The Last Witness

by K. J. Parker

  Like that—

  I drank my tea. To push the analogy where it was reluctant to go, it felt like I’d managed to acquire the twin memory of one I already had—but it doesn’t work like that, does it? And besides, I have perfect recall, and I couldn’t remember another episode in a clay trench in the war. I was absolutely certain I’d never broken my leg; that’s not the sort of thing you forget, even if you’re capable of forgetting—

  (I assume I’m incapable of forgetting, because I’ve never been aware of having done so. Exactly. Circular argument.)

  The honeycake wasn’t bad, though I wish they wouldn’t overdo it by piling on the cinnamon. The man came back with my change. I left a two-stuiver tip. You can afford to be generous when you’ve got more money than God.

  * * *

  A hero like me (my weakness is heroic; it’s a recurring theme in the mythologies of most cultures) fears nothing but fear itself; I’m shit-scared of fear, the very thought of it makes me go all to pieces. As the sun went down, I had this overwhelming urge to barricade myself in my loft, chain myself to the rafters, anything to keep from going out into the gathering darkness to where the dice fall and the cards are dealt. But I’d given my word of honour, so I had to go. If you can’t trust a god, who can you trust?

  Don’t answer that.

  I stopped off at a certain low-profile all-night dealership on the way, but I was still early; he didn’t turn up until well after curfew. I stepped out from behind a pillar, and he didn’t see me until it was too late.

  I drew my sword and hit him between the shoulder blades with the pommel-nut. I recommend this move; you knock all the air out of a man’s body without causing permanent damage. He’s helpless, you can do what you like. I grabbed him and turned him round, then brought the pommel-nut down as hard as I could on his collarbone. It’s one of the most painful things you can do to anybody. His mouth opened, and no sound came out. I stepped back to half measure and touched the point of the blade to his neck. “I’ve brought you your money,” I said.

  He was staring at me. He made me feel like I was unimaginably horrifying, the sort of thing you can’t see without losing your mind. I liked that. I gave him a little prod with the sword, almost enough to draw blood but not quite. “Three angels,” I said. “Hold out your hand.”

  He couldn’t. He was too numb from the pain. So I came forward, grabbed his hand, pulled it toward me, and opened the balled fingers. Tucked inside my palm were the coins. I released them into his hand and closed his fingers around them.

  “Pleasure doing business with you,” I said.

  The plan was to kick him in the nuts, to keep him busy while I withdrew, but there was no need. I slid the sword back into its scabbard under my coat, turned, and walked away. After I’d gone a few yards I turned and looked. He was still standing there, frozen. Not sensible, to stay perfectly still for any length of time in that neighbourhood, if you’ve got money on your person. But so what? Am I my brother’s keeper?

  * * *

  How do you suppose you’d feel if, after many trials and tribulations and having endured many sorrows along the way, you arrived at the satisfactory culmination of your adventures, with every loose end tied off and all outstanding issues dealt with finally and symmetrically? As though your life were a perfectly told story, concluded with a magnificent flourish?

  I went home, pausing only to dump the sword down a well (not the sort of thing you’d want to be caught with on the streets at night, even if you’re a god). I realised I was starving hungry, but there was nothing to eat apart from a stale quarter-loaf and a sliver of cheese rind. Forget it, I told myself; tomorrow you’ll be out of here forever. Then I remembered I couldn’t touch my money for another ten days—ah, well. That gave me ten days to select a gentleman’s residence and deal with the legal formalities; in the meantime, I still had a whole angel, enough to buy plenty of good, wholesome food for a fortnight. I was very nearly out of lamp oil, so I snuffed the lamp and sat there in the dark most of the night, waiting to be reborn.

  * * *

  I think I fell asleep just before dawn, because when the knock on the door woke me up, I was groggy and stupid, and the light through the hole in the roof was very early morning, by its tone and angle. I got up off the floor and staggered to answer the door.

  There was this woman. She looked at me, but didn’t say what she was thinking. Instead, she said, “Excuse me, but are you the man who takes away memories?”

  She was probably about forty-five, or a bit older; not younger. She had a thin face, and clothes that had cost a fair bit of money a long time ago. Someone had put in a lot of time and effort keeping them neat and clean over the years. “Yes,” I said, “but I’m retired now. Sorry.”

  “It’s my daughter,” she said. “It’s so bad, and I don’t know what to do.”

  I looked at her. I can’t read minds, but I’ve been in business a long time, so I can guess. “You’d better come in,” I said.

  “I haven’t got much money.”

  “No,” I said, “I don’t suppose you have.”

  I was right. Three days earlier, her daughter had been raped by three men on her way back from Temple. Since then she hadn’t said a word, hadn’t eaten anything, just sat and stared at something nobody else could see. Her mother had six angels, but she was sure she could borrow another six. She was terribly afraid her daughter was going to die.

  I looked at her. “Do I know you?” I said.

  She shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I have this terrible memory.”

  She didn’t try to answer that. “Will you help her?” she said. “Please?”

  The bad thing about being a god is that people pray to you. I said nothing. I think that hurt her more than a sharp blow to the collarbone. I’m no angel, but I do feel things. “If it’s the money,” she said, “I can go to a moneylender or something. Please?”

