5

She wasn’t pleased to see me. “You arsehole,” she said, as soon as I lifted the bag off her head. “You complete and utter shit.”

“Yes,” I said. “But it wasn’t that I wanted to talk about. You know all those books in the seneschal’s room.”

“Fuck you,” she said. “What books?”

My head was starting to hurt, probably because the little seized-up cogs were trying to turn. “You know,” I said. “The books in the room at the top of the tower. Technical manuals, mostly.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Saevus, you’re a turd. I trusted you.”

“The books,” I reminded her gently. “You’re saying you didn’t bring them with you. They were there when you came.”

“I don’t know anything about any fucking books. Now get these ropes off me. You know being tied up gives me panic attacks.”

“Sorry,” I said, “but you’re too good at getting away. It’s a compliment, really. I happen to think the ability to escape is one of the most beautiful qualities a person can have, and you’ve got it in spades. You sure you don’t know anything about the books?”

A serpentine look lit up in her eyes. “If you showed me what you’re talking about,” she said, “it might jog my memory.”

“I doubt it. So you didn’t bring them with you.”

“No. Saevus, please untie these ropes. They’re so tight I can’t feel my legs.”

I considered for a moment. “I’ll ask your carters,” I said. “They’ll remember if there was a big box full of books. I don’t suppose you’d forget carrying that lot up eight flights of stairs in a hurry.”

“Saevus, I mean it. I’m really suffering. I saved your life once. If you don’t let me go I’ll never forgive you.”

I spread the hem of the bag out with my fingers. “If you do remember anything,” I told her, “do let me know.” Then I popped the bag back over her head, and she started yowling like a cat.

Not that that told me anything, apart from the fact that she has a thing about confined spaces, which I already knew. If Stauracia didn’t want to tell me about the books, she’d be prepared to put up with a lot of personal discomfort before she gave way. I know her well enough to be aware that I don’t always know when she’s lying: useful knowledge, but essentially negative. Still, negative data is still data. “Are you all right in there?” I asked.

I couldn’t make out the words, but the tone of voice told me what I needed to know. I wasn’t going to get anything useful out of her, and she didn’t like having the bag over her head. I took it off. She tried to spit at me but her mouth was too dry.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s assume for argument’s sake that you don’t know anything about the books. In that case, I’d be grateful for your opinion. Let’s go for a walk. I expect you’d like to stretch your legs after a night on the floor.”

As we strolled round the courtyard I listened patiently to her mostly accurate summary of my character, then pointed out that she’d have done exactly the same thing if she’d been in my shoes. She had the grace to admit that, yes, she would. In fact, she looked forward with eager anticipation to proving me right, the very next time she had an opportunity.

“That’s fine,” I said, “we understand each other. Now then, about these books.”

“I don’t know anything about any stupid books,” she said. “And I haven’t even been in that room.”

“Haven’t you? You’re sure about that.”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“You’ve been up the tower.”

“Of course I have, to the platform on the top. But I didn’t go in any room. No need to.”

“Funny,” I said. “You’re curious by nature, you’d have wanted to see if there was anything in there worth having.”

“Fine.” She glowered at me. “I tried the door but it was stiff and I couldn’t get it open. So I thought, I’ll come back with a couple of men and a big hammer. And then I forgot all about it.”

Possible but unlikely. The door opened just fine when I tried it; in fact, it wouldn’t shut properly, because of the damp. Of course, if it was seized and someone had kicked it in, that would account for its deplorable lack of function. “Who the hell,” I said, “would store a load of perfectly ordinary, not especially valuable books at the top of a tower in an abandoned castle?”

The question made her pause and think. “I don’t know,” she said. “Someone who’d stolen them and needed to stash them for a while.”

“Yes, but they’re only worth about ten staurata.”

“Ten staurata’s a lot of money to some people. We aren’t all the sons of dukes, remember.”

“Yes, but – all right, what do you think they’re doing there?”

She stopped walking and frowned. “You can hide something in a book,” she said. “You can cut out a page and paste in a new one. Or you can write something in a margin. Vital information.”

What I’d been thinking. Two minds, et cetera. “Yes, in one book,” I said. “There’s forty-two of them.”

“Camouflage. One book on its own—”

“Might just have been left there by accident, so you’d take no notice. Forty-two are hard to miss.”

She sighed. “All right,” she said. “Someone stole them or got hold of them, knowing that one of them had something valuable in it. But he didn’t know which one, or what the valuable thing was. So he pinched the lot and stashed them, intending to come back later and figure it out.”

“That’s what I figured,” I said. “So let’s go and look, shall we?”

We looked. We went through all the books, me first then her, in case I missed something. But all the pages followed on from each other, the writing in each book was all in the same hand, and there were no notes in any of the margins. Just a load of useful technical books. Useless.

“A code,” she suggested. “You can do a code by using the first word on each page, and then you substitute the letters—”

“Yes, I know. But you could get a copy of any of those books anywhere in the West. If it was a particular copy, the relevant words would be underlined or have a pinhole next to them. There’s nothing like that.”

“Fuck,” she said, with feeling. “In that case, I don’t get it. It makes no sense. So it can’t be the stupid books.”

“Then account for them being there.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, do I? Look, they’re all useful books. Lots of useful stuff about how to do things. Somebody wanted a library of useful books, because they were getting ready to do stuff.”

“So?”

“So maybe the people I’m working for want to do stuff. To be honest, I haven’t got the faintest what they want, but for all I know maybe they’re planning to found the Perfect Society. Nutcases usually do, and I’m pretty sure they’re all nutcases. If you were founding a utopian colony, you’d need to know about preserving fruit and making barrels and all that kind of thing. And they’re probably all city people who don’t know spit about anything useful, so they’d need to read about it in books.”

