She watched the ship until it was out of sight, then clambered down the bell-tower ladder. The flowing skirts of the ridiculous red dress hampered and obstructed her, like bored, hungry children. Number-one priority, change into something else.
The panic was still there, it was always there these days, like a faithful but unfashionable dog, but she pretended she could ignore it. The side buttons were tight in the buttonholes and she ended up tearing two of them off: small, satin-covered buttons, unique, she couldn’t be bothered to look for them in among the junk and rubbish on the vestry floor. She pulled on her smock and apron, her cloak of invisibility. That made her feel a little bit better.
Not to worry, she ordered herself. True, she’d given up her place on the last ship but one out of Beloisa to someone she personally regarded as almost certainly worthless, but there was still one ship to go; her chances of getting on board it, objectively assessed, about forty per cent. Not good odds, but not the worst either. She tried to squeeze her feet into the horrible wooden shoes. What am I doing here? she thought.
She left the twenty-angel silk dress draped over a broken chair. The door was wide open, but she didn’t feel like going that way. She climbed out through the vestry window, tearing her hem. In the street, the water was up over her ankles. It flooded her clogs and made her toes squirm. Thank you so much.
There were no clocks in this horrible city. Not that they’d have been any use today—the sky was low, black cloud, so no sun—but even so. A clock isn’t the end of the world, technically speaking. It’s a brass disc with numbers on and a thing sticking out the middle to cast a shadow. You’d have thought even these people could’ve got the hang of that. A city with no way of telling the time can by no stretch of the imagination be called civilised. It’s just a mob with walls.
She hurried down Coppergate, splashing water up her legs. Oida had offered her his place on the ship, but he hadn’t meant it, she could tell. Oida, of course, was about the only man in the world with nothing to fear in a city about to be taken by storm. Our Father, she prayed, whip up a gentle storm halfway across, just enough to make him chuck his guts up. She composed a mental picture of Oida bent double over the rail, making retching noises. It was a good picture. It made her grin.
There were two kettle hats on the main door of the Prefecture, but either they didn’t know about the side door in Longacre or they didn’t have the manpower. It wasn’t locked; it couldn’t have been, because she’d stolen the key. She clumped up the back stair, squelch squelch, let herself into Major Pieres’ office, sat down in his chair and pulled her clogs off. A cupful of water drained out of them into the floorboards. I want to go home, she thought.
Pieres had locked his despatch case, bless him. That held her up for as long as it takes to boil a pint of water. Nothing new since this morning. She closed the case and locked it, breaking a fingernail in the process. One of those days.
“Hello,” he said, when he finally showed up. “That’s my chair.”
She gave him a look and stood up. “You’ve got it all wet,” he pointed out.
“I’m so very, very sorry.”
He sighed, took off his cloak and draped it over the seat before sitting down. “Well?” he said. “Did you get them off safely?”
Pointless question. “Now, then,” she said. “About me.”
“I wanted to talk to you about that.” Bare-faced lie. She could tell from his face, it was the last thing he wanted to talk about.
“You’ve given my place to someone else.”
He had the grace to avoid her eye. “Not my decision,” he said. “It’s one of Division’s damned politicals, turned up this morning at the South gate, we had to lower a basket on a rope and haul him up. Bloody fool was wandering about in the bush somewhere on a fact-finding mission—” (She loved the way he said that.) “Got separated from his escort, somehow managed to get back here, and now he’s bouncing up and down pulling rank on me, so I’m really sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.” He paused. He always paused when he was about to tell a lie. “There’ll probably be one more ship after this one, though obviously I can’t guarantee it. But I promise you, the first available place—”
She gave him the sweetest smile she could manage. “That’s perfectly all right,” she said. “I quite understand.”
“Don’t be like that,” he called out after her, but she didn’t turn back. Instead, she ran down the main staircase, only realising when she was halfway down that she’d left the clogs behind and had nothing on her feet. Not to worry, she’d gone barefoot often enough. Just one shot at this, she told herself, so for crying out loud guess right. Now then, where would he be?
She went to the guardhouse of the Fifteenth, on Rook Street. Good guess. Poor little Captain Jaizo was there, surprisingly sober. “I need to see your political,” she said. “Now.”
“I’m not sure—”
“Now,” she repeated. “I need to give him a top-priority message to take back to Central Command. The ship leaves in an hour.”
Jaizo gave her an agonised look. “Give me the message, I’ll make sure he—”
“You’re not cleared,” she snapped. “Fine. I’ll go and drag Pieres away from his lunch, and he can order you. I’m sure he won’t mind.”
The political officer was a big man, tall, built like an athlete. He’d got on one of those marvellous vests of small steel scales that overlap like fish scales; light enough so you hardly notice you’re wearing it, but proof against everything below light artillery. Not that it mattered, because she stabbed him in the ear.
“Bad news,” she told Jaizo. “Your political won’t be going.”
He gave her a hazy stare. “What, after the fuss he made?”
“Dead,” she said. “Someone got to him.”
“Dead? You mean killed.”
“Quite. Wonderful security you’ve got here, Captain. Might just possibly cost us the war, but there you go.” Jaizo opened and closed his mouth, but no sound came. “You do realise, if that message doesn’t reach Command—”
Jaizo was one step away from tears. Was I ever that young? she wondered. “What are we going to do? The ship sails in—”
She nodded at the sand clock on his wall. “Twenty minutes.”
Despair; then sudden, wild hope. “Can’t you go?”
“What?”
“You’ll have to go. On the ship. Take the message yourself.”
She needed just the right pitch of exasperated fury. “Don’t be ridiculous; I can’t go. I’ve got far too much to do here.” She shook her head. “It’s no good, I’ll just have to write it out and give it to the captain, who’ll probably lose it or wipe his arse with it. Not to mention it’s a direct breach of standing orders.”
“There isn’t time,” Jaizo wailed. “Not if it’s got to be ciphered: you know how long that takes.” He bit his nails, she noticed. Only weak people do that. “How the hell did they get someone in here? I’ve got guards on all the doors and windows.”
She shrugged. “That doesn’t really matter much now,” she said. “Here, give me some paper.”
“No.” Jaizo had made up his mind, what was left of it. “You’ll have to go. I mean it. I’m ordering—”
“You can’t,” she pointed out. Then a sigh. “But you’re right, of course. Hell,” she added, with feeling. “It’s just one damn thing after another these days.”
She made the ship with a couple of minutes to spare. She was wearing men’s boots; she looked like a clown. The captain looked at her. “Where’s the political officer?”
“He’s not coming.”
“I need to see a written—”
She had her warrant ready, folded in her sleeve. She pulled it out, unfolded it and held it two inches from his nose. Hooray for melodrama. “Well?”
“Fine,” the captain said. “Do you really need all that stuff?”
“Yes.”
The soldiers stowed it for her, wedged between the foredeck rail and a water barrel. It was only three sacks and a small steel trunk. On balance, she decided, she should’ve left a note for Pieres, to get Jaizo off the hook. It would’ve been the decent thing to do. But too late now.
No disrespect to the fire god, naturally; blame it instead on His administration, presumably made up of officers of roughly the same level of ability as their terrestrial counterparts. That would explain why the mild storm she’d ordered for Oida hit her instead.
Just as well she hadn’t eaten for two days. Even so, it was hell. The sailors, nervous enough already about having a woman on board, wisely gave her a wide berth, six feet of rail all to herself. It was inconceivable that any human being could retch so much and still have all their insides. By the time Cape Pinao appeared on the skyline, she was sure she weighed a stone lighter. She lifted her head and scowled at the scenery. In five hours’ time, she’d have to be in the General Office in Numa, looking beautiful. No chance.
Amazing, however, the difference dry land can make. Also, she had a spoonful or two of the stuff left (you swallow it and it makes your skin positively glow, and your eyes shine, and you look like the moon goddess, and six hours later you’re as sick as a dog) and mostly it’s just mental attitude, anyway. In the end she coped just fine, and the evening was pretty bad but could’ve been worse. Anyway, she was home, which was rather more than she’d dared hope the same time yesterday.
In the morning she felt fine, apart from a painfully dry throat that didn’t seem to respond to water, so she went to Temple, which made her feel a lot better. She caught the noon stage to Rasch Cuiber; three days in a coach, with two provincial moneylenders and an actuary.
“Excuse me,” she said brightly, as the coach bounced painfully over the Saddleback hills. “What’s that game you’re playing?”
The moneylenders looked at her. “It’s called Bust,” one of them said.
“It looks like fun. Can I play?”
The moneylenders looked at each other. “Don’t think so,” one of them said. “Man’s game, Bust. Also, you play for money.”
From her sleeve she took her last two gold angels. “Oh, I’ve got money,” she said.
The actuary turned away, as if he couldn’t bear to look. The moneylenders laughed. “Well, in that case,” one of them said.
So that was all right. By the time they reached the inn, she had plenty of money: for a room, food; she could’ve bought the inn itself if she’d wanted. The moneylenders didn’t want to play cards the next day, but she’d got a book out of her luggage so it didn’t matter. She had a nasty turn in mid-afternoon—the stuff did that sometimes, came back at you for a second go—but she managed to keep it down until the driver stopped to water the horses. After that, she felt better than she had for weeks. The moneylenders left the coach that night and an elderly man and his granddaughter took their places. The man was a professor from the Imperial Academy at Fort Nain, specialising in moral philosophy; he was reading Eustatius on Transubstantiation, while his granddaughter looked at herself in the back of a small silver hairbrush. Once she’d broken the ice, she had a really quite invigorating discussion with him about the Six Degrees heresy, on which subject he was surprisingly well informed, for a provincial.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, after a while. “I don’t think I caught your name.”
“Telamon.”
“Ah.” He clearly liked the name. “And which temple did you say you were—?”
Well, she hadn’t actually told him she was a priestess, but she hadn’t denied it either. “The Poverty and Patience,” she said, “in Oudei Mavia. You won’t have heard of us,” she added, quite truthfully, since she’d just made it up. “This will be my first time in Rasch. I’m terribly excited.”
No indication that the professor was a craftsman, which was more disappointing than surprising. It was becoming fashionable in academic circles not to belong; perverse, but no more so than most fashions. She tried not to hold it against him. “Do you know Rasch well?” she asked.
“Reasonably well,” he said. “Where will you be staying?”
“The Blue Spire,” she lied. “Can you tell me where that is?”
The directions he gave her were almost but not quite accurate; if she’d followed them, she’d have ended up in Sixty Yards, a place which, if he ever went there, would freeze his blood. “Thank you,” she said gravely. “I must admit, I’m a bit apprehensive. Cities—”
The professor raised a hand. “You have to be careful,” he said. “But the capital has so much to recommend it. The Old Library. The Opera.”
She smiled. “You like music.”
He had plenty to say after that. Seleucus, of course, and Scadia, and some of the Moderns; Avares, Procopius himself—
“What do you think of Oida?”
He paused; she could see him being scrupulously fair. “His sacred music is certainly charming,” he said, “and of course Caladon and the Wolf. But I find much of his recent orchestral stuff is sadly derivative, and of course he wastes so much time and energy writing for the popular stage. I believe there’s rather less to him than meets the eye.”
“I do so agree,” she said, with feeling. “Terribly overrated. Very much a minor talent, if you ask me.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far.”
Civilised conversation; before she knew it, they were rolling through the vineyards, with the Foregate dead ahead on the skyline. She felt a surge of joy which was hard to conceal. The professor was talking earnestly about Carrana’s Winter Requiem. The girl must have noticed something; she looked at her and grinned, then went back to combing her hair. Through the Foregate and into New Town. Almost there.
The professor was kind enough to point out objects of interest; that’s the Mausoleum, that spire is the Golden Hook, and if you look carefully you can just see the dome of the Offertory, and on our left is the Infirmary (No it’s not, you old fool, that’s the Guards barracks; that’s the Infirmary.) and we’re just approaching the Milk Cross now.
The coach stopped. “We’re getting off here,” the professor said. “So very nice to have met you. I do hope you enjoy your time in Rasch.”
She smiled and stood up to let them get past to the door. As she did so, her short knife dropped from her sleeve and clattered on the floor. She picked it up immediately, but too late. “Thank you,” she said, “I’m sure I shall.” She tucked it away under her bracelet. “Thank you so much for showing me the sights.”
They stared at her and got out. An old woman in a blue silk dress got in, with a small white dog in a basket.
“You killed a political officer,” the abbot said. “Just like that.”
“He was in the way.”
“You can’t do things like that.”
The look on his face told her that actually she could, and that bothered him, quite a lot. She could sympathise. “It was him or me,” she said. “There was one place, on the last ship out. The garrison CO didn’t have the authority.”
“He’s going to report you,” the abbot said gloomily. “And then we’ll have all sorts of aggravation. You know what people are saying about how we’re abusing benefit of clergy.”
She shook her head. “No, he won’t,” she said. “If he’s not already dead, he soon will be. And don’t say he’ll have sent a letter, because he couldn’t have. Last ship out, remember.”
He gave her a despairing look, which she stared down. “Fine,” he said. “I wish you hadn’t told me.”
“I tell you everything,” she said. “Oh, come on,” she added. “A political’s no great loss.”
“Was he a craftsman?”
Sore point. Score one to the abbot. “No idea,” she said briskly. “He didn’t say and I didn’t ask. It’s all as broad as it’s long,” she went on, before he could say anything. “When Senza Belot storms Beloisa and slaughters the entire garrison, what difference will one more body make? They’re all dead anyway. That’s what happens in war, which is,” she added gravely, “an institution of which I do not approve. Can we talk about something else now, please?”
