A nice inconspicuous four-wheeled cart, chipped paintwork, the sort of thing nobody notices; an elderly, massive black mare, just the right side of dead, and a stocky piebald gelding. “You’ll be fine,” the groom had assured them both. “They know what to do, even if you don’t.”
“You’re not a horseman, then,” Musen said as they rolled slowly down Foregate towards the Land Gates.
“Me? God, no.” Pleda shifted uncomfortably on the driver’s bench. “My dad kept horses, but I never got to drive. Fuller, he was. Him and me, we used to go round the City first thing and empty all the piss-pots. Dad drove, I did all the running around. Filthy bloody job.” He looked at the boy, then added, “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”
“Sorry.”
Pleda shrugged. “Don’t suppose they have fullers where you come from. How do you bleach your fine cloth, then?”
“We don’t.”
Pleda nodded. “Figures,” he said. “Anyway, it’s a foul job, that’s all you need to know about it.”
“We had horses on the farm,” Musen said. “I steered clear of them, as much as I could. Got kicked in the head when I was six. Been scared of them ever since.”
Not true, Pleda thought. At least, not true about being frightened of horses, he could tell by the way the horses had reacted to him, right from when they were led out of the stable. Horses know, and the black mare had recognised a horseman. Odd lie to tell, though he could think of half a dozen perfectly good reasons. “Still,” he said, “beats walking. I hate walking. Tires you out and makes your feet hurt.”
Foregate was busy today. Tomorrow was the first day of the Old and New Fair, and the country people had come to town. They were setting up stalls and pens for livestock—at one point the cart had to negotiate its way through a couple of hundred geese, waddling like a tired army, filling the street like floodwater. It was a long forced march from the poultry-keeping villages that straggled alongside the South road, so every single goose had been shod—wooden pattens with leather straps; Pleda remembered that job from his youth, struggles and feathers and goose shit everywhere, the smell got into your hair and stayed with you for days. The marching geese made him think of Senza’s army, herded efficiently along other roads to a slightly different kind of fair. And as well as geese there were escaped rams, too fast and nimble to catch, too terrified to bribe, and the sticking-out back ends of carts, and sudden unexpected lengths of scaffolding pole, thrust out into the carriageway like pikes by men not thinking about what they were doing. Busy, stupid, thoughtless people, with work to do and a small but entrancing possibility of getting their hands on some real money, just for once; five donkeys loaded till their legs buckled with rolls of good coarse hemp matting; an old, thin man carefully arranging two dozen blue duck eggs on a mat of straw in the middle of a very big trestle table; two cheerful women tipping the last of last year’s store apples out of buckets into a sawn-in-half barrel, not giving a damn if the apples got bruised; a splendidly dressed fat man and his splendidly dressed fat wife, laying out a huge stall of the shabbiest second-hand clothes Pleda had ever seen. Two men, so dark they might almost have been Imperials, dragging a long wooden crate overflowing with nails, that grey and purple colour that tells you they’re fire salvage, no good, soft, bend double at the gentlest tap. A very big stall of kettles and fire pots made out of soldiers’ helmets; and, a few yards further down, hundreds of faggots comprised of suspiciously straight, planed inch-and-a-half round poles, broken spear shafts, only the best five-year-seasoned cornel wood. They’ll sell quick, Pleda told himself, and plenty more where they came from; someone had got hold of a good thing there, assuming the carriage costs were manageable. Boots, of course, one thing the war had done for the common man was ensure a plentiful supply of good, cheap footwear. And gilded bronze finger-rings, the sort the Southerners wore, you couldn’t give those away; some optimist had set out two great big tar barrels full of them, at a stuiver each or six for a quarter, but mostly they went straight into the melt and came out as candlesticks or buttons for the military, and each ring represented a dead soldier’s hand; not so good if you had a tendency to mental arithmetic. All in all, it was a good day to leave the City. The noise would be intolerable, and the smell, for a man with a delicate palate—
The boy, he noticed, was fascinated by it all; first sight of the big City doing what it does best. So many things, so much property—cities do things very well, never quite got the hang of people; where the boy came from, no doubt, a man could probably list all the man-made things in his village—an easily estimated quantity of ploughs, axes, spades, knives, spoons, ladles, pairs of boots, straw bonnets, work shirts and best shirts, you’d be able to compile a tolerably accurate inventory. He must think we’re rich, Pleda thought; stupidly rich, with all this stuff. Then he remembered the boy was a thief, a profession which gives you a slightly different perspective on material objects, especially the readily portable kind. Actually, more like a vocation; classified along with priest, artist, philosopher, actor, it’s something you do because you’re made that way, and, no matter how hard you try, that’s what you are, and always will be. A different way of seeing the world, he guessed. Add soldier to that list? Maybe. But thief, definitely.
A country thief, seeing his first City market. Definitely a spiritual experience. “Bit different from what you’re used to,” he said.
“What? Oh, God, yes. It’s amazing.”
Pleda tried straightening his back, stretching it a little. Didn’t help. “Can’t have been easy for you, back home.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Stands to reason,” Pleda said. “In a small place, something goes missing, people notice.”
The boy didn’t like that. “You learn to be careful,” he said.
“Must cramp your style, though. I mean, how do you get rid of the stuff? Nobody’s going to buy something off you if the moment the real owner sees it, he yells out, hey, that’s mine, what’re you doing with it?”
For a moment he was sure the boy was going to get angry with him. Then a sudden grin, and the boy relaxed. “Like I said,” he replied, “you learn to be careful. Like, if I stole your billhook, I’d knock the handle off and whittle a new one. Or, more likely, I’d wait a couple of weeks, then give it back to you and tell you I found it in a hedge somewhere. You’d be so pleased you’d give me something, or do something for me. That’s better than money, where I used to live.”
Pleda nodded. “And no harm done,” he said, “and everybody’s happy.”
“Exactly.”
Not just a liar, Pleda thought, a special kind of liar—like the actors who prepare for a role by pretending to be the man they’re going to portray on stage; don’t think, just be. That’s why he lies all the time, even when he doesn’t need to. He likes to practise. That was why it was so hard to tell the boy’s lies from the truth. They were jumbled in together, like beans and peas in a casserole, and because he lied for no reason it was almost impossible to catch him out. Someone who lies with no immediate intent to deceive, who steals not for money or gain but because he wants to, needs to; oh yes, they’d been quite right about this one. A collector’s item, like the Sleeping Dog.
Even so. He waited until they’d passed through the Land Gate, and the traffic had evaporated, and they were to all intents and purposes alone on the road. Then, as casually as he could, he said, “Hold on a minute, I need to take a leak.” He slid off the bench and handed the boy the reins to hold. Under cover of a roadside thorn bush, he took the pack of cards from the inside pocket sewn into his robe, palmed the three top cards, put the rest away. Then, as he scrambled back up and took back the reins, he slipped the cards into Musen’s hand.
It was a moment or so before the boy realised what he’d done; he noticed something in his hand, looked down to see what it was. Pleda made a point of not looking at him. He got the horses moving. Not a word from the boy. All right, then.
“Four of Spears,” he said. “Victory. Ace of Arrows.”
The boy said, “What’s all this about?”
“Four of Spears,” Pleda repeated. “Victory. Ace of Arrows. Well?”
Just for a moment Pleda felt a little pang of apprehension. He had a padded jack under his topcoat, proof against a casual knife thrust but that was about all. The boy could quite easily have hidden a knife or a blade of some kind in the sling that supported his broken arm. Then: “Nine of Coins, the Angel, Ten of Spears.”
“And?”
“What? Oh, God, sorry, Eight of Swords.”
“Say again.”
“Eight of Swords.”
There is, of course, no suit of Swords. Not in a normal pack.
So that was all right, then. With a sigh, Pleda shifted the reins from his right hand to his left, then balled his right fist and, without looking, swung it sideways. He hit the boy on the elbow of his broken arm. As he’d expected, the boy howled with pain. Quickly, Pleda stuffed the reins under his left thigh and clamped both hands on the collar of the boy’s coat, twisting it, almost but not quite tight enough to throttle him. “You bloody fool,” he said.
The boy was staring at him; sheer terror, no lies there. Very hard to keep straight who you’re pretending to be when you’re in agony. He’ll have to learn better than that, Pleda thought, but that’s not my problem. He maintained the pressure while he counted to four under his breath, then slowly let go. “Idiot,” he repeated. “Clown. What the hell did they send you for, anyway? You’re not fit to be out without a nursemaid.”
“I’m sorry,” the boy said. “What did I do wrong?”
“Acting up.” Pleda fought down the anger. “Bloody acting up, is what. Making up a lot of nonsense just for the hell of it, when you didn’t have to. Nine times you’ve contradicted yourself, did you know that? Nine times. If anyone with half a brain had been listening to you, they’d have been on to you like a weasel. Bloody acting up. And don’t say you can’t help it, of course you can. You just need to bloody well think what you’re doing.”
He’d got through to him all right; scared, guilty, resentful. “I’m sorry,” Musen said, “I didn’t realise I was doing it. It’s more a sort of a habit, really.”
“That’s no excuse. That just makes it worse. First rule is, concentrate. Think about what you’re doing. It’s not just your neck now, it’s mine. You want to remember that.”
He’d done enough. Any more and the boy would turn against him; padded jack or no padded jack, he’d rather that didn’t happen. “Anyway,” he said. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Pleda.”
Pause. “Are you—?”
Pleda took back the reins. “You know better than that. There you go again, overdoing it. I’m the Eight of Swords, that’s all.” He settled himself firmly against the bench; it was digging into the small of his back. Six hundred miles, he thought to himself. What I do for philosophy. “So,” he said, in a very slightly more conciliatory voice, “what exactly happened on the tower?”
“I don’t really know,” Musen admitted. “We heard footsteps. We froze. The old man came up. I’ll swear we didn’t move or make a sound, really. I couldn’t see a thing, it was so dark. Then I guess the old man moved. I heard this horrible yell. I guessed Par—”
“No names.”
“I guessed Six of Arrows had gone over the side, so I ran for it. Tripped over something, and then it felt like I was being trampled by horses or something, and then I was in a prison cell. That’s it.”
Pleda nodded slowly. “What was supposed to happen?”
“The old man was meant to come up on to the tower. Soon as we could, we’d slip past him and go back down the stairs and get caught by the guards. Or the guards would’ve come up first and caught us. But they told me that wasn’t so likely, because the old man likes to be on his own up the tower. Can’t concentrate on his star-gazing if there’s people with him.”
Pleda frowned. “That’s a bloody stupid plan.”
Musen grinned. “That’s what we thought. We said so, and they told us, yes, it is, so why don’t you think of a better one? So, we did as we were told.” He hesitated. “Nobody was meant to get killed.”
Quite. If they’d asked me first—But they couldn’t, of course, could they? “Things like that happen,” he said. “Play with knives, get cut. I don’t know. Whoever picked you for this job’s got a lot to answer for.”
“I don’t see what else I could’ve done,” Musen said. “And it worked, didn’t it?”
“More by luck than judgement.”
The boy could have argued the toss, but he didn’t. Time for a unilateral declaration of victory, Pleda decided, and then let’s move on. “When we get there,” he said. “It’s all laid on at that end, is it?”