  I sighed, and I remember thinking, maybe this is how it is for the Invincible Sun, who takes away the sins of the world. Easy, glib phrase, that—you say it twice a day at Offices, but have you stopped to think what it actually means? I have. The idea is He takes your sins, the loathsome and unbearable things you’ve done, and he transfers them to Himself; it’s as if He’d done them, not you, for all practical purposes He has done them, and all the guilt and pain and self-disgust are His now, not yours, and you’re free and clear. Just imagine how much love and goodness it’d take to make anyone do a thing like that.

  Still; I don’t suppose He enjoys it; and accordingly, I don’t have to either.

  “I can give you half an hour,” I said, rather ungraciously. “Where do you live?”

  * * *

  On the way there, I asked her who’d told her about me. She said she couldn’t remember.

  The daughter was a skinny, stupid-looking little thing, which made me wonder who the hell could be bothered; a question that would of course be answered very soon. I took the mother to one side. You do realise, I told her, that if I wipe this memory, she won’t be able to identify the men or testify against them; they’ll get off scot-free, and that’s not right. She just looked at me. Fair enough. Justice (which doesn’t exist) is not to be confused with retribution. Justice would be making it so that the bad thing had never even happened. Justice is mine, saith the Invincible Sun.

  I sat down on a three-legged stool opposite the girl and stared at her until the side of her head melted and I could see in. There were the usual rows of shelves, with the memories stacked on them. No trouble at all finding the one I was after. It was right there in front of me. I reached for it and took it down.

  —and there she was, the skinny girl, standing next to me. She had a long, thin nose that reminded me of someone, and no lobes to her ears. She was staring at me—not eye to eye, she was gazing at the side of my head. Get out of it, I shouted at her—I mouthed the words but could make no sound. Stop doing that. Get out of my mind. She
turned her head and looked at me, frowning, as if I were logically impossible. She said something, but I couldn’t hear it. Her lips were thin and practically colourless, and I couldn’t read them. It’s for your own good, you stupid girl, I tried to tell her. She couldn’t understand me. She reached for the scroll in my hand, but I pulled it away. I could feel her looking through the wall of my skull. It hurt like hell. I yelled, and got out of there.

  The girl had her eyes tight shut, and she was screaming. Her mother pulled me off the stool and dragged me away. She was shouting, stop it, what have you done to her? Then the girl stopped yammering; I pulled my arm out of the mother’s sharklike grip and ran out into the street. People turned and looked at me. I kept running. I remember thinking, when He does it, they’re grateful. I get yelled at. There’s no justice.

  * * *

  The plan had been to spend the morning cruising elegantly round the various auctioneers and real-estate agents. I didn’t do that. Instead, I went home, wedged my one chair against the door, and sat crouched in a corner.

  The memory of the rape (which was bad enough, God knows) had somehow fused with the moment when I found the skinny girl standing next to me. I wanted to hide, but you can’t when it’s yourself you’re trying to run away from. Just as well I’d dumped that sword, or I’d have tried to cut my own head off. Any damn thing, just to make it stop.

  * * *

  Which it did, of its own accord, a long and unquantifiable amount of time later. What cured it, I think, was a little voice in my head, apparently unaffected by the mayhem going on all around (like the farmer in the valley just over the ridge from the battle, who goes on serenely ploughing while thirty thousand men die, half a mile away) that kept repeating; I know that woman, I’m sure I’ve seen her before, I never forget a face—

  And then I sort of slid into another of the memories I’d taken from the good-looking man the day before. This time it was a nice one. He was sitting on the grass beside a river—I knew the place, an old abandoned iron mine high up on the moor, sounds grim but actually it’s beautiful when the heather’s out and the sun’s shining. He was with another man and two pretty girls, and they were all dressed in the gentrified walking outfits that were in fashion about twenty years ago. There was a big wicker basket; cold chicken, ham, garlic sausage, fluffy white rolls; a stone bottle floated in the river to keep it cool, a string round its neck to keep it from floating away, anchored to a wooden peg driven into the turf of the bank. I made a joke (which I didn’t quite catch); the girls laughed, but the other man scowled—he didn’t like that I was amusing them, and that made me want to smile. He was my best friend and a brother officer, but all’s fair in love and war.

  Around noon, I suddenly remembered that I was still hungry. I’ve never been so pleased to be hungry in all my life.

  * * *

  To reconcile my unkempt appearance with my desire to buy an expensive house, I told them I was a gold miner just back from the Mesoge. I don’t think they believed me but it was an acceptable lie; they recognised it, the way governments recognise each other without necessarily approving. I showed them a letter from the Social and Beneficent, which confirmed that I was indeed a rich man, whose funds would be available to draw on in nine days’ time. They liked me ever so much more after that.

  The first place they took me to see, I didn’t even bother going inside. Sorry, I told them, but I don’t have a dog. And if I did, I wouldn’t be so cruel as to keep it cramped up in something that small.

