Inversions c-6

by Iain Banks

  "Yes, and from being able to fly, and from having hot water gush from wash basins and from having servants pander to their every whim, too. People are strange like that, Lattens. Give them every comfort and they start to pine for the rougher life."

  Lattens frowned mightily at this, but did not protest further. It was obvious he thought that the people of Lavishia, or perhaps just all adults, must be quite mad.

  "Sechroom and Hiliti," DeWar said, "went to the island as a sort of holiday from all the luxuries they were used to. They left all their servants behind and they even left behind the magic amulets and jewels that protected them from harm and which let them call on the local gods, and the two of them were left to fend for themselves in the wilderness. They could still find fruit to eat and water to drink, and they were able to make a shelter from the giant leaves of trees. They had with them bows and arrows and a pair of blow-pipes which fired poisoned darts, too. They had made these before they had come on the holiday and were quite proud of them They used the bows and blowpipes to go hunting for some of the animals on the island, though the animals were not the cooperative sort of animals they were used to, and they didn't want to be killed and cooked and eaten, so they were quite good at keeping out of the way of two people who were really very inexperienced hunters.

  "One day, when Sechroom and Hiliti had been out trying to find some animals to shoot their poison darts at, but without success, they were returning to their leaf-shelter, arguing and becoming annoyed with each other. They were both bored and hungry and that was probably one of the reasons that they were each so upset with the other and blaming the other for spoiling the hunt. Sechroom thought that Hiliti was too aggressive and wanted to kill the animals just for the sake of it, for Hiliti was proud of his skills as a bowman and a blowpiper and at hand-to-hand fighting, while Hiliti secretly thought that Sechroom, who didn't like to kill things, had deliberately made noises so that the animals they were stalking would realise they were there and run away.

  "Their route took them back over a steep-sided stream where there was a natural bridge made by a fallen tree. It had been raining quite a lot that day — that was another reason they were miserable and arguing so much — and the stream below the tree-bridge was in spate."

  "What's that?"

  "It means the stream was swollen, full of water. So they started to cross the tree bridge. Now, Hiliti thought about saying that they should cross one at a time, but by then they had started out across the tree, with him going first,

  and he thought if he turned round and told Sechroom to go back and wait, Sechroom would just get even angrier than she was already, so he didn't say anything.

  "Well, the tree-bridge gave way. It had been lying there rotting away for many years no doubt, and the banks on either side had been partially washed away by all the rain, so when the two of them put their weight on it, it obviously decided that it was time to give up the struggle and just succumb — ah, that means give in — to gravity, and fall into the stream.

  "So down it tumbled, breaking in the middle and bringing down other bits of branches and a few rocks and a load of earth and so on from either side just for good measure."

  "Oh no!" Lattens said, hand to his mouth. "What happened to Sechroom and Hiliti?"

  "They fell down along with the tree. Hiliti was the luckier, because the bit of the tree he was on took its time collapsing, and he was able to hang on to it as it went down and throw himself on to the bank before the trunk hit the water. He still ended up tumbling into the stream, but he was all right."

  "But what about Sechroom?"

  "Sechroom wasn't so lucky. The part of the tree trunk she was on must have rolled as it fell, or she did, because she ended up underneath it, trapped beneath the water."

  "Did she drown?" Lattens looked very concerned now, both his hands at his mouth. He started to suck one thumb.

  Perrund put her arm round him and brought his hands away from his mouth. "Now come, don't forget this is just before Sechroom goes off to become a soldiermissionary.

  "Yes, but what happened?" Lattens asked anxiously.

  "Yes," Perrund said. "And why didn't the tree trunk float?"

  "Most of its length was still on the steep. bank," DeWar told her. "The bit sticking into the water trapping Sechroom wasn't enough to float. Anyway, Hiliti could see one of his cousin's boots sticking up out of the water on the far side of the tree and waving around. Hiliti swam and pulled himself through the water and over the rocks and the broken branches to get to Sechroom, who he realised was trapped under the water. He dived down. There was just enough light for him to see Sechroom struggling desperately, trying to push the tree trunk off her leg, but making no impression on it, because it was very big and heavy. Even as Hiliti watched, he saw a last few bubbles of air float out of Sechroom's mouth and be swept away in the strong current. Hiliti came back up to the surface, took a deep lungful of air and then went back down again and put his mouth over his cousin's and blew the air into Sechroom's mouth, so that she could live a little longer.