I thought about that. It made sense. “Really,” I said. “Someone’s planning to set up the ideal republic, so naturally they desperately need a book about how to make stained-glass windows.”

She glared at me. “Probably a job lot,” she said. “In an auction catalogue: useful books, various. Look, these people aren’t the sharpest arrows in the quiver. And there’s really useful stuff in there, too: crop rotation, basics of animal husbandry, how to build a house. I bet you anything you like that’s the explanation.”

And making stained glass isn’t a bad idea, either. A new colony needs exports, and people pay good money for stained glass, and the raw materials are basically sand. “It’s got to be the books,” I said, “for the simple reason that I’ve been all over this stupid castle and there isn’t anything else.”

“Or you haven’t found it yet. Because it’s really well hidden, or you don’t know what you’re looking for.”

I sighed. “You’re not helping,” I said.

“Why the hell should I?”

“Because—” I hadn’t meant to shout. “Because if we can identify and find what it is, we can play your lot off against my lot, and get what we want: my pals safe and sound, this kid you’re concerned about—”

“My son.”

“This kid,” I repeated, “whoever he is. We can both win, and everybody goes home happy. But if I can’t find it and use it to do a deal, I’ll have no alternative but to hand this castle over to my lot, in order to get Gombryas and Carrhasio back, and you’ll have failed in your mission, and I have to take your word for it that there’ll be repercussions that you won’t like.”

“Fuck you, Saevus. My son.”

I still couldn’t make my mind up about that. I’d tried reconstructing what I knew about her, looking out for a gap of say four months when she’d been out of sight and unaccounted for. The trouble was, there were several gaps of suitable duration; I’d assumed she’d been on the run, hiding out or in prison, but maybe she’d been off somewhere giving birth to an actual human child. Or maybe not. “I wish I could believe you,” I said. “I really do. The trouble is, faith is like sleep and—”

“Love.” She stifled a yawn. “Yes, you’ve told me that before. It’s one of your party pieces. You repeat yourself a lot, did you know that? Like an old man telling war stories. Look,” she said, lowering and softening her voice – it was supposed to inspire confidence but in me it had the opposite effect, unfortunately. “Just for once in your life, believe me. I know, I’ve lied to you a lot and there’s no reason you should ever believe a word I say, but this time it’s for real, and it’s important. He’s all I’ve got. If anything happened to him, I’d die. Really.”

She’s lying, I sixty per cent decided. But that didn’t really matter. I wanted to fix the problem without her getting hurt, with her getting what she wanted. But unless I could figure out what the castle’s hidden treasure was, I couldn’t do that. “How often do you report back to your lot?” I asked.

“You what?”

“The people controlling you,” I said. “The ones you claim kidnapped your suppositious child. Do you send them regular reports? How regular? Once a month? Once a week? Daily?”

“When I feel like it,” she said. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“I’m guessing,” I said, “that they hear from you regularly. If they don’t get a report, they know something’s wrong and they arrive with reinforcements. So how long is it since you last reported in, and when can I expect the reinforcements to get here? Don’t answer that,” I added, “I find it hurtful when people tell me lies.”

She answered the question, though. She did it with a little twitch of her mouth. It’s a habit of hers. I don’t think she knows she does it, though maybe that’s what she wants me to think; that would be very useful, of course. “Oh, come on,” she said.

“I’ll assume they’re on their way,” I said. “But that’s all right, because my lot are on their way, too. And I’ve got five hundred men to hold this castle with, until my lot and your lot get here and we can have a nice three-way siege, just like in bloody Sirupat. But we don’t have to do that,” I said, as impressively as I could manage on the spur of the moment. “Not if you know what the special thing is and where it’s hidden. If only you knew that, we could fix this and go home.”

I looked at her. It was like looking into a mirror.

“I’m glad I’m not you,” she said, after a moment. “I’d hate to have a mind like yours.”

About Praeclara. My mother-in-law.

She’s not someone I like thinking about, let alone talking about or describing. I’m not a hateful sort of person. I meet a lot of hard cases and nasty pieces of work in the course of my daily grind, but they don’t bother me as a rule; I don’t like them, but I don’t hate them. Usually I can sympathise with them, since they tend to have done the same sort of horrible and unforgivable things as I have; I don’t approve, please note, but I can sympathise. I don’t happen to believe in Evil with a capital E. I think there are nice people and nasty people, people who think nice thoughts and people who think nasty ones; and generally speaking, the bad stuff in this world is much more likely to emanate from the nice people with nice thoughts. Such as: well, liberty, equality and fraternity, for a start. Those concepts have started more wars and killed more human beings than dear old greed and selfishness could possibly ever aspire to. Show me a genuinely serious war, not just a border dispute or a scrap about trade but a million-killing, city-burning, depopulating, starvation-inducing nightmare, and I bet you ten staurata I can show you the idealist who started it. True, there are people who do appalling things not for idealistic reasons; mostly people with mental problems. There are people who stab strangers in the street for no obvious motive, or set fire to buildings because they like the glow. They cause unspeakable grief to a few individuals. That’s not evil, that’s illness. Compared to the visionary who longs to free the oppressed or lead the chosen people to the promised land, the damage they do is so limited as to be, in the great scheme of things, inconsequential, and you might as well hate the sky because of the occasional flash of lightning.

So: I don’t hate many people. My mother-in-law Praeclara is one of about five people I genuinely loathe. And Praeclara isn’t evil. She’s just intensely self-centred, incredibly focused and, goes without saying, an idealist. She believes in the Cause. I’ve known her a long time and I’ve never quite managed to figure out what the Cause is, but she knows and she lives, breathes and has her being exclusively for it. I imagine the Cause is probably something fundamentally decent. It usually is.