The abbot gave her a long look, then asked her questions about other things which she was both able and willing to answer. Her answers put him in a good mood, and the subject of the dead political didn’t come up again. “Thank you,” he said, when the debriefing was over, “you’ve done marvellously well, as usual. I honestly don’t know how this faculty would manage without you.”
She gave him a don’t-be-silly smile. “Where next?” she asked.
“Not quite sure,” the abbot replied. “There’s a number of situations developing which would benefit from your touch, I don’t yet know which one’s most important. So, have a few days off.”
She beamed at him. “Thank you,” she said. “I could do with a break. Do you realise, I’ve been on the road continuously for six weeks now?”
“Good Lord.” Of course he knew perfectly well. “Then you definitely deserve a break. How are you for money?”
“Oh, fine,” she said quickly, and he knew better than to ask further. “In fact, the first thing I’m going to do is go out and get measured for some new shoes. I’m sick to death of sore feet.”
There were several hundred workshops in Rasch that professed to make footwear, but only one that anyone with even the faintest idea of style would consider buying from. The Gargon brothers were on the far side of town, but she didn’t mind that; she was going that way in any case.
Her first stop was Drolo’s, in the Old Market. The old man recognised her, a sort of oh-it’s-you look. He didn’t hold with selling weapons to women.
“Too long,” she said, handing the knife back.
The old man was trying not to scowl; it was really rather sweet. “That’s all I’ve got right now.”
“Could you cut it back an inch?”
She’d wounded him. “I could,” he said, as though she’d asked him to blind his firstborn child. “The balance won’t be right, though.”
Perfectly true. The Drolo family didn’t make pretty things; plain, with a dull oil-black finish. But piking a Drolo knife back an inch would be an atrocity. “Fine,” she said. “How long to make me one, like this, but five inches?”
“I’ll pay you now, if you like.”
“No, when it’s ready will be fine.” He waited till she was almost through the door, then asked, “What happened to the last one?”
She smiled at him. “I’m so careless,” she said.
Next, to the Carrhasius twins, on Moorbank. A much better welcome there. “We’ve got something special put by for you,” they said. No kidding. Four out of six volumes of Bartagen’s Reflections, the pre-war edition, with the full marginalia. “How much?” she asked.
Wicked grin. “Does it matter?”
“Yes,” she lied. “How much?”
The figure quoted made her head swim. “Ten days?”
She’d said something amusing. “As a special favour, we can hold them for three days. But only because we love you.”
“Yes, please.” Worry about the money later. “The other two volumes. You wouldn’t happen to—?”
“Alas.”
Liars, she thought, as she walked up Temple Hill. Liars and thieves; they knew perfectly well where the other two volumes were, just as they knew that once she’d got the four there was no price on earth she wouldn’t pay to complete the set. Never mind. The Reflections: just the thought of it made her glow inside, as though she’d drunk good brandy. And then all she’d need would be time to read them.
Corsander, on White Cross; five angels for three silk petticoats and a scarf. Daylight robbery.
A quick stop at Peldun’s for ink, sealing wax and nibs—tempted by a delightful silver and ivory travelling set, early Revival, though the sand shaker was a modern replacement; but she had three like it already, so no—then up the steep, narrow lane to Ash Yard, where the Gargon brothers had raised their temple to footwear. These days the Gargons didn’t see customers; they had a woman, reputedly a field marshal’s widow, to attend to all that. She was perfectly civil, while giving the impression that she wasn’t really there. That didn’t last. The look on her face—
The woman took a moment. “No, of course not. Do forgive me.”
Naturally, the field marshal’s widow had never have seen feet like it before; not unless she was given to acts of charity among the homeless and destitute. “I know,” she said, “my feet are a bit on the wide side. It’s so hard to get shoes that don’t rub.”
Then she went back to the abbey and slept for twenty hours, and then woke up. Nothing to do. At a loose end. Her skin started to itch. She wanted to scream.
Just the reaction (she told herself, as she walked to the library) to a month of constant frenetic activity, plus having to kill five people, plus the very real prospect of death. It’ll wear off, she told herself. It’ll wear off, just as soon as I find something to do.
She went, as always, straight to the Ethics section. The assistant librarian gave her a shy smile. He was twenty-one, and spotty.
“Dahasius on Moral Expediency,” she said. “Is it—?”
He gave her a sad look. “Sorry.”
“Damn.”
“Just went out this morning. If you’d been here an hour earlier—”
“That’s fine. Thank you. Why the hell don’t you people get another copy made?”
He winced, and mumbled something about copyists’ time being limited, and having no discretion, and the war—
“What’s the war got to do with anything?”
He looked like he was afraid of getting hit. “Well, you know how it is.”
Deep breath. “I understand; that’s perfectly all right. I wonder, could you be awfully sweet and let me know the moment it comes back in? Only I’ve been looking forward to reading it so much, and it’s always bloody out.” Another deep breath. “Thanks again,” she said, and wandered back to the open shelves.
Coryton’s Celestial Anvil was where it always was; nobody read it these days, which was silly. She lifted it down and opened it at random, and a few minutes later she realised she was reading standing up in the middle of the central aisle. Dear, wonderful Coryton. She looked round for a seat, found one, in the corner by the pillar. She knew whole chapters of Coryton by heart, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. Reading it was like a hot bath, with soap and honey.
“Hello,” someone said. She looked up and saw Oida looming over her. Damn, she thought, and smiled.
“May I?” He sat down beside her without waiting for an answer, which at least stopped him looming. “You got out all right, then.”
Did he know about the political? “No trouble,” she said. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d be in Mase, for the chiefs of staff.”
He shook his head. “Postponed,” he said. “No reason given. Which means something’s going on, but I don’t know about it. How about you? Heard anything?”
What every other female in the two empires saw in him, she really couldn’t guess. “No. Actually, I’ve been asleep ever since I got back. What sort of thing?”
He shrugged. “If I knew, I wouldn’t need to ask. You sure you haven’t come across anything?”
She frowned. “Well,” she said, “I’ve just been given the week off. Now that was a surprise. I was assuming I’d get just enough time to comb my hair and shave my legs, and I’d be off on the road again.” Her frown deepened. “You know, that should’ve put me on notice. Too tired to think straight, probably.”
Clearly he thought so too; down a couple of degrees in his estimation, not that she gave a damn. “Sounds like a rest will do you good,” he said. “What’s that?” He leaned over her book. There was so much of him; rather more, she felt, than was strictly necessary. “Oh, Coryton.”
“Mphm. I’ve got a spare copy; you can have it if you like.” Just like that; her own copy of the Anvil. As it says in Scripture, to the gods all things are possible. If he remembered, of course, and if it didn’t come at a price.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’d like that. Drop it in at the lodge next time you’re passing.”
He grinned at her. Bloody mind reader. “Sure,” he said. “And if you do hear anything, you will let me know.”
“Of course.”
He stood up and moved away, stopped, turned, gave her another grin, disappeared among the freestanding shelves. Even so, she thought; her own copy of Coryton. That’d be something.
She realised she was now too wound up to read, so she put the book back and went out into the small East quadrangle, up the back stair into the New Building, short cut through the lecture hall and up the private stair to the Neus tower. Out on to the roof; she was pleased to note that she’d climbed all those stairs without getting out of breath. She brushed dust from the handrail off her sleeves. You could see the whole City from there, on a clear day, when the foundries weren’t working, and, this high up, the air was clean and sweet. She took a dozen long, deep breaths. Better.
Oida thought something was going on. He was almost certainly right. He was also worried, which was rather terrifying: he’d have to be, if he was reduced to asking someone like her if she knew anything. Omniscience was a fundamental part of the Oida persona, along with the charm and the red, red hair. I suppose I ought to try and find out, she told herself, but just the thought of it made her feel tired. Why have I got to be on duty all the damn time? she thought. Because you’d hate it if you weren’t, she conceded.
On the way back down, she met Diracca, one of the lodge masters and a friend from way back. He smiled at her. “I didn’t know you were in town.”
Her instincts were all flight and evasion—only passing through, terribly busy, can’t stop, sorry. She repressed them firmly. “Just got back,” she said. “Actually, I’ve got a few clear days, which is wonderful.”
“Good,” Diracca said. “In that case, would you like me to get you a seat for the concert?”
“Concert?”
His eyebrows shot up. He was married, of course, which was probably just as well. “The concert,” he said. “The New Academy choir. Premiere of Procopius’ magnum opus. You know, the one that’s going to knock us all sideways. It’s the day after tomorrow.”
“I’ve been away,” she said. “Actually, I’d love to hear that. I remember people talking about it, what, a year ago.”
“Oh, it’s been on the stocks a hell of a lot longer than that.” Diracca knew about music. “Rumour has it, it’s going to be really rather special, and old Scar-face himself will be conducting. Everybody’s going to be there, naturally. You really should go, if you possibly can.”
“I’d like that,” she said firmly, before she could think herself out of it. “Hell,” she added, “I’ll need a dress.”
He looked at her. “Definitely.”
“Yes, thank you. Where?”
“In the concert hall at the Port Royal, obviously. I’ll get you on the list today. Oida will be there,” he added as an afterthought. “Who knows, you might get a chance to meet him.”
“That’d be nice,” she said vaguely. “What’s he like?”
“Surprisingly genuine,” Diracca said. “Good craftsman. And, of course, that voice.”
Well, quite.
Her mother, that poor, long-suffering creature, had always maintained that she had an eye for clothes, and on balance she’d had a point. She could tell straight away if a particular style would suit someone, and she was never wrong about colours. Other women came to her for advice and went away delighted with the result. Dressing herself, however, was another matter. Her theory was that she had a picture of herself in her mind that didn’t actually correlate with the real thing; she believed she was shorter and wider than she really was, and not nearly so dark, and as a result she ended up in things she’d never have allowed someone else to go out in public in. Maybe, she further speculated, it was because deep down she didn’t want to look nice, because if you do, people notice you.
So, this time, she went to the Corsander woman, handed her twenty angels in cash, told her what the occasion was and abdicated any further responsibility in the matter. The Corsander female gave her a rough verbal outline of what she had in mind, which sounded awful. “Thank you,” she said. “When do you need me for a fitting?”
She got back to the abbey and found two letters waiting for her. One from her sister; she stuffed it up her sleeve for later, when she had a minute. The other one was from the Director of Resources: my office, right now. So much for her week off. She was ashamed of herself for feeling so relieved.
“I’m very sorry,” he said. “I know you were looking forward to a break, but this is urgent. You hadn’t got anything planned, had you?”
The concert. Twenty angels on a dress. “No,” she said.
“It’s not a very nice job, I’m afraid.”
Oh dear. That usually meant either sex or killing somebody. On balance, she’d rather it was killing. Both were grossly intimate, but a killing is over far more quickly. Also, she was better at it. “Go on.”
Neither, thank God. Just an interrogation, and she didn’t mind that at all. But she had to ask, “Why me?”
“Specialist knowledge,” he replied. “That’s all I know. Apparently, none of the regular interrogators can understand what they’re being told, so they don’t know if they’re getting the truth or not, or if it’s important or just waffle.”
She tried not to smile, but she could see how embarrassing that might be. All right, I’ll tell you everything, damn you, and then you had to keep stopping them every two minutes so they could explain to you what such-and-such meant. Hopeless.
“Where?” she said.
He nodded downwards; so here, in the building, probably the holding cells that nobody was supposed to know about but anyone could direct you to, if you asked nicely. In which case, maybe she’d be able to make the concert after all.
He was an Easterner, a High Imperial, so at least there’d be no language barrier, even if their awful flat whining accent made her head hurt after a while. He was lighter than most Eastern Imperials, almost a sort of rust colour. They’d beaten hell out of him, approximately three days ago.
“A woman,” he said, as the cell door closed behind her. “That’s unusual.”
“Not in the West,” she said. She looked round for something moderately clean to sit on. Should’ve brought one of those little folding stools.
“Right,” he said. “Manpower shortages. We have killed rather a lot of your pay grade recently.”
The cuts on his face needed seeing to, or they’d go septic. “Women make better listeners,” she said. “I can get them to send a man instead, if you’d rather. He could hit you some more.”
He grinned. “You’ll do.”
“Thank you. Now, then. You’re Colonel Pausa, Eastern military intelligence, assigned to the land survey.”
“That’s in the file, surely. Haven’t you read it?”
“I enjoy the sound of my own voice. You’re a specialist, second grade, surveyor specialising in rock formations and mineral deposits. Well?”
He was looking at her. “You’d be all right,” he said, “but you’re a bit flat-chested. You want at least a full handful, or there’s nothing to hold on to.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said. “You were captured by our landing party at Beloisa, just over a year ago.”
“That’s right. I gather your lot’s getting a bloody nose down that way. Senza giving you a hard time, is he?”
That’d be the guards, discussing current affairs in the corridors. Too stupid to realise that sound carries, even through steel doors. “It was touch and go for a while,” she said. “But it’s all under control now, thanks for asking. What was so interesting about the rock formations in Beloisa Bay?”
He shrugged. “Nothing much. Just lots of rocks. We were going to cut a road along the bottom edge of the cliff.”
“To link the harbour with the south quay,” she said. “Good idea. Save carting stuff all the way up the hill and down again.”
She’d impressed him. “You know Beloisa?”
“I was there, a few days ago. I particularly liked the Arch of Sarpedon. So much late Mannerist stuff’s been ruined by insensitive restoration.”
“They’re going to knock it down,” he said, smiling. “For the new road. It’s in the way.”
“Too bad.” She glanced down at the papers she’d brought in, though she didn’t need to. “Why would your people send a geologist of your grade to see to a simple road-building job?”