God help us, Pleda thought. You go through life thinking the Wild Cards know it all; they’re wise and cunning, and their carefully distilled plans run the world. Then you actually get involved in one, and you find out the bastards are basically just making it up as they go along. His fault, he supposed; he’d let things get too lax in his own parish, too busy nursemaiding the old man—but if anything happened to him, God only knew what’d happen, so they couldn’t blame him for that. Trying to run half the world from a cubbyhole in the East Wing, no staff, no support, if he needed to write a letter it was a day’s work, and then all the misery of finding someone to carry it. It’s an honour, they’d told him; you must be very proud. Bastards.
“We’d better get one thing straight,” Pleda said. “We’re going to be months on this job, and it’s a lot of travelling and I hate travelling, and there’s so many things that could go wrong before we even get there, it makes me want to scream just thinking about it. If you make any difficulties, even one tiny step out of line, then so help me I’ll make you wish you’d got gangrene out on the moors and died. Is that clear?”
The boy gave him a wounded look. I didn’t ask to get caught up in this, it said; it’s not my fault, don’t blame me. Quite, he thought. It was time to crack a big, friendly grin. “We’ll be all right,” he said in his special everyone’s-favourite-uncle voice that always worked so well with young idiots. “You do as I tell you and we’ll be just fine.”
A long, long ride to the coast, where they sold the cart to pay for passage on a ship to Beloisa—they’d started making the run again, though there was nothing there but rain-soaked ash and a few blocks of black stone. “Don’t know why we bother,” the captain told them, “force of habit, mainly. We go out empty and bring back maybe five dozen bales of wool and a bit of firewood. The passenger business has gone right down the drain, not that that’s any surprise. What do you boys want to go there for, anyhow?”
Pleda told him they were going home, to visit family and friends. That seemed to be an acceptable answer, though Pleda was quite sure the captain didn’t believe it. Of course, as Pleda knew perfectly well, the government was subsiding the shipowners to keep the north–south crossings going, so the captain wasn’t quite as hard done by as he was pleased to suggest.
“Ten years since I was last in Beloisa,” Pleda observed as the ship dawdled through choppy water on the second day.
Musen didn’t feel much like chatting. He appeared to be working on the assumption (unfounded, as Pleda knew only too well) that if you keep perfectly still, eventually it gets better. “It’s all changed now, I expect.”
“Bound to be, since some bastard burned it to the ground. It wasn’t a bad old place when I knew it. A bit something-and-nothing, but I’ve seen worse.” He turned his back on the sea and rested his elbows on the rail. He’d forgotten, but actually he quite liked sailing. “I’m from Arad Sefny originally. Know it?”
Musen shook his head. A mistake. He closed his eyes and swallowed a couple of times.
“About a day and a half’s walk up from Burnt Chapel. Between Bray Downs and the Greenwater valley.”
“Sorry,” Musen said. “No idea where that is.”
Pleda shrugged. “We had a nice little farm, forty acres on the flat, grazed three dozen sheep on the downs. My mother bred geese, we used to drive them down into Burnt Chapel for the autumn fair. Three brothers, I was the youngest, and a sister; she married a man from Corroway. I used to go over there sometimes to help him with the peat-digging.”
Musen turned his head. “You said your father was a fuller.”
Pleda nodded. “Happy days,” he said. “Haven’t been home for, what, thirty years. Don’t suppose they’d recognise me if I walked through the door.”
“Burnt Chapel. Smallish place. Used to be a chapel there, but it burned down.”
Musen was grinning. “One contradiction.”
“Good boy. I made it easy for you, mind.”
Musen turned back so that his mouth was directly above the sea. “Where are you really from?” he asked.
“Here and there. The lodge has always been my home. You go where you’re told. I like that.”
The boy thought for a while before he spoke again. “I can see where it saves you a lot of fretting,” he said. “Lots of choices you don’t have to make.”
Pleda frowned. “Oh, there’s choices,” he said. “All the bloody time, and the higher up you get, the more of them you’ve got to make. Don’t get any easier, either, and nobody thanks you for anything, nobody ever says well done, bloody good job.” He spread his elbows wider along the rail; it helped his back, a little. “I think that’s probably why the lodge works so well,” he said. “It’s not like anything else I know; not like governments or armies or Temple or any of that lot. Everywhere else, you always get people who want to get on, people with ambition. When the choices come along, they choose because they want to get to the top, because of the money and the power and all that rubbish. In the lodge, now, the higher up you get, the worse it is. No, don’t pull faces at me; it’s true. You don’t get paid, you live where you’re put, and if they send you to a tannery or a slaughterhouse, cleaning out the stalls, that’s where you go and that’s where you damn well stay. You don’t get fame and glory because there’s only a handful of people know who you are, and they’re lodge, not easily impressed. Just when you’ve got yourself settled in somewhere and your life feels like it’s starting to make sense, the bastards promote you, and it’s off somewhere else and start all over again, whether you like it or not. You can be Grand Vizier to the Sultan of Dog’s Armpit, and if you get promoted and the job means digging ore fifteen hours a day down an iron mine, that’s that, off you go, you don’t argue. Take me, for instance. Before I was put on this food-tasting thing, I was a chief clerk in a treasury office in the home provinces. Big house, nice bit of garden, servants, a bunch of little clerks to do all my work for me. And before that I was an assistant harbour master, and you can take it from me, there’s no better dodge going if you want to make a bit on the side. I could’ve raked it in, if I’d been that way inclined. Now I’m here doing this, glorified footman, with a good chance of getting myself killed any day of the week. That’s promotion in the lodge, my boy, and don’t you forget it. Nothing but trouble and sorrow. Like I said, I guess that’s why it works so well.”
Musen was looking at him with a mildly startled expression. “I don’t want to be anything special,” he said. “I just want to serve the lodge, that’s all. It’s the only thing I ever wanted.”
“Sure. That, and a load of stuff that doesn’t belong to you. Just as well the lodge can use you, then, isn’t it? Mind, that’s the other reason the lodge is so successful. We can use everybody.” And then the grin. “Even you.”
Maybe the grin wasn’t working today. He could tell Musen didn’t like what he’d said—not the stuff about promotion and all, the other thing. “Fact is,” he said, “we’re all the same. We wouldn’t do it otherwise. We serve the lodge because we believe in it. And if you’re a believer—well, the rest all sort of goes without saying. I don’t think it’s something you choose. It’s inside you, right from the start.” Like stealing, he didn’t say. “Some people are like that, they were born to be just the one thing. That’s us. That’s why we don’t need money and flash clothes and big houses.” He paused for a moment, then added: “You’re one of us, sunshine, I can tell. Don’t expect praise. After all, it’s none of your doing.”
He’d said the right thing, at last. “That’s it,” Musen said. “That’s exactly how I’ve always thought about it. It’s why—well, when I was growing up, in Merebarton. That’s my village. I was the only craftsman there.”
Pleda frowned. “Now that’s hard,” he said. “When you’re the only one. Different for me; there were always at least half a dozen of us, we always had someone to talk to. We felt special, you know, strong. Just you on your own, that must’ve been tough.”
Musen’s eyes were wide and bright. “It was,” he said eagerly. “You know, I think that’s why I started taking things. I always felt, you know, different, shut out. Actually, it was more than that. I felt like they were all blind and I was the only one that could see. But somehow that wasn’t an advantage, if you get what I mean.”
Sooner or later, Pleda thought, sooner or later. There’s always a certain combination of words that gets through, and then you’ve got them; like those amazing locks they have in Sond Amorcy, the ones with no keys, and you turn three little dials to line up the tumblers. Work people a click at a time, you’ll get there eventually. He let the boy talk. There was a whole lifetime waiting to come out, like a blocked drain.
Beloisa was just depressing. There was a structure calling itself an inn, on the quay, where the customs house used to be. It was mostly made of doors, charred on the outside, but military-spec crossply is too dense to burn right through; someone had been all round the site and gathered up about a hundred charred and scorched doors, nailed them to scaffold poles and lengths of rafter; oiled sailcloth for a roof, which sagged where rainwater had pooled—any day now, the cloth would give way and some poor devil would wake up drenched. Meanwhile, the weight of the rainwater had bowed the walls inwards. They’d tried to draw them straight again with guy ropes, but the pegs had already started to pull out. Sorry, the innkeeper said, we’re full up; try again next week, or the week after that.
The plan had been to buy a cart. No problem there; country people desperate to get across the sea had plenty of carts for sale, but horses to pull them were a different matter. The military paid cash—about three stuivers in the mark, but cash—for anything with four legs and a faint spark of life. So the country people had mostly turned their carts on their sides and added a lean-to of sooty planks, and there they sat, nothing to do but wait, observing the new arrivals off the boats, like sheep at market watching the butchers.
“Looks like we’re going to have to walk,” Pleda said. “I hate bloody walking.”
But Musen had other ideas. “I’ve got a letter,” he said.
“What sort of a letter?”
Musen reached inside his shirt and produced a thin tube. It looked like brass, but there are other yellow metals. “Put it away, for God’s sake,” Pleda hissed. “You want to get our throats cut?”
Musen hadn’t thought of that. “It’s signed by the emperor,” he said, pulling his shirt down so the tube wouldn’t show. “It says we can have anything we want. I don’t know if that actually means anything.”
Dear God, a plenipotentiary warrant. A real one, not a fake. “It means something,” Pleda muttered. “Means we don’t have to walk, for one thing. Right, we need the prefect’s office.”
The Beloisa prefecture was a genuine stone, brick and tile building, one of the five still standing. The prefect, a pale, thin man Pleda had never heard of, took the tube as though he’d just been handed a sleeping cobra. “What’s this?” he said.
“You might like to read it,” Pleda suggested.
The prefect had difficulty getting the parchment out of the tube. First he tried to pinch hold of the end with his fingernails, but they were too short. Then he tried prodding with his forefinger, but somehow he managed to get the base of the parchment crumpled so that it jammed. Then he got up, crossed the room to a big rosewood chest on a stand, opened the chest, rummaged around for a while until he found a foot-long piece of ebony dowel, the sort of thing people who need to draw lines on maps use as a ruler. He tried that, but it was too wide to fit in the tube.
“Let me,” Pleda said. He poked the uncrumpled end of the tube with his little finger, and the roll of parchment slid out on to the prefect’s desk. The prefect gave him a baffled look, unrolled the parchment and started to read. Then he lifted his head and stared. “Sorry,” he said. “What can I do for you gentlemen?”
Not nearly as much, it turned out, as they’d hoped. Horses, yes, not a problem. They could go to the stables and help themselves from a wide selection of military-spec thoroughbreds. Only trouble was, they were cavalry horses—first class for charging the enemy, no good at all for pulling carts. All the draught horses in the place had been requisitioned, day before yesterday, and loaded on transports and whisked away over the sea. Not best pleased, as you gentlemen can imagine, since there was now no way of moving supply carts, hauling firewood or emptying the latrines. Sorry about that.