I first met Praeclara shortly after I met her daughter. This isn’t easy for me to write, by the way, so please excuse me if what follows lacks my usual hard-glazed charm and meretricious flippancy. Let me start this again, now I’ve had a moment to catch my breath.

The first time I met Apoina, my wife, was at an Ascension Day service at the Flawless Diamond temple in Leal Defoir. I don’t know if you ever went there before they tore out all the old seating and replaced it with all those ghastly modernist benches; before that, you had the high altar in the centre of the nave, where it is now, and all the seats surrounded it in a series of concentric rings. I can see why they changed it, because at any given time a quarter of the congregation had a splendid view of the back of the celebrant’s head and not much else. I think it was supposed to symbolise the centrality of the Light Made Manifest in all aspects of human life or something like that, but it was all pretty silly and no wonder they scrapped it, though needless to say they replaced it with something worse. Anyway, I was kneeling in the front row during the Sanctus – what was I doing in a temple? You’ve jumped to the conclusion that I was casing the joint with a view to stealing the gold ornaments off the rood screen, but in actual fact I was only there to listen to the music; the choir was due to sing a Procopius anthem – “Rejoice, Ye Lands”, if memory serves – and I happen to like that sort of thing. Anyway, I was kneeling for the Sanctus, looking down at my hands like you do, and at the edge of my peripheral vision I caught sight of something that looked remarkably like a knife. I glanced sideways, and, yes, it was a knife; double-edged, tapered, about five inches. It was being gripped in the left hand of a thin-faced young woman who was muttering something very rapidly under her breath, and I sort of intuitively knew that the moment she’d finished reciting this whatever-it-was, she was going to jump up out of her seat and stick the knife in the back of the Lord Archdeacon.

That sort of thing happens, from time to time; see above, under Evil, non-existence of. You get some poor fool who honestly believes that the Invincible Sun ordered him to do it, so what choice did he have? Personally I don’t think the Invincible Sun did anything of the sort, mostly because He doesn’t exist, but that’s just my opinion; it’s stuff that happens, and the more you agonise over it, the more collateral damage is likely to occur.

Fortunately, thanks to my long association with sharp objects, I know how to take a knife away from someone without making a fuss or getting cut. The trick is to clamp the flat of the blade between your thumb and fingertips, squeezing it as hard as you can, then give it a sharp turn through ninety degrees to break the owner’s grip. Use your left hand; the object of the exercise is to get the knife as far away from its owner as possible, so if you use your left there’s the whole of the width of your body between you and him; also, if the operation goes wrong and you end up getting cut to the bone, you don’t lose the use of your more valuable right hand. Don’t rush; nice and easy wins the race, as my old archery tutor used to say, and you can apply more controlled force if you keep it smooth rather than being tempted to jerk.

So I took the knife away from her. It was a piece of cake, since she hadn’t been expecting it. She turned to stare at me; I put my right forefinger to my lips, ssh, then lowered my head once more in conventional prayer. As the Sanctus wound up I slid the knife down the inside of my left boot, where the hem of my coat would conceal the handle.

The precentor sang the last phrase of the Sanctus, cue for the congregation to stand up for the Miserere, and I glanced at my left hand, which was dripping blood. It was only a minor slice, diagonal rather than square on, so no danger to the tendons. I wriggled my sleeve down my arm and clenched my fingers on the cuff to check the bleeding.

I’d expected her to get up and walk out, but she stayed where she was, eyes fixed straight ahead. For a moment I thought she had another weapon, but the tension had gone out of her neck and shoulders; the poor kid was stunned and confused, no idea what she was supposed to do next. By this point, according to the schedule, she ought to be dead or being dragged across the floor on her way to a prison cell, but everything had changed and she was cut off from her chain of command, like a half-platoon of soldiers at the extreme edge of a battle who’ve just seen the rest of their army wiped out.

I assume they sang the Procopius but if they did I wasn’t paying attention. My hand started to throb and I was afraid to look at it, in case I saw something I didn’t like. It was essential not to draw attention to her or myself, so I made a point of saying the prayers and responses loudly and clearly, looking straight ahead, taking no notice of my neighbours on either side – on my left there was a middle-aged woman in a yellow silk gown, and the last thing I needed was for any of my blood to get on it, so I had to keep my left hand in my lap. All told, it was a pretty weird three-quarters of an hour.

The service ended, the choir and clergy processed out through the west door and everybody did that sitting-around-until-it’s-polite-to-leave thing that you only ever see in places of worship. I looked to my right to see if the woman was still there. She was. She had this sort of dead look in her eyes, which I interpreted as: I’ve made a mess of it; my life is over. Silly girl, I thought, but I knew I was being unfair. Maybe she had some entirely valid cause of action against the Archdeacon, he killed her father or raped her sister, and I’d interfered and screwed everything up. Interfere at your peril, my uncle Cyprian used to say. Good advice, which I’m usually smart enough to follow.

People all round us were standing up to go, but she just sat there. God only knows why, but I tapped her on the shoulder and tipped my head in the direction of the east door; come on, the gesture, said, we need to talk. So we went out into the cloister, and we talked.

Correction: after a sticky beginning, she talked and I listened. It all came rushing out, like fish sauce out of a bottle when the mouth of the bottle’s caked up, so you give it a good shake… Her name, she said, was Apereisi Apoina, and her mother had made her do it. For the Cause, she said, in a leaden sort of a voice. It was time to send Bad People a message, one they couldn’t ignore. She didn’t say what the message was (obviously something short and pithy enough to be written on the back of a dead Archdeacon) but she knew it was important, because out of all the Brotherhood her mother had chosen her own daughter to deliver it, and now it had all gone wrong and she’d failed—

“What do you want?” I asked. “An apology?”

She looked at me. “No,” she said. “I don’t know what to do. I should be dead by now.”