“Unstable cliffs,” he said, straight away. “Can’t trust the local clowns; they’d bring the whole lot down on their heads. I have a bit of experience. Also, we were short-handed, I was available and had nothing else to do. I like to be useful. So I said I’d go.”
She’d have believed him, except that someone had had to inflict unspeakable pain on him to get him to say more than name, rank, number. She rather liked him, probably because he had a nice voice, in spite of the accent. “Would you like me to see if I can get you a doctor?” she said. “A couple of those look like they could do with stitches.”
“Thanks.” She’d amused him. “But I’d rather wait till you’ve finished beating me up, and then do the whole lot at once, if it’s all the same. Bit of a waste of time otherwise.”
She smiled. “You’re probably right,” she said. “And torn stitches can be a pest. You’re not a craftsman, are you?”
“Wish I was,” he said ruefully. “Maybe you wouldn’t have smashed my face in, I don’t know. But, no, I’m not. For what it’s worth, I’m not a believer.”
That shocked her, just a little. “More fool you,” she said briskly. “Did you find anything interesting while you were doing your survey?”
“Depends what interests you. There’s a big fat seam of blue lias, which is unusual for the north coast but not unheard of. Apart from that, nothing really.”
As quickly as she could, she leaned forward, grabbed the little finger of his left hand and bent it back until he yelled. She applied just the right amount of pressure, then a little more. Then she sat down again.
“Let’s try that again,” she said. “Did you find anything interesting?”
He was breathing deeply, and there was sweat on his face. It makes some men do that. “I just told you, no.”
“Did you find anything interesting?”
He’d folded his hand into a ball. “Piss off and die, you whore.”
“I’m guessing,” she went on pleasantly, “that you found silver there. Or lead, which is more or less the same thing. I know those cliffs; there’s no blue lias, they’re sandstone. But there’s a disused lead mine five miles inland, worked out in Flavian times. I think you may have found silver.”
She felt sorry for him. Really bad luck, to have been there when the invasion barges suddenly appeared. Probably he’d stayed to help organise the defence, because the local militia officers would’ve been in a dreadful panic. A lesser man would’ve ducked out on the last boat. “Sorry,” she said, and repeated the operation on his right hand. This time, she used too much force and felt something give. Of course, he wasn’t to know she hadn’t meant to do so much damage.
“Now then,” she said. “Where is this silver?”
For an intelligent man, he wasn’t very smart. The fire god only saw fit to give us ten fingers, and she was afraid she’d run out and have to think of something else. “The silver,” she said, for the twelfth time.
“All right, there’s silver.” He was croaking now, like a frog. “Since you know already, what’s the point of all this?”
“I’ve had a look at the map,” she said, “and I’m guessing the vein starts somewhere in the Creen hills and runs down to Hillsend, where you’ve got that big fault line running north–south. I can show you the map if it’d help.”
He gazed at her. At some point during the interview, it had dawned on him that he wouldn’t be getting out of this alive. “I don’t know,” he said. He was close to tears.
“Obviously, now that we’re back in control in that region, we can send our own surveyors and they can figure it all out for themselves. But it’d save a great deal of time and bother if you’d just tell us what you found. No point in duplicating your work, is there?”
“Forget it.” He’d come to some sort of decision. “Before you can do that, Senza’ll be right up you and he’ll drive you into the sea. You don’t stand a chance.”
She did a light frown. “Oh, didn’t anyone tell you? Senza Belot is dead. Gangrene. Just a little scratch. You’ve got to be so careful.”
If she hadn’t done all the careful spadework, breaking him down inside and hurting him just right, he’d never have believed her. It’s such a delicate thing. “You’re lying.”
“Afraid not, sorry.” She’d damaged him far more with four words than with anything physical she’d done. “You look tired,” she said. “I’ll let you get some rest, and we can carry on where we left off later. I’m surprised nobody told you about General Belot. We’re all very excited, as you can imagine.”
So simple after that. The only problem was getting him to shut up.
There was a vein of silver; not where she’d said (well, it was just an educated guess). The first indications had come to light only quite recently, but he’d had a chance to explore it pretty thoroughly, and in his opinion it was a truly substantial find, as big as Rhomespa, quite possibly bigger; not too far down, easy enough to extract from the lead using standard techniques. It could’ve turned the tide of the war, he said sadly, if only—
Once she was sure she’d got everything out of him that there was to get, it crossed her mind to tell him that Senza wasn’t dead after all. She decided against it; the pain of knowing he’d been fooled into parting with such crucial information would probably be greater than what he’d gone through already, believing Senza was dead. Leave it at that, she thought; don’t meddle.
If only, she thought, as she made her way to the Director’s office. If only General Belot was dead—their General Belot or ours, makes no odds—and the war was really about to end. She smiled at herself for believing something like that was possible.
“Excellent work, as usual.” The Director was preoccupied, as well he might be. The news that the enemy was about to come into a huge sum of money was enough to flood anyone’s thoughts. “I’ll definitely be putting you in for a distinction.”
She thanked him nicely. Pointless, of course, since she was a woman and therefore not eligible for any form of recognised promotion. Shouldn’t be in the service at all, properly speaking. “One thing,” she said.
“Sorry, miles away. Yes?”
“Colonel Pausa.”
“What? Oh, the man you’ve been—”
“That’s him. I was thinking. It might be a good idea to let him live.”
The frown. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You know departmental policy.”
“Yes, of course. But he is actually a really good geologist.” She paused, then added: “Sort of a collector’s item, if you follow me. It’d be a dreadful waste. There’s not many of his calibre, certainly not on our side.”
The special words hadn’t been lost on him. “As good as that?”
“I think so, yes. At any rate, worth passing along, let them decide. Of course, it’s up to you,” she added, “but I thought I’d mention it.”
“No, I mean yes, quite right.” He was thinking about it. In two seconds, it’d have been his idea. “I’ll send up a note,” he said. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
Well, she thought; maybe the good colonel would turn out to be a top-notch geologist after all, and then everybody would be happy. She hoped so. It had been a silly thing to do, to stick her neck out like that for someone of no obvious value to her, but so what; she reckoned she’d earned the right to indulge herself, after all the aggravation she’d been through lately. Calibre, she thought; did I really say that? I’m starting to sound like departmental communiqués.
The dress was beautiful. She loved it, even though it showed a lot of arm (she didn’t like her arms), and she thought the warrior-princess look was silly. Seeing herself in the dress in the Corsanders’ full-length mirror—an extraordinary thing, one of only four in the whole of the West—she revised her opinion. The warrior-princess look was silly when worn by other people. On her, it looked just fine.
Maybe it was just the dress, or the combination of the dress and the successful interrogation: on the evening of the concert she was in a better mood than she could remember in a long time. Walking under the great arch of the Port Royal put a slight crimp in her feeling of wellbeing—the last time she’d been here, she’d been a leading prosecution witness against an old and dear friend, convicted and subsequently executed for treason—but the size and splendour of the crowd in the covered garden counteracted that to a certain extent. The men were either in formal academics or parade armour, and the women were simply glorious, so that she could enjoy her dress and still be inconspicuous, just another bird of paradise in a huge flock. There were just enough people she knew to make her feel comfortable, and she had tremendous luck avoiding the people she didn’t want to talk to. They’d laid on eunuchs with their skins gilded, dressed as fire angels, bringing round trays of hors d’oeuvres, and the four alabaster fountains were running water—snow melt, piped in from the Black hills and deliciously cool—so she didn’t have to drink wine.
As she refilled her cup from the Winter Fountain she met Colonel Vaudo, an old friend from her first lodge, now attached to the Ordnance. He’d put on weight since he’d come off the front line, and there was a long wedge of scarlet tunic showing up one side, where his gilded dress breastplate and backplate no longer quite met. “I know,” he said, observing and interpreting her grin. “It’s hell when I sit down. I had them punch extra holes in the straps, but the bloody thing’s still tight.”
“Can’t be bothered. Only the second time I’ve worn it since I’ve been back. You’re looking good.”
She nodded. “Girl clothes,” she said. “I treated myself.”
He leaned awkwardly against a pillar. There was an audible creak. “I gather you were at Beloisa.”
“That’s right. Any news?”
He frowned. “Not particularly good,” he said. “Of course, what we’re getting is what they’re telling their own people, but it looks like Senza carried the town at the first assault. All over in an hour or so.”
“You surprise me,” she said. “Colonel Pieres had got it done up pretty tight. There was a bloody great big moat, for one thing.”
“They reckon Senza used pontoons under cover of heavy pavises,” Vaudo said. “Anyway, no doubt we’ll get the details in due course. The point is, we’ve lost our last foothold on their ground and we’re right back where we were eighteen months ago. The usual bloody stalemate.”
She did her cheerful voice. “Yes,” she said, “and Senza’s back up north on his side of the line, instead of down here on ours. Meanwhile, it’s Forza’s move. Our turn to beat up on them, for a change.”
“I guess so.” He smiled. She noticed he had a few grey hairs in his beard now. Actually, they suited him. “Anyway, screw the war. Have you seen Oriden recently? Last I heard, she’d got engaged to some Imperial in Internal Communications.”
She twitched her nose. “He’s called Iuppito, and he’s Director of Waterways for the whole of the north-west. Very good-looking but five feet nothing in his army boots. I got a letter from my sister, and apparently they’re talking about getting married in the spring.”
Vaudo raised an eyebrow. “Well,” he said. “How is Philemon, anyway? Still at the same place?”
“And doing very well, apparently. She reckons it’s between her and some Northern female for Prioress when the old battleaxe retires, which should be any day now.” She grinned. “Nice to think that one member of our family’s making something of herself in the world.”
“Well, quite.” Vaudo stopped a gilded angel and helped himself to white wine. “Are you still dashing around all over the place?”
“Pretty much. No idea what’s next. Here, hopefully, but I just don’t know. I’m sick of sleeping in barns.”
He gave her a sympathetic look. “You should put in for a priory,” he said. “You’ve got seniority, God knows. Hang up your boots, nothing to do all day but shout at a bunch of nuns.”
She shook her head. “Women’s work,” she said. “I’d go berserk inside of a month.”
He sighed. “What you should be doing is running a big City lodge,” he said. “It’s ridiculous, someone with your background and ability still nominally a lay sister.” He frowned and lowered his voice. “I’ve heard it said they’re ordaining women in the East. So why the hell not here?”
“Fine,” she said, “I’ll defect. I’ll leave a note saying you suggested it.”
A fanfare of trumpets, and everyone started to move. “See you later,” Vaudo said. “I’m with a party from Supply. Enjoy the show.”
“You too,” she called after him, and then the stream of moving people separated them. She followed it into the main auditorium. They’d draped garlands of blue and red flowers round all the pillars, like at Spring Festival, and the roof was open. She found a seat about halfway down on the end of a row at the right. She liked being on the end, in case there was a fire.
After what struck her as an unnecessarily long time, the choir appeared through the double doors at the back and processed up the main aisle, followed by the orchestra. They took their places on the raised semi-circular platform, and the instrumentalists started making the usual raucous tuning-up noises. Then they stopped, and there was a moment of rather uneasy silence; then the single door at the side of the platform opened and all around her people were standing and cheering. Being on the end, she was able to peer round; she caught sight of a big man in a long black academic gown, but she was too far away to make out anything more precise than that. Certainly, no chance of seeing the scar. He moved towards the centre of the half-moon of choristers, and she lost sight of him for a while until he emerged on to the choirmaster’s podium. He stood there for a while and nothing happened. Then he turned towards the orchestra and raised his hands.
It began with a sudden thrill on the strings that seemed to cut her to the bone. Then the horns launched into a harsh, wild theme that soared, gathered, repeated, gaining pace and mass before hovering as the rest of the orchestra rushed in behind it, like floodwater through a breach in a sea wall. A countermelody cut across it, like a parry, like enfilading fire; there was a duel between the two, scrambling up into a crescendo, into a sudden savage thrust of the strings, and a dead stop. Five beats of silence; then the horns led the woodwind in a gentle, solemn melody so lovely that it caught in her throat until she could barely breathe. The melody developed over two building repetitions, and then the first theme reappeared, muted to begin with but growing to frantic intensity; it was like watching weeds and brambles growing up through a bed of flowers, but speeded up so that they moved as fast as snakes. Just when she could bear it no longer, a frantic ascent on the strings scattered both themes and drove them aside, and a new theme, major, glorious, triumphant, rose from the orchestra like the sun. As the melody burst like a flower opening, the choir took it up and launched it across the hall like a missile.
“Hello, you,” someone said, and she looked round to see Oida, advancing on her with a grin outstretched like a spear. She found a smile from somewhere.
“Well,” Oida said. People got out of his way, with is-it-him looks on their faces. “What did you think?”
“Incredible,” she said.
He was holding a plate with a slice of honeycake. “You reckon.”
“Yes.”
He pulled a wry face. “Yes, it was rather, wasn’t it? You’ve got to hand it to the old devil. Just when you think he’s losing it and dwindling away into a pillar of the establishment, he comes up with something like that. Makes me wonder why I bother, really.”
Indeed, she thought. “You make it sound like a fight to the death,” she said. “I’ve never thought of you and Procopius as, well, rivals. You do such different work.”
“Quite,” Oida said. He handed his plate to a fire angel. “He writes music. Still, there you go. That’s me put firmly in my place for a while. I guess I’ll have to go back to playing the three-string outside tea houses.” He smiled. “There’s a bunch of us going on to dinner at the Vetumnis house, if you fancy coming along.”
“I’d better not, thanks,” she said vaguely. “Early start in the morning.”
He didn’t seem exactly heartbroken. “Next time, then. Meanwhile, if you’ve got five minutes, there’s someone I think you should meet.”
