A.R.Yngve
DARC AGES:
City Of Masks
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Chapter 4
The Blackwhale suffered no more attacks. In the early morning after an eleven-day journey, it reached the port of Vanitia.
The captain had the ship anchored, and raised the signal flag to let a port inspector arrive to clear the ship for entrance. The procedure was familiar to Threo, who had visited coastal cities in Awrica. Vaccine or no vaccine, the fear of Plague carriers remained strong and justified.
Their ship was one of dozens waiting to be cleared for passage; the towering, gun turrets at both ends of the harbor traced the Blackwhale as it approached. Gloomy rain clouds hung over the turrets, blurring their long shadows, and made the towering guns of Vanitia seem surreal. On the far side of the harbor, the spires and steep rooftops of Vanitia beckoned.
The captain waited an hour. He had not expected the kind of inspector who finally arrived in a propeller gondola. The inspector's boat was piloted by a hooded figure who wore long gloves and a flowing red wool robe, covering every part of his or her body. And the figure also wore a face-mask with eyeholes, through which inscrutable but recognizably human eyes watched the newcomers.
From the sleek gondola, the inspector and his assistant climbed the Blackwhale's stepladder. They let the crew help them aboard, and the inspector asked in a peculiar dialect: "Shomme tom capitano, piliso."
Both of them wore identical robes of blue wool, and masks over their faces. The masks were labeled with the city's insignia and had been painted to suggest personal characteristics. The inspector's face-mask portrayed a bearded, elderly man, and he wore a wig of long white hair underneath his hat. Their clothing did not reveal an inch of bare skin.
After a brief conversation with the inspectors in multiple dialects (plus an exchange of sign-language and handwritten communication on a wax-tablet), the captain ordered his crew and passengers to line up on the deck.
While the assistant examined the crew for signs of disease, the inspector questioned the man who wore the crest of the Orbes and Damon families on his chest.
Kensaburé could not understand what the inspector said; he wished now that he had spent more time abroad, and grew restless with frustration.
Beside him, Okono worked her remote-control box and called on Kiti-Mo. The robot walked awkwardly to her across the planks and translated the inspector's and Kensaburé's speech.
Though the inspector was masked, his gestures and head movements made clear that the robot interested him.
Kensaburé felt extremely uncomfortable with their conversation. He wanted to ask the Vanitian to show his face, but knew this was the wrong time to make requests. And the inspector's body language struck him as theatrical, stilted and insincere. What were these foreigners hiding? He wanted to present to the inspector his letter to the city lord, but he simply could not trust it to the hands of a masked stranger.
After a while, when his errand had been explained and he had received the vague promise of an audience with the Vanitian city lord, Kensaburé could not contain himself.
"Why do you wear a mask?" he asked, pointing at the inspector's false painted face.
The masked head moved in such a way as to suggest displeasure, and he replied.
Okono's robot translated: "Why do you not wear a proper face?"
Kensaburé frowned, and nearly lost his temper. "What do you mean? This is my face."
Okono gently interrupted him: "Of course we will wear the proper face when granted audience with the city lord. Could you please lend us some faces for the occasion, or should we make our own?"
The inspector heard Kiti-Mo's translation, bowed to the lady, and nodded approvingly. "The city lord's court shall provide you with proper faces," he replied, and excused himself. He departed in haste with his following.
Kensaburé gave the others a confused glance. "Was he mad?"
"I do not know these people," Okono said, "but there must a be a rational explanation for the masks. Perhaps a festival or celebration. Just try to play along with them. We cannot afford to offend them."
Threo of Mechao worried, but could not put his finger on why. Masks were entirely alien to his upbringing.
Awonso was thrilled: his first meeting with a strange foreign culture! He could not wait to send his observations back to Librian and his family.
Okono felt strangely calm; after all, she was used to a life of wearing masks in public... though the ones in her city and family were made of living flesh.
The traveling party had to wait another six hours for the city lord's courtiers to arrive in a group of fast rowboats.
