Memory

by K. J. Parker

  ‘Yes.’ Naturally Noja sounded bitter. ‘And now, God only knows what I’m going to do. First thing tomorrow we’re supposed to go to Beal, where you’re meant to give me the slip, sneak through the guards using all the cunning tricks they taught you at school, and kill the Emperor. Then Cleapho takes the throne, everybody else in the picture gets wiped out, and as soon as the wonderful new weapons have smashed the raider ships into kindling, nobody’s going to give a toss about legitimacy of succession, all they’ll care about is that the new Emperor just got rid of the raiders once and for all. Years and years of careful planning, and I would appear to have fucked it all up. That’s very bad, you know.’

  ‘Yes,’ Poldarn said. ‘So, what are you going to do now?’

  A long sigh. ‘I think that’s probably up to you,’ she said. ‘Let’s put it this way. If this was a perfect world, and you could do anything you wanted, what would you do tomorrow?’

  ‘Easy,’ Poldarn replied. ‘I’d go to Beal and murder the Emperor.’

  Was it the reply she’d been expecting? Or was she trying to figure out whether he was lying? ‘Why would you want to do that?’

  ‘Because he’s Tazencius,’ Poldarn replied smoothly. ‘Because he grabbed hold of me when I was still just a kid, and he turned me into something evil; because he sold me his daughter – who loved me, so I’m led to believe, though I can’t say as I remember. It’s all his fault; and it seems to me that, since I’m probably not going to live long enough to pick any of this season’s apples no matter what happens, I might as well go out doing something useful as sit back at Dui Chirra forging brackets and drinking bean-pod soup until someone turns up to kill me. True,’ he went on, ‘from what you’ve been saying it’s something of a toss-up who’s worse, Tazencius or Cleapho – not forgetting Feron Amathy, mind, he’s another evil bastard. But I don’t know where Cleapho or Feron Amathy are, whereas Tazencius is just down the road; I might be able to get to him, but probably I haven’t got time to tackle either of the other two. When you prune it all down, it becomes nice and simple.’

  ‘Oh.’ Noja sounded worried. ‘And what I just told you about Cleapho, manipulating you just as much as Tazencius ever did—’

  ‘Not as much,’ Poldarn interrupted, raising his voice. ‘Nowhere near as much. He used me for, what, a few months; and anyhow, the damage had all been done by then. It wasn’t Cleapho who shaped my character or chose my path in life for me, he’s just a very unpleasant man who’ll probably be the next Emperor. Probably a very good Emperor, because he’s intelligent and organised and patient and all the other things emperors never are. Bloody good luck to him, in that case.’

  (Yes, said the little voice in his head, but how did Cleapho arrange for Falcata to be destroyed? And who’s the other man she mentioned?)

  Noja stayed still and quiet for a very long time. ‘Why should I believe you?’ she said at last. ‘What you said, it sounds like the sort of motive someone’d have in a book or a story, not the way a real person actually thinks.’

  ‘Ah.’ Poldarn tried to put the wry grin into his voice. ‘Shows what you know. Maybe I really do believe I’m the god in the cart, like your sister wanted me to. Because if I did, wouldn’t this be just about perfect? After bringing about the destruction of Falcata, I kill the Emperor and throw the Empire into bloody civil war; meanwhile the wonderful new weapon doesn’t actually work, the raiders land unharmed and kill everybody who’s left. Pretty good definition of the end of the world, don’t you think?’

  She sounded offended. ‘Now you’re treating me like I’m stupid,’ she said. ‘You don’t believe that. You know—’

  ‘What do I know? Only what I’ve seen. I’ve seen how everywhere I go, cities burn and people die, and all because of me – I don’t do the burning and killing, but I’m always the cause. I’m the dog with a burning brush tied to its tail– my intentions don’t matter, only the effect I have. So it was inevitable I’d come here, to Torcea, and wreck the place. And here I am. That’s so perfect it’s – well, religion.’

  ‘You’d know more about that than me,’ Noja replied. ‘But you’re just making all that up to be annoying – everybody knows there’s no such thing as the god in the cart.’

  ‘Do they?’

  ‘Well, of course. It’s just an old Morevich story that Cleapho dug out of some book and started putting around so that superstitious people’d panic. It’s not even a genuine old story; some bunch of monks made it up to boost offertory revenue. Any intelligent person knows that.’

  Poldarn laughed. ‘It may not have been true when Cleapho made it up,’ he replied. ‘But doesn’t it seem to you that it’s true now? You know, religion, that sort of thing. After all, nobody knows how gods come to be born. Maybe what Cleapho did is how you make a god.’ He sighed. ‘We probably learned all about making gods in fourth year, but of course I don’t remember.’

  ‘No.’ Noja sounded bored and annoyed. ‘No gods, sorry. And the world isn’t going to end. And the weapons will work.’ Hesitation in her voice. ‘Won’t they? I mean, you were there, you aren’t stupid. Will they work or won’t they?’