Pleda replied that that wasn’t good enough. He had a warrant in the emperor’s own handwriting promising him whatever he needed. It would not go well with the prefect, he suggested, if he was responsible for making the emperor break his promise. The prefect gave him a smile of pure hate and fear and said he’d see what he could do.
An hour later, by some miracle, two carthorses were suddenly available. Sheer coincidence, the prefect told them, some farmer just wandered in off the moor and offered to sell them. They weren’t bad animals, as it happened: shaggy, short-legged, nearly as broad as they were tall. Pleda gave the prefect a list of the emperor’s other promises, and the prefect assured him everything would be loaded on the cart in an hour. Until then, perhaps they would care for a bite to eat in the officers’ mess.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me you’d got a warrant?” Pleda said, with his mouth full. Roast pork with chestnut stuffing.
“We didn’t need anything.”
Farm boy, he thought. No matter. “Well, it’s nice to know it’s there if we need it. Don’t suppose it’ll be much help once we’re out of here, not unless we run into soldiers. Still, you’d better let me keep it.”
Musen looked at him, then nodded. Pleda mopped up gravy with his bread. It would be interesting to find out, he told himself, just how good a thief the boy was. The first thing, of course, would be to remove the warrant from the tube; a fair bet that it was the tube he’d be after, since it was shiny and pretty. “You know the way, I take it.”
“Me? God, no.”
Oh joy, Pleda thought. “Fine,” he said. “They’re bound to have a map.”
“Their maps are all wrong.”
Naturally. “Well, in that case, what do you suggest?”
Musen thought about it for a while. “I may be able to remember enough,” he said. “But we didn’t come straight here, last time. We got lost and wandered about a lot.”
“We?”
“Me and someone else from my village. Don’t know what happened to him.”
Pleda sighed. “Not to worry,” he said. “I’ll ask the prefect nicely for the good map. There’s always one.”
No, there wasn’t. Instead, there was the military survey, seventeenth edition, which still showed Norsuby as the regional capital, or the prefect’s own heavily revised and annotated version, copied for them in rather too much of a rush by a sullen clerk with questionable eyesight and poor handwriting. They chose the survey. After all, Pleda said, where they were going there weren’t any villages or other man-made features, not any more, and the hills and rivers were probably in the same place as they were a hundred years ago; and, anyway, who needs a map when you’ve got the stars to guide you?
“We just keep going north till we can see the Greenstock mountains, then we turn left along the Blackwater till we reach the Powder Hill pass, then due south and we’re there. Adds a couple of days to the journey, but we simply can’t go wrong.”
Musen looked at him. “If you say so.”
“Trust me,” Pleda said. “Geography’s a bit of a hobby of mine. Soon as I get my bearings, I won’t need any stupid maps.”
The main thing was, they still had plenty of food and water; not to mention beer, cider and tea, which Pleda took great pleasure in brewing up on the tiny portable charcoal stove the prefect had given them. “Charcoal,” he explained, as he fried pancakes in a dear little tinned-copper pan, “because there’s no smoke. No smoke, people can’t see you.”
“We’re lost, aren’t we?”
“I don’t know how you can say that,” Pleda replied, wounded. “We’re going north, like I said we should. Any day now we’ll see the Greenstocks.” He paused to flip the pancake. It landed with a delicate plop. “True, I can’t actually point to a place on a map and say, this is where we are. But lost—”
“Well,” Musen said, sitting down on the rock beside him. “I don’t know about you, but I’m lost. I have no idea where we are.”
“You can’t be lost,” Pleda said. “You’re with me.”
The important thing to bear in mind was, they still had plenty of water. The flour would last another two days, three if they were careful. By then, they were sure to reach the Greenstocks, at which point they would have the river dead ahead of them, and Pleda was an expert angler. “Used to spend hours on the riverbank when I was a boy,” he said, wiping grit out of his eyes. “Give me a bit of string and a bent pin, I can feed us indefinitely.”
“Have we got a bit of string and a bent pin?”
Secretly, however, Pleda was somewhat concerned. There should have been a road. He remembered it clearly from the last time he was here—a long time ago, admittedly, but roads don’t just vanish. Instead, they were creaking slowly over heather, stopping occasionally to lever, drag, lift, worry and prise the cart out of the boggy patches that you simply didn’t see till you were in them. They’d brought two changes of clothes each, but every garment they had was now caked with black, stinking bog mud, which never seemed to dry out and wouldn’t brush or wash off. It was ingrained so deep into their hands that they might as well be Imperials. Even the rain didn’t wash it off, even though it soaked right through to the skin and trickled down their bodies and legs, when the wind was behind it. Water, though; not a problem. Wring out a shirt, you had enough for a week.
“This moor’s so flat,” Musen was saying, “you must be able to see for, what, thirty miles?”
And the horizon was still flat. Quite. Pleda had been wondering about that. Was it possible that the mountains simply weren’t there any more—commandeered for the war effort, stolen by profiteers to make ballast for the fleet, demolished by the Belot brothers in a supreme moment of collateral damage? He doubted it. Even the war couldn’t level mountain ranges, or so he’d always been led to believe.
“It can’t be thirty miles,” he said firmly. “Here.” He reached down inside his shirt and pulled out the map. There wasn’t much left of it. Rain had washed off all the coloured ink, and a lot of the black had rubbed off against his chest; the parchment was soft and squishy, and smelt like newly boiled rawhide. “Look for yourself. There’s no open space three hundred and sixty square miles big. Too many hills and mountains. It must just be a trick of the contours.”
That was his latest phrase. He’d come to believe in it, the way a dying man believes in the gods. He wasn’t entirely sure it meant anything. Musen handed the map back without looking at it. “If you say so,” he said.
“Sod this,” Pleda said. “We might as well stop for the night, get under cover before that lot over there sets in.”
Musen glanced at the skyful of thick, black low cloud dead ahead of them. “It’s an hour away,” he said. “And there isn’t any cover.”
“Shut your face.”
They slept under the cart, their backs in pooled bog water. When he woke up, Pleda could see a brilliant blue sky, and three pairs of boots.
Oh, he thought.
One thing they hadn’t brought was weapons. Asking for trouble, he’d told the prefect. Anybody catches us with weapons in the middle of a war zone, they’ll think we’re spies or saboteurs. Ah well.
He nudged Musen in the ribs. The boy groaned. Not a morning person. “Wake up,” he said quietly. “We’re in trouble.”
Musen lifted his head, opened his eyes and saw the boots. To his credit—Pleda was genuinely impressed—he didn’t panic or anything like that. He rolled over on to his face and crawled out from under the cart. Pleda did the same.
Five men. Three of them were sitting on chairs, the other two standing behind them like footmen in a great house; they might have been sitting for a portrait. Certainly they were dressed for it. The left- and right-hand chairs were regulation military folding, but the middle one was a deluxe model, gilded, delicately curved and tapered legs, arm rests carved into lions’ heads. On it sat the most handsome man Pleda had ever seen in his life. Not particularly tall (it’s so hard to tell when someone’s sitting down); strongly built but perfectly proportioned; beautiful hands with long fingers; dark hair just shy of shoulder length; high cheek bones, quite a long face ending in a square chin, straight nose, clean-shaven, clear grey eyes, a strong mouth, a smile of mild amusement. He was wearing an ornate, heavily embroidered robe with a fur collar, the sort affected by merchants with three times as much money as taste, but on him it wasn’t the least bit flashy or vulgar; he had dark green boots, and a broad-brimmed leather travelling hat rested on his right knee. The men on either side and behind him wore armour, regulation, an eclectic and informed blend of the best of East and West. They sat and watched like the audience in a theatre, waiting for the actors to come on stage.
Pleda scrambled to his feet; Musen stayed kneeling, in the wet. Pleda felt sure he had a reason, though he couldn’t see what it might be. The handsome man smiled. “Good morning,” he said. His voice was soft, deep and accentless.
Five men, three chairs, no horses. “Hello,” Pleda said. “What can I do for you gentlemen?”
He’d said something amusing. “You know, I can’t think of anything,” the handsome man said. “The cart’s loaded, and you’ll see we’ve already tacked up the horses. No, I don’t think we need you for anything at all.”
Well, hardly a surprise. “Are you going to kill us?”
The handsome man shrugged. “I haven’t decided,” he said. “What do you think?”
“I wouldn’t bother,” Pleda said.
The handsome man rested his chin on his beautiful right hand. “That’s what I thought,” he said. “My colleagues here reckon it’d be tidier to get rid of you. I took the view that with no food and no transport, it’s a moot point anyway.” He inclined his head just a little toward the cart. “Is that really all you’ve got in the way of supplies?”
“We’re lost,” Musen said. “We’ve been wandering about for days.”
“That’d explain it,” the handsome man said. “Well? Haven’t you got anything to say for yourselves?”
Pleda looked at him, and then at the four men in armour. The handsome man was clean, well-groomed, his gown untorn, his boots unscuffed; the other four looked like soldiers on active service with a good outfit, kit clearly well used but properly looked after. The standing man on the left held a strung longbow, though there was no arrow on the string. “Where’s your horses, then?”
“No horses,” the handsome man said, “we walked. We owe you our lives. I’m sorry we can’t be properly grateful.”
“You’re lost,” Pleda said.
The handsome man considered him for a moment, as if translating him from some abstruse dead language. “True,” he said. “So are you.”
“You don’t want to listen to the boy,” Pleda said. “We’re not lost. We’ve got a map.”
“Is that right?” The soldier on the left leaned across and muttered something in the handsome man’s ear. “I’d like to see it please.”
“I bet.”
“I can take it from your dead body if you’d rather.”
“Fine.” Pleda reached slowly inside his shirt and took out the map. He lifted it so it could be plainly seen, then threw it on the ground. Nicely pitched; about halfway between him and the men. The soldier on the right sighed, got up, retrieved it and gave it to the handsome man.
“This is no good,” he said. “It’s ruined; I can’t read it.”
Pleda smiled. “No, you can’t,” he said. “But I can remember what was on it.”
The handsome man nodded slowly, as if in approval. “Of course you can,” he said. “And there’s only enough flour in your jar to last us a day or two, so if we kill you we’re killing ourselves. But you know where the nearest village is. You’re not the least bit lost, and your friend there’s talking nonsense. Well?”
Pleda was still smiling. “If you’re lost in the wilderness,” he said, “why bother lugging those chairs around with you? Why not dump them?”
“I like to sit down in a civilised manner. They carry them because I tell them to. Well?”
“I know where the nearest village is,” Pleda said. “He only said we’re lost because it’s his village. He doesn’t want to lead the likes of you there. He’d rather die than betray his family and friends. Me—” Pleda shrugged. “Screw them.”
The handsome man looked at Musen, who was still kneeling; he’s got a knife or something, Pleda realised, something he can throw; he’s doing mental geometry. The man on the handsome man’s left said, “We don’t need both of them, do we?”
“Yes,” Pleda said, “you do.”
“I don’t think so,” the handsome man said. “Gatho, shoot the boy.”
The archer took an arrow from the quiver at his waist. Musen stood up and threw. It was a knife—he’d had it hidden in the bandages of his sling, though Pleda had looked for it when the boy was asleep and hadn’t found it—and it didn’t fly true. Rather a lot to ask at that range. Instead, it hit the archer’s cheek side on, cutting him deeply and making him drop his bow. Oh for God’s sake, Pleda thought. Here we go.
