by K. J. Parker
That, Gannadius reflected, was what he liked about Jaufrez Mogre. Alone of all the Shastel factioneers he’d met, Mogre freely admitted that his life’s work was a game, and a dangerous and silly one at that. Useless, yes, and potentially disastrous, almost as bad as abstract philosophy, he’d cheerfully admitted, when after a long and lugubrious evening over a jar of genuine Colleon applejack Gannadius had actually voiced his opinion of Shastel politics. The difference is, we don’t pretend we can turn each other into frogs. Good applejack, this, have another.
‘Jaufrez, I want to tell you something,’ Gannadius replied, sitting down and looking meaningfully at the jug on a nearby table. ‘You may remember, a while back, we were talking about various things and I admitted that I couldn’t do magic?’
‘Yes, I remember.’
‘Well,’ Gannadius said, with a sheepish grin, ‘I was lying.’
Carefully, not allowing his attention to wander, Jaufrez poured two cups of Mavoeson perry in such a way as to make sure the bitter sediment stayed in the jug. ‘Is that right?’ he said. ‘That’s interesting.’
‘It’s true, Jaufrez. Not the sort of magic you’re thinking of, in fact it’s not really magic, but it’s not, well, normal either. I suppose you could say it’s halfway between the two.’
‘I believe you,’ Mogre replied, putting one cup down in front of Gannadius. ‘Don’t think you’re telling me something I don’t know, because you’re not. That’s why I’ve always regarded you as a dangerous bugger; you can sometimes do this stuff, but you don’t know how or why, and usually you can’t make it do what you want.’ He smiled over the rim of his cup. ‘I do read the intelligence reports, you know. I was reading about all this while you still thought the plainspeople would never take Perimadeia.’
‘Oh,’ Gannadius said. ‘I wish you’d told me.’
Jaufrez shrugged. ‘I thought you knew. Oh, right then, I’d better tell you some other stuff you might not know. Niessa Loredan,’ he went on, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. ‘She’s a witch.’
‘Niessa Loredan?’
Jaufrez nodded. ‘Straight up. She knows more about the Principle than you ever will. And if you want proof,’ he added with a wry grin, ‘you used to live in it.’
Gannadius frowned. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said.
‘Think,’ Jaufrez replied sternly. ‘The original curse, right? And before you ask, this is straight from the bitch’s mouth, via one of our most valuable snitches on Scona, so you keep this to yourself and don’t even think about it without telling me. The original curse was placed on Bardas Loredan by Alexius at the instigation of Iseutz Hedin, Niessa’s daughter. Alexius – and you, of course – then do everything you possibly can to lift the wretched thing, by which time it’s got hopelessly tangled up in the affairs of Perimadeia itself, because Bardas Loredan has become Colonel Loredan and is in charge of the City defences. Bardas doesn’t get killed by Iseutz, and the City falls. Now that’s history. The connection you don’t seem to have made is that the City falls because Bardas doesn’t get killed. Or had you grasped that already?’
Gannadius sat still and quiet for a moment. ‘Why?’ he said.
‘Because Niessa Loredan’s a witch,’ Jaufrez replied. ‘Easy. She brought together two unwitting agents: her daughter, and a man with an innate ability to manipulate the Principle – natural, I think you call them – Patriarch Alexius.’
‘What?’ Gannadius lurched forward in his seat, spilling his drink. ‘Alexius?’
‘Ah, you didn’t know that either. Interesting.’ Jaufrez nodded. ‘It’s got something to do with the really rather bizarre history of the Loredan family – you do know about that, don’t you? Oh, good. Niessa wanted the City to fall, and she wanted Bardas back, and she wanted her daughter back as well. Now I won’t even attempt to go into the theoretical stuff, which is all equations and funny notation and long words, but basically, because of all the history of Bardas and Maxen and the systematic destruction of the plainspeople’s society, the fall of Perimadeia was Bardas’ fault. Niessa recognised that, she knew that in consequence the City would be destroyed by them, sooner or later, and it was just a matter of leaning on the right supernatural levers and tweaking the right pulleys to make it happen. But to save Bardas, not to mention Iseutz – remember, she’s caught up in this ghastly Loredan family thing, her mother was Maxen’s niece just as much as Bardas was Maxen’s nephew – she needed to find some way to protect them that wouldn’t jeopardise the fall of the City, which she very much wanted to happen. The purpose of the curse was to make Alexius avert it; to keep those two safe from each other, and therefore safe generally, by churning up the Principle all round them with shields and defenses and all manner of such things; the result being that while all this was going on, Bardas Loredan could have jumped in the sea with lead boots on and still not have drowned – charmed life, completely safe from anything you care to name.’