I took a deep breath. “Let’s pretend,” I said. “Let’s make believe it all went swimmingly and you’re dead.”

She laughed, then burst into tears. “I’m not, though. Am I?”

“You’re left-handed, aren’t you?” I asked.

“Yes. How did you—?”

“You were holding the knife in your left hand,” I said. “If you’d been right-handed, I wouldn’t have seen it in time, if I had seen it I couldn’t have taken it away from you without a hell of a fuss, and there’d have been blood everywhere. And I’m sorry if it sounds feeble, but I regard blood as an admission of failure. I see so much of it in my line of work, and it’s sort of my golden rule: whenever you see blood soaking into the dust, somewhere close at hand you’re bound to find an idiot in charge of something.”

“Your line of work.” She stopped short and frowned. “You’re a soldier.”

“No.”

“Yes you are.” She looked straight at me, and if she’d had hackles they’d have risen. “You weren’t just there by accident.”

“I was, actually. I heard they were going to sing a Procopius anthem, and I had a bit of spare time, so I dropped in for the service. If you remember, I was there first.”

“No, you weren’t.”

“Yes, I was. You arrived late, just before the introit. You sat next to me because there was only one empty seat in the front row.”

Actually that proved nothing, but I said it as though it was conclusive evidence. I could see her fighting it, then reluctantly giving way. “So if you’re not a soldier, what are you?”

“Me? I’m a businessman. I deal in second-hand goods. Actually, more like a glorified rag and bone man.”

“You see a lot of blood in the rag and bone business?”

I decided I’d better change the subject as quickly as possible. “You say your mother told you to do this.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“But—” No, I thought, forget it. None of your business. It’s like flies in buckets of water. You see them thrashing desperately, trying to get out before all their strength is used up, but they can’t, and when they’re utterly exhausted they drown. So you have a choice. You can scoop them up in your cupped hand and put them somewhere safe, or you can leave them to it. I don’t think even Saloninus could calculate precisely how many millions of flies drown in buckets of water on any given day, and you know what? You can’t save them all. In Echmen they have these fairy tales where the fly turns out to be the daughter of the Dragon King of the West, who in due course rescues her saviour from certain death and ends up marrying him, but Echmen is a long way away and we don’t have dragons in these parts. The hell with it. The world is crowded to bursting with dying, helpless innocents. There’s nothing you can do about it. Really there isn’t. And you can catch something nasty from dipping your hand in stagnant water.

I thought about all that, and then I looked at her. “I lied,” I said. “I’m a soldier. You’re under arrest.”

Which left me with the question of what to do with her. I couldn’t let her go back to her mother, who’d simply issue her with another knife and tell her to try again. I couldn’t hand her over to any form of authority; either they wouldn’t believe me or they’d hang her. I couldn’t find a job for her in my business, which is what I generally do with the waifs and strays I lumber myself with – Stauracia lives and thrives on battlefields, but she was clearly no Stauracia. I felt like a man who wanders into a saleroom to get out of the rain and comes out again having bought a stuffed elephant.

“You’ll end up marrying her,” said my friend Amphilyta, to whom I’d unwisely told my troubles. “I can see that happening, clear as day.”

“Bullshit,” I said.

Amphilyta runs the Crystal Garden. I’d asked her if she needed a bookkeeper. “You haven’t got a choice,” she said. “You’ve backed yourself into a corner and now you’re screwed.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Absolutely. You’ve taken responsibility for her: that’s where you made your big mistake.”

“Which makes her a nuisance,” I said, “not a prospective bride. Look, I’ve got her locked up in a room out back of the distillery in Coopers Yard, for which I’m paying sixteen stuivers a day. The sooner I can get shot of her, the happier I’ll be.”

“Your own silly fault,” she said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “And anyone can see you’re besotted.”

“No.”

“Yes. How long have we known each other? I can read you like a book.”

Amphilyta is illiterate, which is why I’d thought she might need some clerical assistance. “No, you can’t,” I said.

“The way you talk about her,” she said. “Besotted.”

“Drop dead.”

Which got me a smile; more like a leer. “I suppose I could use someone to look after the accounts,” she said. “Of course I can do them in my head far better than any silly girl can written down, but since you asked so nicely—”

I’d made a mistake, but it was too late. Amphilyta had made her mind up, and that was that. When I’m in Leal I spend most of my time in the Crystal Garden; it’s where everyone knows where to find me, and I know I’ll be safe there. Amphilyta knows people who can arrange that sort of thing. I helped her out of a scrape once, a long time ago. I had a nasty feeling this would, in her view, be her way of repaying her debt.

The main thing, I told her, was to make sure Apoina’s ghastly mother didn’t find out she was there; also, while we were on the subject, what was known about her, and why would she want her daughter to kill an Archdeacon? Amphilyta knows everything that goes on in Leal. The mother’s name, she told me, was Praeclara, and her outfit was the Golden Spider—

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I said.

“Precisely,” Amphilyta said. “And in all the years I’ve known you, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you swear.”

If you want to start a conversation in any bar in Leal and be confident that it’ll end in shattered furniture and broken teeth, walk up to someone and say, “So what do you think the Golden Spider is really trying to achieve?” There are plenty of theories. They’re out to overthrow the government. They’re the government’s top secret black ops squad, blending deniability with utter ruthlessness as they wipe out the regime’s more troublesome opponents. They plan to drive a stake through the heart of the military-industrial complex that really runs things. They’re a bunch of religious fanatics. They’re a bunch of atheist maniacs hell-bent on toppling established religion. They’re a pseudo-political front for organised crime. They’re out-of-control vigilantes fighting organised crime because the government can’t or won’t. They’re misguided idealists trying to stop the next war. They’re misguided idealists trying to start the next war. All of the above.

