Bracinta was last century’s giant, decomposing slowly. Had the Pals found it at its height then either they’d have mustered all their armies and waged one of the most savage wars in all their bloody history, or they’d have decided that maybe the place didn’t need to be perfected quite yet, instituted diplomatic ties and taken their batons elsewhere. But the glory days of the Bracite Kings were buried in yesterdays. The iron grip of the ruling dynasty had been eroded by internecine squabbles and the rise of viziers. The nation the Pals had found had been wealthy and failing. And yet not quite failed. The initial emissaries reckoned that forcible introduction of Correct Thought might just catalyse a Bracite renaissance and make the whole business more costly than anyone needed. The Pals’ solution to the Bracite Problem was not to flip the heavily-laden table of Bracinta, but to slowly slide their regulation-booted feet under it inch by inch until they’d made themselves entirely at home.
“That man,” Banders said, mightily impressed, “is breathing actual fire. Fire. You see that, Tally? Didn’t you use to do that, back before we civilized you?”
Tallifer looked gratifyingly dissatisfied with that. “Banders, will you just not,” she hissed.
“I will not just not, no,” Banders answered blithely. They were only just within the walls of Magnelei but the locals, who knew exactly the best choke-point from which to extract money from their visitors, had put on a hell of a show in the square there. It was a proper square, too. There were great big pillared buildings on all sides, three storeys and the top two – out of vandals’ easy reach – heavily carved with an eye-leading montage of scenes and figures. There were stalls shoving one another for elbow room, selling food, ornament, clothing, toys and a lot of pointy-toed slippers that seemed to be a local specialty. Wherever a stall hadn’t managed to set roots down, someone was trying to be entertaining. The air was full of the caterwauling that passed for Magnelei songs, plus tootly little pipes and fluttery drums and a sort of shaky thing with sand in it. People were dancing or putting their half-clad bodies through weird contortions. One old boy sounded like he was preaching stern religious admonishments to the off-duty soldiers as they filed through the gates, and Banders put him down as ‘man most like to get lamped by midmorning’ in her personal betting book. And the soldiers had all been read the ordinances. No brawling, no immoderation, no starting anything with the locals. As far as Banders could make out, the only reason the ordinances existed was so the provosts and the duty Inquirers would have something to do, because you didn’t want highly important people like that just sitting on their hands.
The fire-eater held up the little glowing bug in his hands and breathed over it. A plume of flames roared out in the shape of a phoenix ascending to the heavens.
“Cor, there he goes again with it,” Banders noted approvingly. “Someone give him a penny.”
“Today is going to be a bloody privation, isn’t it,” Tallifer remarked to nobody and everybody. “Banders, what is your plan, exactly, for today?”
“I, Tally,” Banders told her, “am going to see the sights, whatever they may be. ’Cos that is one of the main compensations of being in this army, and I’ve never been here before, and probably it’ll all be on fire next time we get to see it. I plan to conduct a scholarly investigation into whatever it is around here that people eat, and drink, and do for entertainment, and then lie down in a dark room and bounce about with. And maybe buy a souvenir if there’s anything left in my pouch at that point. Sound like a plan?”
It sounded like a plan to Lochiver and new girl Lidlet and – incredibly – to Cosserby, and it didn’t look like Jack or Masty had any better plans. The Butcher was off to trawl the markets for alchemical reagents. Which, given he’d left his boy minding the shop back at camp, meant he was hunting for smutty pamphlets or worse stuff, but each to their own as far as Banders was concerned.
“I understand that there is a fine local tradition of poetic houses where one might drink superior tea and listen to verses,” Tallifer declared.
“That sounds like literally the worst and last thing I would ever want to do,” Banders said frankly.
“I thought you’d say that,” Tallifer agreed. “That is why I proposed it. You go catch as many intestinal complaints and venereal diseases as you like. Lochiver…”
“I am not doing poetry and tea-readings,” he said mulishly. “Which it is, by the way. You read poetry, and then they look at your tea leavings and tell you your future. Given we’re both old as snakes, we wouldn’t be getting our money’s worth, would we?”
“Lochiver, you are coming with me to defend my honour,” Tallifer told him sternly.
“That sounds like trying to find the sun’s shadow.”
Tallifer snagged his thin arm and bent close to whisper something. Banders rolled her eyes at the attempt at subterfuge.
“You two old timers want to ditch us so you can find some mad drugs and a double bed, you go right ahead. That comes right after poetry in my list of things I don’t want to experience,” she said.
Lochiver leered at her. “You ain’t had it, unless you’ve had it with a plague-cultist.”
“Oh god help me.” Tallifer covered her face. “We’re doing poetry and tea. Anyone so much as insinuates anything else and I will fight them. Come on, you old pervert.”
Lochiver gave out a spectacularly filthy chuckle, and then the pair were weaving off into the crowd.
“That,” the Butcher declared, “was a whole conversation I did not need to be a witness to.”
“Chief, I don’t want to get old now. How can I not do that?” Banders said.
He clapped her on the shoulder. “Knowing you, I don’t feel it’s something you need to worry about.”
