An imperial visit demanded a certain amount of theater. Nymaut and Bocce danced an eternal waltz of power and politics across their borders as two of the oldest countries in the world formed when Blessed Mat left the lighthouse to explore beyond the sea. Thousands of years later, when the Shrieking Revolution left the Great Dome with no government and no king, Bocce’s emperor restored order to Nymaut by creating the High Court. The mages kept their statehood, their libraries, and the rights to admit Ny’s children to the temple -- but only the Emperor could choose archmages from among them.
Emperor Mat had named only two in Ciamon’s lifetime: Journey and Diamondhands. Archmages Tillbauch, Kojan, and Redbeard had fifty years on the High Court between them. Officially, the High Court seated nine total, but the Emperor had been slow to fill the empty places in the decades following the Lost Court.
What would the Emperor do if he knew Maeva Sininen was still alive? Ciamon wondered.
His hands stilled on the laces of his shirt. The weight of the Witch Massacre settled somewhere near his stomach while stray thoughts of becoming an archmage bubbled to the top of his head. When Ciamon looked into the cracked mirror hanging above the basin in his room, neither Caelt nor Kaltevus stared back. With his full beard and the haunted look in his eye, he utterly believed he was a refugee who’d escaped near-death. The Grand Duke was likely to believe it, too.
Maybe that’s the point of the evening.
A sour taste started in his mouth. It took Ciamon a moment to recognize the beginnings of nausea — he still hadn’t broken his fourth-day fast. When the end-day bells rang and the Great Dome’s kitchens crackled to life, the smell of the cook fires nearly sickened him.
The Great Dome boasted two dining halls that could house the whole of the temple for feasting days. The open roofed Hall of the Whale held a skeleton of the long dead animal suspended above the trestle tables by silver wire spun so fine, it barely gleamed in the lamplight. Mages ate their meals here, waited on by acolytes of the temple who served them from trays brought from the Dome’s kitchen.
Archmages dined at the Hall of the Cabinet, an intimate tower room atop the Rotunda with one wide window overlooking the Hall of the Whale. Only their invited guests could eat there. Food made its way to the chamber through a miniature Ascension built into the wall to bear serving trays the archmages lifted themselves. Ciamon had only ever seen the bottom of the contraption when he took his turn at the cookpots.
A familiar sense of wonder rerturned to him as he climbed the spiral staircase up to the Hall of the Cabinet. Mages coaxed opulence from the old stone with frescoes and friezes all along the walls, and added onto it with carpet for the steps and gleaming brass handrails. When he stood outside the double doors engraved with the names of every archmage ever to serve between the Dome, that bubble of a thought returned to him. Ciamon looked for a blank place on the bronze where his name might go one day. Maybe even the new one Archmage Redbeard had spoken of.
Archmage Diamondhands admitted him through a narrow crack between the two panels, he was surprised to see she wore a simple gown of white wool with only her necklace for decoration. Up close, the stones looked barely bigger than the tip of Ciamon’s pinkie.
“Caelt,” she said, stepping to one side to allow him into the room. “How long has it been? Days? Hours.”
“‘Bout a thousand and some, Ma’am,” he answered in Caelt’s exact pitch and timber. Hearing his Ammarish accent anchored his thoughts. A stableboy didn’t talk like a nobleman. A groom of the Great Lord would never address a woman without a gendered honorific. Their women divided by age and marital status. The men by beards and blades.
Diamondhands studied his hips. She turned to call across the hall to where archmages Tillbauch and Kojan stood beside a sideboard laden with cups and bottles. “Shouldn’t he be wearing a knife, at least?”
“We don’t let the first-years carry knives,” Tillbauch called back. He looked up from the mortar and pestle in his hands to study Ciamon from foot to face. When he arrived at the beard, the archmage snorted. “Sol put too much dye in—might as well have painted the hair on.”
