abderus ughed from his belly. “Two full sets, as it happens. I couldn’t show my face in public with only one!”
There was a round of chuckles from the others, but none found the joke as funny as Abderus himself. By the scent of his breath Hesperos could tell that he was already a little bit drunk, though not so much as to have lost control entirely. Whether that would make the task ahead easier or more difficult remained to be seen.
Hesperos decided to say something fttering. “It is rare indeed to see a man of high station, especially not one so high as an Exarch, who is willing to lower himself from the absolute highest of presentations. Perhaps the world would be a better pce, were such humility more common.”
Abderus nodded sagely. “Perhaps it would. But as, it seems I have failed in my task.”
“Why do you say so?”
“Because you recognized me as an Exarch! Will I st the whole evening without being mistaken for some petty senator? I certainly hope not.”
“Ah,” said Hesperos, grinning uncomfortably. “My sponsor pointed you out to me. That’s how I recognized you.”
“I see, I see,” said Abderus. Suddenly, his attention swung around. For a moment, Hesperos became certain that they had failed, that some greater beauty had caught his attention.
“The Emperor arrives.”
The Emperor did indeed arrive, and he had the most eborate costume of all. Even the base yer, a full suit of legionary’s armor fully gilded, would have been extravagant. But on top of that, like a fine statue, Peleus was decorated with twining vines and palmate leaves, all themselves crafted from gold and copper wire. Every one of the Emperor’s movements was careful and slow, so as not to damage any part of his accoutrement.
Fnking Peleus, in the pce of his guards, were two figures. On his right was the Patriarch of the Church in his pin white woolen robes, struggling under the weight of the brass Tertalia Bell, slung across his shoulder like a hammer. On his left was a young girl, younger than first blood, leading a mb. With effort visible even from halfway across the agora, the Patriarch took the bell in both hands and swung, then swung again and again. The clear note that rang out signified the official beginning of the feast.
At the center of the courtyard, around the massive wooden pilr holding up the highest point of the cloth roof, was a small altar, carved with countless agrarian scenes, all symbolic of Tertal the Mother. It was there that the trio walked, and around it gathered all of the attendants of the feast. Again and again the Tertalia Bell rang, and from all across the city, the lesser bells of the common feasts rang out in reply. The crowd of bureaucrats and senators formed a huge ring, many lines thick, around the central opening in which stood the Emperor, the Patriarch, and the goatherd-girl. Abderus, and Hesperos alongside him, had a front-row viewing.
As the girl led her charge to lie down upon the altar, the Patriarch rang the bell one st time, then set it down and threw up his arms to the air as he spoke a rousing prayer to Tertal. No doubt this was the only time he ever did so; though the Patriarch was, in theory, in command of the whole of the Macarian Church and the worship of all of its gods, he always enacted his rituals from the main temple of the Golden Lord.
Meanwhile, once the goat was in pce, the little girl solemnly handed to the Emperor a bronze bde, barely longer than his hand but razor-sharp. He took her pce at the animal’s side and waited for the Patriarch to finish. When he did, all eyes were on the Emperor.
He pced the bde against the goat’s throat. One swift motion, aimed with precision, would sever artery, vein, and windpipe all in one. The animal would die instantly and in total silence. For several breathless moments, Peleus adjusted and re-adjusted the angle of his hand upon the bde and the bde upon the throat. Then, finally, he moved.
The sound was horrible, a bleating squealing scream of agony as the bde bit into flesh but did not kill. Goat’s blood sprayed across the stone and, as the animal thrashed, onto Peleus’s perfect golden armor. His other arm moved swiftly, pinning the goat down by the chest as he moved in with the knife yet again, sawing deeper into the flesh of the sacrificial target. And yet it still failed to die, piteous noises ringing out across the courtyard. Peleus quivered in anger, adjusting the force of his grip before pulling the bde back and sinking it down to the bone in the animal’s neck. Then, at st, it died.
An ill omen if ever there was one, and even as the gathered crowd scattered to their various feasting-spots, an ill mood and dark mutterings flitted amongst them. Hesperos remained quiet, for they were beginning to understand. To sacrifice an animal perfectly requires a sure and steady hand; and what better way to rob a man of his sureness, than by robbing him of sleep? Shirrin was exhausted, she had told Hesperos, because she had spent more nights guiding Peleus on some ritual than she had actually resting.
But that was besides the point. Hesperos had a mission to complete. They kept pace with Abderus until he sat down for the feast. Hesperos asked if they could take the seat next to him, and he agreed. The first topic of conversation was obviously Peleus’s failure to perform.
One of Abderus’s courtiers, a thin, elderly personage whose name Hesperos had failed to catch, had a strong opinion. “It’s the witch, it’s obviously the witch. What did the Emperor expect would happen when he started to cart around a foreigner and a sorceress as his most prized advisor?”
