Matter

by Iain M. Banks

  “Then do not blame yourself,” Fanthile was saying. Then it was his turn to frown. “What?”

  Oramen shook his head. “Just the way Tove said ‘Not me’, when . . .” He wiped his face with one hand. “And before, when we were at the door . . .” He stared up at the ceiling for a few moments, then shook his head decisively. “No. What am I saying? He was my best friend. He could not.” He shivered. “Great grief, the man dies in my place and I look to blame him.” He drank again.

  “Steady, young man,” Fanthile said, smiling, nodding at the glass.

  Oramen looked at the glass, appeared to be about to argue, then set it down on the table between them.

  “The blame is mine, Fanthile,” he said. “I sent Tove first through that door, and I was stupid enough to finish off the one I’d hit first in the chest. Through him we might have discovered who sent them.”

  “You think they were sent, by somebody else?”

  “I doubt they were just loitering around the courtyard waiting to rob the first person to come through that door.”

  “Then who might have sent them?”

  “I don’t know. I have thought, and, on thinking, realised there is a dismayingly large cast of suspects.”

  “Who might they be?”

  Oramen stared at the other man. “The same people you might think of.”

  Fanthile met the prince’s gaze. He nodded. “Indeed. But who?”

  Oramen shook his head. “Deldeyn spies, republicans, radical parliamentarians, a family with a personal vendetta against my family, from this generation or one before, an out-of-pocket bookmaker mistaking me for Ferbin. Who knows? Even anarchists, though they seem to exist more in the minds of those who oppose them most fervently than in awkward reality.”

  “Who,” Fanthile asked, “would gain most from your death?”

  Oramen shrugged. “Well, pursued to the absolute limits of logicality, tyl Loesp, I suppose.” He looked at the palace secretary, who met his gaze with a studiedly blank expression. He shook his head again. “Oh, I thought of him, too, but if I distrust him I distrust everybody. You, Harne, Tove – WorldGod welcome him – everybody.” Oramen made a fist and punched at the nearest cushion. “Why did I kill that wounded one? I should have kept him alive!” He stared at the palace secretary. “I’d have wielded the pliers and the glowing iron myself on that cur.”

  Fanthile looked away for a moment. “Your father frowned on such techniques, prince. He used them most rarely.”

  “Well,” Oramen said, discomfited, “I imagine these . . . occurrences are best avoided. Best . . . delegated.”

  “No,” Fanthile said. “He would be present, but it was the only thing I ever saw make him physically sick.”

  “Yes, well,” Oramen said, feeling suddenly awkward. “I doubt I really could do it. I would faint, or run away, no doubt.” He lifted his glass again, then set it down once more.

  “You will need a new equerry, prince,” Fanthile said, looking pleased to be changing the subject. “I am sure one will be chosen for you.”

  “Doubtless by Exaltine Chasque,” Oramen said. “Tyl Loesp has left him ‘in charge’ of me while he’s gone.” Oramen shook his head.

  “Indeed,” Fanthile said. “However, might I suggest you present the Exaltine with your own choice, already made?”

  “But who?” Oramen looked at the palace secretary. “You have someone in mind?”

  “I have, sir. Earl Droffo. He is young but he is wise, earnest and reliable, devoted to your late father and your family and only lately come to Pourl. He is – how shall I put this? – not overly contaminated by the cynicisms of the court.”

  Oramen regarded Fanthile a little longer. “Droffo; yes, I remember him from the day Father died.”

  “Also, sir, it’s time you had your own dedicated servant.”

  “Very well, arrange that too, if you would.” Oramen shrugged. “I have to trust somebody, palace secretary; I shall choose to trust you.” He drained his glass. “Now I trust you will refill my glass,” he said, and giggled.

  Fanthile poured him a little more wine.

