City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [57]
It wouldn’t be the first time Jeryd had put his life on the line for the greater good. ‘When duty calls,’ he sighed.
*
If Jeryd needed any further guidance along the path to total disillusionment with the world at large, that evening provided it.
As a treat, he took Marysa to the Citadel’s masked ball, a more glamorous affair than he had thought could be staged given the Freeze and the forthcoming war. There must have been a hundred people fluttering around each other in the hall, a strangely opulent place with eclectic decorations derived from every corner of the Empire.
People milled about dressed in their finery, clutching delicate glasses. Everyone wore fancy eye-masks, with gold trim and ribbons in dozens of striking colours. The whole atmosphere seemed so unnaturally decadent to Jeryd: this was an ice age, for Bohr’s sake, and a war was looming around the corner. Women were necking wine or vodka copiously, men admiring them. How could they party like this, appearing all so carefree? Lute players sat up on a stage in the corner, harmonizing their chords, though Jeryd thought them worse than the city buskers he’d seen earlier in the day.
Marysa was more than happy for this opportunity to meet new people and within a few minutes she was off mingling with other guests. How was it she could just go off and chat to strangers like that? It wasn’t his own style. He could speak to people, of course, but not in casual situations like this. Usually he needed a dead body at hand to prompt him into conversation.
A couple of the young Inquisition rumel had gone off chasing after a couple of pretty rumel girls, grey skins, and all big eyes. Within moments, each of them had succeeded in kissing one of the girls in turn.
I’m more out of touch with things than I realized, Jeryd decided, mildly envious of them.
Still, at least without Marysa at his side, he could sneak a few of these delicious-looking nibbles. Diet, my arse. And if he was going to be miserable and not talk to anyone, he might as well wander around and listen in, to get a flavour of Villiren, maybe pick up on a little gossip, perhaps even fill in some information gaps. He badly needed to learn more about the city.
Jeryd circled the entire room a few times, loitering while pretending to sample dishes. The wine was far too sweet for his liking, but he drank it anyway. Jeryd was a skilled eavesdropper and so, through snippets of conversation, Villiren’s history gradually came alive.
Portreeve Lutto had been elected for a third term after the success of his expansionist economic policies, namely trading with as many of the other islands in the Empire as possible, and thereby turning Villiren into a centre of negotiations. People said that Lutto had delivered economic growth consistently since new deposits of ores had been discovered. The previous portreeves, Fell and Gryph, had never capitalized on the minerals coming from Tineag’l. Apparently there had been several assassination attempts on Lutto’s life, but none were successful.
Lutto’s wife was the plump Lady Oylga, daughter of the largest estate owner on the island of Y’iren. Depending on who Jeryd listened to, Lutto either had numerous whores visiting his private chambers, especially rumels for those hard-skin kicks – or else he was having an affair with a star of the local theatres, called Felina Fetrix, spending exuberant amounts of taxpayers’ money entertaining her and buying her jewels.
Jeryd listened with great interest as two guests, wearing plush masks and robes with matching gold features, had a heated debate at a corner table.
‘The poor are no longer as poor as they once were, dear boy,’ declared one man, an ill-favoured fellow with a moustache. Even the