Hell, she thought; but there’s just so much refusing you can get away with in one evening. “Love to,” she said, and followed his slipstream through the crowd towards the left-hand side door.
Through the door into a corridor, then some stairs. At least it was quiet. She really needed some silence, after the music; silence, and somewhere dark and safe where she could come down. The last thing she wanted was to make conversation to some lodge grandee or politician.
At the top of the stairs there was a door. He breezed through it, she followed, and found herself in a small panelled room; there was a table, covered with piles of sheet music, and a dozen or so men and women down the far end of the room, drinking and talking quietly, and at the other end, eating cold beef wrapped in flatbread, a huge man in a black gown.
She stared at him. She couldn’t help it.
The scar, an inch wide, ran from his left eye to the right corner of his mouth, drawing a white line across the deep mahogany brown of his skin. She could see at once that it had been appallingly badly stitched at the time; the upper side of the scar overlapped the lower, forming a mound, like dried glue left around a joint by a slapdash carpenter. It occurred to her that it was the sort of job you’d do if you didn’t expect your patient to survive, so why bother?
“Telamon, I’d like you to meet Director Procopius. She loved the show, by the way.”
He must have seen her staring. She imagined a knife cutting her throat; it made her feel a tiny bit better. She opened her mouth, but froze, having no idea how to address him. There was a silence that lasted till the end of the world.
“I gather you’re not long back from Beloisa,” he said. He had the most amazing voice. She felt like she heard it through her skin. “That must’ve been pretty rough.”
He gathered. He’d heard of her? “Towards the end, yes,” she heard herself squeak. He had thick black hair in braids down his back, with just a few filaments of grey. He was tall and broad enough to be a Rhus. “I’m afraid I ducked out. I gather things ended badly.”
“I’ve read about Beloisa before the war,” he said. “It was supposed to be one of the most beautiful cities in the empire, in its day. There was a mosaic ceiling by Garheil in the apse of the White temple.”
“Gone now, I’m afraid,” she said. “We pulled it down.”
A slight frown. “That’s a great shame,” he said. “It’s terrible when beautiful things are lost, no matter what the reason. Still, I expect the commander was only doing what he felt he had to do. I’m not sure I could ever take a decision like that, so it’s just as well I’m not a soldier.”
She had no idea what to say. “I loved the music” sort of slipped out before she could stop it, like a bad dog after a cat.
Procopius frowned a little, as though she’d said something in slightly bad taste. “Thank you,” he said. “How about you?” he went on, turning a few degrees to the left. “A bit staid and academic for you, I imagine.”
“I loved it,” Oida said. “If you don’t get the Crown this year, there’s no justice.”
“I can guarantee I won’t get the Crown. I’m on the panel of judges.”
Oida clicked his tongue. “You shouldn’t let them take advantage of you like that,” he said. “Every year you put yourself out of the running, and some kid gets it who hasn’t got a tenth of your ability. Result: people stop hearing your name, and next thing you know they stop playing your stuff. Next year, you really ought to tell them, enough’s enough.”
Procopius nodded slowly. “You haven’t entered for the Crown for five years. Not since you won it.”
Oida shrugged. “I guess I’m not competitive by nature. As someone very wise said to me recently, it’s not a fight to the death. But there’s such a thing as proper recognition.”
“Oh, people recognise me,” Procopius answered quickly. “That’s not a problem.”
A very short but intense pause, then Oida laughed loudly. “I guess not,” he said. “But you know what I mean. It’s different for someone like me, churning out junk for the masses. For you—”
“Not nearly as many people like my music,” Procopius said. “Quite.” He turned back to her and smiled. The scar stretched. “I’ve always taken the view that the best music is what people like the most. What do you think?”
She opened her mouth. Her mind was a complete blank. They were waiting for her. “You’re asking me which is best, lamb or honey. I love both.”
Procopius sighed. “Born diplomat,” he said. “Let’s go and have dinner.”
The dinner at the Vetumnis house, to which she’d refused an invitation. Oida said, “Are you sure you won’t join us?”
But then, you wouldn’t want to have dinner with the fire god; you’d be all burned up before they’d finished clearing away the soup. “I’d love to but I really do have to get an early night. Otherwise I’ll be useless in the morning.”
“Another time, then,” Procopius said. “So nice to have met you.”
By her standards, she slept late. There were broad red stains in the eastern sky when she closed the side door of the Old Cloister behind her, put the key (she’d cut it herself, from an impression taken in a pat of butter) safely away in her sleeve and started to climb the long hill up to Cyanus Square. A tune was going round and round in her head, the way tunes do; nothing from the Procopius last night, but, rather, a theme from one of his earlier pieces in the same vein, the second movement of the Sixth Symphony. It fluttered around inside her head like a trapped bird, until she could barely think.
“Oh,” said the duty priest at the Golden Light. “It’s you.”
She nodded. “Is he in?”
“In body. His soul will be along in an hour or so, after he’s had his breakfast.”
Clearly the priest knew him well. She went up the narrow spiral staircase to the top of the tower, knocked on the door and went in.
Dawn was a good time to visit. During the Bonfire of the Images, three hundred years ago, nearly all the pre-Republican stained glass in Rasch had been smashed by the mob. According to the story, Precentor Argantho and his monks, canons and deacons had crowded into the staircase she’d just come up, literally filling it with human bodies, to keep the rioters from getting up into the tower. Three quarters of the way up—four turns of the spiral—the rioters had grown sick of killing monks and heaving them out of the way; they’d given up and gone and burned down the Gynaeceum instead. Ever since, art historians had argued whether Argantho’s sacrifice had done good or harm, the Macien glass in the Prefecture tower versus the neo-Mannerist frescoes of the Gynaeceum. Contemporary sources, which she’d bothered to dig out and read, tended to suggest that Argantho wasn’t actually there that day, and a couple of dozen monks had tried to barricade themselves in the tower and failed. That was probably why she’d always preferred theology to history.
Father Icadias sat on a low stool in the exact centre of the Rotunda, as he always did at this time, marinading in the reds and blues streaming in through the windows. The tower builders had placed it so that the first light of dawn seemed to come in from all round, three-sixty degrees. Provided the sky wasn’t overcast, a man sitting dead centre in the Rotunda would appear to be bathing in flames that illuminated but did not consume; a graphic if somewhat literal illustration of the fundamental miracle of the faith. Among other miraculous properties ascribed to it, the dawn light in the Rotunda was supposed to cure all bodily ailments, provided the soul was ready. Icadias made a point of telling people this when they came there for confession for the first time. He’d been the incumbent for thirty years, and he had chronic rheumatism.
“Hello, Telamon,” he said. He had his back to the door. She’d taken pains to tread as lightly as possible, so he wouldn’t hear her, let alone be able to identify her by her footsteps. She had no idea how he always knew it was her, no matter how hard she tried, though she suspected there was a perfectly good mundane explanation.
“Close the door, for heaven’s sake. You’re letting the draught in.”
She did as she was told and sat down on the floor. He turned round slowly and faced her. “How was the Procopius?” he asked. “I had a seat, but something came up.”
“Glorious,” she said. “One of the best thing’s he’s ever done.”
“Ah.” Icadias nodded, so that the reds and blues seemed to flow up his face like tears. “I miss all the good ones, but when Zembra premiered his Sacred Cantata I was there in the front row. About halfway through I remember praying for death, but no such luck. What can I do for you?”
“Hear me, Father, for I have sinned.”
“Oh, right.” He pulled his hood down over his eyes. The gold overstitching on the hem blazed like beacons. “In the name of the Five and the One I absolve you. What’ve you been up to this time?”
“I killed someone.”
He sighed. “Yes, you did, didn’t you? Still, he was a political, so I imagine the All-Seeing will turn a blind eye. Anything else?”
She paused for a moment. “I have lied, stolen, betrayed a trust. I have inflicted pain, not through necessity. I have neglected appeals for help from fellow craftsmen.”
“Well,” Icadias said. “Five solemn indemnities, and don’t do it again. That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“No luxuries, adulteries, immodesties or unnatural fleshly practices.”
“No.”
“You should get out more. No, really,” Icadias went on, “I’m a bit worried about you. I mean, you’re still a beautiful young woman, but time’s getting on. You ought to find a nice steady young man and settle down.”
“Yes, Father. Is that it? Five indemnities?”
He grinned at her. “Telamon, I’ve known you since you were six; you’re a craftsman to the bone. I think you can take it from me that your immortal soul is the least of your worries. I heard you saved the life of that enemy surveyor. There’s not many in your position that would’ve done that.”
“It seemed such a waste. He was a clever man.”
“Not a craftsman.”
“One day the war will be over. They’ll need people who can build roads.”
“Or find vast new deposits of silver. Quite. About that,” he added. “Do you think it’ll change things?”
“It’s got to,” she said.
He nodded. “Would it surprise you to learn that we have also found silver? A very large amount of it, on the flood plain just below Hyperpyra?”
That was news. “Really?”
“Really and truly. Oh, you didn’t hear it from me, of course. No, by all accounts it’s a truly significant strike. They were rather hoping it’d be enough to buy victory, but now the other side have got one that neatly cancels it out, and we’re back where we were.” He hesitated for a moment. “Very neat,” he said. “A sort of divine symmetry that suggests to me that our heavenly Father has a wicked sense of humour, at the very least. At the worst, He wants us to carry on slaughtering each other till there’s nobody left. Blessed be the name of our god,” he added serenely. “And you can see His point. But it makes you think.”
She thought of the moors above Beloisa: empty land, abandoned farms. “They’ve kept it very quiet,” she said.
“Believe it or not, they can keep a secret, when they really want to. So,” he went on, “it was a good concert. Many people there?”
“Everybody,” she said. “And you’ll never guess. I actually met him.”
“Director Procopius,” she said. “Oida introduced me, of all people. He was so amazingly—” She tailed off. Icadias smiled.
“I knew his father,” he said. “Charming fellow, fine draughts player. I suppose I should say it came as a terrible shock, but it didn’t. Like so many charming people, he had a vicious streak. Were you surprised? At being introduced, I mean?”
“God, yes. Sorry,” she added, and he grinned. “Yes, of course. And the strangest thing was, he’d heard of me.”
“Strange indeed,” said Icadias, who didn’t seem the least bit surprised. “Your explanation?”
“I haven’t got one.” She thought for a moment. “I mean, I sort of suspect that Oida’s after me. Who knows why, considering the sort of women who’d be only too glad—”
“I think he wants the complete set,” Icadias said solemnly. “Like the coin and medal collectors; the one you want most is the one you haven’t got, regardless,” he added kindly, “of condition. That wouldn’t account for Procopius knowing who you are.”
“No,” she said. She waited. Then: “Any ideas?”
He stretched his legs out with a faint groan. “Doctrine states,” he said, “that the clergy, duly anointed through the chain of apostolic succession reaching back in an unbroken line to Medra himself, are the mortal conduit for the divine flame. When I speak, provided I’m wearing the right bits and pieces and I haven’t got them on back to front, the voice that issues from my lips is the voice of the fire god, my thoughts are His thoughts and my wisdom is His wisdom.” He paused, took the heavily embroidered scarf off from around his neck and laid it reverently across his knees. “Sorry,” he said. “Not a clue.”
“Oh.” She frowned. “But you know everything.”
He laughed; genuine pleasure. “By no means,” he said. “I only know everything that matters. Therefore, by implication, the reason why Scar-face has heard of you can’t be terribly important. I hope that’s some comfort to you.”
She looked at him. “You didn’t seem terribly surprised, that’s all.”
“I’m eighty-one years old, and I’ve been a priest sixty-two years. Surprise is just one of the faculties that atrophies with age. Actually, it’s the one I miss most, I’m ashamed to say. What exactly did he know about you?”
“That I’d been at Beloisa.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “He’ll have read your report. The name at the bottom will have stuck in his memory, since not many women file war despatches. Next miracle, please.”
“I suppose so,” she said. But then: “Why would he be reading third-level classified despatches? He’s an academic.”
“I would imagine he’s something high up in the craft. Not the main line, perhaps, one of the side orders. If he’s sixteenth or seventeenth degree, he’d get to see everything, if he wanted to. And before you ask why would he want to, there’s all sorts of possible explanations. Maybe he has family in those parts. A surprising number of people keep up their connections across the boundary, particularly in the older families. And the Procopii are old Imperial, right back to Carnassus and the First Ships. That’s a guess,” he added, pointing to his unadorned neck. “You can probably come up with half a dozen more, equally plausible. Or you could ask him.”
“Me?” She felt a sudden wave of panic. “Don’t be—”
“Why not? You’ve been formally introduced. People tell me he’s very approachable. Write him a letter.”
“I couldn’t.”
Icadias was mightily amused by that. “So you do know the meaning of fear after all. What’s this, hero-worship?”
“And then some.”
“I don’t blame you. There’s only half a dozen men in the two empires I genuinely respect, and Director Procopius is one of them.” He smiled. “Did you know, my lodge archdeacon was on the panel that assessed him when he applied for the priesthood, what, twenty-five years ago. Turned him down. Said it’d be a crime against gods and men to have a fellow with his talent wasting his time in the ministry when he should be writing music. I remember being deeply shocked, but the old devil was perfectly right, of course.”
“Procopius wanted to be a priest.”
“Yes.”
“And your archdeacon stopped him. That’s dreadful.”
“Oh, come on. Think of the effect it’d have had on his work. No secular music whatsoever.”
“If he wanted to be a priest, you should’ve let him.”
Icadias looked at her, head slightly on one side. “Spoken with true feeling.”
“You know it’s all I’ve ever wanted. And it’s impossible.”
He was silent for a while. Then he lowered his voice. “You do know,” he said, “they’re ordaining women in the East.”