The group of robed courtiers, all wearing ornate painted masks, sent aboard a troupe of mask-makers. These artisans – themselves also masked - asked the passengers to sit still for their "faces" to be made.
After an hour's work, the mask-makers gave Threo, Awonso, Okono and Kensaburé a mask each. Also their two manservants received masks. Each piece came with strips of gauzy cloth attached around the edges, so that the neck and head could also be covered.
Buchu scowled at his mask, but Kensaburé's manservant seemed quite pleased with what he received: it was a beautified version of his face, without the old scar across his cheek.
"Pretty," Okono said of her mask. "Very pretty." She put it on and tied the string around her head, and the cloth to cover her neck and head, then looked around. Okono's pale mask wore a perpetual frozen smile, playful and modest, its red lips slightly parted with a round opening in the center. What seemed like freckles on its ruddy cheeks were in fact tiny air holes to keep her cool. "Do I look like myself?"
"Yes," Kensaburé said, and studied his mask. It had a beard painted on, because he had not been able to shave for the whole journey. "Someone is playing us for fools."
"Will you not make one for Kiti-Mo?" Threo joked, indicating the robot to the mask-makers. They studied it with exaggerated consternation, debated among themselves, and decided that none of their masks would fit this robot's head. Threo tied his eyeglasses on top of his mask's eye slits. He wondered how one was supposed to eat or drink in this state of disguise.
The courtiers applauded the masked newcomers and gestured their mannered approval from the surrounding boats. The chief courtier told the traveling party they were now welcome to visit the city lord in his palace, and should board the welcoming boats at once.
Kensaburé ordered the captain to wait for three days before leaving the harbor.
"Perhaps I should stay behind with the radio, as a precaution," suggested Awonso. But he was ordered to come along and carry the radio set with him.
The procession of court rowboats passed quickly through the packed harbor, and through a sluice gate leading into a canal. The city's canals served as a traffic system; low, curved stone bridges crossed it at every city block.
Scores of citizens lined the bridges, balconies and walkways above the waterway, watching the newcomers. Passing rowboats and gondolas stopped to let the passengers turn their heads and stare after the procession.
But every single citizen, even the children, wore painted masks, and many of them also wore long gloves.
It had begun to rain when the party arrived at the open courtyard before the city lord's palace. For a city this isolated, its splendor was imposing - and in decay. The rain fell on the peeling gold-paint of spires and steeplechases, dripped from moss-stained porcelain-tiled roofs, gathered in the pools of green bronze statues, pooled on the faded mosaics of centuries past, and sizzled in countless torches.
There were very few electric lights in the city. Awonso, the son of an engineer, wondered whether the Vanitians lacked the kind of underground power plant that sustained most other walled cities.
A band of musicians - in garish masks - played trumpet fanfares for the visitors as they entered the great hall. Guards with bayoneted rifles eyed them through skull-faced masks with large round eyeholes.
A red-masked master of ceremonies announced their arrival in a loud voice: "The emissaries of Lord Dohan Damon of Castilia!"
The great hall of the palace was housed beneath a large glassed cupola; rain spattered against the panes, and leaking water dripped down here and there on the marble floor. Some members of the court held small parasols.
In the center of the hall, under a giant brass chandelier, sat three masked figures in opulent golden robes: the visitors understood this had to be the city lord and his closest family.
The master of ceremonies bellowed – his red mask was a fitting caricature of a shouting man with swollen cheeks: "Our master, the most admirable protector of Vanitia and the Adriatica, Blessed by the Churches, beloved by the people, His Eminence Berluchos of Vanitia!
"His Eminence's wife, our mistress, protector of Vanitian children, Lady Gradischa of Eckos! And their heir, the most beloved daughter of our city, patron of the arts, Bottichea!"
The visitors beheld the masked figures on the three silk-draped thrones. If their masks were to be believed, Lord Berluchos was a balding, thin, perennially grinning, jovial man in his middle age. He also wore an enormous golden-curled wig that made his head seem too big. His wife's mask suggested a plump, prim woman with red locks arranged to frame her rose-colored cheeks. And the mask of Bottichea was obscured by a gauze veil - a mask over a mask...
