The Alchemist of Souls (Night's Masque, #1)(44)

"I-I'll return when you're dressed," Mal muttered, and hurried down the stairs to the lower chamber, suppressing the urge to vomit.

He had seen mercifully little of the Huntsmen's bloody victim, but now he knew what drove them to such fear and loathing. The ambassador's spine ended in a stubby hairless tail, about the size of Mal's thumb, which twitched obscenely like a rabbit's scut. Making the sign of the cross Mal retreated into the bedchamber that had been set aside for Lodge. Tonight he was damned well going to sleep in here, and to Hell with Leland's instructions.

He could not hide forever, unfortunately. Steeling himself, he walked through into the dining room, where breakfast had been laid out. A dozen of the skrayling guards were lined up behind the benches awaiting their master. Mal took a stool at the far end. His appetite had fled, but he snatched up a tankard of small ale from the breakfast table, wishing it was something stronger as he downed it in one.

Kiiren arrived a few minutes later, dressed once again in his blue robe.

"Good morrow, Catlyn-tuur," the young skrayling said.

Mal got to his feet and bowed, though more to cover his own discomfort than out of courtesy. The ambassador took his place at the head of the table and a servant helped him to slices of bread and cold beef. Mal couldn't help but watch the skraylings closely, expecting some new and dreadful revelation of bestiality, but as at the banquet the ambassador conducted himself with a prim courtesy that would not have shamed a prioress. Even the skrayling guards ate in a civilised manner, though they slouched on the benches in a way no English lord would have tolerated from underlings. The ambassador, on the other hand, sat bolt upright on the hard wooden chair. Mal hid a smile. Having a tail really was a pain in the arse.

When breakfast was over the ambassador retired to the parlour, and Mal felt obliged to follow. He scarcely had time to wonder what to do or say next when one of the castle servants entered the room, carrying a velvet cushion to which was pinned a large gold pendant.

"A gift for His Excellency," the servant said to Mal.

"Bring it here," Kiiren told him.

The servant looked taken aback at being addressed by a skrayling, but complied. "From my lord the Earl of Northumberland," he said, kneeling before Kiiren.

The centre of the pendant was an oval of blue fluorspar the size of a hen's egg, with faint veins like ripples in water; around it were set seed pearls and tiny beads of jet in a pattern reminiscent of skrayling designs.

"Allow me, sir," Mal said.

He took the pendant and examined it. Henry Percy was famous for his knowledge of alchemy, an interest which had helped earn him the nickname "the wizard earl". The back of the pendant was smooth, however, with no sign of poisoned needles or hidden mechanisms. He handed it to Kiiren.

"I thank your master for most kind gift," the ambassador said, bowing low.

"A splendid offering," Mal said, after the servant had gone. "No one who sees it can doubt the giver, either."

"How so?"

"Blue and gold are the Percy colours, and the central gem may have been mined in Northumberland; my own home county produces a similar mineral. And these lozenges," he pointed out the design of the setting, "are found on their family's coat of arms."

"Coat of arms?"

"A shield bearing symbols of great antiquity, which is passed down from father to son. Each family has its own design."

"Our people are not so very different, then," Kiiren said.

"How so?"

The skrayling ran a grey-nailed thumb under the necklace around his own throat. It consisted of cylindrical ivory beads carved into elaborate patterns similar to the ones on their clothing, interspersed with round beads of gleaming grey-black metal. Mal had noticed all the skraylings wore them, though he had assumed they were merely a fashion.

"This is marked with signs telling name of my father and his clan. Father gives to mother, and then mother to child, as proof of kinship."

"Proof? Do fathers not acknowledge their children amongst your people?"

"We are not like you. We do not take mate for always. There is mating, and then we part."

Mal laughed. "A lot of men would prefer your way."

The pendant turned out to be only the first of an endless flow of gifts, sent by courtiers eager to show off their loyalty to the Queen by favouring her guest. Scented gloves, jewelled daggers, falcons, books of poems: all had to be checked for signs of poison or other treachery. The gifts were then arranged on a cabinet, apart from the falcons, which were taken to the Royal Menagerie for safekeeping.

Examining the gifts for poison was one thing; looking for secret messages was going to be more difficult. Mal needed privacy and time, neither of which was likely to be in generous supply for a while. So far no letters had been sent to or by the ambassador, at least not openly, and Mal's initial examinations of the gifts had revealed no hidden notes or suspiciously blank pages that could hold invisible writing. If anyone was trying to communicate privily with the ambassador, they were using more subtle means.

He had just handed over the latest gift, a pair of German pistols inlaid with ivory panels depicting the death of Actaeon, when he realised the ambassador was addressing him.

He inclined his head. "Sir?"

"Please, have this gift from us."

He gestured to a skrayling servant, who held out a small box of pale wood about the size of a child's palm. Mal took it, quite forgetting to bow. As he opened the box, he let out a low whistle. Nestling in folds of velvet was a black baroque pearl as big as his fingernail, attached to a hoop of the same dark metal as the beads on the skraylings' necklaces.