As he bounded forward, Pleda cast his mind back to the course he’d been on, five years ago, at the Institute. The secret of the Belot brothers’ success, they’d told him, was their ability to see the battlefield as a schematic, a diagram. Senza Belot had once described it as superimposing an imaginary grid on to the battlefield, turning real life into a chess game. Now you try it, the instructor had said. And Pleda had tried, ever so hard, but he simply couldn’t do it. Wrong sort of mind, they’d told him. Not everyone can do it. Not to worry.
Maybe, back at the Institute, all he’d lacked was motivation. The lines of the grid formed instantly, each square representing a quantity of both space and time. Another thing they’d told him was that a fight is a fluid, rather than a collection of colliding solids; a fight flows, it has tides and currents, and it’s vital not to let yourself get swept away. That probably meant something too, but he still didn’t get it.
The handsome man was standing up; the soldier on his right hadn’t quite realised what was happening. The other standing man was out of it for now, and so was the archer. Pleda made for the soldier on the left, who was standing up and drawing his sword at the same time. He got to him just as the tip of the sword cleared the scabbard; he grabbed his wrist and continued the draw for him, sliding the cutting edge under the point of his chin. The soldier stumbled backward, tripped on his chair and went sprawling, leaving the sword in Pleda’s hand. The archer was so close he could have cut him straight away, but he wasn’t an immediate threat; Pleda swung round, but the handsome man wasn’t there. Instead, the right-hand soldier was on his feet, backing up to give himself a bit of room. He was dangerous. Pleda jabbed at his face, just enough to keep him at a distance, then pivoted on his back foot to bring himself face to face with the standing soldier on the right. He’d just drawn; his sword hand was raised at shoulder height, and he was wide open. All that bloody armour; Pleda tried a fast, light jab at his head and hit him in the mouth; the sword point jarred on his teeth, drifted up and sliced into his top lip.
That’ll do, Pleda decided; he had his back to the boy and couldn’t see what was happening to him, but the absence of the handsome man spoke for itself. He took three long steps back and made a half-turn. Sure enough, the handsome man was standing behind Musen, one arm round the boy’s throat, the other pressing a short knife to his neck.
“I think we’ve got off on the wrong foot,” the handsome man said, catching his breath. “Let’s start again. Allow me to introduce myself. My name’s Axio. Who are you?”
Well, now. “Axio,” Pleda said. “You’re—”
“Yes,” the handsome man snapped. “That’s me. And, no, I don’t look much like him. He takes after his father, and I’m the spit and image of our mother, or so people tell me. All right?”
Pleda grinned. “Actually, there is a resemblance, now I think of it. Same neck and shoulders. Of course, he’s that much taller.”
“Absolutely.” Axio didn’t seem to like talking about it. “Now you know my name, let’s have yours.”
“I didn’t know you’d turned to crime.”
“It’s not something he wants people to know, oddly enough. But, yes, in the proclamations you see nailed up on doors I’m described as a robber and a thief. Not through choice. Personally, I prefer to think of myself as the last line of defence.”
Pleda wasn’t sure he understood that, but never mind. “I’m Pleda. He’s Musen.”
Axio frowned. “Hang on, I know that name. Pleda Lanxifor. You’re the food-taster. Good Lord. Suddenly, everybody’s famous.”
“It’s a small world,” Pleda agreed. “Would you mind letting my friend go now, please?”
Axio glanced at his companions, who were still preoccupied with trying to stop the bleeding. “Put that sword down.”
“No chance.”
“Fine.” Axio relaxed his grip and drew his hand away from Musen’s throat. Then he stopped. “Hello, what’s this?” he said, and pulled the gold tube out of Musen’s shirt. Musen took his chance and scrambled away. Axio was entirely preoccupied with the tube.
“Let me get this straight,” he said, turning the tube round with the tips of his fingers. “The emperor’s food-taster, in a farm cart, with a load of government-issue camping gear and a gold despatch tube. Empty,” he added. Then he looked at Pleda. “A food-taster, but no food,” he said. “And a message tube with no message.”
Pleda sighed. “The boy steals things,” he said. “He can’t help it.”
“That makes two of us,” Axio said, tucking the tube in the pocket of his robe. “Would you mind telling me what you two are doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”
“Visiting family,” Pleda said. “His family, in the village.”
“Of course. You?”
“I’m going to marry his sister.”
Axio raised an eyebrow. “Is that right?”
“I bloody well hope so. I paid twenty angels.”
Axio nodded slowly. “I get you. Sight unseen?”
“Looks aren’t everything.”
Carefully, Axio put the knife away in a fold of his robe. “In that case, let me be the first to congratulate you. I love weddings. Particularly,” he added, “weddings with lots and lots of food.”
Pleda glanced quickly at the soldiers. They were watching him, and he read them easily—we can take him, but we’ll get cut up some more, and one of us might not make it; do we really have to? The decision clearly rested with Axio, which made Pleda think over what he knew about bandits and their tendency towards democracy. The last line of defence; curious way for a professional criminal to describe himself. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any food,” he said.
Axio smiled. “Not enough to share.”
“Not if you’re walking,” Pleda said. “But if you were lucky enough to get a ride in a nice cart—”
All sorts of issues there, needless to say. From Pleda’s perspective, the essential question was, could Musen drive a team of horses? Inevitably, Axio would be addressing the matter from a different angle. Not impossible, even so, that both parties could arrive at the same conclusion.
“Indeed,” Axio said abruptly. “The hell with all this fighting, anyway. If I’d wanted to fight, I’d have stayed in the army. Isn’t that right, boys?”
They might be fiercely and unthinkingly loyal to Axio; that didn’t mean they liked him. The looks on their faces suggested that, at that moment, they didn’t like him at all. That couldn’t have been lost on him, but he didn’t seem worried by it. Curious people, Pleda thought, can’t wait to be rid of them. But that wasn’t going to happen any time soon.
The arrangements were fairly straightforward. The four soldiers, Axio and Pleda rode in the back of the cart—they had to dump some of the gear, but no great loss; the soldiers and Axio at the far end, Pleda with his back to the driver’s bench and the sword across his knees. Musen and the soldiers’ weapons sat on the driver’s bench. Axio cheerfully handed over his knife, which Pleda took as definitive proof that he had another one. Still, wedged in between two of his friends in a cart that jolted horribly all the time, his capacity for sudden movement was somewhat diminished. Musen proved to be a competent driver, which was just as well.
“You’re sure you know the way,” Axio asked, as they set off.
“Oh yes,” Pleda replied cheerfully. “I know this country like the back of my hand.”
Not long after midday, they saw the Greenstocks.
They’d been going steadily uphill for a long time; the gradient was so gentle they’d hardly noticed it until, quite suddenly, the ground seemed to fall away at their feet, and they were looking down a steep slope, on the other side of which was a river and, beyond that, mountains.
“We can’t get the cart down that,” said the archer.
“Don’t have to,” Pleda replied. “We follow the top of this ridge for a bit, parallel with the river until we see a gap in the hills on our right. Then we turn left. There’s a road,” Pleda added hopefully. “Takes us straight there.”
As a boy, Pleda had always loved the story about the boy who rescued an old woman from a lion, and the old woman turned out to be a witch, who gave him a magic something-or-other, whose special power was that everything he said thereafter turned out to be true. It was a ring, or a five-sided coin, or a walrus-ivory comb, or a pebble with a hole in it; something ordinary, anyway, something you might well pick up and forget about, and never realise you had. An hour before sunset, Pleda surreptitiously searched his pockets. He narrowed it down to the bit of old rag and the horn-handled penknife; could be either of those, or maybe, just possibly, it was luck or coincidence and not magic at all.
“There’s the road, look,” he said, pointing. “Bang opposite the Powder Hill pass, just like I said it would be.”
Axio tried to stand up to get a better view, but a jolt sat him down again; he landed hard on the knee of the man next to him, who winced. “That’s all right, then,” he said. “Tell you what. Let’s stop here for the night and then carry on in the morning. Don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”
They sat warily round a fire—Pleda wasn’t keen, because of the smoke, but Axio insisted; they smashed up the cart’s tool box for firewood—and ate the last of the biscuits and some rock-hard dried sausage from the archer’s pack. Nobody seemed to be in any hurry to go to sleep. It was going to be a long night.
“Anybody fancy a game of cards?” Pleda said.
He’d got their attention. “Why not?” Axio said, and reached in his pocket, from which he produced a beautiful ivory box with gilded hinges. “Should be enough light to see by for a little while.”
Pleda hadn’t expected that. Still, it wasn’t unreasonable for a thief to have a luxury item like a pack of cards, especially if it came in a valuable box. “Let’s play Bust,” he said. “Eastern rules?”
“Of course.” Axio smiled. “We’re all patriots here, aren’t we?” He opened the box and took out the pack. “Here we go,” he said. “Three cards, face upwards.”
He dealt a card and suddenly Pleda couldn’t breathe. He clenched his hands very tight and concentrated all his efforts on keeping his face straight and not staring. Axio dealt quickly and with the easy fluency of long practice. Even in broad daylight, it would’ve been next to impossible, for anybody else, to see how he cheated.
“And three covered,” Axio went on, dealing the face-down cards. “All right, here we go. Stuiver in and a penny raise.”
“Oh,” Musen said. “Are we playing for money?”
“Bless the child,” Axio said.
“I don’t have any.”
Pleda dug in his pocket, found his purse, picked at the tie, pinched out the knot, emptied the purse on the ground, picked out a dozen quarters and flung them at him. Then, trying really hard not to let his hand shake, he took up his cards.
Seven of Arrows. Two of Spears. Poverty. His mouth was dry as a bone. “I’m in,” muttered the soldier to his left, and Pleda heard a coin chink. His turn. “Just a second,” he said. Two crows in the tree, and a jug, broken in three pieces.
“Come on,” Axio said. “Before it gets too dark to see.”
“I’m thinking,” Pleda snapped. He forced himself to consider the cards tactically. With the open three, he had a pride in Arrows, Poverty and the Angel. “In and up twopence,” he said.
“Your turn.” Axio was talking to Musen.
“I’m in.” The boy was frowning. “And raise a penny.”
The Angel’s crown had four fleurets. No question about it. The archer shook his head and folded. “In and up a penny,” Axio said. “Right, I dealt, so you start.”
The soldier to Pleda’s left bought a card, threw away the Five of Arrows. Pleda snapped it up, dumped his two and raised twopence. Musen passed. Axio bought two and threw them away again. The soldier passed. “Buy one,” Pleda said. Axio handed him the Star-Crossed Lovers, which he dumped. Musen passed. “Right,” Axio said. “Here’s a quarter says it’s my lucky day. Let’s meld.”
Pleda scrabbled on the ground, located a quarter by feel and flipped it into the middle. They all laid out. Axio won; a run in Spears and the Ship. He was grinning. “Go again?”