She looked at him in surprise. “You know,” she said, “you’re the second person in two days to tell me that. Why is everybody so dead keen on me defecting? Is it something I said?”
He shrugged. “It’s what you always wanted. And, no, it’s not impossible. I’m just stating a fact, that’s all.”
She sat up straight. “Hear me, Father, for I have sinned. For a split second, I was tempted to betray my country, my lodge and my craft. Fortunately, I was able to overcome the temptation quickly and easily.” She looked at him. “What do I get for that?”
“One lesser indemnity and light a candle in the chancel.” He shrugged. “I thought I owed it to you to mention it. Same god, after all. I’m not sure it matters to Him all that much which side you happen to be on in this stupid war. If He cared, He’d have done something about it by now.”
“You’d have thought.” She stood up. He looked disappointed.
“Are you leaving so soon?” he said. “I thought we might have a hand or two.”
That made her laugh. “Oh, why not? It’s ages since I played.”
He got up—it was distressing to see how much effort it cost him—and crossed to the wall. With practised ease, he teased a single loose stone out of the wall, felt behind it, retrieved a small rosewood box, replaced the stone. He handed her the box; she opened it and took out the pack. “With or without trumps?” she asked.
“Without, I think. After all, we’re on consecrated ground.”
She nodded and went through the pack, taking out the picture cards. They reminded her of the Rhus thief, Musen, and his home-made versions. Then she gave him the pack to shuffle. As always, his dexterity amazed her. “Do you cheat?” she asked.
“What a thing to suggest.”
“Well?”
“Not against you.”
He handed her the cards and she dealt: sixteen each, the remainder placed on the floor between them. Talk about a rotten hand; four of each suit, all high cards, including the dreaded Twelve of Spears. “Are you sure about that?” she said.
“I don’t need to cheat against you. You’re a terrible card player.”
Not true. She opened with five, which he immediately doubled. She felt in her sleeve and fished out some coins. “Excuse me,” he said. “Enemy money.”
“What? Oh, sorry.” She scooped the coins up and put them back. “Souvenirs from Beloisa. Here we go, the good stuff. Come on, then, let’s see yours.”
He smiled. “I seem to be a trifle short today. Instead, I wager two blessings and a conditional indulgence.”
“Seems fair,” she said. “Thirteen with none.”
“Call,” he said. “Confident, aren’t we?” he added, as more of her money hit the floor. “I’ll cover that with an act of grace. All right?”
“Sure. I don’t think I’ve ever had one of those.”
“Don’t hold your breath.” He smiled, and laid the Three of Arrows.
“You do cheat.” She had the Four. He smirked as she gathered up the cards. One to her. The Four had been her lowest card, and the lead was now with her. Somehow she had to contrive to lose four tricks, with this load of rubbish. “Do you say penance afterwards, when nobody’s looking?”
He played the Eight of Spears to her Ten. “Not to rejoice in a victory sent by the Almighty would be a sin,” he said. “To pretend to regret such a victory would be blasphemy indeed. Your lead.”
She won all sixteen tricks; five over the line, in other words, which meant he could throw away five cards and draw from the pack. She dealt. No chance he’d draw an ace, because she had all four. Might as well concede now and pay the fine, while she was still nominally solvent.
“It’s a shame,” he said. “You’d have been a good priest.”
She looked at him. “What makes you say that?”
“A special blend of piety, humanity and ruthlessness. I have two, but I’m rather lacking in the third.”
“Which one?”
“Your declaration.”
She went six. Doubled. She called. No use. When the game was finally over and he was counting his winnings, she asked, “What do you do with the money?”
“Charitable works,” he replied, not looking up.
“Such as?”
“With this lot, I might just endow an order of monks. Or I could rebuild the Grand Temple, only with solid ivory pillars.” He looked at her. “Do you need it back?”
She shook her head. “Plenty more where that came from.”
“I shall pretend I didn’t hear that.”
“If you win money off people by cheating and then spend it on good works, is that an act of grace?”
“Qualified grace,” he said. “But I don’t cheat.”
“And if it’s stolen money?”
“Rectified by outcome. Not the fact, remember, the intention.”
“Of course. Sorry.”
He peered at her. “Was it stolen money?”
“No.”
“That’s all right, then. Had breakfast?”
She looked at him warily. “It’s not fermented cabbage, is it?”
“That’s tomorrow. Today is pancakes.”
“In that case I haven’t.”
He proved to be almost entirely right. It was indeed pancakes; but, since it was the second recess day after Ascension, the archdeacon had authorised pancakes filled with fermented cabbage, as a special treat.
They came in the middle of the night. She was just dropping off to sleep again—the Sixth Office bell over in the New Building had woken her up, and then she was wide awake for an hour—when the door opened. She heard boots on the floor, managed to remember where she was before instincts took over and led her to do something drastic and unfortunate. “You Telamon?” said a man’s voice. Low-class, southern, about thirty, thirty-five.
“Yes.” No point making a fuss. Someone who bursts into your room at midnight and asks to confirm your name can only be the government. “Don’t light the lamp.”
She could hear a tinderbox whir as she said it. “Why not?”
“I haven’t got any clothes on.”
Dim glow, then enough light to see by. Too smart to fall for that one; she might have a knife under her pillow—she did, actually, though obviously she wasn’t going to use it this time. She grabbed at the sheet and pulled it up. “Do you mind?” she said.
Six kettlehats—six. She was flattered. Full armour, too. He was looking at her, but not in that way; she was just dangerous freight. “All right if I get dressed?” she asked.
He nodded, just the minimum of movement. A sergeant, by his collar, but he and his men all had new armour, all the plates matching, no obvious make-do-and-mend repairs. Not many like that these days. Not just any grab squad, then. Just as well she wasn’t going to try anything.
She waited for him to turn his head, which he didn’t. “Fine,” she said, trying to sound outraged. She slid her legs off the bed, stood up and grabbed yesterday’s dress, which was lying on the floor. It was a rather splendid object, red with white and yellow slashed sleeves, seed pearls on the collar, one of her old outfits she’d got out of store. Not really suitable for being arrested in; a shade too frivolous. For being arrested, you want something smart but sombre in dark blue or slate-grey worsted. She had a bit of trouble with the buttons at the neck, for some reason.
“Right,” she said. “Where to?”
Of course they didn’t tell her. It wasn’t close arrest, they didn’t tie her hands or grab hold of her; just that dreadfully embarrassing boxed-in walking, where you have to try really hard not to step on anyone’s heel.
She didn’t know him. A large bald man, craftsman, in dark brown ecclesiasticals (but he was government, not Temple: that was only too obvious); a broad face, quite good-looking, forty or thereabouts. The fact that she didn’t know him was quite eloquent in itself.
“Please sit down,” he said. The chair was old black oak, very nicely carved, Restoration or maybe a shade earlier, worth money. The table was even older, though quite plain. She sat down, and he nodded to the kettlehats, who left and closed the door. “Apologies for the melodrama,” he said. Quiet voice; he’d been to the Seminary, but where he came from originally she wasn’t quite sure. “It’s all right, you’re not in trouble.”
“That’s nice,” she said. “Who are you?”
Like shooting arrows at a wall. “Just a few questions to start with,” he said. “When you were in Beloisa, did you meet a couple of Rhus prisoners, brought in by a Captain—” a glance at the papers in front of him. “Captain Guifres.”
“One,” she said. “Not a couple.”
“Mphm. Did you catch his name?”
“Musen.”
Slight frown. “One prisoner, called Musen.”
“That’s right.”
“Describe him.”
She took a moment to get it right. “About six four,” she said, “two-twenty pounds, big man, broad shoulders. Brown hair about the colour of your robe down to the shoulders, nineteen or twenty years old, brown eyes.” She paused, then went on: “Clean-shaven, no scars or distinguishing marks, narrow face, long nose, small mouth, good teeth.”
“Yes?”
“That’s about it. He was a Rhus. They all look pretty much the same.”
A faint not-good-enough look. “You didn’t see a red-headed man, same height and build, blue eyes.”
“I don’t think so, no.”
“Does the name Teucer mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“This Musen didn’t mention anyone called Teucer.”
“Not to me.”
He was perfectly still for a moment; then he wrote something on a wax tablet with a very thin ivory stylus. Too small for her to read. “You sent Musen to Thief School.”
“Yes. I thought he showed promise.”
He nodded. “They’re pleased with him,” he said. “They say he shows a remarkable degree of innate spirituality, possibly even worth considering for ordination at some point. Did you sleep with him?”
“What?”
“Did you have sexual intercourse with him?”
“No, certainly not.”
“No matter.” What was that supposed to mean? “How well did you know Captain Guifres?”
“I didn’t do him, either.”
“How well did you know Captain Guifres?”
She made herself calm down. Business, she thought, just work. “I knew him by sight, I didn’t talk to him. He wasn’t anything to do with me, just some soldier.” She paused. “You know why I was there.”
No acknowledgement. Information went into him, not out; like a sort of valve. “In your opinion, was Captain Guifres a loyal officer?”
She shrugged. “He looked loyal,” she said. “At least, from about ten yards away. That’s as close as I ever got. I don’t know, what do traitors look like?”
He did something odd. He reached down on to the floor, picked something up, put it on the table between them. It was a little silver inkwell, highly polished. Oh, she thought. “Did Colonel Pieres ever mention a second Rhus prisoner? One that came in at the same time as Musen?”
“Not to me.”
“Captain Jaizo?”
“No.”
He nodded. Another glance down at the paperwork. “Now then,” he said. “You murdered a political officer, Captain Seunas.”
“No.”
“I said,” he said, “you’re not in trouble. We can’t prove it; you’ve already admitted it. You killed this Seunas.”
“Yes. He was going to take my place on the ship.”
“Did you know him? Talk to him?”
“No. First time I met him was when—”
“Do you know what he was doing upcountry? What his mission was?”
“No, I just told you. I went to his room, drew a knife and stabbed him. Just here,” she said, pointing. “He may have said hello, who are you, I don’t remember.”
“You didn’t look through any papers he may have had.”
“No.”
“Ah.” Mild regret. “And neither Pieres nor Jaizo said anything about the work he’d been doing.”
She tried hard to think. “Pieres said he was on a fact-finding mission. He was late coming in because he got separated from his escort. I saw that name you said on a document while I was flicking through Pieres’ despatch case, but I didn’t read it; I was in a hurry and it wasn’t anything to do with me. I didn’t know his name was Seunas till you told me just now.”
A flicker of interest. “What sort of document? The one with his name on.”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
“Try.” Pause. “Orders? Despatches? Memorandum? Personal letter? Was it parchment or paper, sealed or unsealed? What sort of writing, court hand or freehand? Pro forma or narrative? Come on, I’m asking you a question.”
“Freehand,” she said. “Half a page of writing, standard military paper, not parchment. Not sealed, not orders or any sort of a form. Not a personal letter.” She paused, trying to see it clearly in her mind. “It was a name in the middle of a paragraph. I think it only occurred once. I was scanning the letter for names, capital letters; you know, like you do.”
“Go on.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s all. I didn’t read it.”
“Were there any other names you remember from the same document?”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
He looked at her. He was deciding whether to kill her or let her go. “Thank you,” he said. He made his decision. “You’ve been most helpful. Did you enjoy the concert?”
“What?”
“The Procopius. Did you like it?”
“Yes, very much.”
Another nod. “I missed it,” he said, “but everyone says it was excellent. Would you like a score?”
“A what?”
“A score. A copy of the music. Would you like one?”
“Yes. Yes, very much.”
Just a trace of a smile. “I’ll have one sent to you.” He balled his fist and brought it crashing down on the table. The door opened, and the kettlehat sergeant came in. “Please show the lady out,” he said.
The sergeant led her down about a mile of corridors, completely unfamiliar, not the ones she’d come in by. Eventually he opened a door and she could see New Market Square, a dazzling blaze of gold in the early morning sunlight. “Thanks,” she said, stepping carefully round him. “I know my way from here.”
It took her about ten minutes to get home. When she got there, she found a parcel on her bed, wrapped in fine linen cloth and tied up with official green tape. It was the score of the Procopius. She hurried to the balcony and threw up into the South Cloister garden below.
“Another nasty job, I’m afraid,” he said. He didn’t look particularly remorseful. It occurred to her that maybe he thought she liked doing that sort of thing. Revolting thought.
“Ah well,” she said. “Home or away?”
“Away,” he replied. “Somewhere you know quite well, actually. That’s why it’s nasty.”
Her heart sank. “Go on.”
“Water?”
The idea of drinking water was clearly disturbing to him. “Wine or brandy.”
“No, thank you. Where are you sending me?”
He leaned back in his chair, making it creak. She wanted to tell him, for crying out loud, don’t do that, it’s Age of Elegance and very fragile and valuable. But the lodge house was crammed with stuff like that, and nobody bothered about it. One dark night, she’d have a cart waiting out back of the stables and a dozen strong men to do the lifting, and then she could retire—
“You spent a year in Blemya, is that right?”
“You should know. You sent me there.”
Smile. “Not me, my illustrious predecessor.”
“You’re quite right, so it was.” She frowned. “You’re sending me to Blemya.”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s not so bad. What’ve I got to do?”
He leaned forward again, and her heart bled for the delicate joints of the chair. “When you were there last, you met the queen.”
“Well, she wasn’t the queen then. The prince was still alive, so she wasn’t anybody special. Just so much stock-in-trade, waiting to be found a husband.” She paused. “Nice girl, I liked her. She’d be, what, twenty-four now?”
“Twenty-two,” he said. “A girl of twenty-two is the most strategically important asset in the world. Sometimes I can’t help wondering, no disrespect to the Almighty—”
“Indeed,” she said briskly. “So, what do you want me to do to the poor kid?”