Gannadius pulled himself together; not easy to do. ‘But that doesn’t explain what you said about the City falling because Bardas wasn’t killed,’ he said. ‘Does it?’
‘Again, my friend, think it through. Bardas is carrying the blame for what Maxen did to the plainspeople. The necessary outcome should be that the City is punished, and Bardas dies. Again, don’t ask me to show you the maths, but Niessa worked out that the directon the Principle was tending towards was that Bardas should die defending the City, and the City survive. Not the desired result. But,’ he added, ‘with a little shuffling, a pair of silly old fools meddling with dangerous stuff they don’t understand – no disrespect intended, of course – and everything turns out the way Niessa wanted. Apparently she had a slice of unexpected luck when it turned out there was another natural in there rooting for Bardas, but otherwise it was all according to plan. And that’s why I worry about magic, and Niessa Loredan being a witch. And,’ he went on, staring hard into Gannadius’ eyes, ‘why I made damn sure we got you before she could. My big mistake was thinking Alexius was too old and frail to make the journey, or be any use to her if he did. Bad mistake, that. I should have realised that it was the Principle that nearly killed him back during the siege, not his own bad health. But,’ he added with a sigh, ‘when you’ve got a thousand and one things to take care of, you get lazy and jump to unwarranted conclusions. Sorry, I’ve been rabbiting on. You came here to tell me something?’
Gannadius was silent for a long time. ‘I think I owe you an apology,’ he said. ‘I thought you were just another of the faction buffoons, and in fact you run the place.’
Jaufrez looked scandalised. ‘Me?’ he said. ‘Not in the least. Shastel is run by the Foundation in Chapter, in accordance with the spirit of the precepts laid down by our founders, and if you think I think otherwise, you really are insulting me.’ He relaxed and smiled. ‘Gannadius, my dear old friend, what do you think we’ve all been doing these years? The Grand Order of Poverty and Learning is the greatest repository of knowledge and wisdom the world has ever known. We’d got the hang of the Principle back when your Patriarchs were still learning to do long division. Our problem is, rather like Niessa, we understand it but we aren’t much good at making it do useful work. Unnaturally low per capita level of naturals, probably as a result of our intensive study of the subject – don’t know why, but it seems that the more interested you are in the subject as a community, the less likely you are to throw up these lethal freaks of nature. Which is why we’re so excited about you and young Machaera. That and the link you’ve presumably still got to Alexius-’ his grin broadened. ‘Oh, come on,’ he said. ‘Otherwise why in the gods’ names would we hire an old fraud like you to be a Doctor of Philosophy in the greatest academic institution in the world? The boy who cleans your boots knows more philosophy than you do; but of course,’ he added, yawning, ‘he can’t change people into frogs.’
It took Gannadius nearly a minute to get his voice back. ‘Volco Bovert,’ he said.
‘My old tutor in Paranormal Dy
namics, and the author of one of the standard commentaries,’ Jaufrez replied. ‘What about him?’
Gannadius licked his lips to free them. ‘And does he know I’m a fraud?’ he said.
‘But you’re not,’ Jaufrez said patiently. ‘Oh, you may think you are, but you’re not. You’re that exceptionally rare occurrence, the man who isn’t a natural to begin with, but who messes about with naturals for so long that the ability rubs off on him. Which is why, now that the war’s starting to go a bit yellow on us, we need you.’
Gannadius let go a deep breath, which he hadn’t realised he’s been holding. ‘So that’s it,’ he said. ‘You’re really a city of wizards.’
Jaufrez shook his head. ‘Only in our spare time,’ he said.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The next morning, Bardas Loredan left the house shortly before sunrise. He took with him a felling axe, three wedges in a leather bag and a quart barrel of cider.