"I wonder what their wedding night was like," mumbled Threo in Awonso's ear. Awonso suppressed a smile. Any moment now, Kensaburé thought, someone would leap out and declare that the joke was over. But he walked up to the ornate, jewel-encrusted throne and kneeled on one leg before Berluchos. Kiti-Mo translated his words.
Kensaburé glanced over his shoulder at his party, and noticed that only Threo was not kneeling with the others. He gave the young physician an angry nod, and Threo reluctantly went down on one knee.
After the formal greetings and exchanges of letters from Damon City and Lord Damon's allies, the visitors waited for the city lord's response. An advisor discussed the letter with Berluchos as minutes passed. And finally the advisor - his mask a bearded caricature of gaunt, stern vizier - faced the knight and said: "You may rise. Chairs for our guests!"
Masked servants carried in a set of chairs.
The vizier-masked man said: "I am Sarastos, chief counselor to His Eminence and his court. Our master wants to know what gifts you bring him. I should warn you - Lord Berluchos rewards generosity in kind and stinginess in kind."
Hesitating only briefly, Kensaburé spoke from memory the lines he had been taught by Dohan and Librian: "Your Eminence! We come to offer you freedom - freedom from fear. We have the cure for the great plague which has ravaged the world for too long. And we are going to give it to you. We also offer to open a trade route to Castilia, once we have ensured that all of your people receives the cure and can travel freely without fear of plague."
He paused for the anticipated reaction and excitement. But the court of masked men and women in colorful costumes fell silent, their eyes scanning the masked visitors. The ruling family members whispered among each other and then to Sarastos, who turned to the knight.
"Your letters confirm what you say, but you make an awfully big promise. How do you intend to prove this cure? There are no plague victims in this region. The Leper tribes have long since been driven out of the Italican peninsula."
Awonso tapped Kensaburé's shoulder and whispered: "He's lying! We know there are Lepers in the wilderness of Italica."
Kensaburé pretended not to have heard the whispering, and said to Sarastos: "I bring with me a doctor, Threo of Mechao, whose father invented the plague vaccine. The cure is injected in the bloodstream and does two things: first, it destroys the pollution of the body which causes children to be born deformed. Second, it cures the infection which causes minor deformities. Once cured, the body develops its own protection, so-called 'immunity.' And if the disease should return, our doctors can isolate it and improve the vaccine."
He added a warning that other city-states were accepting the cure at a rapid rate; any city that chose to refuse, would risk being feared and shunned.
Berluchos spoke: "What of the laws against tampering with genes?" His voice sounded muffled, as if the mask were blocking his mouth, and he strained to speak clearly. “Do your doctors practice forbidden knowledge?"
"Your Eminence," Kensaburé replied, "my masters and our doctors' guilds have now admitted that the old laws were carried out with undue harshness. We do not approve of reckless experimentation with the genes of living things in our cities. However, the cure works... and the world sorely needs it. Would we have traveled this far, braved sea and pirates, for a lie?"
Berlouchos paused, pretended to stroke the painted-on beard on his mask, and said: "We appreciate your efforts. Before we accept your offer, a demonstration of sorts would be in order. Perhaps our armored knights could capture a Leper from the north and bring him here for testing your cure."
"I have seen the cure work. We have all taken the treatment. But I shall be honest: deformities from birth cannot be cured by the vaccine alone. Only the contagion is removed."
Threo wanted to speak, to do his duty and inform the Vanitians and use his skills, but Okono and Awonso held him back so he could not stand up and cause a scene.
Lord Berluchos invited his guests to stay the night in his palace, and the palace staff carried their luggage to the guest quarters.
The travelers were escorted through corridors with arched ceilings where a few electric lights spread a yellow illumination. The corridor walls were almost completely covered by very old painted portraits, dark with the patina of centuries. Threo noticed that the paintings only depicted real faces.
"Lend me your robot," Threo asked Okono. "I need information."