Two of the soldiers were scowling at him. “Yes, why not?” Pleda said. Musen nodded. The archer shrugged and said, “Go on, then.” Axio gathered the cards. “I won, so I deal,” he said. “Let’s make it interesting. Stuiver in and raises are a quarter.”
Pleda didn’t watch him shuffle. For his open cards, he got the Three, Four and Five of Shields, an open run. Covered, Seven of Shields, Hope and the Ten of Swords.
There is no suit of Swords. Not in a normal pack.
“Tens are wild,” Axio said. “Right, who’s in?”
The soldiers and Musen looked at Pleda’s open cards and decided not to bother. Axio threw a stuiver into the middle, then another one. His open cards were rubbish. “Well?”
“Tens are wild, did you say?” Musen picked up three stuivers from the pile in the grass beside him. A week’s money where he came from. “I’m in.”
Axio beamed at him. “Right,” he said. “Since it’s just you and me, your two stuivers and double it.”
Another week’s pay. “Meld,” he said. He turned over his cards. “Three to Seven of Shields, plus the trump.”
Axio picked one card out of his hand and turned it face outwards. It was the Ace of Swords. “Sorry,” he said, and scooped up the money.
Musen frowned. “Just a second, that’s not—”
“Eastern rules,” Pleda said quickly. Musen stared at him, then shrugged.
“Aces high in the East, remember?” Axio said. “You know what, I’m enjoying this. How about another? Or we could play Cats and Buckets.”
Pleda stayed awake all night—he couldn’t have slept if he’d wanted to—but Axio made no attempt to talk to him privately; he rolled himself up in a thick blue blanket, with the archer’s pack for a pillow, and went straight to sleep. Pleda toyed with the idea of sending Musen to steal the ivory box from his pocket, but decided against it. He’d seen enough, anyway.
Ace of Swords. The Ace, for crying out loud.
Just before first light, he hauled himself up and shuffled a few yards the other side of the cart for a pee. When he got back, under his blanket, he found the ivory box. He covered it up and looked at Musen, who appeared to be fast asleep. He crawled under the blanket and opened the box by feel. It was empty.
If Axio missed his treasure the next morning, he gave no sign of it. They resumed their places in the cart and set off down the miraculous road. Thirty miles, maybe less, to Merebarton.
“Another good game,” Axio was saying, “is Blind Chopper. Do you know that one? We used to play it a lot in the army. It goes like this. Dealer deals five cards face down, you’re not allowed to look at them—”
Pleda was having second thoughts about Axio’s men. At first he’d assumed they were deserters, with Axio as their officer; it was common enough, a platoon or half-platoon deciding it had had enough of the war, or finding itself in trouble on account of some breach of military law, or simply unable to resist the commercial opportunities of the total breakdown of civilisation. That might in some part explain the unswerving obedience, and the way Axio took them so completely for granted. Pleda was still fairly sure that the four silent men were soldiers—the way they walked, talked and moved, they couldn’t be anything else—but unless there were provinces of the Eastern empire he knew nothing about, which was rather unlikely, they most definitely weren’t Easterners. Possibly they were the other lot, which would make sense of Axio’s remark about all being patriots, and there was a degree of logic in a group of Western deserters moving east, where the ferociously keen military proctors couldn’t follow them. It was the loyalty thing that bothered him most; more than loyalty, it was rather a sort of involuntary devotion. It reminded Pleda of a shepherd he’d known; horrible man, who used to take his bad temper out on his dog, but the more he kicked the dog for no reason, the more it worshipped him. That and the business with the cards—Well. Axio had cheated on the deal, he’d seen it quite plainly. To win, of course, to make money. But the hands he’d dealt; oh, he was a clever man, sure enough. And the pack (yes, but it had been Pleda who’d suggested a game of cards), and the Ace of bloody Swords. He made a quick interpretation of the two hands; inconclusive. Pleda didn’t really believe in fortune-telling, because with a bit of skill and sophistry you could make a deal of cards mean anything you wanted it to. The cards Axio had chosen for him could have meant he’d reached the end of his journey and now it was time to hand his burden on to a better, stronger man; even that would be a bit too vague and convenient to base a decision on. Of course, he had no way of knowing that the handsome man really was Axio, though if you were going to assume someone’s identity, there were a lot of better ones you could choose. One thing he was sure of. No way in hell could Axio be the Ace of Swords—
He glanced at him, then looked away quickly. The good looks, of course, the easy manner, commanding personality; you could add the honest and sincere conviction that he was the centre and sole purpose of the universe. And smart, too, almost as smart as he thought he was. And it would explain a number of otherwise inexplicable mysteries—why the war was dragging on, why both empires were going to hell, why nobody seemed to be doing anything. But no. Pleda didn’t believe it, couldn’t believe it, just as he could never bring himself to believe it if someone told him the fire god created the heavens and the earth for a bet, and that plagues, wars, earthquake and famines were his idea of livening up a tedious afternoon. That’s the whole essence of faith. You wouldn’t believe something like that, even if it was true.
All that day, oddly enough, Pleda had trouble staying awake. He yawned all the time, and only the ferocious bumps and jolts kept him from nodding off. That, he knew, would be a bad idea. Now that they’d found the road, his usefulness was at an end, whereas the cart was still every bit as valuable as it had been. Just because you’ve played cards with someone doesn’t mean they wouldn’t cut your throat in an instant, with something as precious and rare as a cart at stake.
The soldiers had scabbed up nicely, no immediate prospect of infection, which suggested that the man he’d taken the sword from had kept it scrupulously cleaned and polished; not like an old soldier, who knows that rust and blood poisoning can make a valuable contribution to the war effort. From time to time he caught them looking at him; a hungry sort of look, like a dog watching a joint of meat just out of reach on the kitchen table. He hoped they were good dogs.
He wanted to ask Musen if the countryside was starting to look familiar, but anything he said would be plainly heard by Axio and his men, so he couldn’t. All he could see of Musen was his back. When Axio made noises about stopping to stretch their legs and eat something, he put him off with a vague nearly there; the sun gave the lie to that as it lifted overhead and headed west, and still nothing to see except heather and gorse. Hell of a place to make a living, Pleda thought; don’t suppose the war’s helped much, either. At the very least there should be sheep at this time of year—summer grazing—and the shepherds living out at the shielings. But the only living things he’d seen had been larks and crows.
Axio had been gazing vacantly up at the sky. He sat up a little. “Sorry, are you talking to me?”
“Yes. Your boots.”
“What about them?”
Pleda made him wait for a moment or so. “There you were, the five of you, miles from anywhere with no horses. So, wherever you came from, you must’ve walked.”
“Correct.”
“Not in those boots you didn’t. Soles are barely marked.”
“Oh, I see.” Axio beamed at him. “You’re quite right.” He lowered his voice, mock-furtive. “Entirely between you and me, strictly speaking, these aren’t my boots. Well, they are now, of course. Their previous owner had no further use for them.”
Pleda studied him, as if learning him for an audition. A plausible enough explanation for a bandit to give. But, the night before they’d encountered Axio and his gang, he’d looked all round to see if there was anyone, anyone at all, out on the moors with them, and he was absolutely sure he’d seen nothing and nobody. Impossible that anyone could have walked, particularly in the dark, from the horizon to where they’d stopped the cart in the space of one night. But when he’d woken up and found them sitting there on those idiotic chairs, there were definitely no horses. And boot soles that clean and unscuffed had barely touched heather at all.
“Right,” he said. “That explains that, then.”
“Glad to have set your mind at rest. I won’t go into details, if you don’t mind.”
“No, that’s fine.”
The cart stopped with a jolt. “What’s the matter now?” Axio said. “We’re not stuck in the mud again, are we?”
It meant taking his eyes off Axio and his men, but Pleda twisted himself round. “What’ve you stopped for?” he said. Musen didn’t answer. The horses were still, their ears back, their heads up. Something’s wrong, Pleda thought; there’s something the horses don’t like, and they’ve stopped.
Musen didn’t turn round. “Look,” he said.
The cart shifted as Axio stood up. “Where did they come from?” he said.
“Who?” Pleda demanded; then Axio dropped to his knees, not caring who or what he landed on. There was a yelp of pain from the man next to him. “Get down, you bloody fool,” he shouted. Who to? Then Pleda heard a sound he recognised, a sort of swish, followed by a solid noise. Missed, said a voice inside him, because nothing appeared to have happened. Then Musen fell sideways off the bench.
He landed on his bad arm, but he didn’t make a sound. That wasn’t good.
“Sod this,” Axio said suddenly. He jumped up, snatched the sword from Pleda’s hand and vaulted out of the cart. His men followed as though tied to him by a rope. Another swish, this time so close that Pleda felt the slipstream as the arrow—he’d caught just a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye, a shapeless blur going so fast he couldn’t really track it—passed by the left side of his head. He threw himself face down into the bed of the cart.
The boy, he thought. He tried to get up, but fear was like a hand pressing him down, so instead he crawled down the cart and fiddled with the tailgate bolts; they were stiff and he couldn’t get them free. He used the heel of his hand as a hammer, and got cut. He tried again with his other hand, the bolts shifted and the tailgate dropped down with a bang. He slithered out over the back edge and landed on the heather with a thump that winded him.
Musen was lying on his side, quite still. Beyond him, Pleda could see Axio and his men, fighting—wrong word, it was too one-sided for a fight. They were outnumbered three to one at least, but the harvester faces far greater odds, one scythe against a hundred thousand stalks; it was like watching a skilled man cutting wheat, the same momentum, small, efficient movements, controlled deployment of strength, footwork, concentration and, above all, experience. Pleda thought, they weren’t anything like that when they were fighting me. He left them to it and crawled over to where Musen lay.
He turned him over; he was breathing, which was good, but the arrow was through him and out the other side, the shoulder side of the collarbone. There was also a big smear of blood and an ugly graze on the side of his head—he must have bashed it falling off the cart, and that was what had put him out. Pleda realised he had no idea what he was supposed to do. Damaging people he’d learned about, but fixing them once damaged hadn’t been covered on the course he went on.
He looked up. Axio and two of his men were standing very still, their hands empty. Men with bows were walking towards them. Apparently they’d lost, after all.
Pleda glanced over his shoulder; clear behind the cart, as far as he could tell. He could run, maybe get out of bowshot before he was noticed. Then what? Down the road to Merebarton—assuming the archers hadn’t come from there. He had no idea if Musen could be left, or if he needed urgent help, or if he was as good as dead already. The archers could’ve shot down Axio and his two surviving men where they stood, but they hadn’t. He seemed to remember that you don’t pull an arrow out of a wound, you push it through, because of the barbs. The simple fact was, he was out of his depth. One of the archers had seen him; he was pointing, and now a couple of the others had seen him as well. Two seconds in which to run, and then the window of opportunity would be closed. He let them pass. Hell, he thought.
Axio was furious. “Bloody fools,” he was shouting. “You didn’t call out or anything, you just started shooting. And now two of my people are dead, and one’s got an arrow in him, and all because you can’t control your own men.”
Difficult to gauge the reaction of the man he was shouting at, a big, stocky type in a grey hood, which covered a lot of his face. “Be fair,” he was saying; “you killed eight of mine.”
