The Heavenly Lord’s Ambassador. A Kingdom Like No Other. Book 1. Андрей Кочетков

its establishment almost three hundred years earlier, the Trikazinso neighborhood had been a city within a city where people of a certain class lived their own life. After the founding of the empire, the great Emperor Norius had considered forcing the nobles of the lands he conquered to move to the new capital. No one knows what shrewd plans he had in store, but the task turned out to be more complicated than he had expected. Most of the nobles concerned had little desire to leave their homes, where they enjoyed an exalted position within their clans and communities. The once-independent nobles also had extremely stringent requirements concerning their own comfort, especially when compared to the lifestyle in Herandia, which had been a small and relatively unimportant country until recently. As a result, it was not until the reign of Nazalio, the great urban planner, that the Trikazinso neighborhood opened its doors to receive new residents. By that time, the former monarchs of Herandia’s acquisitions had sunk to the level of provincial aristocrats and were eager to move to the capital so they could be closer to the Emperor and his court. In these new circumstances, the resettlement went well. In later years, it was commemorated with the annual Festival of Flying Lights, when dozens of silk balloons emblazoned with the coats of arms of the leading families, rose into the sky on streams of hot air, hailing the arrival of a new class of leaders in the city.

      The neighborhood had grown over the past three hundred years as civil servants, priests of the Cult of the Sun, military commanders, and wealthy merchants and craftsmen moved in. But Trikazinso remained a lush island, hidden from prying eyes by thick, green parks with decorative ponds, gardens, a canal, and grottos for silent contemplation. It was an unwritten rule that there were no walls or fences between the villas, and any resident of the neighborhood could walk anywhere within its confines. The idea was that this would create bonds between people from different parts of the empire (and even between political opponents). Interestingly, this freedom was not extended to the other 700,000 residents of Enteveria: a special division of the Solar Sentinels protected the select few from all curiosity on the part of outsiders.

      A taciturn guard led Margio along a colonnade lined with statues representing the twelve sins and twelve virtues, facing each other in two lines. At the end of the colonnade, the director of the imperial archive found himself in a large, pentagonal garden with a small tea house standing on a knoll at its very center. The tea house had five sides like the garden around it, and a pentagonal gable roof topped with a forest nymph skillfully carved of ivory. With a speed that belied his five decades, Margio hustled across the grass and into the tea house.

      “Well, well, well, what on earth has happened in that dusty rathole of yours that brings you here to see me?” growled a deep voice. The two men sitting in the tea house were not pleased to have their private conversation interrupted by such an unexpected and fidgety visitor. One of them – a thin, nervous-looking man – moved uneasily in his seat, which was a black silk cushion embroidered with red flowers. The other, more heavyset man was sleek and well-groomed, with an arrogant face, but something about him suggested that he might have been employed as a stevedore at one of Enteveria’s ports until quite recently. It was his voice Margio had heard upon entering.

      Margio bowed as low as his figure allowed, held the pause for as long as he could, and launched into a dramatic retelling of the events of that morning. At the end of the tale (which he augmented liberally with details of his own), he handed the valuable scroll to his protector with a ceremonious flourish. The owner of the tea house fumbled with his short, sausage-like fingers, finally tearing the scroll a bit as he opened it, and his every movement revealed crude strength and an aggressive indifference to sophistication of any kind. His was a strength that stripped the elegance from every object he touched. Looking up from another low bow, Margio could not help but notice that the large man’s lips moved as he read silently, like a half-literate priest of the Sun trying to memorize the text of a hymn to the deity on the day before the holy equinox.

      Licisium Dorgoe turned to his companion. “Look at this, Forsey. These fairy tales are right up your valley.” He tossed the scroll the way a man might toss a dog a bone. The other man reached out with both hands and missed. The scroll landed silently on the thick Mustobrim carpet. Forsey cursed and leaned over to pick it up, doing his best to retain his dignity. Dorgoe lifted his chin and stroked his throat with a pompous air.

      “Fergius, I am pleased with you. For once, your dusty institution is of some use to me. I will speak with the Emperor about providing the funds for improvements to your building. Go now. We are leaving for the palace soon.”

      As Margio turned to leave, Forsey watched him with a scowl. When the archive director was gone, he turned back to Dorgoe and tried to get his attention. “Well? What do you think about this?”

      “There’s nothing to think about.” Dorgoe stood up easily, despite his size, and walked over to the window with a cup of Ulinian wine in his hairy hand. “You’re a lucky man!” he took a sip of his wine and slapped Forsey on the shoulder with a patronizing air. “Now you don’t have to do anything.” He laughed. “Just don’t expect me to support you all of a sudden because of this.”

      “That’s low of you, Licisium.” Forsey whined. He leaped up from his seat and clenched his fists. “You promised to think about it. You promised to take everything into consideration! And now you want to abandon me? Was that your plan all along? Don’t forget that you stand to benefit from this more than anyone. Why don’t you take this scroll and deliver it to Ronko this very day?”

      “Of course not,” his burly companion snorted. “Let the scroll be your plunder. Here. I give it to you. But you can deal with Ronko on your own. Stripped of his main arguments, he won’t be a serious adversary for you.” He pulled a wry face. “And stop whining. You should thank me for recommending that the council be moved up a week. That caused him to lose his nerve, and he made some mistakes. Why do you think he reached out to that boy at the archive? Because he was desperate.”

      Forsey’s face turned white. “You know perfectly well what is going to happen if those crazy fools sign a trade pact! Do they really not know what they are doing? I believe they see nothing but their own purses.”

      “Not at all. They simply believe they are saving the country and the Emperor. From you and me.” Dorgoe allowed himself a loud cackle. “They’re prepared to do anything, consequences be damned.

      “So, you agree with me?”

      “We’ll see. My advice to you, Forsey, is to stop being so blunt. The art of politics does not mix well with bluntness. And remember, the one who wins is not always the one who makes the right move, but the one who knows how to benefit from it.”

      “I don’t like it when you speak in riddles. We will meet again at the council. And understand, if you can, that I need your open support!”

      After Forsey had dashed out of the tea house, Dorgoe stood a while longer at the window, his eyes trained on his confidant’s receding figure as he made his way across the grass. Smiling as if he had just eaten a good meal, he set his half-empty cup on the eight-sided wooden table and, feeling cheerful, made his way over a carved wooden bridge that spanned a meandering creek. On the other bank, he entered a well-appointed mahogany pavilion where attentive servants had prepared his bath. The steam rising from the bath carried a strong aroma of pine.

      “To the demons with work, at least for now,” Dorgoe reflected happily. “I’ll have plenty of work to do this evening.”

* * *

      Uni sat comfortably up to his chin in the water of a luxurious indoor swimming pool, the bottom of which was covered in a pale green tile mosaic featuring images of mollusks, sea urchins, and other inhabitants of the mysterious deep. The sunlight streaming through an opening in the roof created an illusion that half of the pool was made of pure gold, and it was in that golden gleaming that Manelius Ronko splashed and flopped with the easy grace of a young boy. Uni found himself more and more surprised by this man, who seemed to know how to derive the utmost pleasure from each moment of his life. He was unconcerned by the stolen report and equally indifferent to the everyday troubles recounted by the former archivist. Uni found himself infected by the man’s demon-may-care attitude (or perhaps the wine had done its work),