by K. J. Parker
‘Because of the shape of her nose,’ Poldarn said. ‘But what was her regular name?’
Noja didn’t answer for a while. Then she stood up and carefully slipped the catch of the brooch that held her cloak together. ‘I’m tired,’ she said flatly, without expression. ‘I think I’ll go to bed now. You coming?’
Poldarn looked at her. She was allowing the cloak to slip down over her shoulders, revealing the sharp profile of her collarbone. ‘You go on,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll just sit up for a while.’
‘Fine.’ Her eyes were ice cold, like the touch of dead meat. ‘Don’t stay up too late,’ she said. ‘We ought to make an early start in the morning.’
Noja waited for a reply, then turned and walked out. The angle of her cheekbone as she moved away was entirely familiar. Mostly, Poldarn realised, he felt disappointed.
After she’d gone he counted up to two hundred, then opened the door cautiously and listened; the coachmen and the footman hadn’t struck him as the sort of men who had the knack of breathing quietly. A small, detached part of him regretted missing the honey festival, which had sounded rather pleasant, if you liked that sort of thing. But they hadn’t been going there in any case.
Nobody in the corridor, which was pitch dark; but it was easy enough to locate the kitchens by smell alone. He considered his options. There would be people in the common room, but that was no guarantee of safety, and the shortest route to the stables was out that way, so that was where they’d be expecting him to go. Through the kitchens and round the back was three times as far. Simple mathematics: if she followed the relevant precept of religion (sharpen an arrowhead but make a shield as broad as possible), she’d have assigned two guards – the coachmen, presumably, they seemed to be a matched pair – to the common room, and stuck the footman outside the kitchen door. He was fairly sure he could handle the footman, quietly and without making a disturbance. But there was, of course, a third alternative: the stairs.
The bedrooms at the Purity of Soul were on all four sides of a gallery above the common room; one flight of stairs only, leading up from the end of the corridor he was standing in. It’d be a rather bone-jarring drop from a window down into the courtyard, but that couldn’t be helped. The Weasel, he thought (assuming she’d been telling the truth), and the Earwig: a regular pest menagerie. Had they given him a nickname too, he wondered? Not that it mattered; but quite soon, one way or another, he’d be in a position where he’d never be able to ask about that sort of thing again. Whether he liked it or not, between them they had possession of most of his life (his memories their hostages, as it were). Even if everything went as well as it possibly could, he’d lose everything they knew about him for ever; and the loss of memories is the destruction of the past, and what is a human being except the sum of his experiences? Dead either way.
On balance, Poldarn decided, he’d rather be dead and still moving; so he turned his back to the wall and slid along it until the side of his foot bumped against the first stair. If they had to creak, he begged providence, let them creak softly. Up to a point, a creaking stair is your friend, because all stairs creak a little during the night, as the compressed fibres of the wood relax. The sound, being usual, is ignored and therefore inaudible. (‘Something seen a hundred times becomes invisible’: yet another precept of religion. There was probably a complete list of them, in alphabetical order, at the back of Concerning Various Matters, but he hadn’t managed to get that far.) It’s the sudden loud, complaining creak that gives you away and sets the dogs barking.
At the top of the stairs he paused. The plan had been simple enough – find an empty room, climb out of the window, drop down into the courtyard, steal a horse and escape. It was also, of course, the wrong thing to do.
He faced the door nearest to him, lifted the latch and walked in. There were two people in the bed, a man and a woman. The woman shrieked and tried to hide under the sheets; the man sat up sharply and stretched out his arm towards the sword propped up against the bedside chair. It was probably just as well for him that Poldarn got there first. He didn’t draw the sword (an elegant if rather fussy object: moulded silver grip in the form of a leaping dolphin, which’d cut into your hand quite horribly if you ever had occasion to hit something); instead he closed his left hand around the scabbard chape and held it against his waist, ready for a theoretical draw.
‘Sorry to burst in,’ he said, ‘but I need your window, just for a moment. You don’t mind, do you?’