Outside the door to his guest-room, Threo gave a gold coin to a servant, and asked him: "When is it proper to remove this?" He gestured at his face-mask, and Kiti-Mo translated.
The servant, her mask a subservient grimace of cowardice, replied: "Why, in the dark of course. Everyone knows that."
"But do you ever see your own family members without... this?"
The servant started visibly. "No, no... We have a face for every occasion, for every age. I have worn twenty faces in my life. The face from my birth is gone... but I still keep the face from my marriage..."
Threo thanked her and sent the robot back to Okono's room. Then he shut and locked his door, removed the mask from his sweaty face, dropped his hat on a table and took a deep breath.
"Goddess," he muttered. "I thought I would suffocate... how can they stand wearing them all day long?"
At least, he thought, the figures in their paintings did not seem mad. His spacious room had a balcony overlooking the courtyard below, a framed painting on one wall and a fresco on the wall facing the balcony. A single electric lamp-globe in the ceiling spread a yellow light over the room.
He walked up to the painting and studied it closer. It depicted some scene from the city's past; its landmarks were recognizable. In the foreground, an armored commander pointed toward the horizon, surrounded by a following of men, women and children of all social stations.
In the picture's background, fires or explosions illuminated the city harbor; glowing lines of laser fire played across a darkened sky.
Threo looked closer still. The smallest details were blurred by a layer of grime... was that a mass of people fleeing in the background, or advancing enemies? The unknown painter clearly suggested some great threat coming from the sea while the ruler stood removed from danger, or were fleeing it – or were ignorant of it.
Filled with forebodings, Threo went out on the balcony and took in the view of the city and the harbor to the east. The rain had just about ceased, and a gray haze lay over the city's spires and rooftops. He tried to locate the Blackwhale in the harbor, but could not recognize it through the haze.
Then he went over to the side of the balcony's stone rail, and peeked beyond the column on its side. On the other side of the column was the balcony of the adjacent room. Over the din of the city and the dripping of rainwater from gutters and roofs, he could hear the fizz and static of Awonso's radio set.
"Hey! Psst! Awonso!" The round-faced young man walked out and saw Threo wave at him from the other balcony. Neither of them wore their masks. "Have you looked at the pictures on the walls?"
"Yes... beautiful, are they not?" He grinned. “Much more interesting than the ones in in my town! There is one in here of a beautiful woman, and she is only wearing a tiny -"
"Does she wear a mask? Does anyone in a picture wear a mask?"
Awonso stopped grinning, and understood what Threo was implying. "No. How strange! What does it mean?"
"I slipped one of the maids a coin, and she answered my questions. It is not a festival or joke! Everyone here wears masks all their lives, except in the dark! And they don't call them 'masks', but their 'faces'!" Threo gestured like people on Kap Verita when they were excited or wanted to press an argument. "Something bad has happened here, I just know it."
Awonso shrugged. "So why not just ask the city lord, or some other Vanitian, to take off his mask?"
Threo made a glum face. "And what if they refuse... if they have something to hide and would stop us from leaving with their secret?"
Awonso swallowed. "Oh goddess."
"Have you had radio contact with Damon City yet?"
"I tried, but there is a strong noise signal which drowns out all frequencies... as if we were standing on top of a power plant, or... oh no." His eyes went wide. "Someone is deliberately blocking out the signal of my set. I cannot tell whether my word gets through to Castilia, and I cannot hear any incoming answers."
"Quick, go and warn Kensaburé. We should leave this place. Now! I'll go warn Okono. And take your radio with you."
Despite his overweight appearance, Awonso was quick to oblige and rush out. Threo went to the other side of the rail and climbed over to the next balcony. He found himself looking in through the open door to another guest-room, similar to his own, and heard the sound of tools working against metal parts.
He half feared he might be intruding on some private, intimate scene, and knocked on the doorpost. "Okono?"
A tool dropped to the floor. Then he heard Okono's strained voice: "What are you doing here? Where are your manners?"
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DARC AGES (c)A.R.Yngve 1995, 2000, 2004, 2006. All rights reserved. May not be copied without permission.
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