Mark Newton - Retribution

We probably didn’t have much choice in the matter. I bowed. ‘We’d be delighted to attend.’

‘Sulma Tan will accompany you both to the event.’

‘As you wish, your highness,’ the second secretary replied, with a deferential nod of her head.

‘I will be most pleased to have a Detratan and an Atrewen as guests. Those old countries. . we in Koton envy them greatly. Our history is too undeveloped, so we must take our heritage from others.’

Her craving for prestige was obvious, matching up perfectly with what I had seen of her tastes in art, and I was very curious to see what the evening would entail.

The queen was about to dismiss us from her company when she suddenly stared at me and asked a question that appeared out of context. ‘How are you with protection?’

I briefly explained Leana’s talents, how they had served us in the past, and admitted I wasn’t too bad with a blade myself. ‘We won’t need any of your guard to accompany us, let’s put it that way.’

Queen Dokuz nodded, but said nothing else on the matter. She leaned back in the throne, her unsettling gaze lingering on me for longer than was comfortable, before she dismissed us.

On our way back out of the hall, passing through the onlookers, I wondered if I had misunderstood that last question. It appeared as if the queen had made a simple mistake in a language that wasn’t her native tongue, or had deliberately veiled her words — but had she in fact been assessing our ability to protect someone else?

Sulma Tan guided us around the other side of the royal palace and eventually through the busy streets of the prefecture, heading on a much shorter route back to Jejal’s establishment.

Sulma Tan appeared to be annoyed with me, but I couldn’t place what I’d done wrong. I had casually been commenting upon how effective my investigations had been elsewhere in Vispasia, simply to build her trust. She might as well have been leading cattle down these roads for all the interest she showed in us.

‘Have I offended you in any way?’ I asked her.

‘No,’ she called back, striding past a vendor who sold various jars of oils.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ok.’

Leana merely shrugged, but it was enough of a gesture to know that I wasn’t imagining her attitude towards us.

‘Only I was wondering,’ I continued more firmly, ‘why your conversational skills have taken a turn for the worse. My commissioner suggested you would be a good point of contact.’

It was never easy to tell whether or not such a comment would go down badly, yet this time it was enough to shake Sulma Tan from whatever mood she was in.

She stopped in the middle of the street, people bustling by around her, and turned to face me. It was obvious from her expression that I’d hit a nerve. ‘I apologize,’ she said. ‘It was rude of me to behave in such a way. You’ve done nothing to vex me — I am unused to outsiders talking about the wider continent.’

‘Let me guess,’ I ventured. ‘You’ve much work on your hands, and you do not really want to deal with a dead body?’

‘Perhaps that is so.’ She gave me an intense, concerned look.

‘Then let us do all the hard work,’ I replied. ‘I represent the Sun Chamber. We really don’t need much help — just a map, somewhere to base our investigation. And suggestions on where to find decent food.’

There was a smile — or at least a relaxation of her frown. ‘I can arrange those things for you, but can I ask why you are so keen to find the killer?’

‘It’s my job to do that,’ I replied. ‘I was sent here to investigate the matter, and that is precisely what I’m doing.’

‘Fine.’

‘For some reason you seem suspicious of my answer.’

‘Of course. You are a man. A man like every other, who blunders into a situation and thinks that I am incompetent. I have dealt with men many times before you came, and probably will many times after. So far they have all proven to be the same. Those who have worked with me in the past grab me in some dark corner and lift up my dress.’ She jabbed a finger towards Leana. ‘She will know what I mean, am I correct?’

‘I do know,’ Leana replied. ‘Though I have my own effective methods for dealing with such cretins.’

I was honestly shocked at Sulma Tan’s response, but there was little point in protesting about the ways of crude men and the fact that I was associated with them.

Leana interrupted. ‘As much as I like to see him suffer, he has lived with me for years without so much as making one single inappropriate gesture. Nor has he undermined me. We are like brother and sister. Lucan is annoying for many other reasons, sometimes pompous and sometimes he bores me, but this subject is not a flaw for him.’

‘Thank you for that heavily disguised compliment.’ I turned to Sulma Tan. ‘So when I say to you I want to help, it is not out of chivalry, nor is it the patronizing view of a Detratan who is looking down on your culture. I have orders, strict orders, and I will be following them. No matter what work you have on. You have the option to help me out or not. It is up to you.’

Sulma Tan looked up as a flock of geese shot across the sky above the narrow street. ‘You remember that census the queen mentioned, the one by which our nation will assess itself and celebrate afterwards?’

A change of subject, an alteration in the tone of the conversation and the tension vanished swiftly in the afternoon heat.

‘I am the one who is organizing it all,’ she continued. ‘Every single detail is mine to arrange, command and record.’

‘Ah,’ I said, contemplating whether or not the information might be of use to the case. ‘Quite a project.’

‘Ah indeed. It is an ambitious project and, though worthy intellectually, it is time-consuming. On top of that there are petty issues such as the monthly games and. . It is no excuse. Better not to let the daily tasks overwhelm oneself.’

‘Understood,’ I replied. ‘We’ll keep out of your way. You can even head back now — we’ll find our own way to Jejal’s establishment.’

‘You are perhaps a kind man,’ she concluded firmly. With a faint but detectable smile she added: ‘But a hand out of place and I will castrate you myself.’

My tongue firmly in my mouth, I watched her vanish through the crowds.

‘And so ends your first lesson in Kotonese culture,’ Leana added.

Back in our room, with the low evening sunlight casting a bright-red glow on the walls and a fresh breeze coming in through the open window, I sat on the bed and contemplated the logistic puzzle that a census must have presented to Sulma Tan.

It was not merely counting the official number of women, men and children, or amount of land and goods, but the act of compiling the information too, surveying, interviewing, and presenting it in a way that the queen would find beneficial for her to make informed choices about the direction she wished to take Koton. There would be no end of liars and cheats seeing this as an exercise in tax collecting, or simply boasting, not to mention trying to make sense of the numbers of people migrating back and forth across borders like air through an open mouth. No doubt there would be many interfering, so that the census did not highlight any untoward business within the nation. There were thousands of people who lived in tribes across Vispasia, too, and who claimed no nation as their own.

The Sun Chamber always approved of official efforts to monitor a country like this. It went some way to analysing the large and fluid cultures of the Vispasian Royal Union so that strategies could be formed when the kings and queens met in Free State. They also went some way to keeping the rogue propaganda of a royal in check: artificial tensions would so often be used as a method of funnelling resources in a more favourable manner, and the more official data there was, then the more resources could be allocated evenly.