by K. J. Parker
Musen tried, but even with his right hand he couldn’t. Axio took the pack from him. “Spears it is,” he said, and picked up his cards. “Oh, God in heaven, what a load of old rubbish.”
Musen pulled his cards down into his lap and spread them out as best he could with the sides and heels of his hands. He’d drawn four high Wheels and the rest were picture cards. “I haven’t got any money.”
“Not true, as it happens.” Axio dumped a handful of coins on the table. “That’s yours,” he said. “I figured you wouldn’t get far with no money.” He grinned. “I’ve learned a lot from watching you,” he said. “Which is fair enough. I taught you to pick locks.”
Musen looked at him, then swept the coins over to his side of the table with the inside of his wrist. Then he glanced down at the cards in his lap. There was no way a hand like that could lose. “I’ll bet the lot,” he said.
“You sure?”
Musen nodded. Axio dropped a gold angel on to the pile. “Read ’em and weep,” he said, and turned over his cards. All pictures; the highest, counting back from the Cherry Tree. He gathered the money and swept it to his side of the table. “Nominally your deal, but I’ll do it for you. Now, since you’re broke, we’ll have to think of something else you can bet with.”
“I haven’t got anything else.”
“Don’t you believe it. For a start, you’ve got all those teeth. I’ll be generous, twenty stuivers against each tooth. And after that we can play for fingers.”
Musen thought about the window. He’d break his neck. “Corason told me you like hurting people,” he said.
“Did he now?” Axio frowned. “That’s a gross oversimplification, as he well knows. I like doing things—to people, for people—that sometimes involve pain. But pain isn’t the reason. It’s involved, but it’s not the reason.” He leaned back in his chair. “We don’t have to play cards,” he said. “I just thought it’d help pass the time, that’s all.” He gathered the pack and put it in his pocket, then did the same with the money. “Did Corason tell you about the time he was a junior captain commanding a half-squadron of light cavalry, and orders came down to intercept an enemy raiding party? Turned out when he got there he was outnumbered eight to one, he didn’t have a hope in hell. But the enemy took over this village, it was in the marshes somewhere, out back of Bresc; village was on an island, with a palisade all round it, and great big wooden gates, I think about five hundred people lived there. So Corason sent his men out to set fire to the reeds. The village burned down; there was no way off the island; the few that made it past the flames went down in the marshes, soldiers and villagers alike. And Corason didn’t see anything wrong with that. He’d been given a job to do, and the orders didn’t mention civilians at all, so he left them out of the equation. Of course, the purpose of the exercise was to stop the raiders hurting the local population, but he couldn’t see that.” He shrugged. “There’s doing things that might have certain side effects which aren’t pleasant, and there’s doing things that utterly defeat the object of the exercise. I’m sure you can see the difference, but I don’t think he can.” He closed his eyes and folded his hands on his chest. “What I’d really like to do is get a couple of hours’ sleep,” he said. “Will you promise me you won’t do anything annoying if I close my eyes for a bit? Bearing in mind your hands are all bunged up and I’m a light sleeper?”
“I promise.”
“Thanks,” Axio said, and yawned. “You’re a pal.” He breathed in deeply and immediately went to sleep.
Musen lifted his head. Light was streaming through the window, the door was open and Axio was gone. He started to get up, pressed his hands to the floor to lever himself up, winced and remembered. He looked at his left hand and saw three black, swollen fingernails.
He found Axio outside, on his hands and knees in the gravel of the yard. “Bloody key,” Axio explained. “That’s my window there, look. Got to find the key and hand it back in, or they won’t let me stay here again.”
Musen took a step back and trod on something. “Here,” he said. “Sorry, I can’t pick it up for you.”