Hesperos remained silent, partially out of an understanding that that was the desired action for a pretty woman at a feast, and partially due to a ck of interest in having to defend or attack their own mistress.
“Is it not his right as Emperor,” Abderus said through a mouthful of bread, “to keep as sve a captured enemy? And it isn’t as though the gods have any great fear of magic!”
“But a foreigner!” said the courtier. “Do you really suppose that this ‘Witch-Queen’ pays obeisance to the gods in the right way? And do not pretend that he does not listen to her! Why, for all we know, the Trabakondai demand that sacrificial offerings cry out in pain, and he has chosen to do it their way!”
“Do you know much of Trabakondai religion, Darius? I must compliment your learnedness if that is the case.”
Darius gritted his teeth, revealing a scattering of golden repcements. “That may be only a supposition, but that is all anyone can say about the witch! Suppositions. None know her ways, other than that they are barbarian.”
Abderus swallowed a bite of fig, then turned to Hesperos. “I might not be so hasty. There is at least one person here who might know a thing or two about the Witch-Queen. Unless I was mistaken that that was you in her entourage?”
Hesperos nearly choked on a sip of wine as their heart beat rapidly and their skin felt suddenly tighter around their flesh. “No, that was indeed I,” they said.
“Then tell us what you think of this question.”
“Why are we asking a woman for her opinion?” Darius grumbled.
“Because a woman’s opinion backed up by experience is better than a man’s wild specution,” said Abderus. “Go ahead.”
Hesperos thought carefully. What would Abderus expect? A tirade about the iniquities of ‘Helen’s’ host? A few trite comments? Rambling about the handsomeness of her servants and how good she was at weaving? They gnced up into Abderus’s eyes, searching for an answer, and found only a sort of genial openness, which could have meant almost anything. Why had Abderus asked for their opinion in the first pce.
The answer came immediately. Because he wanted to hear it. Consciously or otherwise, he was judging them by their response. It was how Hesperos would have acted towards a person who, for no apparent reason, had stuck herself firmly to their side. Which meant that, whatever they said now was almost certainly destined to color every other interaction that Hesperos had with Abderus until the end of the mission, success or failure. The correct course of action became obvious.
“To tell the truth, I have spent little time around Shirrin, and I have never seen her engage in sacrifice. But I have seen Peleus, and enough of him to understand him. Peleus is a practical man, intelligent in the ways of maintaining control. I cannot say whether he is enamored by Shirrin’s practice as you believe, but I know he would have to be either a fool or a fanatic to make a show of his favoritism so publicly, and I know for a fact that he is neither of those things. Bellerophon’s faction—the Defiantists, I believe they’re called—have been nipping at his heels for years, and this will be exactly the sort of downturn that they will seize onto like a hound seizing onto a stag. I admit that it is possible that Peleus may be in some way overly fond of her, but I think that would be because he covets the power that he believes her magic can bring him, nothing more. Oh, and there’s no carnal feeling between them, that much at least I know. If everything else I say is wrong, then in that I am right.”
It was not until Hesperos had finished, and they had a moment with which to catch their breath, that they realized that they had just stunned every single person within listening distance. The source of that stunning ranged from awe, for Abderus, to rage, for Darius, but all were stunned.
“Well I’ll be. How did you… who are you, exactly? I haven’t even learned your name, but apparently I’ve been sitting next to a woman schor this whole evening.”
“My name is He— Helen,” Hesperos said. “I was a princes of Iathines once, though that country was subsumed by the Sarraniai not too long ago, so it is only by luck and the grace of the Witch-Queen that I am not destitute. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Abderus, Exarch of Philgeonia.”
Abderus remained frozen a moment longer, and Hesperos worried that they had ruined it. Then he tossed his head back and ughed. “Well, well, what a fool am I, sitting next to a princess without realizing it! I see the nobility in your carriage now, don’t you worry. Tell me, what do you know of Philgeonia? My people have been bulwark against Sarrania for generations.”
“I know a little,” Hesperos said tentatively. “I’ve heard tell of rebellions against the Emperor, of ancient cults which still survive to this day.”
Abderus grimaced at the mention of rebellions. “Such grim things they expose you princesses to. Perhaps I’ll tell a lighter story. Perhaps the story of Darius trying to marry off his daughter, eh, what do you think of that?”
As Abderus began his tale, Hesperos listened, occasionally making their own interjection. They ughed, they joked, they slowly built a greater and greater confidence. This was not a doomed attempt after all. Abderus clearly liked Helen in more ways than one, and to her shock Helen found that she began to like the Exarch back. Through the bring noise of the feast and the hazy smell of smoke, she became more and more certain: this was Helen’s element.
SaffronDragon