“Thanks – hey!”
Then he had a big ham of a hand on either shoulder, turning her to face him. “I want to say ‘don’t get into trouble’ but that would be me pissing into the hurricane, wouldn’t it.”
“That’s hurtful, Chief.”
“Masty, Cosserby, at least try to keep her throat from getting slit.”
Cosserby stuck his chest out, but mostly his gut. Masty was so shrouded in the depths of a non-uniform hood that Banders had no idea what he was doing.
“We’re waiting for Alv, though, aren’t we?” Jack queried. “She’s with us?”
“She was up an hour before any of us,” the Butcher told him. “She’s teaching, needs to get the new class up on the basics.”
“That doesn’t seem fair,” he said.
“Yeah well, that’s ’cos Alv’s scared of enjoying herself,” Banders put in, and earned a warning look from Ollery.
“Walk in your own boots,” he told Jack. “Nobody else’s will fit you. And look after the new girl.” Which barely needed saying given Lidlet had glued herself to Jack’s shoulder. Ollery made to go, then obviously had what were at least third thoughts, maybe fourth. “Banders—”
“Chief, we’re fine. We have a native guide. Eh?” And she jabbed Masty in the ribs. He tried to shake his head at her, but if he was going to go about in a hood then she could safely ignore any of that kind of signal. “Even if he is embarrassed to be seen with us. Masty, you think you’re going to be recognised? You owe people here money? Take it off, for the sake of reason.”
He hooked it back a bit, but only so he could give her a Look.
“What? You’re our local boy, right? Take us to all the best neighbourhoods. What?” Aware that there was a bit of a head of silence developing around them, like a cold spot against the heat of the frenetic market. Other soldiers were pushing past on the way to some fun, but here everyone was staring at her. Even Jack, who was so new he’d barely been born. Even Lidlet. “He’s a lo-cal,” she spelled out for them. “I mean, you can see that. Just look at him and look at all of them.” A bit of a generalisation, true, but you could see a lot of Masty in the people of Magnelei, in aggregate. The long face, the aquiline nose, the olive-dark skin. Put him in their clothes – the flowing over-robe, the skirts, the bare chest and thin belt with a fancy buckle. Dress him up like that, he’d fit right in. And, because everyone was still staring at her, not least Masty himself, “Will you knock it off. I’m just saying there’s no point him hiding away. He looks just like them. It’s not a bad thing. It’s just… what?”
The Butcher leaned in until his breath tickled her ear, giving her the uncomfortable feeling he might bite it off at any moment. “You think about when Masty signed on, Banders?”
“What? I mean, right, he was young? It was before my time.”
“It was before my time,” Ollery stressed. “I don’t reckon Masty got much of a grounding in Magnelei’s vice dens before then, on account of him being five years old. Right?”
“Oh hell, Chief, I wasn’t suggesting—”
“And.” His voice was a low purr, an undertow beneath her words that dragged them down into silence. “Just think about how it might have happened that a Bracite kid of five ended up with our army just as it all kicked off here. Think about all those happy childhood memories our friend might have. After the dynasty fell, fighting in the streets, they said. Half a dozen different contenders and factions. Blood enough to turn the river red. Happy to have us march in and keep the peace, and if you think about how people normally feel about our marching then you’ll see how bad it was.”
“Chief—” Banders opened her mouth, then had one of those rare moments when she got to see herself from the outside, with especial reference to recent words spoken. She thought about just what the Butcher had said. Whatever words had been about to issue from her mouth like a parade put down their flags and trumpets and slunk back down her throat.
“Masty,” she said, instead.
He watched her warily.
“I am such a twat.” She didn’t like self-knowledge. It so seldom brought a feeling of warmth and happiness. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t think. I mean, you know me. I never think. I just say things. Mostly stupid things. And I even badgered you into coming in the first place. I bet you’d rather be back at camp. You’d rather not be anywhere near me right now. You go on back. You can. I don’t mind.”
And Masty, damn him, actually smiled at her, somehow managing to accept even that dog-earned excuse for an apology as sincere. “I’m here now,” he told her. “It’s all right. I understand.”
She felt a weird stab of anger on his behalf, but she could hardly demand that he not understand. She couldn’t exactly insist that he slug her in the jaw and storm off. Not that it was in his nature to do so, and not that he probably had much of a right hook in him. But he’d have been justified. She’d not have held it against him.
“We’ll keep out of trouble.” To Banders surprise it was Lidlet speaking, taking on an authority she absolutely didn’t have. “I mean, I don’t have any choice in it, right? Neither of us do.” Rapping on Jack’s box to get his attention.
“That,” he agreed, “is very true. So yes, we will keep to the straits, Chief. Don’t worry about us.”
“And you’ve got your idiot passes?” he checked. Meaning the additional piece of paper that Landwards had instituted for Accessories. And Banders, Cosserby and Lidlet didn’t need them, but Masty and Jack certainly did.
With a final warning look at Banders, Ollery nodded. “I’ll see you next back at the camp,” he told them, like a caution. As it happened, it turned out to be poor prophecy, but none of them were to know right then.