Axio crawled towards him like a dog, then stopped, just out of kicking range. “Thanks,” he said. “I obviously couldn’t see for looking.” Musen took two long steps back; Axio retrieved the key, stood up and brushed gravel off the knees of his trousers. “I’ve seen Corason,” he said. “It all went off like a charm. One very pissed-off emperor, but Corason said there was never any doubt. He stood over him while he wrote out the orders for Senza, and our man the food taster confirmed they reached the courier.” He turned the key over in his hand. “Nothing can catch those boys once they get going,” he said, “but just to be on the safe side, Corason told him we’ve kept back one card.” He produced it from his sleeve, like a conjuror; it flashed dazzling white in the morning sun, and then Axio put it away again. “He gets that the day after tomorrow, assuming no further couriers get sent to the Front. Not from us, though, thank God. We’re free to go, once I’ve made the arrangements for this little beauty.”
Musen took a deep breath. “Can I see it?” he said. “Just a quick look. Please.”
Axio shook his head. “Better not,” he said. “Kinder if you don’t, if you see what I mean. Right, I’d better hand this key in, and then I’ve got to meet this man. Corason’s out on the stoop if you want company.”
Musen watched him go, then followed him back into the tea house and out on to the covered porch. There he saw Corason sitting alone at a small table, with a teapot and an empty plate.
“There you are,” Corason said. “Sleep well?” Then he frowned. He’d caught sight of Musen’s left hand. “Been playing rough games, have you?”
“I caught it in a door.”
“Of course you did. I thought Axio seemed bright and cheerful this morning, I should’ve guessed.” He nodded at a spare chair; Musen sat down. “He’s told you, I take it.”
Musen inclined his head.
“Job done,” Corason said. “Rasch Cuiber saved from annihilation; everyone breathes again. I watched him write it out; withdraw to the frontier by the shortest possible route, regroup and await further orders. I guess you could say we’ve won. Well, someone has, anyway.” He grinned. “Excuse me if I babble, this is the most amazing weight off my mind. I never thought we’d do it, it was such a bloody stupid idea.” He shivered, and pulled his heavy cloak up round his face. “To be honest with you, I never expected to survive this one. When you two showed up in that horrible shack, I said to myself, this is it: this is the end of the line. Ah well.” He grinned and sipped his tea. “I’ve got to hang around here a day or so, then I’m off to make sure Senza’s pulled out like he’s supposed to.” He put the teacup down. “Fancy a trip to Rasch? Two capital cities in one month, can’t be bad.”
Musen stared at him. “What do you need me for?”
“Absolutely nothing,” Corason replied. “But it occurred to me you might like a break from Axio. Particularly since he appears to have taken a shine to you.” He waited for a moment or so, then clicked his tongue sharply. “Up to you entirely: you think about it, tell me what you want to do. Otherwise, I imagine, you two’ll be heading back to Central. Just you and him. What fun.”
Musen stood up and walked away, not looking back.
Axio didn’t come back to the tea house that morning, or in the afternoon. Corason wasn’t worried to begin with—he had various theories about what Axio might be up to—but around mid-afternoon he put on a heavy scarf and a thick hood and went out. He came back after dark, when Musen was eating in the dining room.
“Well,” he said, “there’s been no couriers at all sent today, which is unusual in itself, but I think we can take that as meaning they haven’t got the missing card, at any rate. Nobody’s seen him anywhere.” He sat down at Musen’s table and lowered his voice. “Our man in the kettlehats reckons he’d know if Axio had been brought in, and I believe him. Far as he’s aware, they haven’t even been loo
king. The idea was to keep both of you out of it, hence the last-minute change of plan, so there’s no reason to suppose they’ve got either of you linked to me. In which case, whatever’s happened to him, it’s not because of this business. My guess, based on knowing him most of my life, is that he’s either sleeping it off on a trash heap somewhere, or he ran into one of the hundreds of thousands of people who don’t like him. Ah well. Life goes on.”
Musen looked at him. “What was the bad thing he did?” he asked. “When he was younger, in the army.”
“Oh, that.” Corason looked down at his hands. “Let’s say he tells that story much better than I do, and leave it at that. Neither of us came out of it exactly smelling of roses.”