  "Hiliti tried to push the tree trunk off Sechroom too, but it was too heavy. He thought that perhaps if he could find a strong enough, and a long enough lever, then perhaps he could take the weight off Sechroom's leg, but that would take a while. Meantime, Sechroom must be almost out of breath again. Hiliti took another gulp of air and dived back down. Again, the bubbles came out of Sechroom's mouth and again Hiliti gave his friend his own air.

  "By now Hiliti could see that this could not go on much longer. The water was cold enough to be sapping his warmth and strength away, arid he was becoming exhausted and starting to gasp for air himself.

  "Then he thought of the blow-pipe. His own had been washed away by the stream when he'd fallen in, but he had seen Sechroom's when he'd first dived down, still slung over her back and partly trapped under her. Hiliti dived down, blew more air into Sechroom's mouth, then took hold of Sechroom's blow-pipe and pulled and twisted with all his might until it slithered out from underneath her. He had to return to the surface to gasp for air, but then he went back down and pointed to the pipe, and Sechroom took it into her mouth.

  "But the situation was not yet saved. Sechroom had to spit the pipe out again, because there was too much water still inside it. Hiliti took the pipe to the surface, let the water out, held his hand over the end this time, and went back down.

  "Finally, Sechroom could breathe. Hiliti waited a few breaths to make sure Sechroom was going to be all right for the moment, then he got out of the stream and looked for a lever. Eventually he found a branch straight and stout enough to do the job, he hoped, and he waded back into the river and went under, setting the branch under the fallen tree trunk and over the top of a rock.

  "Well, at last it worked. The lever almost snapped, and when the tree trunk moved it hurt Sechroom's broken leg, but she was freed, and she floated to the surface, and Hiliti was able to lift her out of the stream and get her to the shore. The blow-pipe floated away downstream.

  "It was just as big a struggle for Hiliti to get Sechroom to the top of the bank, because of course Sechroom was almost helpless with her badly broken leg."

  "Did a surgeon have to cut her leg off?" Lattens asked, squirming on the couch, his eyes wide.

  "What? Oh, no. No. Anyway, eventually Hiliti got Sechroom to the. top of the bank. He was so exhausted he had to leave his friend there and return to their camp by himself, but there was a… a signal fire near the camp which he was able to light and that drew the attention of people who came and rescued them."

  "So Sechroom was all right?" Lattens asked.

  DeWar nodded. "She was indeed. Hiliti was regarded as a hero by all, and after Sechroom's leg was mended, but before she left to become a missionary, she went back to the island where it had happened and searched the length of the stream down from the collapsed tree-bridge until she found the two blow-pipes, lodged amongst rocks in different parts of the stream. She cut a piece off the end of the one that
had been hers, and which had saved her life, and she presented it on a little ribbon to Hiliti at a party which their friends held to wish Sechroom well, on the evening of her leaving to become a missionary. It was the sign that what had happened by the other river, when Hiliti had let Sechroom fall into the water by the side of the waterfall — remember? — it was a sign, they both knew, that that didn't matter any more, that Sechroom had forgiven Hiliti. The little wooden ring was a bit too big to be worn as a ring, which was unfortunate, but Hiliti told Sechroom he would treasure it for ever, and he did, and he does, and as far as anybody knows, it is with him to this day."

  "Whereabouts did Sechroom go?" Lattens asked.

  "Who knows?" DeWar said, spreading his hands. "Perhaps she came here. She and Hiliti knew of… of the Empire, and Haspidus. They talked about it, argued over it. She may have been here, for all anyone knows."

  "Did Sechroom ever return to see her friend?" Perrund asked, taking Lattens on to her lap. He wriggled out again.

