Drakenfeld

Evening Games

It was enjoyable heading back into the tiers of the stadium to see the expressions on the senators’ faces. Leana hobbled up the steps, injured but with her pride intact. Only one of the senators swallowed his own pride and mumbled his congratulations to her, the others remained cool and distant. Some looked as if the event had well and truly ruined their day. Two of them spat on the floor in front of us.

Even General Maxant inclined his head in our direction, acknowledging Leana’s performance. The king, it seemed, maintained the same, remote gaze all afternoon.

We enjoyed the rest of the afternoon’s races at a leisurely pace. I did not want to risk being followed or attacked again – particularly if Leana was partially injured, so I conducted the rest of my questioning at some speed, this time deciding to do it within the tiers of the stadium rather than by the stalls.

At the age of fifty-nine, Senator Gallus was the oldest of the suitors who attempted to charm Lacanta, but he suggested he hadn’t ever been in with much of a chance. There were no games, he stressed – she was polite and affable, and did not successfully get him to vote with any particular motion, despite trying to. ‘She kept on trying to stop the military from their campaigns. She didn’t like war. I can’t agree with such ridiculous sentiments. War is in our blood, after all.’

Senator Litren’s initial bitter mutterings subsided into something sensual eventually, and he spoke of their moonlit walks, tinged with anticipation, as one of his most cherished memories of her. Senator Lobbe, a surprisingly squat man in his forties, and who walked with a noticeable limp, confessed to spending a fortune on gifts for her. But he later found out that Lacanta had given away several of them to her maids or their families. She calmed his rage when he found out, however. ‘She could always do that,’ he breathed, staring into the deep distance. Only Lobbe suggested that Lacanta might, on occasion, query how he intended to vote on a particular piece of legislation. A few times she hoped he would vote in favour of her brother’s laws, or to smooth over some of the warmongering sentiments in the Senate, but his most affectionate times with her did not, he felt, coincide with political requests. That fact had spurred him on somewhat.

The most important part, for me, was that not one of them boasted of or admitted to sleeping with Lacanta. There was the chance they were lying, trying to conceal any connections with her, but I did not believe so, because they each confessed to desiring intimacy with her. They admitted to being rivals for her attention – and yet she had sexual relationships with none.

Yet again I felt I was on the verge of something significant. Why would Lacanta deliberately create the impression that she was sleeping around, despite being a very private and chaste woman? Perhaps there was a benefit in doing so – but why, to mislead others? I could not even make a single connection with General Maxant, either. His potential role in the murder did not seem to fit.

My eyes settled on the one man I had not yet interviewed more thoroughly: King Licintius. If he indeed played a role in his sister’s murder behind the scenes, he had far too much to lose. As well as a beloved sister she was a great political ally, furthering his efforts in the Senate in a way that he could not. But if he had something to hide, why would the king insist I did what I could to find her and permit me access to the most secure building in Detrata? Nothing made sense on that front either.

The mighty general would be the next person to explore further. The fact that he had entered that room first, most likely as some part of an elaborate plan, was the road to understanding just how Lacanta had been murdered, and having seen what they were capable of, I just had to be careful that General Maxant’s men did not get to me first.

We headed home before sunset. I thanked Veron for his guidance today. He remained with the other senators, somehow managing to bask in the victory of Cettrus the Red.

As we walked through the ancient streets, I demanded that Leana put her pride to one side and place her arm around me for support.

‘Just so you know, if anyone attempts a fight,’ Leana said, ‘I am relying on you to do the work.’

‘You know, I’m actually not a bad fighter. You just never let me get any blows in.’

‘I will believe that when I see it.’

The journey home was uneventful. Whoever had been following us at the Stadium of Lentus was no longer here – or, if they were, they were more talented in their methods of surveillance, and they were lost in the thinning crowds. Only gentle streams of people accompanied us home, drunk on the pleasures of the races, calling out the chants from the day and wrapping themselves or each other in the various coloured banners.