Musen sat up in Axio’s room all night, but he didn’t come back. Corason looked in just before dawn. “You’re here,” he said. “No sign, I take it.”
“No.”
“Mphm. Look, if he’s not back by the time I leave, you’d better come with me. All right?”
“Is that an order?”
“Yes, I think so.” Corason hesitated, half in and half out of the doorway. “I don’t know your file very well, but I gather you steal things. Is that right?”
Musen nodded.
“Well, not while you’re with me, you don’t. Not unless I tell you to. Got that?”
“Yes.”
“Fine.” He lifted his hand to his mouth and bit off a hangnail. “I guess I’ll be the one who has to write to his damned brother,” he said. “It’s just one gloriously wonderful thing after another in the Service.”
News. A drunk staggered out of a wine shop, tripped over the cobbles, grabbed at Musen’s arm, missed, crashed into Corason, flung his arms round his neck to keep from going over, and whispered in his ear that the courier known to be carrying Senza’s recall orders had passed through way station 26, paused only to change horses, ridden off at a hell of a lick, no sign of anybody following him.
Corason spent most of the day writing letters, which he stuffed into hollowed-out bones he’d got from a butcher. Musen’s job was to dump the bones on the trash heap out back of the Nine Cardinal Virtues, which led to a misunderstanding with an overconscientious dog, during the course of which he damaged his right hand still further climbing a fence in a hurry.
No sign of Axio. Contacts and contacts of contacts in the kettlehats, the Watch, the prefecture and the subsection of the Works Office responsible for pulling dead bodies out of the river all confirmed that nobody answering that description had been seen, dead or alive—and Axio would be hard to miss. Musen clearly remembered thinking, the first time he saw him, that here was the most handsome man he’d ever seen—not particularly tall; 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, that typical smile of mild amusement. True, he’d shown that he had the knack of making himself nondescript, practically invisible, but he only did that when he had to; he plainly enjoyed the slightly stunned look on people’s faces when they met him. It was a terrible burden, he used to protest, a real handicap for a man wanted by the authorities in sixty-seven provinces. But it should have made him easy to find, and they hadn’t found him.
“I want to stay here,” Musen said. “Just in case he comes back. Then I’ll catch you up.”
Corason burst out laughing. “You, all alone in the big city? Sorry, I don’t think so. Anyway, it’s not up to you: you’re under orders. You’ll do as you’re told.”
“I’m staying here,” Musen said. “Just till he turns up again. Sorry.”
Corason rolled his eyes. “Another one,” he said. “Fine. The only reason I’m going to let you stay is, I’m quite sure he’s not coming back—he’s dead, or arrested, or defected, or he’s been taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot, what-bloody-ever. What are you proposing to do for money, by the way? I can’t fund you, I’m short enough for myself as it is.”
“I’ll manage.”
“Yes, well. If you get caught managing, you’re not a craftsman and the Lodge has never heard of you, capisce? I’ll pass the word around before I go.”
“I won’t get caught,” Musen said.
“You realise, this’ll have to go in your file. It won’t do you any good.”
Musen didn’t bother to react to that. It broke his heart to disobey the Lodge; but the Lodge had sold the silver pack to Glauca the emperor, and he wasn’t sure he could ever forgive something like that.
Choris is the last place on earth where you’d expect it to snow; but it does happen, very occasionally, when cold winds from the north meet wet winds from the east in the corridor between the mountains. It’s fine, powdery, gritty stuff and it never settles, but the locals act as though the sky was hurling down brimstone; the streets are deserted, and the few desperate souls who venture out in it run from doorway to doorway, cocooned in multiple layers of woolly clothing.
“Marvellous,” Corason growled, as he lengthened his stirrup leathers. “I’ll be riding west in a blizzard. Exactly what I need to make this whole trip perfect.”
He was wearing his thick fur hood over a military flowerpot fur hat, and the tip of his nose poked out over his scarf. His fingers were bright red. Musen reached inside his shirt and produced a pair of sheepskin mittens. “I got you these,” he said solemnly.
