Paul Hoffman - The Left Hand of God

He was moving now through the oldest part of the great keep, indeed the oldest part of Memphis. Much of this wall, with its interior rooms now used for storage, had been demolished and replaced by the elegant houses with their huge windows so beloved by the Materazzi. But this old part of Memphis was dark, the only light from the passageways entering and exiting at the walls’ limits, often sixty feet apart. It was designed for siege, not casual passage. As Cale went carefully up one set of dark stone steps without any guard or banister to stop him falling forty feet or more onto the flagstones below, he heard someone hurrying down the stairs toward him. He could not see because of a curve in the stairwell, but whoever it was was carrying a lantern. He stepped back into a recess on the stairs and hoped to be missed as they passed by. The hurried steps and the faint light moved on and then someone appeared. He pressed himself back into the wall and the girl did not see him as she rushed past. But the light was poor in this great dim place and the stones uneven. She had come around the curve too fast and, already unbalanced, clipped her heel on an uneven flagstone. For a moment she started to twist and was held in balance as she hovered over a forty-foot drop onto hard stone. There was a brief cry from the girl as she threw the lantern over the edge and was about to go with it, when Cale snatched her by the arm and pulled her back.

She cried out in terror at this astonishing appearance from nowhere.

“My God!”

“It’s all right,” said Cale. “You were going to fall.”

“Oh!” she said, and looked down at the lantern, broken but still burning the oil that had spilled. “Oh,” she said again. “You frightened me.”

Cale laughed. “Lucky you’re still alive to be frightened.”

“I would have been fine.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

She looked down at the steep drop and then back at Cale in the dim light. He was not like any boy or man she had ever seen-of only medium height and with deep black hair-but it was the expression in his eyes, old and dark and something else she could not place.

Suddenly she was afraid.

“I have to go,” she said. “Thank you.” And then she started to run swiftly down the stairs.

“Careful,” said Cale, so softly that he could not possibly be heard.

And then she was gone.

Cale felt as though he had been struck by lightning. Even the oldest and wisest head was liable to have been turned by the girl Cale had chanced upon, and, when it came to women, Cale was very far from either. She was Arbell Materazzi, daughter of Marshal Materazzi, Doge of Memphis. But no one, except her father, thought of Arbell by her given surname. To everyone else she was always Arbell Swan-Neck, and she was recognized by all as the most beautiful woman in Memphis, and probably all of its vast territories. Describe her beauty? Think of a woman like a swan.

How different history would have been had Cale not encountered her inside the great wall that afternoon, or had lacked the deftness in that dark and slippery place to pull her back and, as certainly would have been the case, she had broken her oh-so-beautifully long and elegant neck on the flagstones below.

Within hours a lovestruck Cale had told one bemused and one resentful companion that he had changed his mind about leaving Memphis. He did not, of course, explain the real reason, telling them that he had taken worse beatings than those handed out by Solomon Solomon all his life and that he had decided just to ignore Conn Materazzi’s nonsense. Why should he let the stupid jokes of a spoiled brat worry him when they had so many good reasons to stay? Puzzled though they were, Vague Henri and Kleist had no reason to doubt him. Nevertheless, Vague Henri did so.

“Do you believe him?” he said later when he was alone with Kleist.

“Why should I care in any case? It suits me if he wants to stay. I just don’t like him acting like God Almighty all the time.”

Over the next few days Vague Henri watched as the beatings and mockery continued. As always it was the ridicule of Cale that concerned him most. Conn Materazzi might have been a spoiled brat, but he was also a martial artist of formidable skill. Only the oldest and most experienced of the Materazzi men-at-arms ever beat him in the painfully realistic fights that took place every Friday and lasted the whole day. And these defeats against soldiers of deadly skill and ruthlessness became fewer and fewer as the weeks passed. He was renowned, it was as simple as that, and for good reason. It was no surprise at all that in the last week of his formal training he was awarded a prize given only rarely to anyone passing out into the Materazzi army: the Forza or Danzig Shank, known popularly as The Edge. Made by Martin Bacon, the great armorer, a hundred years before, it was a weapon forged from a steel of unique strength and flexibility, a secret sadly lost when Bacon killed himself over a young Materazzi aristocrat who did not care for him. Peter Materazzi, the then doge for whom he had made the sword, was inconsolable at his death and refused for the rest of his life to believe that a man of Bacon’s genius could have killed himself for such a reason. “A girl!” he exclaimed in disbelief. “I’d have given him my wife if he’d only asked.” Given the reputation of Materazzi women for coldness, the effectiveness of such an offer remains doubtful.

At any rate, the superintendence of The Edge was a signal honor for Conn and had not been awarded for more than twenty years.

The award ceremony and passing-out parade was as splendid as might be imagined: vast crowds, hats waved, cheers, music, pomp and splendor, speeches and all the rest. The Mond arrayed in front of their forebears were nearly five thousand strong. These should not be confused with mere soldiers-these were an armored elite, the best trained and equipped in the world, each one of high rank and aristocratic birth.

And at the center of it all, Conn Materazzi: sixteen years old, six feet tall, blond, muscular, slender and beautiful-the observed of all the observers, the very center of attention, the darling of the crowds, the pride of the Materazzi. How full of himself he was as he acknowledged the cheers and applause as The Edge was presented to him. As he raised it high about his head, there was a roar like the end of the world.

Vague Henri clapped in order not to call attention to himself. Kleist enthusiastically expressed his dislike by exaggerating his applause and cheering as loudly as if Conn were his twin brother. But despite a nudge from Kleist and a whispered plea from Vague Henri, Cale looked on impassively, a reaction not missed by his master, for all Conn’s feelings that he had been struck by a heavenly lightning.

Given his already high opinion of himself-one reinforced by his set of sycophantic admirers-Conn’s sense of his own wonderfulness had expanded to dizzying new heights. Even two hours later, after the crowds had dispersed and he had returned to the seclusion of the great keep, his brain still buzzed like a hive of excited bees. Nevertheless, after the compliments and adoration of his friends and the cream of Materazzi society began to die away, he had returned sufficiently to the real world to remember the calculated insult offered him by Cale’s refusal even to applaud his triumph. This spectacular act of insubordination was not to be endured, and he sent off one of the servants to call his arms apprentice to come at once.

It took the servant some time to find Cale, not least because when he arrived at the apprentices’ dormitory he had the misfortune to ask Vague Henri where Cale could be found. His talent for evasion had not been needed for some time, but under direct questioning his natural slipperiness reasserted itself.