Opinions, therefore, vary. The facts are pretty universally agreed. A hundred and seven murders, ninety-eight major robberies, over a thousand arson attacks, woundings, beatings and destruction of property too numerous to particularise; those are the facts they cheerfully admit to.

Not evil people; certainly not. I have no doubt whatsoever that they consider themselves to be saints and (if at all possible) martyrs; they’re not evil, they’re fighting evil, and with such utter devotion that they’d happily give their lives to further the long, twilight struggle. But dangerous people – yes, very much so, and I make it a rule to keep as far away from dangerous people as I can get, myself excepted, naturally. I wasn’t overjoyed, therefore, to find out that I’d effectively kidnapped the daughter of one of them. It struck me as possibly the most stupid thing I’d done since I left home. Amphilyta clearly agreed with me.

“I’m not having her here,” she said. “Sorry, but no deal. And come to think of it, you can piss off as well, and don’t ever come back. I like you, Saevus, and you did me a good turn once, but you’re not worth that much trouble. And if they come here and ask where to find you, I’ll tell them. Like a shot.”

I admire honesty. “Give me twenty-four hours, all right?”

She gave me a sad look. “Not if they come here looking for you. Sorry.”

Well, the world is a big place. The previous day I’d put in a bid on a silly little war in Teuda, right up in the armpit of the Friendly Sea. I’d bid low because I didn’t really want the job. I went back to the factor who was taking the bids and raised my offer somewhat.

He looked at me. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Fine,” he said, his eyes very wide. “You got it.”

That was late afternoon. The soonest we’d be ready to leave would be early the next morning. I told Gombryas and Polycrates to get the stuff loaded. Then, as soon as it was dark, I went round to Coopers Yard. They were there waiting for me.

That was the first time I met Praeclara. An interesting woman: clearly very smart, focused, motivated, not one to suffer fools gladly. “He’s not a soldier,” she told her daughter. “He’s a scrap merchant. He makes his living robbing dead bodies.”

In case you’d formed a mental picture of a dark cell with straw on the floor, chains and rats, I’d spent rather a lot of money – forty stuivers – on making the room as comfortable as possible. I’d provided a decent bed and a table and a chair, a nine-stuiver brass lamp and sheepskin rug. The door was bolted on the outside, but I’d seen to it that there was always a scuttleful of charcoal for the fire, a jug of water and a basin, edible food sent in from the Clarity of Purpose round the corner and a box of books for her to read. “I’m assuming,” Praeclara went on, “that he’d got some silly idea about demanding a ransom.”

To make matters just a little bit worse, I hadn’t told Gombryas and the boys anything about it, so they had no idea where I was and weren’t going to come bursting in through the door to rescue me. In fact, as far as I could tell, I’d come to the end of a long and pointless road; a stupid place to die, for a stupid reason, but nobody lives for ever. It was probably going to hurt, but what the hell.

“No,” I said. “No ransom. Matter of fact, I felt sorry for her.”

I’ve probably already told you the story of the friend of mine who stopped by the roadside for a piss and found himself nose to nose with a lion, so I won’t repeat it; but, trust me, I know how he felt. Absolutely terrified, of course, but he also mentioned a sort of brittle, petrified calm, in which he could hear a bird singing in a nearby thorn bush and his own heart beating, as clear as anything. “You felt sorry for her. How come?”

“Because,” I said, “her lunatic of a mother had sent her off to be killed. I ask you. What kind of a monster would do a thing like that?”

She looked at me. I interested her. I imagine the lion had a similar expression. “And what business is that of yours?” she asked.

“None,” I said. “And I got my hand all cut up and I’m out of pocket a gulden thirty. Serves me right for giving a damn.”

Consider the lion. It’s so big and strong that it’s afraid of nothing. It’s so successful at hunting that it can afford to be lazy, belay that, leisured in its approach. It’s not starving hungry all the time like most predators; it can afford to play with its food, or even – the supreme indulgence – occasionally let it go. She looked at me for a long time, then put her hand in her sleeve and took out a small lace purse. “Two gulden,” she said, holding out the coins. “Keep the change.”

I knew the situation, as though it was a scene in a play I’d watched a dozen times already. I reach out to take the coins, someone standing behind me bashes my head, I fall on the ground and they all crowd round me and stomp me to death. They were waiting for their cue. I let them wait.

She stood there holding out her hand with the coins in it for maybe five seconds, then shrugged and put them back in her purse. The lion was intrigued with me. “I found out about you,” she said. “You’re a real piece of work.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Coming from you that means a lot.”

“Funny man.” Again, an obvious cue for the beating to start. She could have started it with the slightest nod, but she chose not to. Interesting. The dynamics of mass stompings are very delicate and precise, like the mechanism of a Mezentine clock. Set the mechanism in motion and the outcome is inevitable, but there are points where, if you keep your nerve and don’t do what’s in the script, you can save your life. I was still undamaged, and I was gleaning tiny amounts of data, like a bee getting pollen on its legs. “I gather you’re off to Teuda.”

“That’s right.”

“I’ve never been there, but I gather it’s a real dump.”

“It’s not so bad,” I said.

She nodded. “Fine,” she said. “Have a safe trip. And if you ever show your face in Leal again, I’ll cut it off. Got that?”

“Yes.”

“Good boy.”

So that was it. She wasn’t going to have me kicked to death in front of her daughter. Later, maybe, but not where her little girl could see. Meanwhile, the Queen of Beasts was extending disdainful clemency to the gazelle trapped under her paw. “Just one thing,” I said.

And why I said it, I have no idea, to this day. Brave, as far as I’m concerned, is just a speechwriter’s synonym for stupid. I knew there was nothing useful I could achieve, and it was none of my business anyhow. At that moment it suddenly dawned on me, like the sharp unexpected pain that tells you that you’ve just torn a ligament, that Amphilyta was probably right and I was besotted. Pity about that, I decided, since it was going to get my skull crunched under someone’s boot.