Corason stared at them, then grabbed them and stuffed his hands into them. “God bless you,” he said hoarsely. “I went all over town and everywhere said there wasn’t a pair to be had.” He frowned. “Should I ask if these were honestly come by?”
“No.”
“Fine, I won’t.” He stuck his foot in the stirrup and hoisted himself into the saddle; not an easy thing to do in all those bulky clothes. “Now then,” he said, gathering the reins. “Change of plan, as far as you’re concerned. Your orders to accompany me to Rasch are cancelled. Instead, I need you to stick around here, keep an eye on the situation, in particular try and find out what you can about the whereabouts of Commissioner Axio. If he shows up, use regular channels to inform Central, and tell him I strongly urge him to return there. Got that?”
“Yes.”
“Good lad. I’ve always said that, given enough patience, Rhus can be trained to carry out simple tasks. Now, since you’re here officially, I can authorise a subsistence allowance out of Lodge funds. You’ll find it on the bed in my room.”
Musen nodded. He’d found it already. Most of it had gone to buy the gloves from the hall porter.
“Your room here’s paid up six weeks in advance,” Corason went on; “that wasn’t a problem, since they take Lodge paper.” The horse was getting impatient, tossing its head and backing up. “Listen,” Corason said. “If Axio does turn up, you watch yourself, you hear me? And give him my love. All right, you stupid bloody animal, that’s quite enough of that. Onwards.” He turned the horse’s head and gave it a gentle nudge with his heels; it broke into a trot, which Corason tried to sit out; but by the time Musen lost sight of him under the arch, he’d given in and was rising to it, a huge furry shape shrouded in falling snowflakes.
Nine of Wheels
Musen wasn’t the only one to see him off. He noticed her out of the corner of his eye as he rode down Victory Row, saw her again as he cleared the city gate, knew she was following him as soon as he turned left and headed up Foregate. Just for a split second he considered turning off and trying to lose her in the tangle of yards and alleys by the Tanneries, but it was quite possible she knew the streets of Choris better than he did. Well, he thought, why not? He managed to confine the stupid horse to a brisk walk and waited for her to catch him up.
“I thought you had people for this sort of thing,” he called out, when he was sure she could hear him. “Don’t tell me, they’ve cut your budget again.”
He heard a brisk clatter of hooves on the road behind him, and she drew level and pulled aside
her veil so that he could see her face. “Commissioner,” she said.
He winced. “This isn’t what was agreed,” he said.
“On the contrary.” Her voice was deeper than he’d imagined it would be, but rather pleasant. “We’ve stuck to the agreement in every particular, and now it’s completed.”
“Quite. All done and dusted. So why are you following me?”
“To find out where you’re going and what you do next.”
“Ah.” He nudged his horse into a trot. She kept perfect station with him, shoulder to shoulder. He slowed down again. “Surely now I know about you, there’s no point.”
“Maybe.”
It wasn’t a good time for him to get one of his headaches, but he could feel it gathering, just behind his eyes. “All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you where I’m going and what I’m about to do. I’m going to see for myself that Senza Belot’s army is pulling out. There, I’ve saved you a long and uncomfortable ride. In the snow.”
“Thank you,” she said. “That’s what we’d assumed.”
They rode on for a while. “You’re not turning back, then.”
“No.”
He sneaked a sideways look at her. It was hard to tell—she was almost as heavily wrapped up as he was—but he got the impression of a severe-looking woman, about his age or maybe a few years older, in an expensive but well-used riding cloak with a dark fur hood that probably wasn’t issue; apart from that, he could see the toe of her boot, which was dark and slightly gleaming with sheep’s-wool grease. She sat the horse well, back straight, hands low, weight in her heels; not cavalry-style, or the farmer’s lolling crouch, or the lazy-centaur look of the government courier or the horse archer. Someone had taught her to ride, and she’d been a good pupil. “You do realise,” he said, “you’re about as conspicuous as a forest fire. Women just don’t go riding about the place on their own, it’s unnatural.”