“Yes, and whose fault is that? Only makes it worse. That’s ten men dead, thanks to your incompetence. There’s no excuse for it, do you hear? You’re an idiot.”
“I was told not to take any chances.”
“Oh, right. So, at the first possible opportunity, you pick a totally unnecessary fight and lose eight men.”
It wasn’t, Pleda thought, the way prisoners usually speak to their captors. Two young men, very tall (like Musen, who seemed to have disappeared), stood behind him. They’d unstrung their bows and looked bored and sad.
Axio had calmed down a little. He’d stopped shouting, which made it harder for Pleda to eavesdrop; he heard, “Yes, I see that, but even so,” and, “Well, yes, of course you must, but you should’ve—” and the man Axio was talking to had stopped backing away. Just as well. Pleda couldn’t wait any longer. He went forward—his two shadows stayed where they were—and coughed loudly. Axio and the hooded man turned and looked at him.
“My friend,” Pleda said. “Where is he? Is he all right?”
“He’ll be fine,” Axio said. “They got the arrow out and they’ve stopped the bleeding. They took him on to the village. There’s a doctor there.”
In Merebarton? That didn’t seem likely. Pleda looked at the hooded man, who nodded. “He was lucky,” he said. “And our doctors know what they’re doing.”
At any other time he’d have been on to the plural like a dog on a rabbit. “I want to see him, now.”
“Of course.” The hooded man was obviously pleased to be talking to someone who wasn’t Axio. “That won’t be a problem. You can ride back with us if you like, or you can follow on in your cart.”
Pleda looked at Axio. “Fine,” Axio said. “We’ll follow you. But I haven’t finished with you yet.”
They walked back to the cart. Axio’s two men were nowhere to be seen. “That man,” Axio said, “is a halfwit.”
“Who are they? Come to that, who the hell are you?”
Axio jumped up on to the bench and gathered the reins. “Untie the horses, there’s a good fellow.”
“Do you mind? That’s my cart.”
“Oh.” Axio frowned slightly. “Did you particularly want to drive?”
“Well, no.”
“Fine. Untie the horses and we’ll be off.”
Pleda did as he was told, then hauled himself up on to the bench, as Axio moved the horses on. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“You know all that. I’m Axio, and I’m a thief. Well, actually, I rather like highwayman, it’s got a bit of tone to it.”
“You’re lodge,” Pleda said.
“Well, yes, of course. I mean, we’re all lodge here, that’s pretty obvious. Isn’t it?”
Pleda’s turn to be angry. “You were going to kill us. Craftsmen are supposed to help each other.”
“Of course we weren’t going to kill you. Just wanted to scare the boy a bit, that’s all. Not entirely sure whose side he’s on, to be honest. Of course, you’d know more about that.”
If he hadn’t seen the way Axio had laid into the archers, Pleda would’ve punched him off the cart. “It wasn’t a coincidence, was it? And you did have horses.”
“Well, of course.” Axio frowned at him reproachfully. “I must say, I don’t know what you could’ve been thinking of, carrying on about my boots like that. The boy must have heard; what was he supposed to think? I assumed you were in the loop, and I thought the card game made it perfectly obvious. I don’t know, maybe you’re just not very quick on the uptake.”
Maybe it’d be worth getting killed or beaten to a pulp, just for the sheer joy of breaking that beautiful straight nose. “You know. About what we’re here for.”
Axio shook his head. “The specifics, no. All I heard was, watch out for an Eight of Swords and some hick boy; they’re running an errand up your way. They neglected to mention whether the boy was secure, so I thought I’d play it safe and act the big, bad bandit. Gave me the shock of my life when you started carving up my men. That’s taking being in character too far, I thought.”
“Who are you?”
Axio smiled at him. “Sorry,” he said. “You’d need clearance for that. For all I know you’ve got it, but that’s the point, I don’t know, do I? Any more,” he added, “than I know who these clowns are. Except that they’re lodge; high cards, no trumps. At least, none I’ve been shown yet.” He broadened his smile into a grin. “I never did see the point of everyone being face down. I mean, I know the fundamental reasoning behind it, but it makes life so damned difficult sometimes. As witness this latest balls-up.”
The last line of defence. Defending what? Presumably that was face down as well. “You knew we were coming.”
“I got a notification, yes, as a matter of courtesy. Also,” he added, “we genuinely were out of food. Mostly because of traipsing about after you in the wilderness. I don’t know where you got your map from, but it can’t be any good.” He shifted the reins into his left hand, so he could scratch the tip of his nose. “Out of curiosity, where are you going?”
“Don’t you know?”
Axio sighed. “I’ll say it again. I was told to look out for two craftsmen, keep an eye on them, make contact if necessary. As it happened, it was necessary, because we’d run out of food and we hoped you’d have some. I don’t know the purpose of your mission, and I’m not really interested. Right now, my priority is finding out who these lunatics with the big coach are. I mean, obviously they’re lodge, but nobody said anything about them to me. I should know that sort of thing, I’m responsible.”
Axio nodded. “That’s right. They’re escorting a big coach to this Merebarton place.” He gave Pleda one of the big smiles. “You said that’s where you’re headed, but I’m assuming that’s not true.”
“Really.”
“Well, it can’t be, can it? Not unless you’re meeting up with whoever’s in the coach. And you seemed as genuinely surprised as I was.”
Pleda thought for a moment. “Do they really have doctors with them?”
“Oh, I should imagine so. Your boy will be fine, you’ll see. I saw far worse than that in the army, believe you me. Men like human porcupines, and they were up and about again in no time.”
A thought struck Pleda; as hard as the arrow had hit Musen, but in a more awkward place. “Your brother,” he said. “Is he lodge?”
Axio stared at him then burst out laughing. “Are you joking? Of course he is. You don’t think he got to be rich and famous on pure musical ability.”
“I assumed—” Pleda shook his head. “It can’t have been easy.”
“It never has been.” Axio said it as though it was nothing—time of day, what a lot of weather we’ve been having lately—but Pleda guessed that that was how you knew he was being truthful. Of course, Axio probably knew that, too. Very like the boy in so many ways, with the obvious exception of intelligence.
“There we are.” Axio pointed with his free hand. “At last.”
Pleda followed the line indicated, but he couldn’t see anything. Then something caught his eye, a square, too regular for anything in nature. He looked carefully and could just make out a drystone wall enclosing a patch of heather. At the far end was a low hill that was too straight and level. It brought back memories. An archery range.
“Good spot,” Axio was saying. “Almost completely hidden by the contours of the combe; you could ride past here with an army and not know it was there, if they’d got the wit not to light fires. And then they go and build their butts on a hilltop, so they’re visible for miles around.” He shook his head sadly. “Soon as we’ve got five minutes we’ll grub out that wall.”
Not long after, they rode up a lane that followed the course of a broad stream which wound along the bottom of the fold between the sides of the combe. Pleda had some idea what to expect; mere meant marshy ground, where the run-off from the steep combe pooled on the flat—they’d have drained that centuries ago, of course—and barton meant land good and flat enough to grow barley, which you’d get in strips along the combe floor where the water had washed down silt from the hillsides. The houses were close together—there would have been a stockade once, for defence—which told him the villagers had originally been tenants rather than freeholders, though all that would have changed long ago, when all the great families were wiped out by wars and taxes. Sheep, he guessed, barley for bread, animal feed, thatch and beer; small gardens for beans and cabbages; they’d have to cart a long way for lumber and firewood, now that all the big copses that used to grow in these parts had been cut for charcoal for the war effort. But they’d have wool to sell, and there’d be pigs and poultry. People could live quite effectively in a place like this, if allowed to do so by their betters. He remembered that he hadn’t seen a sheep since they left Beloisa.
“Had our eye on this place for a while now,” Axio was saying. “Passes, like this one, either end of the village, only real way in or out. You could block them off with a series of thick, low walls with narrow gates and still not be visible from the road. Vulnerable from above, of course, you always are in valleys, but the slopes are pretty steep, too steep for cavalry, and you’d have a really good field of fire, so you could make them pay through the nose for coming at you that way. The main problem would be if they dammed the stream, but we’re pretty sure there’s water not far down, half a dozen wells would be enough for an army. Plenty of good local stone. Timber’s a problem. We could plant on the far side of the hill, but a new plantation in the middle of all this garbage would be a bit of a giveaway. Other than that, though, it’s ideal, and, best of all, nobody knows it’s here.”
“Except the people who live here, of course.”
Axio looked at him as though he’d said something stupid.
The street was empty, but there was a carriage drawn up outside a large house at the far end. In the City, particularly the district between the palace and the Wall, where the best people lived, it’d have been so normal as to be invisible. Here, it was absurd.
“We’ll level all this, of course,” Axio said. “We can reuse most of the stone from the cottages, and it’s cutting and shipping materials that takes the time and costs the money. For now, though, they’re just camping out as best they can.” He drew up behind the gorgeous carriage. “I’ll drop you off here,” he said. “I imagine your boy’s in there, but, if not, just keep asking people till you find someone who knows what’s going on. I’ll drop the cart round to the stables when I’ve finished with it.”
Pleda could see why they’d chosen that cottage; it was either the forge or the granary, because a long single-storey building jutted out from it at right angles, which made it the biggest covered space in town. He watched his cart jingle away, then walked to the door and gave it a gentle push. It swung open and he went inside.
“Hello, Musen,” he said.
The boy was lying in one of five beds in the middle of the main room. Three of the other four were occupied, no doubt with casualties from the unintended battle. Musen was sitting up. There was a pack of cards on the blanket, but not laid out in any recognised pattern. The boy was holding one; he’d been gazing at it with a faraway look on his face.
Pleda came closer. “You all right?”
“I think so,” Musen said. He was swathed in clean bandages, and his broken arm was in a clean, neat new sling. “I thought I’d had it back there, but they say I’m going to be all right.” He lowered his voice. “It’s the brothers,” he said. “The ones who used to come here. I recognised two of them straight away, and they remembered me.”
On the far wall was a tall cabinet with long shelves, lined with jars and bottles, and a long oak table, with straps halfway down and at the end. On a rack on the wall next to it were surgeons’ tools. The floor was gleaming oak boards, not a trace of dirt anywhere. A tall barrel stood in the corner, and next to it a large copper cauldron, with a charcoal stove under it. Whoever ran this place knew what he was doing.
“Where is everybody?” Pleda asked quietly.
Musen smiled. “This used to be the forge,” he said. “So it’s fitting, really. Everybody’s gone. I asked them where, but nobody seems to know.”
Best of all, nobody knows it’s here. Not any more, at any rate. “What about your family?”
“Oh, they lived out of town a way, down the street and up the hill.” Lived, he’d said, and didn’t seem particularly concerned. “They’ve been telling me what they’re going to do here. It’s amazing. It’ll be a stronghold of the lodge, right here in Merebarton.”
The lodge is my family, always has been. Pleda decided to remember that he was here to do a job. “The brothers,” he said. “They’re the ones who—”
Musen nodded. “I haven’t said anything about why we’re here. But—well, it must be going to cost them a fortune, building a castle and a library and a school and everything.” He paused and frowned. “That big coach outside,” he said. “Do you know what all that’s about?”
