Description: Chapter I It was with a sinking heart that the newly arrived ambassador from Seressa grasped that the Emperor Rodolfo, famously eccentric, was serious about an experiment in court protocol. The emperor liked experiments, everyone knew that. It seemed the ambassador was to perform a triple obeisance--two separate times!--when finally invited to approach the imperial throne. This was, the very tall official escorting him explained, to be done in the manner of those presented to Grand Khalif Guru in Asharias. It was also, the courtier added thoughtfully, how the great eastern emperors had been approached in long-ago days. Rodolfo was apparently now interested in the effect of such formal deference, observed and noted. And since Rodolfo was heir to those august figures of the past, it did make sense, didn''t it? It did not, at all, was the ambassador''s unvoiced opinion. He had no idea what this alleged effect was supposed to be. He smiled politely. He nodded. He adjusted his velvet robe. In the antechamber where they waited he watched as a second court official--young, yellow-haired--enthusiastically demonstrated the salutations. His knees hurt with anticipatory pain. His back hurt. He was aware that, carrying evidence of prosperity about his midriff, he was likely to look foolish each time he prostrated himself, or rose to his feet. Rodolfo, Jad''s Holy Emperor, had sat the throne here for thirty years. You wouldn''t ever want to call him foolish--he had many of the world''s foremost artists, philosophers, alchemists at his court (performing experiments )--but you needed to consider the man unpredictable and possibly irresponsible. This made him dangerous, of course. Orso Faleri, Ambassador of the Republic of Seressa, had had this made clear to him by the Council of Twelve before he''d left to come here. He regarded the posting as a terrible hardship. It was formally an honour, of course. One of the three most distinguished foreign posts a Seressini could be granted by the Twelve. It meant he might reasonably expect to become a member on his return, if someone withdrew, or died. But Orso Faleri loved his city of canals and bridges and palaces (especially his own!) with a passion. In addition, there were extremely limited opportunities for acquiring more wealth at Obravic in this role. He was an emissary--and an observer. It was understood that all other considerations in a man''s life were suspended for the year or possibly two that he was here. Two years was a distressing thought. He hadn''t been allowed to bring his mistress. His wife had declined to join him, of course. Faleri could have insisted she do so, but he wasn''t nearly so self-abusive. No, he would have to discover, as best one might, what diversions there were in this windy northern city, far from Seressa''s canals, where songs of love drifted in the torchlit night and men and women, cloaked against evening''s damp, and sometimes masked, went about hidden from inquisitive eyes. Orso Faleri was willing to simulate an interest in discussing the nature of the soul with the emperor''s philosophers, or listen as some alchemist, stroking his singed beard, explained his search for arcane secrets of transmuting metal--but only to a point, surely. If he performed his tasks, both public and secret, badly it would be noted back home, with consequences. If he did well he might be left here for two years! It was an appalling circumstance for a civilized man with skills in commerce and a magnificent woman left behind. And now, the Osmanli triple obeisance. To be done twice. Good men, thought Faleri, suffered for the follies of royalty. At the same time, this post was vitally important, and he knew it. In the world they inhabited, good relations with the emperor in Obravic were critical. Disagreements were acceptable, but open conflict could be ruinous for trade, and trade was what Seressa was about. For the Seressinis, the idea of peace, with open, unthreatened commerce, was the most important thing in the god''s created world. It mattered more (though this would never actually be said ) than diligent attention to the doctrines of Jad as voiced by the sun god''s clerics. Seressa traded, extensively, with the unbelieving Osmanlis in the east--and did so whatever High Patriarchs might say or demand. Patriarchs came and went in Rhodias, thundering wrath in their echoing palace or cajoling like courtesans for a holy war and the need to regain lost Sarantium from the Osmanlis and their Asharite faith. That was a Patriarch''s task. No one begrudged it. But for Seressa those god-denying Osmanlis offered some of the richest markets on earth. Faleri knew it well. He was a merchant, son and grandson of merchants. His family''s palace on the Great Canal had been built and expanded and sumptuously furnished with the profits of trading east. Grain at the beginning, then jewels, spices, silk, alum, lapis lazuli. Whatever was needed in the west, or desired. The caressing silks his wife and daughters wore (and his mistress, more appealingly) arrived at the lagoon on galleys and roundships voyaging to and from the ports of the Asharites. The grand khalif liked trade, too. He had his palaces and gardens to attend to, and an expensive army. He might make war on the emperor''s lands and fortresses where the shifting borders lay, and Rodolfo might be forced to spend sums he didn''t have in bolstering defences there, but Seressa and its merchant fleet didn''t want any part of that conflict: they needed peace more than anything. Which meant that Signore Orso Faleri was here with missions to accomplish and assessments to make and send home in coded messages, even while filled with longings and memories that had little to do with politics or gaunt philosophers in a northern city. His first priority, precisely set forth by the Council of T

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