The man stared at him but didn’t move or make a sound. Close enough for country music. ‘Thanks,’ Poldarn said; he slipped the shutter catch, pushed the shutters apart and swung his leg over the sill. Then he noticed that he was still holding the silver-hilted sword. ‘You weren’t using this for anything, were you?’ he asked politely. No reply. Fine; he swung the other leg across the sill, relaxed his knees and dropped, hoping he wasn’t directly above a pile of bricks or a bucket.
Landing hurt; but nothing seemed to be broken or bent, and he felt it would probably be sensible to get away from the open window. Making sure that the sword was still in its scabbard and hadn’t been jarred out when he touched down, he hobbled as quickly as he could move across the yard, in what he hoped was the direction of the stables.
No mistake there; clearly his sense of direction was fit to be relied on, even in unknown territory in the dark. His self-satisfaction was ruined, however, when someone grabbed at his arm as he approached the stable door. As always, he felt the intrusion into his circle before the actual touch of the man’s fingers, giving him ample time to sidestep, reach out, grab the arm by the wrist and wrench it round a half-turn. Not surprisingly, the voice that yelped with pain belonged to the one remaining footman.
‘It’s all right,’ Poldarn said reassuringly, maintaining his grip. ‘Keep your face shut and I won’t damage you.’
Then someone hit him across the shoulder with a stick. The pain distracted him, when it should have concentrated his mind (take away five points for that); he let the footman go, and got a fist in his stomach as a reward for carelessness. Bad, he thought; don’t want to draw the sword and start hurting people, don’t want to get beaten up either. But the punch wasn’t followed up, and neither was the attack with the stick. He waited to see what would happen next.
‘Did you get him?’ Noja’s voice.
‘Got him,’ said one of the coachmen, behind his shoulder. ‘He’s got something in his hand – stay back.’
‘It’s all right,’ Poldarn sighed, and he let the sword slip through his fingers. It clattered shrilly on the cobbles; probably some slight damage to that fancy silverwork. ‘You can let go, I won’t run away.’
‘Inside the stable, quick,’ Noja said. Someone opened the door and pushed Poldarn through, closing it after him. Inside, it was dark and smelled of horses. He heard the sword being drawn behind him, and hoped nobody would be stupid enough to wave it about in the dark; he could feel where it was, by some sort of deep-rooted instinct, but he doubted whether anybody else shared that abstruse talent.
‘I should’ve noticed earlier,’ he said into the darkness. ‘But really, you don’t look much like her; only when you move, not when you’re sitting still.’
‘My own silly fault,’ Noja replied. ‘If I hadn’t started telling stories about her, you’d never have made the connection. Still, it doesn’t really matter. It just makes things a bit more complicated, that’s all.’
Poldarn thought about that but didn’t say anything. ‘So what’ve you got lined up for me tomorrow?’ he said. ‘Are we going back to the city?’
‘No, of course not,’ she replied. ‘We’re going on to Beal, like I said.’
‘Because Tazencius is there.’
‘That’s right.’ She sighed. ‘It’d all have been so much less trouble if I hadn’t been so careless. You know, I was worrying myself frantic about how to get you there, after everything I’d been told about you – the most dangerous man in the Empire, you know, all
that stuff. When you said that was where you wanted to go anyway, I nearly burst out laughing.’ She hesitated. ‘Are you sure you only just figured it out?’ she said. ‘Or have you been playing us all along ever since you met up with Ciana in the forest?’
‘Is that really what they say about me?’ Poldarn asked. ‘Most dangerous man in the Empire?’
‘Well, yes,’ Noja said, sounding confused; then, ‘It’s true, isn’t it? You really have lost your memory. You don’t know—’ She broke off. Maybe one of the coachmen sniggered, or maybe not. ‘Well, anyway,’ she said, ‘that’s beside the point. As you’ve probably guessed, these three aren’t just your average coachmen. They’re Tazencius’s own household guards, on loan. We insisted. The three of them together, even you won’t be able to—’
‘I told you,’ Poldarn interrupted, ‘I don’t want a fight. I came here to meet Tazencius, and all you’re doing is giving me a lift. I’m grateful, even if you have been playing me for a sucker.’