He beamed at her. “I want you,” he said, “to present her with a copy of the score of Procopius’ new choral symphony. You know, the one that premiered the other day. Were you there, by the way?”
She nodded. “Were you?”
“Front row,” he said smugly. “I liked it, though I thought it dragged a bit in the middle. Anyway, in light of the special relationship between ourselves and the Blemyans, and knowing that Her Majesty is very fond of music, Director Procopius has kindly allowed a copy of the score to be made, and I’d like you to go there and give it to her.”
She frowned. “Just me, or me and some other people?”
“We were thinking of a party of twenty. Keep it quite low-key.”
“I see. And that’s a nasty job, is it?”
“That’s not quite all we want you to do.”
A nasty job all right; but she’d done worse, and at least she’d be out of the country. Probably not a bad idea to be a long way away, in a neutral foreign country, until whatever that other business about Beloisa was had blown over. It was, of course, quite unspeakably hot in Blemya. The thought made her feel sad. And she had absolutely nothing to wear—
I. The sovereign Kingdom of Blemya (see map)—
There was no map, but that didn’t matter. She knew where Blemya was. She stretched out her legs and drew the lamp a little closer.
I. The sovereign Kingdom of Blemya (see map) lies between the Eastern and Western empires on the southern shore of the Middle Sea. Originally a province of the united Empire Blemya rebelled shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War, and has remained independent ever since. The rebel commander, General Tolois, proclaimed himself king and ruled for seventeen years until his death. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Dalois I. Given the strategic location of Blemya and its considerable resources of manpower, agricultural produce, timber and minerals (including iron ore and gold, see Appendix), it was inevitable that after the partition of the Empire at the end of the Civil War, both sides should have made assiduous attempts to enlist the Blemyans as allies. Equally inevitably, first Tolois and then his son and grandson have maintained a policy of strict neutrality while playing off both Empires against each other. Blemya trades extensively with the West, supplying timber and finished lumber, wheat and wine, and the East, predominantly metals, barley and palm oil. Blemyan citizens are forbidden to enlist with the armies of either side, on pain of death and confiscation of family assets. The Blemyan army, well-organised, superbly equipped and professionally led, is believed to number in excess of one hundred thousand, the majority drawn from the Settler smallholder class (see below) …
She yawned. Who wrote these things, anyway?
II. Blemya’s population is seventy-five per cent indigenous desert tribesmen, twenty-five per cent Settlers, the descendants of the Northern Imperials who first conquered and occupied the territory in the reign of Clea IV. The Settler aristocracy own large estates in the north and west of the country, largely worked by indigenous labour; relations between the two ethnic groups are generally held to be distant but friendly, with no recent instances of sectarian disorder. The south and east are mostly tribal homelands, but there are substantial areas of small and medium Settler farmsteads, concentrated alongside the two forks of the Blee river, the arable heartland of the country. These Settler communities provide the bulk of the Blemyan infantry, although the officer class is predominantly northern and western aristocratic. The Blemyan cavalry is recruited from the tribes and is regarded as highly effective; their officers are drawn from the upper echelons of the tribes, and are treated as equals by the upper-class Settlers. All the regions of Blemya are generally prosperous, and considerable wealth is concentrated in the coastal cities and the three tribal capitals in the far south. Indeed, the national average standard of living throughout Blemya is significantly higher than that prevailing in all but the most favoured regions of either Empire.
Overstating it a bit, she thought; but not that much.
III. … Following the death of Dalois II, the throne passed briefly to his uncle, Sinois, acting as regent for Irdis, the crown prince. However, both Sinois and Irdis were drowned en route to a religious festival, whereupon the crown passed to Dalois II’s only surviving child, a daughter, enthroned as Queen Cardespan at the age of nineteen. Remarkably, Queen Cardespan has contrived to maintain the unity, independence and prosperity of her kingdom, thanks no doubt to the support and excellent advice of her council, about whom regrettably little is known—
Fibber, she thought. But maybe just as well not to put too much down on paper.
… is of paramount importance to the security of the Empire, and it has therefore been decided in Council that limited acts of destabilisation are necessary at this time. Equally important, however, is public opinion within Blemya, which currently tends to favour the East. This is largely due to the influence of the mine owners and the palm oil consortium, who derive substantial revenues from the Eastern trade, rather than to any political or ideological sympathy; the average Settler is typically open-minded on the issue of sides, tending to regard both Empires with distaste, as being the direct descendants of the united Empire from which Blemya felt it necessary to secede in what the Settlers refer to as the War of Independence.
… possible at the same time to destabilise the Queen’s regime and to attribute such acts to Eastern infiltrators and/or insurgents, such operations could well have a significant effect on popular attitudes in Blemya and might even result in the overthrow of the Queen and Blemya’s entry into the war on our side. With the human and financial resources of the Kingdom at our disposal …
Well, quite. A hundred thousand men; more to the point, the Blemyan state arsenal, possibly the most advanced arms factory in the world, about which the report had been curiously reticent. But she’d been there and seen it, which the writer of the report presumably hadn’t. And the money, of course. All that money. And victory was quite definitely something you could buy.
Acts of destabilisation. Interesting to see what they had in mind.
She read on.
“Oh,” she said. The wind caught her hair and tugged at it, like a child in a tantrum. “I didn’t know you were—”
Oida smiled at her. “Surprise,” he said.
Oh God, she thought. A porter lifted her bag, winced slightly at the unanticipated weight. What the hell’ve you got in here? he didn’t say. The bag clinked slightly, and Oida raised an eyebrow. “I’ll repack it so it doesn’t do that,” she said, and he laughed.
Oida’s luggage consisted of three trunks, four large bags, two knee-high barrels and a long, flat packing case. “Just as well it’s a big ship,” she said.
“That’s a portable euphonium, would you believe,” he said proudly. “Designed it myself, and the lads at the Dula Arsenal ran it up for me. Folds away flat in five minutes, no specialist tools required. Got a nice sound, too.”
The Dula Arsenal was in the East. “A portable—”
He shrugged. “You get used to a particular sound,” he said. “Actually, if she likes it, I’ll give it to her, I can always get another one made. You, by contrast, travel light.”
“Spare frock and some weapons.” She shrugged. “Who else is coming on this bun fight?”
“Nobody important,” Oida said. “Diplomats, mostly, a couple of lodge bigwigs with a taste for foreign cuisine.” He lowered his voice; still too loud, but the crack of the sails and the squeals of the gulls covered him quite effectively. “The only other one who’s read the briefing is him there—you see, in the green? That’s Cruxpelit.” She looked at him: small, utterly nondescript middle-aged man with a bald spot and a very short beard; his coat was so long, she couldn’t see what he had on under it, military, court dress or ecclesiasticals. “He’s craft, but God only knows what he actually does. Rather a creepy individual, if you ask me.”
She gazed at him in mock astonishment. “You mean to say there’s something you don’t know?”
“Quite.” Not funny. “And I’m not exactly thrilled about sharing a ship with an unknown quantity, let alone an important secret mission. Bastard’s as tight as a miser’s arse. Oh, he’ll talk to you all day long, but he never actually says anything.”
There was genuine unhappiness in Oida’s voice, and for the very first time she thought there might just possibly be aspects of this job that she might enjoy. “I think we can go on the ship now,” she said.
“The proper term is embark. After you.”
It was going to be a slow, lazy voyage. The sea was mercifully flat, with just enough wind to keep them moving at slightly more than fast walking pace. She found a barrel next to the forecastle stairs to sit on. She’d brought three books. She could think of ever so many worse ways to spend five days.
Oida, bless him, was bored silly. Just before daybreak each morning he did his voice exercises, a combination of roaring noises, scales, arpeggios and snatches of heartbreakingly lovely melodies suddenly cut off in the middle. At noon precisely he did scales on the flute and chords on the mandolin. The rest of the time, when he wasn’t being seasick, he prowled round the deck getting in the way of the crew, or came and stopped her from reading.
“I have no idea,” he said suddenly, “where we are.”
She closed the book around her forefinger, to mark the place. “Of course you do. Just there”—she pointed to the place on the deck where he was standing—“is the exact centre of the universe. Nothing else really matters very much. Better now?”
He grinned. “Seriously,” he said. “I tried figuring it out from the position of the stars last night, but I must’ve got it wrong, or we’d be in the middle of the desert somewhere. I hate not knowing where I am. I mean, if the ship sinks, which direction do we swim in?”
“This far out? Makes no odds. You’d drown anyway.”
“Thank you so much.” He sat down cross-legged at her feet, which annoyed her intensely. “I don’t like the way this ship is run. It’s all so bloody haphazard. All over the place, like the mad woman’s shit.”
“You know a lot about seamanship.”
“No,” he said. “But it’s obvious. Half the crew spend half the time just lolling about.”
“That’s because the wind is gentle and constant. What do you want them to do, get out and push?”
He scowled at her, which she took as a slight victory. “We need to get our heads together and decide what we’re going to do.”
“We know what we’re going to do. It’s in the briefing.”
“Yes, but we need to plan.” He looked round. “Have you seen that creep Cruxpelit? I haven’t set eyes on him for days.”
“You sat next to him at dinner last night.”
“Well, hours, then. But he disappears. How can anyone disappear on a poxy little ship?” He picked something up off the deck, a nail; looked at it and threw it over the side. “Someone could’ve trod on that,” he said. “And he’s never seasick.”
“Nor am I.”
“Yes, well, you’re the proverbial woman of steel. But he’s a little fat man. He ought to be chucking his guts up all day long.”
“Like you.”
“I’m much better now, thank you for asking. We need to plan,” he repeated. “Work out a detailed plan of action, with alternatives and fall-back positions. This really isn’t the sort of thing we should be making up as we go along.”
It occurred to her that maybe he hadn’t done much of this sort of thing before. “I wouldn’t bother,” she said. “Detailed plans and fall-back positions generally don’t help, in my experience. Usually they just get in the way.”
He looked at her. “Is it true you murdered a political, just to get his place on a boat?”
She closed her eyes, then opened them again. “Yes.”
“I see.”
For some reason she couldn’t explain, she felt a need to justify herself. “It was him or me,” she said. “There was one last ship out of Beloisa. Everyone left behind was going to die. What would you have done?”
He didn’t answer that. “Talked to the diplomats much?”
Sore point. “They don’t want to talk to me,” she said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were scared of me.”
“Don’t be stupid. But it’s true. I can barely get a civil word out of them.”
He yawned, not covering his mouth, an uncharacteristically vulgar moment. “They’re a poor lot,” he said judiciously. “At least, the men are. Place-fillers. The Imperial woman’s got brains but no charm, and the other one—”
She nodded. “Charm but no brains. Like the fairy tale about the three sisters with one eye between them.”
“Indeed.” He looked impressed by the analogy. “Mind you, they’re just camouflage. I think—” He lowered his voice. Still too loud. “I think the main reason they were picked was because they’re expendable.”
“Excuse me?”
“Expendable. Nobody will miss them terribly much if they never come back. As in, if we make a bog of it and get caught and strung up, no great loss.”
She considered that. “Same goes for me, I suppose.”
That startled him. “I don’t think so. They chose you because you’re good.”
“And expendable.”
“No, not especially. After all, they chose me, too. And I’m definitely not expendable.”
She couldn’t help laughing. “Well then,” she said, “that puts paid to that theory. If they’re prepared to risk a national treasure like yourself—”
He gave her a serious look. “They wouldn’t hang me,” he said. “That’d risk pissing off the West and the East. No chance of that.”
She nodded. “Hence,” she said, “the portable euphonium made in the Eastern state munitions factory.”
He grinned. “Clever old you. Well, it does no harm to drop the odd hint.”
“Of course. Just out of interest—”
“Whose side are you on?”
Big smile. “Silly girl. Ours, of course.”
You must—all the old travellers’ accounts insist, you must—approach Ezza for the first time from the sea. True enough, the approach from the landward side is very impressive, particularly if you’re coming up the old Mail Road, and the first glimpse you catch of the city is the breathtaking view through the gap in the Axore mountains; and then you slowly descend through the lush river valley with its orchards and olive groves, until eventually you enter the city through the amazing Bronze Gate. But for the full effect—the authorities are united on this point—nothing compares with the long, almost painfully slow progress between the seamarks of the lagoon in the early morning, before the mist has lifted, culminating in the first heart-stopping vision of the white marble Sea Gate, with its four impossibly tall, slender columns and the massive statue of the Forgotten Goddess, vast and hideously, wonderfully, eroded into an abstract monstrosity by two thousand years of salt winds. Next, you begin to make out the gold and copper domes of the twelve fire temples crowded together along the Foreigners’ Quay; to begin with, they’re just vaguely disturbing coloured lights; then, as the sun breaks through, they become burning beacons, convincing you that you’ve arrived right in the middle of an invasion or a civil war; and then they resolve themselves into symmetrical, artificial shapes, a row of enormous chess pieces facing you across a board, daring you to make your first move. If you’ve come to Ezza, they seem to be saying, you’d better have brought your best game, or we’ll have you.
This was, of course, her second time. The first time, she’d come to Ezza by night and been hoisted up over the wall in a herring basket. She’d felt horribly sick and her hair smelt of fish for two days.
Three days of diplomatic receptions. How she endured it all she wasn’t entirely sure. Mostly she stayed close to Oida, like those little sucker fish that hitch rides on sharks. Everybody wanted to talk to Oida, and Oida just wanted to talk. She heard all about his early influences, his views on the development of the symphony, where he got his ideas from; she found him loathsome in this vein, but slowly it dawned on her that it was all just armour, interlocking plates of arrogance and charm, designed to attract and repel at the same time. That she could understand, even admire. But the other epiphany was simply baffling. Oida wasn’t really interested in music.