  The battle of the canal crossing was neither the disaster Werreber had feared nor the stroll tyl Loesp had anticipated. They lost more men and materiel than the field marshal thought necessary to get to the far side, and even then they still needed to stop and regroup and resupply for so long that they might as well have waited for the dawn to attack on a broad front after a serious overnight artillery barrage and possibly with the cover of morning mists. Instead they had been funnelled into three long crossings over the shallow pools of standing water and damp sands, and, so concentrated, had suffered from the attentions of Deldeyn heavy machine-gunners and disguised mortar pits well dug in on the far side.

  Still, the battle had been won. They had traded saved, unfired artillery shells for the expended lives and limbs of ordinary soldiers. Werreber thought this a shameful, ignominious bargain when there was no pressing need to hurry. Tyl Loesp thought it a reasonable one.

  Werreber comforted himself in the knowledge that decreeing something did not necessarily make it so on the ground; knowing the order was to take no prisoners, many of the Sarl units chose to disarm the Deldeyn they captured and let them run away. Werreber had chosen not to hear of such insubordination.

  The two men quarrelled again about splitting their forces; the regent wanted to send a substantial body of men to take the Hyeng-zhar Settlement while the field marshal thought it wiser to have all the troops available to attack the capital, where the last significant Deldeyn forces were massing. The regent prevailed there too.

  Reduced by the forces assigned to take the Falls, the remaining army spread out, splitting into three sections for the final assault on the Deldeyn capital.

  15. The Hundredth Idiot

  As soon as Ferbin saw the knights Vollird and Baerth he knew they were here to kill him. He knew precisely who they were. They had stood on either side of the interior of the door at the abandoned factory where his father had been killed. They had stood there and they had watched their king being brutally murdered by tyl Loesp. The shorter, broader, more powerful-looking one was called Baerth – he was the one Ferbin had recognised at the time. The taller, skinnier knight was Vollird, well known to be one of tyl Loesp’s closest allies and who, Ferbin was sure beyond surety, had been the taller knight whose face he had not seen standing on the other side of the door from Baerth.

  “Gentlemen,” said Vollird, nodding fractionally and smiling thinly. Baerth – the shorter, more powerful-looking one – said nothing.

  The two had appeared on the broad, crowded concourse which stretched away from the Tower exit Ferbin and Holse had just been led from while the Oct – who was still demanding their documents – was attempting to explain why the Nariscene Grand Zamerin wasn’t there to be met with. The two knights were escorted by a Nariscene in a glittering exoskeleton of gold and precious stones. They were dressed in leggings and long tunics covered in tabards, with sheathed swords and pistol holsters hanging from thick belts.

  Ferbin did not reply. He just stared at them, fixing their faces in his mind for ever. He could feel himself starting to shake as his pulse quickened and a cold, clenching sensation came from his guts. He was furious with his body for betraying him so, and did all he could to relax, breathe evenly and generally display every outward sign of steady normality.

  “And you, sirs,” Holse said, hand still resting on the pommel of his long knife, “who would you be?”

  “Documents, if please,” the Oct at Holse and Ferbin’s side said, unhelpfully.

  The taller knight looked at Ferbin as he said, “Do us the courtesy of informing your servant that we don’t answer to the pet when the owner stands before us.”

  “My servant is a man of honour and decency,” Ferbin said, trying to keep his voice calm. “He may address you in any form or manner he sees fit and by God you ought to be grateful for even the most meagre courtesy he accords you
, for you deserve less than a dry spit of it, and if I were you I’d hoard most jealously what little comes your way, for trust me, sirs, leaner times lie ahead if you but knew.”

  The short knight looked furious; his hand twitched towards his sword. Ferbin’s mouth was very dry; he was horribly aware how mismatched their two sides were in armament. The taller one appeared surprised and mildly wounded. “These are unkind words, sir, to two who desire only to help you.”

  “I believe I know the fate to which you’d like to help us. It is a condition I’m determined to avoid for some time yet.”