  The next place was just off the Park, opposite the side gate of the Baths of Genseric. There was a high brick wall with a tiny wicket gate in it; go through that and you’re suddenly in this beautiful formal garden, with a fountain and little box-hedge-enclosed diamonds planted out in sweet herbs and lavender. The house itself was early Formalist, with those tiny leaded-pane windows and two ornate columns flanking the front door. The price they were asking seemed a trifle on the cheap side; it turned out they were acting as agents for the Treasury, the house having been confiscated from the estate of a recently executed traitor. I had, how shall I put it, certain connections with that case (here’s a hint; they hanged the wrong man). Thanks but no thanks.

  The third one was just right. It was on the riverbank; the main entrance was actually from a landing-stage, and we arrived by boat. As soon as I walked through the door I felt at home. There was something about the place that made me feel right somehow, as though I’d been away for too long but was back again where I ought to be. I sat down on the window seat in the back kitchen and looked out over the river. I could see a boat, one of those flat-bottomed barges they use for hauling lumber and ore down from the moors to the City. It lay low in the water, and gulls were mobbing the crew as they lounged and ate barley cakes in the bows. I grinned and reached for my tea.

  Which wasn’t there, of course, although my fingers closed with exact precision on where the tea-bowl should have been—where it had been, twenty-one years ago, when I sat in the bay window of my best friend’s house, the second day of his first home leave from the war—

  I jumped up, remembering to duck my head so as not to crack it against the overhanging beam, which I hadn’t noticed when I sat down (but I knew it was there, just as I know where my fingers are) and ran out of the house. The agent was outside, leaning against a pillar, eating an apple. Not this one, I told him. He smiled. Of course not, he said. Let’s go and look at something else.

  * * *

  The next day, the man from the Knights of Poverty took me out to see a place he was sure I’d like, about ten miles north of the city. True, it was just a farmhouse; but in the big hay meadow stood the derelict but still fundamentally sound shell of a fine old manor house. I could live in the farm while the big house was done up, which wouldn’t take long (by an extraordinary coincidence, his brother-in-law the builder lived in the village) and then I’d have exactly the home I wanted, created to my precise specifications, for a tenth of what it’d have cost to buy anything similar that still had a roof. We saw the ruin first. It was a tall galleon of bleak, untidy stone rearing up out of a sea of nettles. It certainly had potential, the way a granite boulder is potentially a masterpiece of portrait sculpture. It looked as much like a house as I do, but the Knight assured me his brother-in-law would have it shipshape in ten minutes flat. Then we looked round the farmhouse; one big room downstairs, a combination bedroom and hayloft above it. I grew up in a smaller version. Oh, and there were a hundred and ninety acres of good pasture, if I was interested in that sort of thing. Five hundred angels. I offered him four and he accepted open-mouthed, as though he’d just cut open a fish and found a giant ruby. I asked him, who used to live in the big house? He didn’t know. It was a long time ago, and everyone had died or moved away.

  * * *

  The best thing about living in the farmhouse was nobody knowing I was there. I had taken pains to leave no forwarding addresses, and I’d made the Knights promise they’d never heard of me, if anyone came asking.

  The second best thing was the house itself, with its paved yard, three barns, well, and stable. I walked into the village and bought a dozen chickens; an old woman and a very young boy brought them on a handcart that afternoon, by which time I’d fixed up the end of the smallest barn as a poultry shed. I left the chickens pecking weeds out from between the flags in the yard and hiked out east to look for my neighbour; he turned out to be a short, broad, harassed-looking man about my age, who sold me a half-ton of barley and told his eldest boy to cart it over that evening. By nightfall, I had chicken-feed and chickens to feed it to; I ground a big cupful of the barley in a rusty hand-mill I found in the middle barn, to make bread for myself the next day. I’d forgotten how tiring it is working one of those things. After an hour, my arm and neck ached and I still had half the grain to do. I was happy, for the first time in years; relaxed, peaceful, as I’d assumed only a god could be.

  Over the next two weeks I bought two dozen good ewes at the fair, and
a pony and cart, and a dog. I was busy patching up the hedges and fences. The Knight’s brother-in-law came asking for money. He found me in the long pasture, splitting rails out of a crooked ash I’d felled the previous day, and asked me if I knew where the owner was. Who? The rich city gent who’d bought the big house. Oh, him, I said, and sent him down to the farmhouse. He left a note. I wrote a reply and a draft on the Bank, walked down to the village when it was too dark to work, and slipped it under his door. Two days later I was driving the sheep to new pasture and happened to pass the ruin. It was almost invisible under new white pine scaffolding, like a city under siege. I gave it a wide berth.

  That night the fox got in and killed all my chickens. I remember sitting cross-legged in the yard, surrounded by feathered wrecks, bawling like a child.

  * * *

  Then they tracked me down, and a carriage arrived to take me to the City. Get lost, I told the driver, I’m retired, I’m a gentleman of leisure now. He looked at my clothes and the hammer and fencing pliers stuck through my belt and the wire burns on my hands, and went away to report to his superiors.

  Then the young man—the old man’s son—rode out to see me. They needed me, he said. He understood that I’d given up regular practice, but he was sure I’d make an exception. The fee was a thousand angels. I’m retired, I said, I’m a gentleman farmer. I have all the money I could possibly want.