  DeWar shook his head. "No," he said. "A few years after Sechroom left, so did Hiliti, and he lost touch completely with Lavishia and all the people he knew there. Sechroom could have returned there by now, but Hiliti will never know. He exiled himself from the luxuries of Lavishia for ever. Sechroom and Hiliti will never meet again."

  "How sad," Perrund said. Her voice was low, and her expression sombre. "Never to see one's friends and family again.

  "Well," DeWar began, but then looked up to see one of the Protector's aides signalling him from the doorway. He ruffled Lattens" hair and stood slowly up, lifting his hat, bags and cloak. "I'm afraid I don't have any more time, young general. You must say goodbye to your father now. Look."

  UrLeyn, dressed in a very fine riding outfit, strode into the room. "Where's that boy of mine?" he shouted.

  "Father!" Lattens ran to him and threw himself up into his arms.

  "Oof! My, what a weight you're getting!" UrLeyn looked over to DeWar and Perrund, and winked. He sat down with the boy on a couch near the doors and they huddled together.

  Perrund stood up, by DeWar's side. "Well, sir. You must promise me faithfully you'll take good care of both the Protector and yourself," she told him, raising her face to him. Her eyes looked bright. "I shall be most cross should any harm befall either of you, and brave though you may be, you are not so brave, I hope, as to risk my ire."

  "I shall do all I can to make sure we both return safely," DeWar told her. He rearranged his cloak, hat and bags, putting one on one arm, the other two on the other, before putting the saddle bags over his shoulder and the hat over his head to hang down against his back on its cord.

  Perrund watched this shuffle of impedimenta with a sort of sad amusement. She put her good hand on his, stilling him. "Take care," she said softly. Then she turned and went to sit where she could see UrLeyn and he could see her.

  DeWar looked at her for a moment as she sat there, straightbacked in her long red gown, her face calm and beautiful, then he turned away too, and walked to the doors.

  17. THE DOCTOR

  Master, a killer for Duke Walen was of course eventually procured. It could not be otherwise. The murder of one so prominent cannot simply be left unavenged. As surely as the heir to a vacant title of note must be found, such an event leaves a hole in the fabric of society which has to be repaired with the life of another. It is a vacuum into which some soul must be sucked, and the soul in this case was a poor mad fellow from the city of Mizui who with every appearance of happiness and even fulfilment willingly threw himself into that void.

  His name was Berridge, a one-time tinder-box maker of some age who was well known as a mad fellow in the city. He lived under the city's bridge with a handful of other desperates, begging for money in the streets and scavenging the market for discarded or rotten food. When the death of Duke Walen was made public knowledge in Mizui on the day following the masked ball, Berridge presented himself at the sheriff's office and made a full confession.

  This was not a cause for any great surprise on the sheriff's part, as Berridge routinely claimed responsibility for any murder in or near the city for which there was no obvious culprit, and indeed for some where the murderer could not have been more obvious. His protestations of guilt in court, despite the fact that a husband of known viciousness had been discovered comatose with drink in the same locked room as the body of his butchered wife with the knife still clutched in his bloody hand, were the cause of much hilarity amongst that part of the populace which treats the King's courts as a form of free theatre.

  Normally, Berridge would have been thrown out of the door and into the dust of the street without the sheriff giving the matter a second thought. On this occasion, however, due to the gravity of the offence and the fact that Duke Quettil had only that morning impressed upon the sheriff the extremity of his annoyance at a second unsanctioned murder taking place within his Jurisdiction within so short a time, the sheriff thought the better of treating the madman's claims to such automatic dismissal.

  To his immense surprise and satisfaction, Berridge was incarcerated in the town jail. The sheriff had a note sent to Duke Quettil informing him of this swift action, though he did think to include mention of such confessions being a habitual feature of Berridge's behaviour and that it was correspondingly unlikely that Berridge was really the culprit.

  Guard Commander Polchiek sent word to the sheriff to keep Berridge in jail for the time being. When a half-moon had passed and no progress had been made discovering the murderer, the Duke instructed the sheriff to make further investigations into Berridge's claim.