“What?”

“You’re the biggest heap of shit I’ve ever come across in my entire life. Would you like me to justify that remark?”

So I had her undivided attention. Lucky me. “I think you’d better,” she said. “If you can.”

“No problem,” I said. “You send your own daughter to be a martyr to the Cause and get killed. That’s all right,” I added quickly, before she could interrupt, “I can understand that. I think it’s disgusting and ridiculous, but I can see why someone might think it was the right thing to do.”

“Thank you,” she said sweetly. “I do admire an open mind.”

“It’s not your lunatic fanaticism I’m taking issue with,” I said. “It’s you being so utterly selfish and self-centred that you don’t mind killing your own child for the Cause, but you don’t want her to watch you having a man beaten to death, because then she might see you for what you are and you won’t be her Great Goddess any more. I know that’s trivial compared to all the killing and burning you get up to, but I happen to think it’s particularly low, that’s all.”

It was one of those moments that could have gone either way. She could have decided that the damage had been done, so there wasn’t anything to lose by having me killed on the spot; there was also her dignity and authority to think about, since I’d insulted her in front of a dozen of her goons. Or she could prove me wrong by letting me live and being magnanimously amused about the whole thing. In her shoes I’d probably have had me killed. “Finished?” she said.

My heart stopped, because for a moment I thought she’d said, “Finish it”. My bowels had started to open; I managed to get control of them back just in time. “Yes,” I said. “I think that more or less covers it.”

Nobody said anything or moved. It was up to me. I turned round and headed for the door. If it was going to happen, it would be now; I’d lost the eye contact, my back was turned. I got as far as the door. “Just one thing,” she said.

I stopped but didn’t turn round.

“My daughter wasn’t in any danger,” she said. “I had seventeen men in the congregation, carefully positioned to screen her and make sure she got away. But you had to interfere.”

I put the palm of my hand against the door and gave it a gentle push. It opened. I walked through and kept going. Ten yards brought me into Coppergate; I turned left. Seven doors down on the right is the Clarity of Purpose. I plunged through the door and went straight up to the bar, where my friend Despoina (actually my friend Amphilyta’s friend Despoina) started to say, “You’ve got a nerve, showing your face in—”

“I need to hide,” I said. “Now.”

“Oh, for crying out loud.”

There’s a trapdoor to the cellar. It’s a nice cellar, cool and airy and not too many spiders. Sometime later, Despoina lifted the trap. “You can come out now,” she said.

“They’ve gone?”

She nodded. “Five of them,” she said. “I don’t know them so not from round here, but definitely trouble. And you owe me forty stuivers for the dinners.”

I gave her a gulden. “Won’t be needing them any more,” I said.

She looked at me. “Walked out on you, did she? Can’t say I blame her. If ever I decide to live in guilty splendour, it won’t be in a grubby little kennel out back of Coopers Yard.”

I went back to the Crystal Garden but didn’t go inside. Instead I hung about in the street. Eventually Olybrius came and found me. “What the hell is going on?” he asked.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Strange men have been looking for me.”

“We didn’t like the look of them, so we caught one and Carrhasio talked to him.” He smiled. “Told him he’d cut his toes off one by one with the poultry shears. You remember, there was a pair in with all that kitchen stuff from Duke Ousia’s baggage train.”

“And?”

“Nothing,” Olybrius said, clearly impressed. “Carrhasio was all for snipping some toes but we wouldn’t let him. He’s still in there if you want to have a try.”

“Let him go,” I said. “I know who sent him.”

So much for all that, then; all in all, I was glad we were leaving and heading for Teuda, a dismal place but not nearly as complicated as Leal. I was furious with myself for getting besotted (that was the word I made myself use) and acting like a stupid teenager over some thin-faced girl who’d barely said ten words to me. A month on the road followed by heaving about heat-swollen corpses would set me straight again and serve me right. We all act a little crazy from time to time—

I’d finally managed to get to sleep after a lot of staring up into darkness when that idiot Gombryas woke me up. “She says she needs to talk to you,” he said, grinning horribly. “She says it won’t wait.”

It was that sort of grin. I didn’t need to ask who she was.

“I got away,” she said. “I climbed out of a window onto the roof, then I lost my footing and slid the rest of the way. Is it bad?”

She’d lost a lot of skin off her palms and knees. I sent Gombryas, who’d been standing there smirking his head off, to fetch Doc Papinian. “You’ll live,” I said. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m coming with you,” she said. “To Teuda.”

“Like hell you are.”

I’d spoken quite loudly but she can’t have heard me. “I’m not going back,” she said. “I’ve finished with her and the whole lot of them. I hate her.”

I sighed. “All daughters hate all mothers,” I said, “just as all mothers hate all daughters. But only part of the time. Go home. Stop putting me in mortal peril. I don’t like it.”

“You’ve met her,” she said. “Well?”

Besotted. Buy me one drink more than I can handle, and I’ll explain to you, convincingly and in great detail, why love is the most harmful force in the universe. Actually it is, but I don’t suppose I’ll ever be able to convince you, so I’ll save my breath. “Yes, all right,” I said. “But you can’t come with us. Where we’re going it’s not – nice.”

She shrugged. “I was brought up in the Spider camp,” she said. “When I was ten my mother made me kill a hostage, in front of everybody, to prove I could.”

“And did you?”

She nodded. “They held him still, so it wasn’t difficult. When my mother tells you to do things, you do them.” She breathed out slowly through her nose. “But not any more.”

She’d been parted from her mother for four days. She must hate her very much.

Of course I needed a lot more data before I could make an informed decision. How many men did she have, and where? Was she strong enough to be able to come after us to Teuda? If not, did she know people who could? It wasn’t a simple decision. There were so many factors to be taken into account, and a great many lives depended on it.