Even though he couldn’t see Noja’s face, he knew she didn’t believe a word of that – a pity, since it was true. ‘If you think you can make your peace with Tazencius after everything that’s happened, you’re more stupid than you look.’ She was trying to sound harsh but she didn’t have the gift for it – unlike her sister, who had difficulty being anything else. ‘She won’t be able to protect you any more, not now. Don’t suppose she’ll want to, either.’
Poldarn had to think for a moment before he figured out who she was. ‘I wasn’t expecting her to,’ he replied. ‘Truth is, I don’t remember Lysalis at all. I’ve been told she was fond of me—’
‘Fond’s putting it mildly.’ Noja sounded amused. ‘I think, honestly, that’s what really made Tazencius hate you the most. He felt really bad about using his darling daughter as bait, to get you, the most evil man in the world; and then she goes and falls in love with you – you, of all people – and of course it’s all his own fault.’ Noja laughed hoarsely. ‘Well, it wasn’t so bad when you went missing, and he had the boy, of course; sometimes he could almost kid himself he didn’t remember who the boy’s father was every time he looked at him. But then you turned up again, not dead after all. Where did you vanish off to, by the way?’
Poldarn smiled in the dark. ‘I went home,’ he said.
‘Home? Oh, I see, back there—’ He could imagine a look of disgust crossing her face. ‘But you didn’t stay?’
‘Got thrown out,’ Poldarn said. ‘For making trouble.’
‘Well, of course. It’s a pity you had to come back, things had sort of found their own level again: Cronan dead, Tazencius getting his chance, the new man turning out to be helpful after all.’ Poldarn didn’t know who ‘the new man’ was supposed to be, but he didn’t want to show his ignorance. ‘And then Gain found you, and of course you had to be right there on the spot, where the new weapons were being made. You know what? Xipho seems to believe it was just a coincidence; at least, that’s what she said in her letters. Is that really true?’
‘Yes,’ Poldarn said.
Short pause. ‘No, I don’t believe it,’ Noja said. ‘I mean, the irony’d be too much, you helping to make the weapons that’re going to blast your disgusting relatives out of the water before they can get within a hundred yards of landfall.’
‘Maybe I’d like that,’ Poldarn suggested pleasantly.
‘Maybe you would,’ Noja replied. ‘Wouldn’t put anything past you. Honestly, I can see why Tazencius took to you, in the beginning. You really do think alike. Which is why,’ she added, trying hard to sound threatening (but she didn’t have the touch), ‘you don’t stand a chance of getting round him this time. He’s got you figured out, you can rely on that.’
Poldarn shifted slightly; he was starting to get cramp in his knee. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve reached the point where I’m not really bothered any more.’
‘Nobody ever goes that far,’ she said flatly. ‘I should know.’
‘Really? I expect you’ve had an interesting life, if you’re anything like your sister.’
He’d intended to provoke her; not this much, though. ‘You think I’m like her? Oh, please!’ Noja’s anger was so fierce that he could almost see it, glowing in the dark like hot embers. ‘I’m nothing like her, never have been, even when we were kids.’
‘You’re going to a lot of trouble on her behalf, if you don’t even like her.’
‘She’s my sister.’ No, she was concealing something. Whatever she was up to, she wasn’t doing it just to help Xipho. Bombarded with so many obscure fragments of data, Poldarn was too confused to know what to do with this one; he tucked it away in his mind, hoping he’d remember it as and when it became relevant.
‘And Ciana’s your brother.’ He let that one hang, but she didn’t seem to be reacting. Shot in the dark, anyhow. ‘Was this all his idea, or does he just do what his big sisters tell him to?’
Her voice cooled down a little. ‘What I told you was the truth. It was Ciana who brought me out here when our parents wanted me to marry some farmer.’ She made it sound like some sort of nasty, crawling insect. ‘I guess you could say he’s the white sheep of the family. He genuinely went to Tulice for the hunting.’
‘Really.’