He walked for about twenty minutes, found what he was looking for and set to work. He hadn’t been at it long when he saw Athli coming towards him, struggling gamely through the long, wet grass in her fashionable boots.
‘There you are,’ she said. ‘I followed the sound of the axe.’
‘Good thinking.’ Bardas leant on the axe-handle for a moment. ‘I’m out of condition,’ he said irritably, ‘getting soft and fat in my old age. Did you want something?’
Athli shook her head. ‘I felt like breath of air,’ she said.
‘Right.’ Bardas lifted the axe and pointed with it at the tree he was felling. He’d cut deeply into the trunk on two sides; the cuts looked neat and symmetrical. ‘My great-grandfather planted that tree,’ he said, ‘when he was a boy. It was a tradition in our family – you planted a tree for your eldest son to cut down and make into the roof-tree of his house. Somehow my grandfather never got around to using this one, and it became a sort of family mascot.’ He looked up into the branches. ‘From up there, you can see right across to Joyous Beacon, assuming it isn’t raining.’
‘And you’re cutting it down,’ Athli said.
‘That’s right.’
‘I see.’
Bardas took a step or two to the side, changed his grip on the axe and swung. ‘The idea,’ he said, punctuating his words with precisely aimed blows, ‘is to cut away on three sides, the fourth side being the opposite direction from the one you want the tree to fall in.’ He worked briskly and without apparent effort, raising the axe-head and letting it fall under little more than its own weight, making sure that each cut carried on from its predecessor in a planned logical sequence. ‘Now, I want this tree to fall that way – right where you’re standing, in fact – so the trunk will be supported by that little hump in the ground when I come to start splitting. Important to take the support away from each side equally – that way, when it’s ready it’ll go, just like that.’
Athli watched for a while, trying to think of something to say. ‘What kind of tree is it?’ she asked.
‘Osage,’ Bardas replied. ‘Very few of them left in these parts now. People will insist on cutting them down, you see.’
‘I see. And why’s that?’
Loredan moved across a little. ‘It’s the best timber of all for bow-making,’ he said, his eyes fixed on the cut. ‘Better than yew or hickory or ash or elm, if you can find the right stuff. About one tree in twenty’s fit for the job; the rest’s firewood. Of course, you can’t tell it it’s any good until you’ve felled it. Evil stuff to work with, of course. If you violate the growth rings, you’re finished.’
Athli watched for a while, as he took out the third side and moved round for the final assault. ‘What’s a growth ring?’ she asked.
‘Look at a trunk that’s been sawn through, and you’ll see lots of concentric rings, right? They’re growth rings. If the tree was a family, each ring would be a generation, and the present generation would be the bark. That’s the only bit that’s actually still alive.’
‘I think I follow.’ She looked up at the tree. ‘Where should I stand?’ she asked.
‘I’d come behind me, if I were you.’
He was making rapid progress; now, with each blow of his axe, the branches shivered. ‘Is this what you’re planning to do, then?’ she asked. ‘Start up a bow-making business here in the Mesoge? I thought you told me the people in these parts were mostly self-sufficient.’
‘They are.’ His pace was slowing now, and he paused after each cut to make sure he was on line. ‘This one’s for me. Hence the choice of timber.’
A few more cuts, and the tree made a sharp cracking noise and seemed to nod, as if in agreement with something he’d said. ‘Nearly there,’ he panted. Two cuts later, the tree groaned again and slowly toppled forward, directly onto the little hump he’d indicated earlier. ‘Now we’ll see if it’s any good,’ he said.
He walked up and down the fallen trunk a few times, lopping off small branches and studying the bark. Then he shook the wedges out of his bag, picked a spot and knelt down, holding the axe just below the head. ‘Now, if I’m lucky,’ he said, ‘it’ll come apart along this line like a book opening.’ He tapped the wedge in just enough to start it, using the back of the axe-head as a hammer; then he stood up and swung. The axe-head rang on the wedge with a sharp, brittle sound that made Athli wince. After a few heavy blows, he took the next wedge and tapped it in little further down the line, repeating the procedure until all four wedges were started. Then he walked up and down the trunk, hammering each wedge in turn, until one long continuous split appeared quite suddenly in the bark. ‘Amazing,’ he said, ‘how something this big and solid can be taken apart with five bits of metal and a stick. Remind you of anything?’