The evening was as pleasant as I could have hoped for. The house was busy with three men from the Civil Cohorts, who were settling in to their new, hastily set up offices, and Bellona seemed to have developed a new-found confidence, ordering them about the place, telling them where they could and could not put their little crates of ledgers. Only three of the men were ever permitted inside at once, and late at night there would only be one man, who would remain a point of contact. Veron had also suggested constructing some kind of makeshift gaol nearby, and looked at the city plans to find a suitable location. Though I was happy to share my house with the cohort, the idea of the place turning into a prison did not particularly appeal.

Much to my delight Titiana arrived a little later, wondering how the day had gone.

Bellona cooked a meal for all of us, Constable Farrum and his men included, and we took several couches outside and dined humbly but happily in the garden. I don’t think I’d been as happy in a long time, all of us there under that balmy Detratan evening, faces occasionally walking past the pools of light offered by the lanterns, talking, laughing. Titiana had lost her inhibitions about being seen with me in public, though we were not overly affectionate together. It was progress at least.

At first everyone had seemed on edge, possibly feeling some unease among these luxurious surroundings, but Leana spoke of her time in the stadium, immediately endearing herself to the gathered cohort. People began to relax and eventually a few of them told jokes and drank heavily from the jugs of watered-down wine. Bellona seemed delighted at the many compliments to her food and I heard her laugh for the first time – a warm, hearty laugh.

As for me? I did not want to interfere too much. I knew that if I spoke it might make people feel awkward or on ceremony, and I was more than happy to know that they were enjoying themselves. Their good humour would go some way to blowing away the dark clouds this house had seen with my father’s debts and his suspicious demise.

So I lounged in the background with Titiana, inhaling her jasmine perfume, waiting to be alone with her.

She managed to persuade me to head out with her into the evening, to a ‘tavern of her choice’.

My reaction must have been reasonably dismissive, because she started calling me ‘po-faced’ and ‘pretentious’. I didn’t mind being pretentious – there was nothing wrong with appreciating good things – but I took exception to being called po-faced.

Her teasing grew more and more immature and so I stood up – perhaps with more drama than intended – and said that Lucan Drakenfeld could drink and talk with anyone, in any place. I suspect I was too busy trying to impress her to understand what I was letting myself in for.

Secretly, I was delighted to be going out into the city with her.

The more I grew to know Titiana, the less predictable she became; but as soon as I’d realized that fact, I felt at ease with it. It was nice not to be myself for a while, to escape into being someone else. For one night it felt alluringly unsettling to let go, to be willingly guided by her hand into Tryum’s darker places.

The whole experience seemed like some mythological story. I had seen some strange sights in the underbelly of Venyn City, but Tryum could offer as much, if not more, in the way of debauched proceedings.

Colour exploded across the city. Uncertain of our location, we passed along tall, narrow lanes and compact plazas lit up by braziers and lanterns, so that shadows lurched and waned repeatedly. Cheap street performers wearing masks jumped out from alcoves and archways, chanting at me in foreign dialects. Illicit figures were pushing vials upon those who walked by, practically tearing coins from their grip so that it seemed more like a robbery than a transaction. A curse-dealer came by with leather patches on which to transcribe one’s hatred of another, and there were street drummers and dancers and a dark festival atmosphere. People had painted their faces for the various gods and wore strange outfits made entirely from leaves.

Prostitutes were offering their trade from the side of the street, calling out – almost heckling – the crowds of night-goers. They were not coy about their business, either – both men and women exposing themselves to anyone who might look their way. Their hands crawled up bare legs like insects. But one might see the inherent loneliness of such a business – the vacant expression, the hollow laughter. Tonight their work possessed a raw, animalistic nature; in fact, one couple was engaged in a feral transaction up against the walls of a tavern, either unaware or delighted that they were providing a spectacle.

Titiana laughed at all the goings-on, finding wonder in the sheer variety of offerings. We continued through this dreamlike neighbourhood, one that seemed utterly detached from the Tryum of daytime, and eventually down some steps, into a small underground tavern.