  “Sir,” the taller knight said, smiling tolerantly, “we have been sent by the current and rightful ruler of our shared homeland, who wishes you only good, to aid you in your passage. I regret any misunderstanding that might have led you to think ill of us before we are even correctly introduced. I am Vollird of Sournier, knight of the court; my companion here is Baerth of Charvin, also so ennobled.” Vollird swivelled fractionally and indicated the shorter man by his side with one hand as he spoke these words, though his gaze stayed fixed upon Ferbin. “We are here at your service, good sir. Grant us civility, I beg you, if for no other reason than that we are in front of our otherworldly friends here, and might risk demeaning the reputation of our whole people by seeming to squabble or fret.” Vollird waved at the brilliant, static forms of the Oct and Nariscene at their sides, his gaze still fastened on Ferbin.

  “If you are at my service,” Ferbin replied, “you will remove yourselves from us at once and take this message to your master, who is no more the rightful ruler of our ‘shared homeland’ than my last turd, indeed somewhat less so: I go only to return, and when I do, I shall treat him with all the grace and respect he showed my father, at his end.”

  There was the tiniest of jerking motions at one extremity of Vollird’s dark brow; it was the merest hint of surprise, but Ferbin was glad to see it. He knew he could say more, but also knew, with a sort of fascinated certainty, that this constituted one charge of powder he ought to keep aside for now. There might be a moment when some further revelation of his most detailed knowledge of what had happened in the half-ruined factory that evening would be of a use beyond just discomfiting these men.

  Vollird was silent for a half-moment, then smiled and said, “Sir, sir, we still misunderstand each other. We would help you, escort you on your way away from here. That is our earnest wish and most specific instruction.” He smiled, quite broadly, and made an open gesture with both hands. “We all of us wish the same thing, which is to see you on your way. You have departed the land and level to which you have belonged with some urgency and dispatch, and we would merely assist you on whatever further flight you may be determined on. We ought not to dispute.”

  “We do not wish the same—” Ferbin started to say, but then the shorter knight, Baerth, who had been frowning mightily for the last few moments, said, under his breath, as though to himself,

  “Enough talk. Sheath this, whore.” He drew his sword and lunged at Ferbin.

  Ferbin started to take a step back; Holse began to move in front of him, his left arm making as though to push Ferbin behind him. At the same time Holse’s right arm arced across his body and out; the short knife tore through the air and—

  And was whipped out of the air by one limb of the Nariscene at Baerth’s side, at the same time as one of its other legs tripped up the lunging knight and sent him sprawling to the floor at Holse’s feet. Holse stamped sharply on the man’s wrist and scooped his sword from his broken grip. Baerth grunted in pain. Vollird was drawing his pistol.

  “Stop!” the Nariscene said. “Stop!” it repeated as Holse made to stab the prone knight with one hand and take his pistol with the other. The sword was knocked from his hand by the Oct while the Nariscene turned and snapped the pistol from Vollird’s grip, producing a sudden gasp. Sword and pistol went clattering to the floor in opposite directions.

  “To stop, hostilities,” the Oct said. “Inappropriate behaviour.”

  Holse stood, glaring at the eight-limbed alien, shaking his own right hand and blowing on it as though trying to get blood back into it on a cold day. He had moved the foot he’d stamped on Baerth’s wrist with so that it now lay on the man’s neck, with most of Holse’s weight on it. Vollird stood shaking his right hand vigorously, and cursing.

  Ferbin had observed it all, keeping back and low and watching with an odd detachment who had done what and where all the weapons were at each moment. He found he still possessed a very clear idea of where both pistols were; one over there on the floor, the other still in Baerth’s side holster.

  A device swung down from the ceiling. It looked like a bulky rendition of a Nariscene in an entire symphony of coloured metals.

  “Fighting is not allowed in public spaces,” it said loudly in oddly accented but perfectly comprehensible Sarl. “I shall take charge of all weapons in this vicinity. Resistance will incur physical penalties not excluding unconsciousness and death.” It was already gathering up the sword and pistol from the floor, swinging through the air with a whooshing sound. The Nariscene handed it Holse’s long knife. “Thank you,” it said. It removed Baerth’s pistol from its holster – the man was still flat out under Holse’s boot, and starting to make gurgling sounds – took another, smaller gun from the prone knight’s boot and also found a dagger and two small throwing knives in his tunic. From Vollird, now holding his right hand delicately and grimacing, it took a sword, a long knife and a length of wire with wooden grips at each end.