  Sufficient time had passed for neither Berridge nor any of his under-bridge-dwelling companions to have any recollection whatsoever of the movements of any of them on the day and evening of the masked ball, save that Berridge insisted he had left the city, climbed the hill to the palace, entered the private chambers of the Duke and murdered him in his bed (this quickly changed the better to fit the facts when Berridge heard that the Duke had been killed in a room just off the ballroom, while awake).

  In the continuing absence of any more likely suspect, Berridge was sent to the palace, where Master Ralinge put him to the question. What good this was supposed to do other than to prove that Duke Quettil was serious about the matter and his appointees thorough in their investigations is debatable. Berridge presented no satisfying challenge at all to the Duke's chief torturer and from what I heard suffered relatively little, though still enough to unhinge his feeble brain still further.

  By the time he appeared before the Duke himself to be tried for the Duke's murder, Berridge was a thin, bald, shaking wreck whose eyes roved about with seemingly complete independence from each other. He mumbled constantly yet spoke almost no intelligible words and had confessed not only to the murder of Duke Walen but also to that of King Beddun of Tassasen, Emperor Puiside and King Quience's father King Drasine, as well as claiming to be responsible for the fiery sky rocks which had killed whole nations of people and ushered in the present post-Imperial age.

  Berridge was burned at the stake in the city's square. The Duke's heir, his brother, set the fire himself, though not before having the sad wretch strangled first, to spare him the pain of the fire.

  The rest of our stay in the Yvenage Hills passed relatively uneventfully. There was an air of unsettled concern and even suspicion about the palace for some time, but that gradually dissipated. There were no more unexplained deaths or shocking murders. The King's ankle healed. He went hunting and fell off his mount again, though without incurring any injuries beyond scratches. His health seemed to improve generally, perhaps under the influence. of the clear mountain air.

  The Doctor found she had little to do. She walked and rode in the hills, sometimes with me at her side, sometimes, at her own insistence, alone. She spent some considerable time in Mizui city, treating orphans and other unfortunates at the Paupers" Hospital, comparing notes with the local mid-wives and discussing remedies and potions with the
local apothecaries. As our time at Yvenir went on, a number of casualties from the war in Ladenscion arrived in the city, and the Doctor treated a few of those as best she could. She had little success at first in trying to meet with the doctors of the town, until with the King's permission she invited them to his counsel chamber, and had him briefly meet with them before he went off to hunt.

  She accomplished less than she'd hoped to, I think, in terms of changing some of their ways, which she found even more old fashioned and indeed potentially dangerous to their patients than those of their colleagues in Haspide.

  Despite the King's obvious health, he and the Doctor still seemed to find excuses to meet. The King worried that he might run to fat, as his father had done in later years, and so consulted the Doctor on his diet. This seemed bizarre to those of us for whom growing fat was a sure sign that one was well fed, lightly worked and had achieved a maturity beyond the average, but then perhaps this showed that there was a degree of truth to the rumours that the Doctor had put some strange ideas into the King's head.

  Tongues also wagged concerning the fact the Doctor and the King spent so much time together. As far as I know nothing of an intimate nature took place between them during all this time. I had been present at the Doctor's side on every occasion she had attended the King, save for a couple of instances when I was too ill to leave my bed, when I diligently undertook to discover through my fellow assistants, as well as through certain servants, what had transpired between the Doctor and the King.

  I am satisfied that I missed nothing and have reported everything that could possibly be of note to my Master thus far.

  The King commanded the Doctor's presence most evenings, and if he had no obvious ailments, he would make a show of flexing his shoulders and would claim with a small frown that there might be a stiffness in one or other of them. The Doctor seemed perfectly willing to act the masseuse, and would happily work her various oils into the golden-brown skin of the King's back, kneading and working her palms and knuckles down his spine, across the shoulders and over the nape of his neck. Sometimes at such times they would talk quietly, more often they would be silent, save for the King's sporadic grunts as the Doctor loosened particularly tense knots of muscles. I too kept silent, of course, unwilling to break the spell that seemed to prevail on such candle-lit occasions, and afflicted with an odd, sweet melancholy while I watched in envy as those strong, slender fingers, glistening with perfumed oils, worked on the King's yielding flesh.