‘Not really,’ Athli said, shivering a little in the cold. ‘Any luck?’
‘Too early to say,’ Bardas replied. He carefully knocked out the wedges, hitting them sideways, first one direction and then the other, until they came free. ‘Now for the boring bit,’ he commented, and he set to work cutting the trunk off at the top, just below where the main spread of branches started. This part of the job seemed to take longer than the actual felling.
‘Why didn’t you do that first?’ Athli demanded.
‘If it hadn’t split the way it did, I’d have known the whole thing was useless and I wouldn’t have bothered cutting it off. That’s an important part of felling timber, knowing what’s good and what’s just waste, and not persevering with something you know you can’t salvage. Now I’ve got to roll it over to get the next line of wedges in.’ He knelt down and heaved, just managing to roll the trunk a third of a turn. ‘What I’m looking for,’ he said, ‘are flaws that run through all the way from top to bottom, right down through all the growth rings.’
‘From generation to generation, like a family curse. How melodramatic.’
‘Oh, it’s primal stuff, chopping down trees. A tree’s the oldest thing most men ever get to kill. Like I said a while ago, a tree’s more like a family than a single thing on its own.’ He tapped in the first wedge; it seemed to go in far more freely than the ones on the other side had done. He repeated the procedure, and when he’d driven the four wedges in almost as far as they’d go, there was another crisp crack and a section, like a slice out of an enormously thick cheese, came loose enough for him to lever it out. He laid down the axe and examined the section.
‘This bit here’s a possibility,’ he said. ‘The grain’s not perfect, but it’s straight enough, and I can get these kinks here out by steaming and bending.’ He moved back to the remainder of the trunk, heaved again and repeated the wedging process, until he was left with two more cheese-slices. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this bit’s completely useless, the grain’s waving up and down like the course of a river. This chunk’s all right, though; look, there’s a lovely straight bit here, see?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Athli said, giving it a cursory glance.
‘Wrong. There’s a knot here, look, it wrecks the whole thing. Sometimes you ca
n work round them, but this one’s too big.’
‘Pity,’ Athli said.
‘Waste. Well, what we can’t use we can always burn.’ He looked up and grinned at her; she looked away. ‘It’d be a laugh if I can’t get one stave out of the whole of this great big tree, don’t you think? All those years, all that waste, and nothing at all to show for it.’
‘Quite.’
He drove in the wedges a third time, lugged the three sections around until they lay side by side, and examined them carefully for about a quarter of an hour. ‘Useless,’ he finally pronounced. ‘Not even if I cut the two limbs separately and spliced them in the handle. Isn’t that just perfect?’ He sat down on the grass and put his face in his hands.
‘Bardas.’ He didn’t answer. Athli studied him as dispassionately as she could, trying to remember what it had been like in the old days. She’d seen him in a mess often enough, but she couldn’t now call to mind the exact form the mess used to take. He hadn’t touched the cider; now that was different, because back in the City the first thing he did on a bad day was take it out on a bottle. She wished she could remember more of the pathology of his downswings, but it was starting to seem long ago and far away, as if she was the one who’d moved away and he’d stayed where he was, more or less. In a way, this was the right place for him, beside the stump of this particular wasted tree. He looked like he’d been there all his life.
‘I think I’ll go back to the coast in the morning,’ she said. ‘I want to have a closer look at the market in Tornoys. There may be things I can buy there.’
He nodded, without looking round. ‘Textiles, some of the local ceramics and brassware,’ he said. ‘The quality’s not up to much, but it’s cheap. They’ve been trying to set up factories, trying to find a good use for all the people we have hereabouts.’ Now he looked up, but not at her. ‘Pity you can’t just take an axe to people the way you can with trees,’ he said, ‘split ’em down the grain and have a look at the way they lie. You’d waste a good few, but you wouldn’t make nearly so many mistakes. And there’s plenty more where they came from. A man can be ready to fell in twenty years, but a good tree takes generations, and you still can’t tell…’