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“It’ll be dark,” Archmage Everly soothed. She poured a splash of jewel-colored wine into a crystal glass, and sipped it. A moment later, she spat it back in the cup and walked away from the board with the bottle in hand. “Sour. Cheap. You couldn’t spare something finer from your cellar for the occasion? With the cut you take from the docks, I’d expect at least an Aleegash.”
“You’re very generous when sharing my things, Bev,” Tillbauch snapped at her. “I didn’t invite this yindin to dinner, and I’m not wasting one more drop of alcohol on anything to do with Ammar, got that? Not one more drop. Watch, he probably poisons it.”
“Hsst. No more of that talk or I’ll stick you back in salus until you sweat out the hate,” Diamondhands snapped. She guided Ciamon by one elbow over to where Tillbach stood beside a rounded stone wall. She switched into a stiff, formal Ammarish to instruct him. “Now, then, Caelt. Stand over here and plate the food as it comes. Your wife—lovely wife!—will be the one to lay it out.”
“God help me, Leigh, I’m going to kill him,” Archmage Everly whispered as they neared. She passed the glass to Diamondhands who immediately handed it to Ciamon. “If he says one more damn thing about whiskey, I am going to kill him… Taste this—it’s vinegar! Did he mix it in his basement?”
Diamondhands handed the glass to Ciamon. Her expectant gaze commanded him to sip it. He set the drink to lips gingerly, mindful that Archmage Everly had just spat into it. The smell alone confirmed all that she’d said — Archmage Tillbauch had meant to serve the Grand Duke of Bocce little better than kitchen rinse.
The wave of nausea came back. He quickly set the glass down on the stone ledge nearest his hand. Archmage Diamondhands made a small sound in her throat and Archmage Everly nodded her approval.
“Let me show you how to banish food from an archmage’s table, son,” said Everly.
She touched a set of nickel-handled levers on the wall beside the ledge. She pulled one and the entire stone shelf lowered into the floor, traveling along a track of iron built into the tower. Ciamon marveled at the intricate gears and sturdy cables that operated the miniature Ascension. The ledge vanished below the tiled floor down to the kitchens far below, taking Tillbauch’s cheap wine with it.
A soft scratching at the door drew Archmage Diamondhands across the room. Everly took it as the cue to return to Tillbauch where the two returned to fussing over the glasses. Now Ciamon found himself with a moment alone to take in the Hall of the Cabinet. It would have embarrassed him to be caught gawking, but he couldn’t help it. The opulence was unlike anything he’d seen. Even the Library of Sages had nothing so fine. Polished mahogany walls decorated animal skulls mounted alongside fossils. Three dangling chandeliers lit with white-gold magelight enspelled into the suspended crystal shards. And there was indeed a cabinet, housing all nine masks of the Fabled Beasts, each on a velvet pillow.
Stately place for a stately visitor, he thought.
Noemi slipped into the room beneath Diamondhands’ arms. She carried a red veil looped around one arm with a yellow fringe. The archmage gave her a sour look as she shook it out to throw over her jet black hair braided close to the head.
“What good is a disguise worn some of the time, Kojan? Eh? You want the Grand Duke to see you? Flirt on your own time.” She snapped her fingers over to where Ciamon stood with his hands at the small of his back. “Stand there. Let your husband -- idiot husband -- explain.”
Flirt? The word crackled in Ciamon’s mind. He glanced at Noemi’s face as she made her way toward him, chin tilted downward. When their eyes met, her cheeks pinked just as they had at the baths. She’s not flirting.
Or was she? Noemi stood very close to Ciamon’s arm as they waited for the weightless shelf to lift fresh food into the room. He could feel the warmth of her arm passing between the sleeves of their shirts. When a tray of fresh baked bread arrived, wafting the scent of heavenly fresh-baked bread, he nearly retched.
Noemi glanced at him. “Are you sick?”
Ciamon licked the inside of his mouth, feeling a greasy spot on his tongue leftover from Tillbauch’s wine. It had been three long years since he’d passed his Test of Poisons. His tongue had forgotten the taste of hazebark.
“Hell, I think I’m poisoned.”