(“Well, no, actually,” he confessed, when she taxed him with it, during a brief ceasefire in the middle of the deputy chief minister’s reception. “I used to, but not any more, not for a long time. But I’m so good at it—”)
So she stopped fighting from behind his shield and took the battle to the enemy; in particular, the Blemyan ministers’ wives. They found her fascinating. With one huge, obvious glaring exception, women didn’t participate in Blemyan politics. There were priestesses, of course, quite senior figures in Temple, but they confined their activities to reciting Scripture and enacting ritual, very occasionally being consulted on fine points of doctrine (but only in their capacity as conduits of the divine). There were no female craftsmen above the second degree; she got the impression that their principal function in lodge was baking honeycakes and arranging flowers. As for a woman doing a regular job of work in return for money—God, she thought, what a country.
The ministers’ wives asked her three questions: is it too terrible having to work for a living; what’s Oida really like; what are they wearing in Rasch? She had to struggle to get anything much in return. It wasn’t that the wives were discreet or cagey. They simply didn’t know anything, about politics or trade or the economy or sectarian divisions. That just left malicious gossip, and, although that wasn’t too hard to obtain, she didn’t really know enough about the people and the issues, though she was learning fast. All in all, not the three best days of her career so far.
“And the food,” she protested to Oida, when they were finally clear of the finance minister’s reception. “How can they eat that muck? If I see another sun-dried bloody tomato—”
He gave her a seraphic smile. “You know the two barrels I brought with me?”
“Yes, I—” Wasn’t able to see a way of getting them open without being obvious. “Was wondering about them.”
“One of them’s a side of boned salt beef, Dirian-style.”
“Oh God,” she moaned.
“And the other’s spring greens preserved in honey.” He looked at her. “It’s such a shame you don’t like me. Otherwise, I’d be delighted to share.”
“I never said I don’t like you.”
“Some things don’t need saying.” He shrugged. “Salt beef Dirian-style with six different kinds of pepper,” he said. “There’s a little man in Cousa who makes them for me, to an old North Imperial recipe. So tender you can carve it with a blade of grass. But I imagine you’d rather preserve your integrity and eat couscous.”
“I’ve always liked you, Oida. You know that.”
He laughed. “You don’t,” he said. “That’s why I find you so intriguing and irresistible. Don’t spoil it, please.”
“Fine,” she said. “You’re arrogant and vain, you wear scent and you stand too close to people when you talk to them. Also, I don’t like your vocal music. The instrumental stuff is fine, but you can’t write songs for olive pits.”
They were walking under the soaring pink granite arch of the Friary, where they were staying. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear the last bit,” he said. “The rest is freely admitted. I am who I have to be.”
She found that statement rather unsettling. “And your attitude to women—”
“Ah.” He shrugged. “The moths revile the flame, and why not? Let me tell you something. If I’d wanted to get you into bed, I’ve had done it long since.”
She was aware that she was glowing red, like coke under the bellows. She hoped it was anger.
“But,” he went on, “I don’t sleep with colleagues, it’s a rule. Just so happens, you’re the only woman I count as a colleague. But it’s a rule.”
“You’re so completely full of—”
“Yes,” he said gently. “It’s how I make myself useful. Let me put it another way. I don’t sleep with women I care about.”
She looked at him. “That’s just silly,” she said.
He shrugged. “Thankfully it’s a very small category. And most of them are over seventy. Do you want some salt beef and greens or not?”
She gave him a solemn look. “I should very much like some salt beef and greens.”
“All right, then. Because once it’s opened, it’ll only keep a couple of days.”
And then they were presented to the queen.
Afterwards, long afterwards, she tried to picture her, but all she could bring to mind was the image of a huge golden throne—its arms were lions, its legs were elephants, and two gold and ivory double-headed eagles perched on the headrest—flanked by the biggest human beings she’d ever seen, head to toe in gilded scale armour; and it was as though someone had left a heap of bizarrely exotic ceremonial regalia piled up on the seat of the chair, intending to come back for it later. Somewhere under all that stuff—the lorus, the divitision, the greater and lesser chlamys, the purple dalmatic, the Cope of State with jewelled pendilia, the labarum and orb flammiger—she sensed the presence of someone small, frightened and angry, but she couldn’t lay her hand on her heart and swear she’d seen her.
The diplomats did the actual handing over of the gift: a silver box containing the score, dedicated to Her Majesty by Procopius in his own handwriting. Nothing else with it—an eloquent gesture, that, because anything else would be mere junk in comparison, so why bother? A chamberlain took it from them and put it on a large circular silver tray carried by four enormous guardsmen, who lugged it away somewhere behind the throne. The chamberlain thanked them and made a sort speech, stressing the friendly relations between the kingdom and the empire. The chief diplomat then made a short speech stressing the friendly relations between the empire and the kingdom. Everybody bowed to everyone else, then everyone bowed to the Throne, and then it was time to go.
For sharpening knives she used three stones: first the red sandstone, then the coarse grey millstone, finally the black water stone, a tiny chip out of a mountain somewhere in the Casypes, a semi-mythical range in the far north of the Eastern empire, the only place in the world where the stuff had ever been found. Black water stone, weight for weight, was slightly more expensive than emerald, much harder to get hold of, and illegal to own in the West. She wore hers in a brooch, with a highly ornate silver setting.
Carrying the knife about would be easy. The Director of Protocol back home had sent the Blemyan Chamberlain’s Office a twenty-page summary of Imperial court dress; on page seven, under Priestesses, was a list of sacred and ceremonial items which a priestess was required to have with her at all times: a mirror, a small silver phial of holy water, a tinderbox, a knife, a pair of white linen gloves for handling the sacramental chalice. The Blemyans had objected that no weapon of any kind was allowed inside the palace precincts unless expressly authorised by the Count of the Stables. The Director replied that the empire would of course respect Blemyan law, and it was a shame that the visit would have to be cancelled over so small a detail; however, no embassy could set out without a priestess, and no priestess could discharge her duties without a mirror, a small silver phial of holy water, a tinderbox, a knife and a pair of white linen gloves for handling the sacramental chalice. The Blemyans quickly responded by issuing the mission’s officially designed priestess with written authority to carry a small ceremonial knife, signed and sealed by the Count of the Stables. Simple as that.
She gave the blade five more strokes each side on the water stone, for luck; then she wiped the slurry off her brooch with a small pad of cotton waste, which she threw on the fire, and slipped the knife into the pretty velvet sheath they’d run up for her in the lodge workshops. It was dark red (so practical as well as fashionable) and decorated with three rows of tiny freshwater pearls. She longed to hang on to it after the mission was over, but she was pretty sure they’d make her give it back. Lodge property, after all.
She took off her shoes.
Now, then. Time to go out and kill a perfect stranger.
Three essentials of the perfect political assassination: a sharp knife, a plausible excuse for being in an inappropriate place, if challenged, and a really accurate map.
She could see maps. One good long look, and she could see it in her mind, up to three days later. So, out of her door and turn right, down a long marble-floored corridor, past a statuary group representing Blemya Marrying the Sea, at the end of the corridor turn left; fifteen yards, second mezzanine, up six flights of stairs, left, then right, then thirty-two yards (she had a pair of excellent dividers, which doubled as a cloak pin), the door on the right. As anticipated, the room was empty and dark. She crossed it slowly and carefully, guided by the slight change in temperature, until she reached the unshuttered window. Out on to the ledge—she hated that—and shuffle along twelve feet in a state of blind, weak-kneed terror, until her groping right hand felt the wood of a shutter. Next, the horrible part; the shutters opened outwards, of course. She inched along, letting her fingertips trace the shutter panels, until she found the line in the middle where they met. She crept on, two feet precisely, and inserted her fingertips into the join. If the shutters were latched, that would be that—mission aborted, try again later. But they weren’t; she felt the right-hand shutter lift away from the wall. If it creaked and woke him up, she’d have no alternative but to jump. Eight floors up. No chance.
Getting off the ledge, in through the window, feet on to the floor, proved to be very nearly impossible. For some unaccountable reason, the bottom sill of this window was a good eighteen inches higher than the counterpart in her room, on which she’d practised so assiduously, and her legs simply weren’t long enough. In the end, she had to hop, not knowing what she’d be landing on. Mercifully, it was a sheepskin rug.
Pitch dark, of course. She straightened up and stood perfectly still until she found where the bed was by the sound of his breathing. He’ll be alone, the briefing had assured her; he’s a married man, but his wife is a home body and doesn’t like coming up to town. Therefore there’ll be no need to identify which occupant of the bed is the target. That was, in fact, the principal reason why he had been chosen to die, rather than the equally eligible Director of Interior Supply.
She waited as long as she dared, giving her night vision as much time as possible to acclimatise to the very faint light coming in under the door from the lantern sconces in the corridor outside. Unfortunately, there was some bloody great big thing—a wardrobe or a linen press—directly in the way; she could see its outline, just about, but the space between her and the bed was dark grey fog. Way beyond the point now where any explanation would be credible. She closed the shutter, just in case the slight chill of the night air disturbed his sleep. You have to be really considerate, like a newlywed.
Two distinct patterns of breathing. Oh hell.
She’d have to kill them both, the minister and his unknown, inconvenient bedfellow. Nothing for it, had to be done. Could it be done? She rearranged the cutting list in her mind and decided that, yes, it could. You found the vital spot in the dark by touch, by tracing with the exquisitely sensitive tip of your left little finger until you found a landmark: an ear, the corner of the mouth, something definite to navigate by. Almost always, the subject started to wake up while you were doing it, and then you had less than a second, which is actually plenty of time. You could do two people in one second if you absolutely had to. What you couldn’t do was flounder about distinguishing man from woman, and most certainly you couldn’t leave a live, awake witness. Sorry, she thought. I really am sorry. It’s such horribly rotten luck.
The hell with it, she thought. She made herself slow right down, a parody of movement. She knew from long practice exactly what the edge of a bed felt like against her shin. Killing people in the dark is so sensual, someone had told her once, before her first time; your whole body comes alive, every tiny patch of your skin becomes unbelievably sensitive. At the time she thought he was just being weird, but it was true. Hearing, too. She understood how blind men could find their way around by sound alone. It wasn’t as though either the minister or his companion snored, or anything like that, but their breathing was loud and clear enough to find them by. She reached out, and the first thing her fingertip touched was hair.
She tried to remember. The minister, she’d seen him at three receptions: a medium man, medium height, build, medium-length hair. Several of the Blemyan council were bald as eggs, why couldn’t they have set her on one of them? She followed the line of the hair, trying to gauge its length. It was soft, but some men had hair like that. A faint scent of peaches and apples, but the men here were incredibly vain. She thought of Oida. She touched an earlobe, instinctively drew her hand back. Too small to be a man’s.
I have to kill them both, she thought. I can’t, she thought.
Well, that was all there was to it. A wave of annoyance swept over her; damn the stupid bloody woman, some people are so thoughtless. She couldn’t do it the usual way, she’d have to go by sound and intuition. Some people could do that, she’d never tried. She’d have to kill the man without waking the woman. Trade test. Thank you so bloody much.
She listened, trying to unravel the combined sound of breathing; like trying to listen to just the bassoons in an orchestral piece. Actually, she could do that. He was the quieter of the two, oddly enough, and he took longer breaths, slightly more widely spaced. Just as well she had ears like a bat. She listened some more, until she was as sure as she’d ever be where the man’s nose was. What she didn’t know was, was he lying on his back or on his side?
Very cautiously, she felt, and located a cheek; on his side, fine. That ruled out her preferred point of entry, the triangular hollow at the base of the throat, where the collarbones met. She was fairly sure he was lying on his right cheek, in which case the jugular vein would be just there; but she couldn’t be sure—also, spurting blood might wake the stupid woman. In through the ear, then. Difficult when you can’t see, because of the risk of hitting bone. She’d have to risk using force. It just got better and better.
She slid the knife out, reversed it, passed it into her left hand, positioned it, like a mason poising a chisel. This is all going to go horribly wrong, she thought; she could hear the lodge master’s voice in her head, how could you be so irresponsible, though of course she’d never hear him say it, she’d be dead herself. So; so some tart’s life is worth more than yours, but you killed a political officer. Bloody stupid, she thought, I’m just so bloody stupid. Then she cupped her right palm and used it as a hammer on the pommel of the knife.
There was a sound; a crisp, crunching, punching noise. It was so loud they must’ve heard it in Rasch. Only one breathing sound now, but still regular and even. She tightened her left hand on the knife and pulled. Stupid thing was stuck.
Leave it, yelled the voice in her head, leave it and get out of there. No. She tried again, felt the dead man’s head lift off the pillow, stopped immediately, gently relaxed until she was sure it was resting again. She splayed the fingers of her right hand and put them on the dead head—insensible now, so no risk; she felt damp warmth, must remember to wipe her hands as soon as possible. She felt the steel of the blade against the web between middle finger and ring finger. She pressed down gently but firmly on the head, and drew on the knife with her left hand. It reminded her of the fairy story, the boy who pulled the sword from the rock to prove he was the true king. She pulled. Knife still stuck, a slight jolt, knife free and clear. She stopped for a moment, then gently withdrew her right hand, taking great care not to let it brush against anything. She wiped the knife on the pillow four strops per side, then did her best to wipe her hand; then the knife back in the sheath. One final listen; breathing still regular. One of those people who can sleep through anything. She envied her.