If all the chaos we had seen outside had been condensed into the large room, that would have been – almost – a sufficient description of the place. Surprisingly, those from the senatorial class mixing with the less fortunate didn’t seem to be the Tryum way. Among the soft light of a hundred lanterns, there were battered cushioned couches, amphorae full of wine, cheap food and generally people not wearing much in the way of clothing. Drinks were thrust into my hand, and I refused them; flesh flashed before my eyes. Both women and men made passes at me, but not the kind that one could take as a compliment. Smoke whirled around my head, a heady, herbal concoction. Despite remaining sober, the rest of the evening became a fast blur of images: expressions of numb ecstasy, Titiana kissing me in a darkened corner of a dingy tavern.

At what point the ghost came to me, it is difficult to say. Titiana had gone to find more drink and I was sitting on a stool in one of the rare quiet spaces, away from the music and other people, as I tried to clear my head from the fug of smoke and stench of spilt wine. If there was another partygoer in the room, they had probably passed out, or were sprawling on a couch, intoxicated on some herbal concoction.

Into this relative calm stepped the eyeless man I had seen in the tombs outside Tryum.

His hair was unkempt, his skin pale, his clothing in tatters, yet he moved with the confidence of someone who was doing very well for himself. I rose to meet him, losing my gaze in the vacant spaces within his head.

‘You are Drakenfeld?’ he rasped, barely audible in these surroundings.

‘What do you want?’

‘My wife,’ he replied.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I’m looking for my wife. Have you seen her?’

‘I don’t know who she is, nor do I know who you are.’

It is difficult to gauge the expressions of another when one cannot see their eyes, but nevertheless he seemed disappointed. There was something about his manner, his slumped shoulders, his slightly bowed head.

‘Where are you from?’ I asked.

‘The tombs,’ came his reply. ‘The mausoleums. I… came back from them.’

‘You rose from the dead?’ I asked, incredulous that the words even came from my mouth.

‘I was brought back. A woman greeted me, a rich woman.’ He proceeded to describe Senator Divran, and then his own life as it came back to him. He was the first to admit that he wasn’t entirely certain himself. Though he had no name, he claimed to have once been an important man in the city, a politician or senior administrator; he could not remember the name of the king he served under, nor could he recall his address. All he really remembered were patchy snippets of his life, echoes of his past, but with some clarity he recalled his wife. He asked me once again for my help. He said he had heard my name mentioned about the city as someone who could help the dead.

Who was this figure? Was he a ghost? Had Senator Divran returned him from the dead? I could not say precisely, but if the latter was the case, it wasn’t going to be easy to let him know that his wife had most likely died long ago.

My only suggestion was for him to go back to the mausoleums and scrutinize their facades in the hope that one of them would remind him of his wife – presuming she had been buried alongside him. He left me suddenly when he realized that I could be of little help, and disappeared into the crowd as quickly as he had come.

Had I imagined the whole thing? Had the heady smoke of the room gone to my head? It left open the question: if this ghost’s, or dead man’s, story was real, could Lacanta’s murder have truly been a supernatural act after all? Should Senator Divran be questioned once again?

This was senseless thinking. The ghost surely had nothing to do with the murder, which, as I said to Divran, had the marks of a living human all over it. Unless hard evidence steered me in another direction, I would continue my business with the living.

Much later, deep into the night, after I had driven the ghost from my mind as far as possible, I hauled myself out of the establishment and gasped the blissful, cooler night air. Titiana kissed my face and asked if I was enjoying myself, saying that this was how she liked to spend any free time she had. I couldn’t determine how truthful it was, and how much free time from her family she had.

She was drunk, she was falling over me and, occasionally, when she focused on me properly, she started to cry. Her behaviour was confusing: this was, more or less, what we’d done in our youth, but it didn’t seem the same any more, it didn’t seem as exciting as it used to, and Titiana wasn’t upset back then. She said that this was her life now, but she didn’t seem sincere about it; she said it as if it was a call for help rather than a statement of happiness.

Titiana had not sobered up by the time we returned home. She stumbled through the door and into my bedroom, where she collapsed on the bed and attempted to pull off her dress, all the while asking me to take her. She was not in control of her thoughts. With me almost sober, and Titiana in this state – nothing positive could ever come from such a union. So instead I pulled the blanket across her and kissed her brow before lying down exhausted alongside her.

As the ceiling slowly came into focus, I wondered, sadly, if the dead man would find rest tonight, or if I was right to be so sceptical of the supernatural as I had been through my life.