Pleda shook his head. “That flash bastard knows, but he wouldn’t tell me.”
“This bit here’s the hospital,” Musen said, “but there’s more out back, where the smithy used to be. Of course, I haven’t seen in there. I think there must be another way in.” He grinned. “The smith who used to be here wasn’t a craftsman,” he said. “Can you believe that? It’s so stupid. Mind you, he was an idiot; you couldn’t have made him understand in a million years.”
Pleda looked at him for a while. The thing was, Musen was happy; you could see it all over his face. “Do you want me to try and find out where your family’s gone? Someone here must know. I could take a message.”
Musen shook his head. “I never liked them anyway.” He lowered his voice. “For a start, I don’t think my father was actually my father, if you know what I mean. He and I were always so different. I think—” He paused. “I think one of them, the brothers, was my real father. Maybe that’s why my dad never had any time for the lodge or anything like that. Dead set against it, always. And I think that’s why he killed my mother.”
Pleda hadn’t expected anything like this. “Your father—”
“Oh, nobody ever said anything. She died when I was a baby, and nobody ever talked about her. I’m sure he killed her, because of me. So you see, really they’re not my family, the lodge is.”
Difficult to find words. “Have you got any proof for any of this?”
Musen shrugged. “Not really. I don’t need any. I mean, I’m not going to do anything about it. I can’t be bothered, to be honest. Anyway, they’re probably all dead by now. It really doesn’t matter.”
Probably all dead. No sheep. Where would several hundred refugees go, in this country? It really doesn’t matter, said the son of the lodge. Cut their throats or turn them out on the moor, it’d come to the same thing in the end. They’d have died anyway, because of the war. Meanwhile, a choice piece of real estate, just right for the purpose—
“I don’t suppose anyone’s said anything,” Pleda said quietly. “But do you know why they’re doing this?”
Musen frowned. “Doing what?”
“Building a fortress. Here in the middle of the wilderness.”
“Oh, I see. Well, it’s for the war, I guess.”
That made no sense. “Don’t be stupid. The lodge isn’t in the war. We’re neutral.”
“Oh, not this war. This war doesn’t matter. They’re doing this for the next war. The important one. Us against them. The war.” Musen frowned at him. “You know that,” he said. “You must do.”
Pleda made a huge effort and kept his voice low and steady. “Where did you hear all this?”
“At the college, of course. You know, where I went to be trained. They told us about it. Not very much, obviously, we’re not secure, but just the basics, so we’d know. You know,” he added, with a touch of impatience. “The war. The one that this one’s clearing the way for. And I’m going to be in it,” he added, with a hint of wonder in his voice. “Me and all the other wild cards, it’s what they’ve been collecting us for.” He stopped, and looked closely at Pleda’s face. “You don’t know, do you?”
“What? No, of course, of course I know. I’m an Eight of Swords, remember?”
“You don’t know.” An accusation. “You don’t know anything about it at all. But I thought—getting you here, I mean. I thought that was what it was all for, to get you here. The emperor’s cards, I mean, and all that rubbish. To get money for the building, and to bring you here. I thought—” He stopped again. “I thought you were important. But you’re not, are you? They just wanted the money.”
Pleda took a deep breath. “What war?” he said. “Tell me.”
But Musen shook his head. “You don’t know,” he said. “So I can’t tell you. Don’t ask me any more. In fact, you’d better go away. I don’t know what I’m allowed to tell you, or anything.”
“Eight of bloody Swords,” Pleda said, in a low, harsh voice. “You’ll tell me what I ask, understood? What war?”
There was nothing on Musen’s face but contempt. “You don’t matter,” he said. “I’m home now; you can’t touch me. You’re not allowed to ask me questions. You might as well go and do what you’re here for, get those stupid cards. I don’t want to see you again, do you hear me?”
Pleda found the strength to smile at him. “Screw you, then,” he said. “And get well soon.”
He headed for the door, half expecting someone to stop him. What war? What war, and who against, for crying out loud? Clearing the way? There were the desert nomads, yes, the idiot Blemyans had stirred up a hornets’ nest there, and it would take the combined efforts of both empires to deal with them once and for all. Glauca knew that, and Senza Belot must realise it, too; and he imagined they weren’t stupid in the West, either. But the war, the one that this one’s clearing the way for— This war was certainly clearing the way; it had cleared sheep and men off every hillside from here to Beloisa, and from what he understood things weren’t much better anywhere else. But the war; for a war, you had to have armies. The way this war was going, it wouldn’t be long before there was nobody left. The Blemyans? That’d be a campaign, not a war, a paragraph in the official history. What war?
You don’t matter, the boy had said. You’re not important. Now there was a thought. Eight of Swords, and not important enough, a card you throw away when you’ve bought something better.
The light outside was painfully bright after the cool shade of the hospital. The fancy carriage, he noted, wasn’t there any more. In his pocket was the plenipotentiary warrant. He needed to talk to someone in authority.
(Because a run of low cards, two, three, four, will beat a pride of tens; if you’re holding three and four, two is important, two matters. You’d run through the whole damned pack to get a two if you needed one, and dump your eight, nine, ten without hesitation. The wild cards, the boy had said, it’s what they’ve been collecting us for. Thief School? Were there other schools like it—covered cards, face down—he didn’t even know about?
Anything that’s face down you have to pay to see. Fine, so long as you can afford it.)
A man stepped out of a doorway. He wore a robe that looked vaguely ecclesiastical but belonged to no order Pleda had ever heard of over a regulation Western scale cuirass, and Eastern issue boots. Of course, you could buy anything you wanted from the battlefield clearance contractors. “You’re Pleda,” he said.
“That’s right.”
“Do you think you could possibly spare a moment? They’d like to talk to you.”
“Why? I’m not important.”
“Please?”
Well, he’d always been a sucker for politeness, especially when it wore armour. “Go on, then,” he said, and followed him round the side of the hospital. There was a paved yard, probably left over from the smithy, and there was the long building that had once been the forge. The armoured man led him to a door, then stood aside to let him pass.
It was dark inside, and he recognised the smell as damp plaster. He heard the scratch of a tinderbox; a little red glow, as someone blew on smouldering moss, followed by a bigger yellow one, as whoever it was lit an oil lamp. Before that, he supposed, he’d been sitting there in the dark.
Correction: they. Three men, and a woman in a long black veil. The men wore the same robes as the man who’d brought him here, but no armour. One was bald and middle-aged, one had a bushy head of grey hair, and the third was very old indeed, with little white wisps, like sheep’s wool caught in brambles. There was nothing in the room except for five plain wooden stools and a small round table, on which lay a tarnished silver box. The walls and ceiling were off-white; freshly applied plaster, still wet.
“Pleda,” said the old man. “Please, sit down.”
You paint frescoes—masterpieces of religious and esoteric art—on wet plaster. He sat. The old man smiled.
“Glauca sent you,” the old man said.
Not the emperor. “That’s right.”
The old man laid a finger on the lid of the box. “Thank you for coming. I trust the journey wasn’t too arduous.”
Pleda shrugged. “I’m here now.”
The old man nodded and lifted the lid. “The asking price,” he said, “is one hundred and fifty thousand angels.”
One million angels paid for the war for a year. “No,” Pleda said. “It’s too much. The emperor hasn’t got that sort of money.”
“Then you’ve had a wasted journey,” the old man said. “But in any case, I don’t agree. In your pocket you have a plenipotentiary warrant. Do you know what that means?”
“Yes.”
“It means,” the old man said, “you can do anything. Including,” he went on, lifting something out of the box, “endorsing the back of the warrant with an order to pay the bearer one hundred and fifty thousand angels. I happen to know that exactly that sum of money will arrive at Beloisa in twelve days’ time, to cover arrears of pay and finance the rebuilding and fortification of the city. So you see, the emperor does have the money.”
“Yes, but he can’t afford—”
The old man lifted his other hand, a gentle but categorical gesture. “So let’s see what happens. You go back to Glauca and tell him you refused our offer. Glauca is furious. He sends you straight back again. Next time, the price will be two hundred thousand angels. He can well afford not to fortify Beloisa. He can afford for the troops who will shortly arrive here to mutiny because they won’t get their back pay. He can afford for them to defect to the enemy and hand Beloisa over to them. He has other provinces, and this one isn’t much use to him in its present deplorable state. The Westerners will occupy it; sooner or later Senza Belot will come and take it from them, and Glauca will be back where he started. And he’ll have these.” He put down what he was holding on the table, a block wrapped in red silk. It clinked. “And you will have lost his favour and trust, which you’ve worked so hard to gain, and the lodge will have lost a highly placed observer at a key point in the chain of command. Now, we’ll start again. The asking price is one hundred and fifty thousand angels.”
Pleda breathed in slowly, then out again. It was supposed to calm him down, but all it achieved was to fill his lungs with the wet plaster smell, and make him want to cough. “What do you want the money for?”
The old man laughed. “To decorate this room,” he said.
Pleda looked at him. He was serious. “That’s a lot of money,” he heard himself say.
“Loxida of Blemya, the greatest living painter of religious subjects, has agreed to paint this room with scenes of the Transfiguration of the Host. We’ve negotiated a fee of one hundred and twenty-five thousand angels, which we feel is entirely reasonable, given that his work will quite possibly be the supreme achievement of the human race. It will most certainly still be here, admired and valued and a source of immeasurable spiritual strength and energy, in a thousand years’ time. Or the money could be spent on building a set of walls, which siege engines will have battered into rubble within five years. Oh, in case you were wondering, the balance of twenty-five thousand angels will pay for the materials. Loxida has specified ninety-nine-pure gold from the mines in the Aradian desert; apparently, the colour is very subtly different. We’re exceptionally fortunate to be in a position to give him this commission.”
Loxida of Blemya; never heard of him. “I’ll need to see them first.”
“Really? What for? Only Glauca and three other men alive—I’m one of them, incidentally—know enough to be able to tell whether these are the genuine Sleeping Dog or an extraordinary skilful copy, made by either Praxidas or Tariunno of Licynna. Please don’t be offended, but you’re completely incapable of forming any sort of valid judgement.” He smiled. He had six teeth. “You’re just going to have to trust me, I’m afraid.”
Pleda could feel his brain melting and dripping down his throat. Even so; he needed to think. “Here’s the deal,” he said. “I’ll endorse the warrant in escrow. The paymasters at Beloisa will release the money once they hear from the emperor that the pack is genuine.”
“Unacceptable.” The old man didn’t sound upset or anything. “Glauca will say that the cards are fakes. He’ll keep them, and refuse to pay over the money. He can’t be trusted. You, however, can trust us, because we’re all fellow craftsmen. This is the Sleeping Dog Pack. You have my word on it.”
Pleda wanted to laugh. He also wanted, very badly indeed, to ask who the toothless old man was. But there’d be no point. Even if he got an answer, a true one, it’d be meaningless to him. Instead, he said, “Tell me about the war.”
The old man’s face didn’t change. “Excuse me?”
“Not this one,” Pleda said, “the next one. The one this one’s clearing the way for.”
“Now why should I do that?”
