The ostensible purpose of the expedition was to buy everything required for a wedding, but the Duke clearly had his own agenda, and in the square of the jewellers, he led them to the most elegant shop in the middle of the long block, where he was received like a visiting prince. He turned to Ser Michael and took him by the hand. ‘You are rich,’ he said. ‘Buy this beautiful young woman a trinket or two.’
‘With what?’ Michael spat.
‘Just choose some things,’ the Duke said, and followed his host through a door which closed behind him.
Sauce, of all people, chose a comb with red and green enamel. The comb depicted two knights locked in mortal combat – dagger to dagger – in lovingly detailed harness, and she took off her hat, put it in her hair, and smiled into a mirror – and then closed her mouth to hide the missing teeth. ‘How much?’ she asked.
A shop boy was sent for sweet tea.
Ser Michael found his lady-love a wild rose in gold and garnets. She loved it, and he loved her. He put it on the padded silver tray.
Ser Gavin wandered from shelf to shelf, and finally chose a pair of bodkins for lacing and a set of buttons – cunning, tiny buttons for a lady’s gown, all filigree with tiny bells hidden inside that made a lustrous sound.
The other knights tried not to damage anything.
The Duke emerged with a tight smile, and he and the jeweller embraced. He examined Ser Michael’s choices and his smile grew broader.
‘On my tab,’ he said quietly.
Sauce paid in hard silver and softer gold, from a bag she produced.
Ser Michael noted that Sauce and the Captain exchanged a long glance as the bag was closed and she stowed it away.
In the square of the glovers, all discipline broke down, and the knights began to spend money like the mercenaries they were. Gloves were one of a soldier’s most precious possessions – along with boots, an item upon which a man’s comfort depended utterly. Good gloves were essential under gauntlets and just as necessary for archers.
Master Baldesce, Master Mortirmir and the nuns were also buying gloves, and by a gradual process of social osmosis, they were absorbed into the company and joined the knights, squires and pages at a tavern for wine.
The Duke walked from cup to cup, dipping the point of his roundel dagger into each pitcher before the wine was served, and the pages served it themselves. Michael could see his Captain was taking no chances.
Young Baldesce turned to Mortirmir. ‘He’s a magister! Look at his casting. Clean!’
Master Mortirmir watched the Duke’s simple working with an avid curiosity.
After wine, they visited armourers. The Captain went from shop to shop for an hour, and while Kaitlin might have been bored, her husband-to-be entertained her by singing romances in a street-side wineshop. A pair of Morean street singers were attracted – they listened first, and then began to play accompaniment so good that all the knights who weren’t avid for new armour applauded, and the pages were smitten. Then the street singers sang. The knights distributed largesse, and by the time the Captain had been carefully measured for a new breast and back in hardened steel, a small theatre had been set up and one of the ancient plays was being performed by a troupe of mimes in antic clothes.
Kaitlin, despite her pregnancy and fatigue, was delighted.
The Duke stopped by the singers and engaged them for the wedding party, and the actors as well. He paid them a fair amount of money, which was as well, because all of them subsequently received visits from Bad Tom that might have caused them to question their luck.
Every knight, man-at-arms and page had his sword sharpened in the street of cutlers, and the young Etruscan watched, delighted, as twenty mercenary swordsmen tested blades, so that wherever one looked, there was the soft slip of a balanced blade through the air – wrist cuts, overhand thrusts, imbrocattae. The sword smiths earned more hard coin in an hour than they usually saw in two weeks.
The Duke prowled the street like a predator in search of prey, swishing an arming sword through the air, admiring a brilliantly made Tartar sabre in green leather, fondling a roundel dagger – until he settled on one shop which was neither grander nor shabbier than the rest.
He went in. There were a dozen swords on the walls, and he could see the workshops built into the stone of the hillside beyond and smell the fires and the metallic odour the grinding wheels gave off. The master cutler came out in person, wiping his hands. He was small, wiry, and looked more like a schoolmaster than a smith.
Ser Michael stood at the Duke’s shoulder. He was part of an impromptu conspiracy – with Tom and Sauce and Gavin – to keep the Captain under their eyes all the time. He was odder than usual; too often drunk, and too often irritable.
But not in the cutler’s shop. There, he was more elated.
‘You make the best blades,’ the Duke said.
The cutler pursed his lips. ‘Yes,’ he agreed, as if it displeased him. ‘That is, Maestro Plaekus makes them, and I turn them into weapons.’ He frowned again. ‘What is it you want?’
There followed a long exchange. Apprentices ran for wooden forms, for swords – at one point, a dagger was borrowed from a Morean nobleman’s house two streets way.
In the end, the Duke settled on a length, a hilt, a pommel, blade shape, a cross section, a weight. And a matching basilard.
‘Jewels?’ the cutler asked.
Michael had seldom seen so much disdain packed into one word.
‘No,’ said the Duke. ‘Ghastly idea. But red enamel. Red scabbard.’ He smiled. ‘Red everything. And gold.’
The cutler nodded wearily. ‘Of course, gold.’
The Duke leaned forward. Michael saw the change – a subtle change in body language, a change in tone. He didn’t know what it meant, but he’d seen it happen once or twice.
‘May I ask a personal question?’ the Duke said.
The cutler raised an eyebrow, as if the ways of the gentry and the killers who bought his wares were so alien that he couldn’t be expected to know what was next. ‘Let’s ee, my lord,’ he said smoothly.
‘Wasn’t the Emperor’s magister once one of your apprentices?’ the Duke asked.
The cutler sighed. ‘Aye.’ His Morean was difficult to follow, accented the way the Morean islanders spoke. ‘He was here twenty years.’ He frowned. ‘More than an apprentice.’
The Duke nodded. ‘Do you – perhaps – have anything of his?’
To Ser Michael, it was that moment when your opponent was a little too eager to draw the next card. The Duke was up to something.
‘When he left-’ The cutler shrugged. ‘He left all his work things. When he came into his powers.’ He looked away. ‘He was already thirty years old. Very late.’
Wine was served, and sugared nuts.
A tall woman appeared with a bundle. ‘Two work smocks, and a cap.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘I made him the cap, before he was so high and mighty. Kept sparks out of his hair.’
The Duke took the cap carefully – almost reverentially. ‘Such a famous man,’ he said.
Harmodius released control of his host and slammed his aethereal fist into his aethereal palm.
The Captain was shaken – scared, and betrayed. ‘How dare you!’
Harmodius raised an aethereal eyebrow. ‘You want rid of me. I want to be out of you. I have a plan. Sometimes, I need your body to make it move along.’
The Captain felt as if he might vomit. But it was – again – his body. He surfaced not in conscious control and found that he was sitting in a chair. In the moment of confusion, his body had apparently let go a cup of wine. Ser Michael was looking at him as if he’d grown a second head – Gavin was standing with a hand on his shoulder.
‘Brother?’ he asked. ‘You were not yourself.’
The Megas Ducas grunted. ‘You don’t know the half of it,’ he said.
He looked down, and in his right hand, wound around his index finger, he had a hair – a thick, coarse black hair.