“Fine,” I said. “You can come with us.”

I had a lot to put up with on that trip, from Gombryas and Carrhasio and my so-called friends. As it turned out, the war wasn’t the total dead loss I’d expected it to be. The winning side pulled off an amazing ambush in a mountain pass, wiping out an opposing force that outnumbered them four to one with remarkably little damage to property. We actually made a profit; and to celebrate, Apoina and I got married in the chapel of the Mercantile Exchange in Sphoe Theon. I don’t know if you know it, poky little place, but with the remains of some rather fine Fourth Empire mosaics. As a wedding present I made her head of department responsible for saddles, bridles and horseshoes. The other heads of department acknowledged that she’d probably do a fine job. Never thought I’d say this, Gombryas said, but she’s not bad at it, for a girl. Coming from him, that’s the sort of accolade you want on your tombstone.

From Teuda we went straight on to another job, a useful little border war in northern Baesia. I spent a day piling up dead bodies ready for burning, then went to look for her. “Well?” I asked.

We’d piled up all the dead horses. There are two schools of thought about the most efficient way. One way is to cut off the legs at the knee; it’s a lot of work, but rather less time and effort than hauling all those half-ton corpses about, just to salvage a few horseshoes. I, on the other hand, take the view that time is money. Hacking off legs takes time, therefore costs me money. Much better to collect and stack the dead horses in such a way that you can get at the hooves without too much scrambling and heaving; only we’d never been able to figure out how to do it. It took Apoina half an hour. She stood there looking at the scattered mess, where a cavalry charge had been turned back by mass archers. It’s the sort of sight that gives most people the horrors. It keeps coming back at them in their dreams, and sometimes they’re never the same again. She stood and looked at it, like I just said, and I was just starting to think I’d done the wrong thing and I was about to have a basket case on my hands for the rest of my life when she turned to me and pointed out that if you stacked the horses alternately – one level with the legs sticking out one way, the next level with them sticking out the other way – the pile would be much more stable and you could do the hooves quickly and efficiently without being scared to death the whole lot was going to collapse and come crashing down on you like an avalanche.

“I’m happy,” she said.

I looked at her. She was filthy with mud and other stuff you find on battlefields. “You spend your life prising the shoes off dead horses and you’re happy,” I said. “You’re weird.”

“Colybas made me a special prybar,” she said. “He reckons I need a longer handle, to make up for being a girl.” A little flick with the lower hand, and off the shoe came. She picked it up and tossed it in a bucket with the others. “For the first time in my life I can be me,” she said. “Of course I’m happy.” She walked on her knees to the next hoof and dug the sharp lower edge of the bar into the thin line between horn and iron. “We’ve been over this,” she said.

“I can’t take yes for an answer. Thank you. It’s a good line, but it doesn’t really cover everything.”

“It’s all you’re getting, so you’ll just have to make do.” Another shoe came loose and joined the pile in the bottom of the bucket. “What’s the deal with these things, anyway? Do we straighten them out and reuse them, or do they go in the melt?”

Neither, as it happens. We sell them to the fancy shops in places like Choris, where they hammer them out into thin strips, twist them like cornstalks, heat them white hot and forge-weld them into the finest patterned steel, out of which they fashion miracles of the swordsmith’s art, which rich men buy and never use. I mention it at this point because of the obvious analogy: love, friendship, besottedness, all that stuff. Why horseshoes I have no idea, but apparently nothing else is half as good.

“Ask Colybas and he’ll tell you all about it,” I said. “It’s really boring. You say you can be you. Define you.”

“I said, we’ve been over this.” She scowled, then decided to humour me. “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t define me, just like that. It’ll take me years to figure it out. But at least I can make a start, which I couldn’t when I was—” The scowl came back. “Like an eclipse,” she said. “The moon covers up the sun. Actually, that’s a lousy comparison.”

I nodded. It was. She thought for a moment, the said, “All right, more like an occupied country. There are foreign soldiers on every street corner and you aren’t allowed to speak your own language: you’ve got to speak theirs. They even want you to think in it. But when you drive them out, you can start again. That’s why I’m happy. Liberation.”

I nodded. “Seen a few of those in my time,” I said. “And over the next five years either there’s a civil war or someone comes along and makes himself First Citizen, and next thing you know, taxes are higher than they were under the occupation. Liberation only lasts a week or so, and then you’re back with government. I suspect it’s more or less the same with happiness; it just marks the transition between different phases of misery. But I’ve never been happy, so I wouldn’t know.”

“Poor baby.” She grinned at me. “Why are you trying to make me miserable?” she said.

“Out of a sense of duty,” I replied. “It’s what husbands do.”

The grin vanished. “You mean mothers,” she said. “No, screw her, I don’t want to think about her any more.”

“Probably best if you don’t,” I said.

“Quite. As far as I’m concerned, the world is divided into two sections. There’s a great big one called my mother, and a much smaller one called everything else. I’d never have got away from her if you hadn’t—”

“Probably not,” I said. “But you’re here now, so that’s all right.” The sun came out from behind a cloud. I felt it on the back of my head and winced. Bright sunlight isn’t good for dead bodies, and we still had a lot of work to do. You are my sunshine isn’t a compliment in my line of work. “You sure you’re all right?” I asked her. “Doing this.”

“Yes,” she said, without hesitation. “It’s so much better than anything I’ve ever done before. All these people are already dead, and we didn’t kill them.”

It didn’t last, needless to say. After we’d finished in Baesia we shipped the stuff we’d collected back to Beloisa for the big twice-yearly fair, and guess who was waiting for us when we got there.