  “All unauthorised weapons have now been removed from the vicinity,” the machine announced. Ferbin noticed that a small crowd of people – aliens, machines, whatever one might call them – had gathered at a polite distance, to watch. The machine holding all the weapons said, “Nariscene Barbarian Relational Mentor Tchilk, present, is in notional charge here until further Authority arrives. All involved will hold approximate position under my custody, meantimes. Failure to comply will incur physical penalties not excluding unconsciousness and death.”

  There was a pause. “Documents?” the Oct said to Ferbin.

  “Oh, have your damned documents!” he said, and fished them from his jacket. He nearly threw them at the machine, but didn’t, in case this was taken as a violent act by the device hovering over them.

  “So,” the glittering Nariscene said, floating slowly round about them a metre or so over their heads and between two and three metres away from them, “you claim to be a prince of this royal family of the Sarl, of the Eighth.”

  “Indeed,” Ferbin said crisply.

  He and Holse stood within a great, softly green-lit cave of a room. Its walls were mostly of undressed stone; Ferbin found this quite shockingly crude for beings supposedly so technologically advanced. The complex they had been taken to was set deep within a cliff which formed part of an enormous spire of rock sitting in a great round lake a short machine-flight from the concourse where they had first arrived. Once Vollird and Baerth had been taken away, apparently already adjudged to have been the guilty parties without anything as crude and time-consuming as a formal trial – as Vollird had pointed out, quite loudly – Ferbin had asked one of the Nariscene judicial machines if he could talk to somebody in authority. After a few screen conversations with persons distant, all visibly Nariscene, they had been brought here.

  The Nariscene officer – he had been introduced as Acting Craterine Zamerin Alveyal Girgetioni – was encased in a kind of skeletal armour like that worn by the Nariscene who had been escorting Vollird and Baerth. He seemed to like floating above and around people he was talking to, forcing them to twist this way and that to keep him politely in sight. About him in the great cavern, at some distance, other Nariscene aliens did incomprehensible things from a variety of cradles, harnesses and holes in the ground filled with what looked like quicksilver. “This royal family,” the Acting Craterine Zamerin continued, “is the ruling entity of your people, and the executive positions are inheritable. Am I ri
ght?”

  Ferbin thought about this. He looked at Holse, who shrugged unhelpfully. “Yes,” Ferbin said, less certainly.

  “And you claim to have witnessed a crime on your home level?”

  “A most grievous and disgraceful crime, sir,” Ferbin said.

  “But you are unwilling to have the matter dealt with on your own level, despite the fact you claim to be the rightful ruler, that is, absolute chief executive, of this realm.”

  “I am unable to do so, sir. Were I to try, I would be killed, just as the two knights today tried to kill me.”

  “So you seek justice . . . where?”

  “A sibling of mine is attached to the empire known as the Culture. I may gain help there.”

  “You travel to some part, ship or outpost of the Culture?”

  “As a first step, we thought to find one human man called Xide Hyrlis, whom we last heard was a friend of the Nariscene. He knew my late father, he knows me, he has – I hope and trust – still some kind sympathies for my family, kingdom and people and may himself be able to aid me in my fight for justice. Even if he cannot help us directly he will, at the least, I feel sure, vouch for me to the part of the Culture called Special Circumstances within which my sibling is located, allowing me to contact and appeal to them.”

  The Nariscene stopped dead, becoming quite perfectly stationary in the air. “Special Circumstances?” it said.

  “Indeed,” Ferbin said.

  “I see.” The Nariscene resumed its orbit, sailing silently through the oddly scented air while the two humans stood patiently, swivelling their heads as the creature circled slowly round them.

  “Also,” Ferbin said, “it is imperative that I get a message to my brother Oramen, who is now the Prince Regent. This would have to be done in the greatest secrecy. However, if it was possible – and I would hope that the mighty Nariscene would find this neither beneath nor beyond them—”

  “That will not be possible, I think,” the Nariscene told him.