To see a covered card, you have to pay. My entire life, Pleda thought, and raise you a stuiver. “Because if you don’t, there’s no deal. I’ll go home and tell Glauca that the cards were fakes. Such obvious fakes that even I could tell. The colour of the silver was all wrong. Too pure for the period. There were no copper tones on the raised areas.”
The old man frowned. “Would you please wait outside?” he said. “I’d just like a private word with my associates.”
Feeling slightly dizzy and light-headed, as though he’d been drinking, Pleda got up and walked to the door. It seemed a long way. The man in the cuirass was there to open the door for him. Outside, the air was dry and fresh. He rested his back against the wall. If his legs weren’t so weak, he’d have run away. The lodge, he thought; that man is a fellow craftsman. He’s supposed to be on the same side as me. He’s supposed to be my brother.
Brothers, like Senza and Forza Belot.
On the roof of a nearby house he saw two crows, the first living things apart from men and horses he’d noticed for days. He watched them for a while. Senza Belot reckoned you could learn a lot from watching crows, so he’d been told. His hands were beginning to get cold; he put them in his pockets and found his deck of cards. The temptation to lay out his fortune, there on the paving slabs, was almost too strong to resist. Nine of Shields; you will meet an influential stranger. Four of Spears; you will learn something to your advantage. Poverty, reversed; you will achieve your heart’s desire.
Sometime later the guard called him back in. There were three men and a heavily veiled woman. Different men.
“Please sit down.” The speaker was an elderly man, with a full head of short grey hair and a neat, pointed beard. “We’re sorry to have kept you.”
Pleda sat down. “That’s fine,” he said. “I needed a breath of air.”
“The asking price,” said the neat man, “is one hundred and seventy-five thousand angels. We have considered your request for information, but we have to refuse. The information is sensitive and you are not secure.”
He felt as if his strength was draining slowly away, like oil from a cracked bottle. “The extra twenty-five thousand,” he said. “There’s no more money.”
The neat man shook his head. “The garrison commander at Beloisa holds a thirty-thousand-angel contingency fund,” he said. “Our best information is that he still has nineteen thousand of it left. The balance will have to be raised by means of a forced loan from the soldiers of the garrison.” He held up his hand before Pleda could interrupt. “We appreciate that that will likely precipitate a mutiny,” he said. “But that’s going to happen anyway, so it really doesn’t matter. Meanwhile, we would encourage you to contemplate the repercussions of your actions.” He paused, and looked meaningfully at the little round table. On it, beside the silver box, was a small silver-gilt inkwell and a goose-quill pen. “It would probably be best if I dictated the wording of the endorsement,” he said. “These legal formulae have to be exactly right, you know.”
Pleda took out the warrant, leaned forward and got hold of the pen. He wrote the words he was given, resting the parchment rather awkwardly on his knee. “Now sign it, please,” the neat man said. “One of my associates will witness your signature.”
He handed the parchment to the neat man, who glanced at it briefly and gave it to the man on his left, a short, broad-shouldered Imperial. He had his own pen. Then he put the warrant down on the table, as if it no longer mattered.
“And this,” the neat man said, “is yours.”
His left hand rested for a moment on the silver box. Pleda looked at it, but stayed where he was. The neat man waited for a moment or so, then said gently, “You can examine it, if you wish.”
“No thanks,” Pleda said. “I trust you.”
The neat man smiled at the joke. “Well,” he said, “I think that concludes the formal business of the meeting. Now, perhaps you’d care for a cup of tea. Or something stronger, maybe.”
Pleda nodded. “Something a lot stronger, please,” he said.
The man on the neat man’s right laughed. “I think we can manage that,” he said, and clapped his hands. From nowhere, apparently, someone in the same cut of gown appeared; he leaned forward so the Imperial could whisper in his ear. Then he nodded and went away. “Bearing in mind the fact that we’re playing host to possibly the most discerning palate in the East,” the Imperial went on, “I’ve had the cellarer find us something rather special. I’d like your opinion.”
The servant was back again, with a silver tray. On it stood a dusty brown pottery pint bottle, its mouth stopped with beeswax, and four tiny, exquisite horn and silver cups. The servant produced a dear little silver knife, with which he cut and chipped away the wax; then he filled the cups. One each for the men; the lady in the veil wasn’t getting any. Pleda looked down at the overgrown thimble in his hand; an inch of a clear yellow liquid, very slightly paler than urine. “Your very good health,” the Imperial said, and didn’t move.
Well, Pleda thought; and he nibbled a drop of the yellow stuff. It was without doubt the most delicious thing he’d ever put in his mouth, and it kicked like a mule. Oh, and none of the known poisons. “Not bad,” he said, and swilled down the rest of it. There was a brief war in his intestines. Like the other war, nobody won, but there was considerable damage.
“Cheers,” the Imperial said; he took a sip, and then the other three followed suit. Pleda smiled and looked pointedly at his empty cup. “Care for another?” the Imperial asked.
“Oh, go on, then,” Pleda said.
The really good stuff, of course, gets better and better the more of it you drink. After the third cup (the others were still on their second) Pleda felt like he was briefly floating on a lake of burning honey, just before going down for the last time. “You know what,” Pleda said. “I wouldn’t mind a barrel of this.”
The Imperial grinned at him. “No doubt,” he said. “Regrettably, that was the last known bottle in existence.”
“Oh yes. It’s a hundred and twenty-five years old.”
“Keeps well, I’ll say that for it.” The Imperial laughed and leaned forward to top up his cup.
“Sort of mead, I’m guessing.”
“Sort of.”
Pleda applied his wealth of technical knowledge, then gave up. “Beats me,” he said. “Basically mead but—well, different.”
“Exactly.”
“Ah well.” He smiled. “Another secret. And I’m not secure.”
“Alas.” The Imperial pulled a sad face. “A lost secret, I’m afraid. A warning to us all, I think. Secrets too closely guarded can die of confinement.” He glanced at the other three, then added, “There’s a difference, of course, between telling a secret and giving a hint.”
Quite suddenly, Pleda was stone cold sober again. He tried his very best not to let it show. “That’s right,” he said. “A little hint never hurt anybody.” He mimed slow, painful thought for a moment. “Tell you what,” he said. “Gamble you for it. If I win, you give me a little hint.”
The Imperial had another quick telepathic conference with his colleagues. “And if we win?”
“Oh, I don’t know. My head on a pike?”
Next to the neat man, on his left, was a big man with red hair and a beard. “We could’ve had that already, if we’d wanted it.”
Pleda shrugged. “That’d have been cheating,” he said. “Difference between fleecing a man at the tables and mugging him in the alleyway outside. Anyhow, it’s all I’ve got. Take it or leave it.”
The Imperial nodded briskly and opened the silver box. Then he hesitated. “I forgot, these don’t belong to us any more. With your permission?”
“Go ahead,” Pleda said.
The Imperial took out the cards and shuffled them. “Let’s make it strictly chance,” he said. “Fairer that way. You cut, then we cut. Highest card wins all. Agreed?”
Pleda waved vaguely. “You’re the doctor.”
The Imperial fanned out the cards. Pleda leaned forward. He
knew, better than anyone, how to force a card on somebody. He took his time, and picked from the left-hand edge of the fan. He
looked at the card. Eight of Swords. He felt suddenly cold. Oh, he thought.
“No, don’t show me yet,” the Imperial said; then he offered the fan to the veiled woman, who took a card and covered it with her other hand. The Imperial put the cards down carefully on the table and looked at Pleda. “Now,” he said. “You first.”
Pleda turned over his card and held it up. “Ah,” the Imperial said. Then he nodded to the woman, who revealed the Nine of Arrows.
There was a moment of dead silence. Then the Imperial said, “Congratulations.”
I’m a dead man, Pleda thought. “You what?”
“Northern rules,” the Imperial said. “Swords are trumps. You win,” he explained.
Pleda opened his mouth, but no words came. He closed it and tried again. “Oh,” he said.
The Imperial leaned forward and gently pulled the card out of his hand. “So you get your hint,” he said, returning the card to the pack. “Try not to look so sad about it.” He shuffled the pack and laid out nine cards, face upwards.“Well, now,” he said.
Pleda leaned forward. The Hero. The Thief. Poverty. Virtue. The Two of Spears. The Two of Arrows. The Scholar. The Eight of Swords. The Cherry Tree.
“Hint,” the Imperial said.
“Personal,” Pleda said. The Imperial shrugged. “I don’t tell fortunes,” he said.
Now, then. Two of Spears and Two of Arrows back to back had to be the Belot brothers. The Thief was presumably meant to be Musen, though the identification struck him as facile. By the same token, the Scholar had to be Glauca. Eight of Swords; now who could they possibly mean by that?
“Who’s the Cherry Tree?” he said.
The woman drew back her veil. He saw a pale, thin, sharp face with light blue eyes; twenty-seven or -eight, though he was a poor judge of women’s ages. Not pretty, not beautiful, but if she walked into a room it wouldn’t be long before every man there noticed her. “That’s me,” she said. “I’m Lysao Pandocytria.”
Pleda caught his breath. Senza Belot’s Lysao; except she wasn’t, that was the point. He remembered someone using the expression collector’s item, and two things Musen had said: something about wild cards, and it’s what they’ve been collecting us for. He decided he’d changed his mind about what the lodge were planning to do here. Not a fortress or a temple, a museum. “That was your coach outside,” he said, for something to say.
“Yes. I’ve just arrived. I’ll be safe here.”
The Cherry Tree. He wasn’t quite sure he got it, but that was probably because he was being rather slow. He looked at the Imperial. “Does this mean I can’t go home?”
The Imperial smiled at him. “Don’t be silly,” he said. “We trust you. After all, you’re a craftsman. We know what side you’re on.”
Glad somebody does. “I’d better be going, then. Thanks for the hint.”
“I trust everything is now perfectly clear.”
“As mud, thank you. I don’t suppose you’d tell me who the Hero is.”
The Imperial shrugged. “I could tell you his name,” he said, “but it wouldn’t mean anything to you.”
“Shouldn’t the Scholar be reversed?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
Well, that was something. He was actually quite fond of Glauca. “What about the Two of Spears?”
The Imperial hesitated, then reached out and turned the Two of Spears face down. “We think,” he added. “If you find out for sure, please let us know.”
Liar, Pleda thought. He collected the cards—they clinked, because his hands were shaking—and put them in the box, and put the box in his pocket. “We must do this again sometime,” he said.
“No,” the Imperial said. “We shouldn’t.”
The big red-headed man stood up and opened the door for him. “Thank you for the game,” he said.
“My pleasure,” Pleda replied, and stood up to go. “Who won, by the way?”
The Imperial beamed at him. “We’re craftsmen,” he said. “We all won. Have a safe journey home.”
Pleda reached out, grabbed the bottle by the neck and walked out quickly. He didn’t look back until he heard the door slam shut. He shook the bottle gently. Empty, of course. He put it down on the ground; as he let go of it, he discovered that his hand wasn’t empty. He turned it palm upwards and opened his fingers. Squashed into his palm was a card, from a cheap, throwaway pack, like the sort soldiers have. It was the Ace of Swords.
He grinned. There is no suit of Swords. He crunched the card into a ball and stuffed it into his pocket.