I was manning the stall, on the second day of the fair. We’d already shifted most of the stuff – the real action at a fair happens on the first day, in the hour before the main gate opens – and we were at the stage I like best, when everybody mooches round talking to the friends and enemies they haven’t seen since last Beloisa Fair. I’d just been chatting with Curosh Asvogel (Is it true? Did you really get married?) and then Laelian Andrapodiza from the College of Vultures; Laelian and I go way back, and he’d just agreed to buy my fifty dozen unissued seven-foot spear shafts, warranted genuine cornelwood, some water damage. I was leaning back in my chair with my hands folded behind my head feeling moderately content, and then Praeclara showed up.

“Relax,” was the first word she said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Beloisa Fair is as close as I ever get to feeling safe. When I say close, I mean you can see safe from there, if you stand on a chair. “You’re a long way from Leal,” I pointed out.

She nodded. She was dressed for the occasion. Sartorial restraint isn’t what Beloisa Fair is about. She’d gone for the Warrior Princess look that was so in that year. I don’t know if you remember it: red leather, gilded chain mail, exaggerated gold pectorals and lots of flesh. You wore it if you were a middle-aged businesswoman with a lot of money to spend. “Buying?” I asked her.

“This is a good place to buy armour and weapons,” she said. “We use a lot of that sort of stuff.”

“Feel free to browse,” I said. “And all at sensible prices.”

“Actually, I’m selling.” She looked at me as if I was a castle someone had built in the middle of her lawn; she didn’t like it, but being realistic, there wasn’t a lot she could do about it. “I suppose I ought to thank you,” she said.

“Really? Why?”

“For rescuing my daughter.”

“You said she was never in danger.”

“From me.”

“Ah.” I thought for a moment, then kicked a chair in her direction. She sat down.

“It was the right thing,” she said. Her sword – purely decorative, not a practical item – was digging into her armpit. She took it off and laid it on the ground. “It was good for her to leave. I’d lost my sense of perspective, I guess. I’d stopped thinking of her as my child. She was just another soldier, and not a particularly good one. And that pissed me off, because I expected her to be the best.”

It was my turn; my cue to give her a mouthful, about being a monster and so forth. I’ve found that if you listen when it’s your turn to talk, people tell you useful things. But Praeclara is as smart as me, or smarter. “Well?” she said.

I shrugged. She was dressed like that because she wanted to look ridiculous; I was supposed to underestimate her. The lion turns out to be just another mutton-dressed-as-lamb follower of fashion. “Tell you what,” I said. “You can have five per cent off. Special discount for family and in-laws.”

“We don’t buy equipment,” she said. “We take it from our dead enemies. But it was sweet of you to offer. How is she?”

“Happy,” I said. “Or so she says. Personally I think she’s overstating the case. Make that happier.”

She nodded. “I imagine she probably is. I thought I’d miss her terribly, but instead I just miss her.”

“Only yourself to blame for that,” I said.

“What the hell.” She stood up. I managed to override my impulses and not flinch. “You can keep her. I don’t want her any more.”

“That’s very generous of you,” I said. “Sit down, I haven’t finished yet.”

She looked at me, and sat down again. “Well?”

“It’s what I’d do,” I said. “If I were you, and I wanted her back. Let her go. Like loading a pig in a cart.”

The more you drag it, the more it resists; so you drag it away from the cart, which means it backs away from you right up the ramp, and then all you have to do is slam the tailgate, next stop the slaughterhouse. She gave me a faint smile. I like it when I don’t have to explain.

“I made the mistake of assuming she was me,” she said at last. “Then I realised she wasn’t. I love her, but she’s no earthly use to me. You can have her. For now.”

“Until?”

“Until she realises that all she wanted was to get away from me. You were just the getaway horse. She’ll cut you loose as soon as she figures that out.”

“Probably,” I said. “I’m not getting my hopes up. But you never know.”

She gave me a curious look, as though she’d just noticed a sixth finger on my left hand. “You really love her, don’t you?”

“The word I choose is besotted,” I said. “Not mine, a friend’s. But it covers it quite well.”

Another nod. We understood each other. “In that case I’m sorry for you,” she said. “If I were you, I’d make my hay while the sun shines. But who knows, I might be wrong.” She stood up again, and retrieved her stupid toy sword from the floor. “Just keep well away from Leal,” she said. “Anything less than twenty miles from Leal Cross and you’re a dead man. All right?”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Do you want to see her? I can ask. I don’t know what she’ll say.”

“I do, so don’t bother. And I mean it. The next time I see you, you’re dead.”

Anyway, that’s more than enough about Praeclara. She stayed away, and Apoina and I were happy for a while, until she lost the baby. Afterwards she was too sick to come with us to General Sichyon’s big war in eastern Blemya. I offered to stay with her but she said no, you go, I’ll be fine; a bit of time on my own will do me good. So I went to Blemya and we did good business; there was a big cavalry skirmish with plenty of dead horses, and I missed her a lot. Then, on the way home, I got a letter from my friend Gaularia. Apoina had been staying with her while I was away. Apparently she’d caught the fever and died.

Gaularia and I go way back. It was quick, she said in her letter. Did I want her stuff sent on to me at Beloisa, or should she sell it and set the proceeds off against what I owed her for rent?

That was all some time ago. I’m still here. I think that’s about all I can say on that score.

And now Praeclara was on her way, with her guerrillas or disciples or whatever the hell they were, and I was expected to do what she wanted me to do, or else. I’d often wondered if she blamed me for Apoina’s death. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she did. If she hadn’t gone off with you, she’d never have caught the fever and died; sometimes it was Praeclara saying that inside my head, sometimes it was me; it’s got so I can’t tell which of us is which, and I don’t suppose there’s any real difference. Neither of us did much of a job of looking after her.

Water under the bridge, I told myself. What signified was that the lion was back, the only difference being that this time I was tied to a tree. Happy days.