‘Really.’ Now Noja didn’t sound quite so tense; maybe because this part of her story was entirely true? Hard to tell, especially in the dark. ‘And when his good friend the Chaplain in Ordinary asked if he could give him a lift as far as Falcata, he was only too pleased, naturally: doing favours for Cleapho is good business. So when Cleapho asked him for one other little favour – very much in his line, hunting something down in a forest—’
‘Me. That’s interesting. How did he know where to look?’
Noja laughed prettily. Nice voice; wasted on her. ‘Really, you’re too entertaining for words. You don’t see it, do you?’
‘Enlighten me.’
He heard her take a deep breath. ‘Chaplain Cleapho wants to get you to Torcea. But he knows you ever so well, from the old days; and he remembers how you fought your way past – well, past the Amathy house men at the inn in Sansory. He knows that you’re as slippery as a buttered eel. The only way to get you here is to make you want to come here; and the only way to do that is to get you to think that what you’re actually doing is running away – running here, for safety. Hence the pantomime. That loathsome Gain Aciava finds you and keeps you at that foundry place—’
‘Dui Chirra.’
‘Like it matters. He finds you, keeps you in play there like an angler with a fish that’s too big to pull in straight away. Of course, you would have to be there, of all places, where they’re making the weapons. That imbecile Muno Silsny hears about you – the brave hero who saved his life.’ Noja sighed. ‘Fat lot of good it did him, because as soon as he’d figured out who you were, he had to go. Terrible waste of time and effort: Cleapho brought him on, trained him up, from nonentity to commander-in-chief virtually overnight, because he needed someone in that position who’d do as he was told and never think twice. Anyway, that’s all done with; Cleapho got rid of him, and just as well as it turned out. But all his plans got screwed up because of it, and by the time General Muno was out of the way, the weapon thing was far too well advanced. Simply bursting in there and flushing you out like a rabbit was out of the question with all those soldiers there. So he had to be clever about it – and wasn’t he ever that. Of course he had good help – Aciava, and that strange man, Spen-something—’
‘Spenno.’
‘Whatever. He flushed you out of Dui Chirra, just in the nick of time—’
‘Really?’ Poldarn interrupted. ‘Why?’
‘You don’t need to know why, but what the hell. Because he didn’t want you trapped in there when his other man – another old school chum of yours, incidentally – captured it, by force, with some bunch of religious zealots he’d somehow turned into an army. See what I mean about clever? No fool, Cleapho. He wanted you in Torcea,
and having the weapons safely kept out of harm’s way would be nice too; lo and behold, he’s got both. Once you were out of Dui What’s-its-name and on the loose, it was child’s play to shoo you along to where you had to go. It meant bringing forward the business with Falcata a month or two, but that was no big deal.’
‘Falcata?’ Poldarn didn’t need the explanation, but for some reason he wanted a confession from somebody. ‘You mean destroying it.’
‘Well, yes. That was part of the plan from way back: make it look like your disgusting compatriots are on the loose again, hence a state of national emergency, and Cleapho can start moving troops to where they need to be, recruiting his strange bedfellows, all the stuff that needs to be done but which is such a bother to justify during peacetime. And thanks to the new man, who’s a real treasure by all accounts, it was easy, and you went scampering straight into Cleapho’s arms, thinking you were escaping.’
Poldarn scowled, grateful that Noja couldn’t see his face. ‘But that doesn’t make any sense,’ he said. ‘Because I escaped from him, too.’
‘Silly.’ She was finding him amusing again. ‘That’s like saying the ball escapes from the stick when you smash it into the goal. He told you just enough to get you all worked up and determined – to do what he wanted, of course, without knowing that was what you were doing – and then let you slip away, to where Ciana was waiting with his professional huntsmen and tracker dogs and God only knows what, to bring you in and fetch you across the Bay. And here you are. By rights, right now you should be like an arrow on the string, fully drawn and aimed at Tazencius, and tomorrow we let you fly and, well, job done. But I have to go and screw it up, by telling you stories about Xipho as a little girl.’
Poldarn allowed for a moment’s silence before speaking. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘You’ve made rather a mess of things.’