Why do I have to make things difficult for myself? she thought. Own worst enemy; always been the case. She steered warily round the wardrobe, chest, whatever the damn thing was, until she was basking in the light from under the door. She knew where the door was. Fingertips of her left hand, the clean one, to find the key, mercifully in the lock. Usually, all of this stage wouldn’t be a problem, because you’re alone in the room; you can fumble about, make a certain amount of noise, maybe even risk a light. But no, she had to be merciful, playing God. Her reward was that the key was in the lock. She turned it, agonisingly slowly, until she felt the wards relax. Plenty of follow through, even then, to avoid a sudden last-moment click.
Her information was, there was no guard on the door. The corridor would be empty. She could just leave, rest of the day’s your own. She opened the door.
And nearly brained a soldier, in full-dress armour, standing about ten inches in front of it. He stepped sideways, swung round, looked at her. Just a very faint fleeting grin, and he stepped aside.
Among her gifts was the ability to get in character instantly. The woman in the bed, on being leered at by a guard, would give him a look like this. The guard immediately put on a stuffed-fish expression and directed his eyes to a space on the wall six inches above her head. She walked past him two paces, then slipped out the knife, shot out her arm and stabbed him at the base of the throat. His mouth opened; she left the knife in there until the light in his eyes went out, then took his full weight on her left arm and gently eased him down on to the floor. Sorry, she thought; but he was a soldier, they don’t really count, and, anyway, he’d laughed at her for what he thought she was. No justification, really.
It just gets better and better and better.
But there was nobody else in the corridor, she’d been exceptionally quick and quiet, and she was going to get away with it, this time. She wiped the knife on his hair, taking a second to make sure it was really clean, then examined her right hand. One little smear of blood she’d missed. She spat on it, worked it out with her left forefinger, wiped it. Attention to detail. Then she set off down the corridor towards the middle stair, which took her down two flights, then left and right across the back gallery, rejoin the stairs she’d come up by, retrace steps, back to her own door, inside, turn the key, shoot the bolt. She walked quite calmly to the bed and sat down on it, and stayed completely still for quite some time.
Then she found her tinderbox, lit the lamp, took off her knife sheath, drew the knife. She washed the blade carefully, paying particular attention to the slight crevice where the blade went up into the hilt. She examined the sheath for even the tiniest speck of wet or drying blood, found two, scraped at them with her fingernail, teased the pile of the velvet until there was nothing to see. She’d have to be wearing this knife and sheath tomorrow, and the next day, or it’d be too blindingly obvious. Then she checked them both again, knife and sheath, and again, and again, and again, and again. Her head was splitting. She lay down on the bed, feeling dizzy and sick.
I’m so sorry, the City prefect said for the fifth time, I’m really sorry to have to ask you all these questions, but you do understand, it’s a matter of the utmost gravity. Naturally, completely above suspicion, but we do have to ask. You do understand, don’t you?
Oida understood perfectly. He was charming, sympathetic and completely cooperative. Yes, as it happened, he could account for his whereabouts all last night, and, as it happened, he did have a witness. He spent all night with his colleague, the priestess Telamon, and she could vouch for the fact that he was in his room all night, because neither of them had got very much sleep.
Conflicting emotions plainly visible on the City prefect’s face; about to die of embarrassment, but oh so relieved that he could cross this overwhelmingly, lethally important man off his list of suspects and not have to bother him any more. The lady Telamon can verify what I’ve just told you, if you want to ask her. Oh no (very emphatic). No need, no need for that at all.
“Simple misdirection.”
She wished he’d go away. It was gloriously warm on deck, there were pools of golden light like honey, and they were going home. He was spoiling the mood, and she didn’t want to have to hold that against him. “Yes,” she said. “I know.”
Probably he wasn’t listening to her. He sounded like he was giving a lecture. But he admitted that he did that sometimes—gave lectures to imaginary audiences, as a way of clarifying his mind. You understand something so much better when you’re trying to explain it, he’d said.
“They suspect me,” he went on. “I produce an alibi. It’s entirely plausible. It never occurs to them it’s the other way round.”
“Quite,” she said. “I’d rather like to close my eyes for five minutes, if that’s all right.”
“Sure, go ahead.” He stayed where he was. “They said to me, that’ll never work, but they didn’t understand. It’s not what you present, it’s how you—”
Just a moment. She opened her eyes and sat up. “It was your idea.”
“What?”
“The alibi thing. You thought of it.”
“Of course,” Oida said. He sounded too surprised by the question to be lying. “This whole show was my idea. We kill a minister known to be favourably inclined to us—”
“Your idea?”
“That’s right. We kill a minister known to be favourably inclined to us, during a state visit by us. What are they supposed to make of that? We couldn’t have done it; the dead man was our friend. Therefore the opposition must be behind it, therefore they must be trying to frame us. Meanwhile the balance of power on the council shifts dramatically—”
It had been, she had to concede, basically a good idea. Simple, therefore good. Create the instability, don’t try and be greedy or clever. A remarkable plan for someone so arrogantly convoluted.
“Result,” he went on: “the council collapses, the government falls, she loses her key advisers, meanwhile popular opinion’s against the East because they’re perceived to have murdered a very popular minister, adored by the poor Settlers for his economic and social reforms, so her new cabinet’s heavily weighted in our favour. It picks up a momentum of its own with no further interference needed from us. Next thing you know—”
“It won’t work,” she said.
That stopped him dead in mid-flow. “Why not?”
She gave him a sad smile. Luckily, the sea was so smooth that even Oida’s notoriously frail stomach had nothing to fear. The faint cry of gulls. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the silver flash of a school of flying fish. “Think about it,” she said. “Daxiles dies a martyr’s death. His fellow Radicals on the council use the sudden upsurge in popular support to ram through the rest of his agrarian reforms. Nobody dares oppose them, it’d be seen as pissing on the martyr’s grave. Result—” she tried to mimic the way he said the word, but couldn’t quite catch the inflexion. “You get your instability, the government does indeed fall, but the new cabinet’s going to be chosen for their economic policy, not which empire they favour. What you’ll actually get is a council packed with Radicals, who either favour the East or couldn’t give a damn either way. You should know by now, it’s the price of bread that gets people excited, not foreign affairs.”
The look on his face was a wonderful sight. Really and truly, he hadn’t thought of it that way, and realisation had just dropped on him like a huge rock. She’d seen it, of course, the night she read the mission briefing. And, naturally, she’d assumed that there had to be more to it than that, and that whoever had thought up the plan was playing a much longer, deeper game than she could begin to understand. But in fact it was all the clown Oida, who’d failed to think it through—
“I don’t agree,” he said. “I think the fundamentalist faction on the right of the KKA—”
“Anyway,” she said crisply, “we’ll know soon enough how it’s going to pan out. And we’re free and clear and on our way home, so what the hell.”
He was angry—with her, which was just ridiculous, but at least it made him go away. She opened her book and tried to read, but she’d lost the thread of the argument and couldn’t be bothered to go back and pick it up. Something was wrong, but she couldn’t figure out what it could possibly be.
She closed her eyes for a moment, and heard Oida’s voice, right back down the deck. He was not quite shouting at someone, but definitely giving him the full force of his personality. She could only make out a few words here and there, but the general idea seemed to be, can’t you make this thing go any faster? The captain, or whoever it was, was being too deferential to be audible. He wasn’t doing much of a job of soothing Oida’s tantrum; quite the reverse. She guessed this would be one aspect of the journey in the great man’s company that the captain wouldn’t be telling his grandchildren about.
Later it got very hot indeed, even when the sun went down, and since it was still calm she decided she’d sleep up on deck, where there was at least a trace of a breeze. Apparently the diplomats had chosen to do the same thing; she could hear them talking somewhere in the darkness, quiet and fast, not heated but anxious. She wondered if something had gone wrong; well, she’d find that out in due course. Maybe their tone of voice made her nervous. She took the knife and sheath off her belt, stood up and dropped them over the side into the sea. Pity about that; the sheath was lodge property but the knife had been her own.
She drifted off to sleep and was woken by what at first she took to be screaming; it proved to be nothing more than a very big gull, perched on the rail and complaining loudly about something. She sat up, and it spread its wings and flopped away.
Oida walked past. He had a plate of scrambled eggs resting on the upturned palm of his left hand, and a short wooden spoon in his right. He stopped and glowered at her. “You’re completely wrong about the KKA,” he said. “They’ll go into coalition with the Optimates, you just wait and see.”
She yawned. “Any eggs left?”
“No.”
“You could’ve woken me.”
He scowled at her and walked away, eating. She grinned.
Not long after that there was a storm, the sort that comes out of nowhere, threatens to tear the sky in half and then dies away into sweet serenity, as if to say “Who, me?” She was used to them; she’d already found herself a tight corner of the hold, with things to hang on to and no risk of being buried under falling cargo. She went there only to find it occupied: Oida, curled up in a ball and muttering the catechism, over and over again, very fast.
“Mind if I join you?” she yelled. He couldn’t hear her over the roaring and creaking, and he filled all the available space. She swore at him and went back on deck, where she got under the feet of the crew and was scowled at.
It was early the next day, and the Silver Spire was just visible on the skyline, when she finally realised what it was that had been bothering her. She sat down on a coil of rope, because her legs were suddenly too weak to carry her weight. Oida. Oida planning operations, formulating policy; since when? Sure, he was really high up in the lodge, twenty-third or twenty-fourth degree, something ridiculous like that. But he was neutral; that was the whole point about him, he came and went between the two empires (each one naturally assuming that he was on their side really), playing his music, making (she assumed) absurdly large sums of money, courted and feted wherever he went, and everyone upon whom his radiance happened to shine was continually asked, what’s he really like? And, yes, presumably both governments knew he was a double agent, a complete whore who’d turn a trick for anyone, impersonal, just business, no feeling; such an entity would be not just useful but vital, since even treachery is a form of communication, and otherwise the two sides couldn’t communicate at all. Yes to all that; but Oida spearheading a serious attempt to bring Blemya into the war wasn’t the same thing as a few names, pillow-talk secrets, troop movements. Was it possible that Oida had actually made up his mind at last and taken a side? If the East found out what he’d been up to, they’d be livid—
Yes, but it was stupid plan. It wasn’t going to work. A good man dead, all that risk, and nothing to show for it whatsoever. Maybe that was the idea. Maybe his true masters, in the East, had told him: we want you to go to the West and sell them on this incredibly stupid plan, and it’ll go wrong and the Blemyans will be furious and come in on our side—only that wasn’t going to be the result. There would be the most appalling trouble in Blemya for a while, and then things would carry on exactly the same. So where the hell was the point?
It had been a stupid plan. Which raised two colossal issues. One: was Oida really that stupid? Part of her yearned to say yes, of course, he’s an arrogant clown, shallow as silver plating, so full of it that he simply didn’t see how bad the plan was; a clown and a coward, curled up in a ball, whimpering to the fire god because of a silly little storm. She wanted that to be true, so she was fairly sure it wasn’t. And two: the great men of the lodge and the great men of the Western empire had given their blessing to this stupid plan, blinded by Oida’s fiery glow or just too thick to see it wouldn’t work. Now that—
“Hello, you.” She looked up. She hadn’t seen him since the storm. He’d brought her a plate of scrambled eggs. She realised she was quite hungry.
“Can’t face anything myself,” he said, sitting cross-legged on the deck beside her. “God, I hate the sea.”
She laughed. “I don’t think it likes you terribly much.” He handed her a little wooden spoon. The man who thinks of everything. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
She prodded at the eggs with the spoon. “When were you last in the East?”
“Let me think.” He thought. “I came straight on from Belroch to Beloisa.”
She looked at him. “You just strolled through the front line like nothing was happening?”
“Good God, no. I had a safe passage. Not that I needed it, because the country all round there was pretty much deserted.”
“But you had a bit of paper, if you’d needed it.”
“Well, yes. Not a problem. Why do you ask?”
She smiled. “What’s it like in the East?”
He took a moment to reply. “Different,” he said, “but more or less the same. They have women priests there, for one thing. And grace comes at the end of the meal, not the beginning. And they celebrate Ascension on the three-quarter moon, not the full, and the jam is poured over your pancakes, not served separately in a little dish. And if two people are shown to have conspired to kill someone but you can’t prove which of them actually struck the fatal blow, they’re both acquitted of murder but convicted of attempt, but they’re both hanged just the same anyway; and they can try you up to three times for same crime, which I can’t say I approve of. On the other hand, a son can’t be forced to testify against his mother, and vice versa, which is quite civilised. Oh, and the country people use tanned bulls’ scrotums for putting their money in, and in town they carry their small change in their mouths, which is pretty startling the first time you buy something from a street trader. You lift your head up for yes, and nod down for no, it’s quite important to remember that. Summer solstice used to be a big festival where all the servants and apprentices went home to their families in the country and they used to burn a straw lion at sunrise and give each other presents, but that’s terribly old-fashioned now. And only prostitutes carry handkerchiefs stuffed up their sleeves. That’s the same in Blemya, by the way, which is why you kept getting all those funny looks.” He shrugged. “That sort of thing, anyway. Otherwise, they’re more or less like the West. About what you’d expect; five hundred years as all one big happy family, then ninety years apart hating each other to death. Why the sudden interest? Thinking of going there?”
“Just interested,” she said. “As in, if they’re really not all that different from us, what are we slaughtering each other for?”
He sighed. “Honour,” he said. “Moral imperatives, to defend our country and our way of life. Money, of course, and eternal glory, and to defend our trading interests. Because we’re right and they’re wrong. Because evil must be resisted, and sooner or later there comes a time when men of principle have to make a stand. Because war is good for business and it’s better to die on our feet than live on our knees. Because the fire god is on our side, and it’s our duty to Him. Because they started it. But at this stage in the proceedings,” he added, with a slightly lopsided grin, “mostly from force of habit.”