  Poldarn thought for a moment. ‘I don’t see why not,’ he replied. ‘Basically, it was Spenno who did it all, and I think if anybody could make a Poldarn’s Flute, it’d be him. But that part of it’s all a bit sloppy, isn’t it? What if the Flutes work just fine, but they only manage to sink two ships out of two hundred? And besides, I don’t believe the raiders will turn up at precisely the right moment to get blown out of the water, and I should know, I was there only a year or so ago—’ He frowned. ‘It’s not the raiders he’s thinking about, is it? He wants the Flutes to use against someone else.’

  Noja didn’t reply, and Poldarn saw no advantage in pressing the point: he wasn’t interested, he’d just pointed out the discrepancy to keep her in play, like that angler with the heavy fish. ‘Anyhow,’ he said, when the silence was starting to get awkward, ‘you can believe me or not, it’s up to you. But how about this: if we go to Beal, if I’m not going there to kill Tazencius, what else would I have in mind? Go on, you tell me. I’m not going there to make my peace with him, we both know that; and the honey festival sounds like fun, but not enough to risk my life for.’

  She was a long time in answering. ‘You could try and run away.’

  ‘I could’ve run away tonight,’ Poldarn said. ‘I could’ve killed your pathetic excuses for guards out there in the yard, easy as anything. But then I’d have had to steal a horse and ask the way to Beal. Too much like hard work.’

  ‘Assuming Beal was where you wanted to go.’ Assuming Gain Aciava was telling the truth; and Copis, and Cleapho, and Copis’s sister who’s just admitted she’s a liar.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I could’ve killed them and gone anywhere. But here I am.’

  A long silence, unbroken until Noja sighed. ‘Yes,’ she said slowly, ‘here you are.’ She was looking at him as though she’d expected more. ‘Did you really love her?’ she asked.

  ‘Sorry?’ he said. ‘Who are we talking about?’

  Her face remained the same, but her eyes had taken the cold, like molten bronze setting in the mould, flawless and strong. ‘My sister, of course. Did you really love her?’

  Poldarn considered his answer. ‘I honestly don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘I see. So the child—’

  ‘I loved her then,’ he said. ‘I suppose; I’m not entirely sure. It was more – well, I guess it was something like signing a formal contract between business partners, or a peace treaty. I know that when I thought she might’ve come to harm, at Deymeson, when the monks captured me, I was worried sick; it wasn’t my main priority, but it was always at the back of my mind. But that was probably mostly because she was, at that point in time, my oldest friend; I mean, I’d met her only a few hours after I woke up in the river, and we’d been together ever since, on and off. That’s something, but not love—’ He frowned. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘that probably
sounds really bad. But I’m too tired to lie.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Noja said, sounding almost relieved. ‘And before that, at school and so on. You can’t remember?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ve been told all sorts of things,’ he said, ‘and if it doesn’t sound too crazy, I’ve had dreams about those days, which might be memories of some kind, or maybe not. But if I was in love with her, I don’t remember.’

  ‘So,’ she went on, as if she hadn’t heard him, ‘when you married Tazencius’s daughter, and she loved you, you don’t remember if you were really in love with Xipho all the time? Or did you ever feel anything genuine for her – Lysalis, I mean.’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Poldarn said. ‘The part of me that I’m still on speaking terms with reckons that if the worst thing I’ve ever done is either marry one girl while still being in love with another, or else ditch one girl because I’ve met someone I prefer, then it could be a lot worse.’

  Noja stared at him for a moment, then shrugged. ‘That’s fair enough, I suppose,’ she said. ‘I mean, it wouldn’t make you the most evil man in the world, or anything.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rain. Rain, just like bloody always. Rain, when he really didn’t want it; because Runting had just woken him up out of his recurring nightmare, the one he was glad he could never remember when he woke up, and told him to get his trousers on, because the enemy were at the gates—

  The enemy, he muttered to himself, at the gates. Which would’ve been just fine, absolutely no fucking problem, if it wasn’t bloody raining. Because if only it was dry, the enemy at the gates would be the perfect test medium for the four finished, fettled, furnished, burnished, done and dusted but not actually yet test-fired Poldarn’s Flutes sitting comfortably in their wooden cradles like cats on rugs on top of the watchtower. The defence of Dui Chirra would’ve gone down in history as the day when the world changed for ever; when all the art-of-war manuals and all the precepts of religion had to be rewritten, because a few hundred scruffs with four brass parsnips had beaten off the Empire’s best troops led by the Empire’s best general in the time it takes to boil a kettle. If only it wasn’t raining.

  Instead, Monach reflected bitterly, we’re all going to be killed; and some other bugger, someone who hasn’t had to put up with Spenno and Galand Dev and all the mind-meltingly annoying politics they go in for in this horrible place, is going to get all the glory and be a footnote in the appendix at the back of the history of the world. And—

  And I wouldn’t have let down my friends. That’s the worst – no (he decided firmly as he dragged on his wet boots), no, dying’s going to be the worst thing, but failing Cordo, and Xipho, when they trusted me – the Earwig, they’ll say, give him a simple job to do, and a weapon that sneezes hellfire and lightning to do it with, and he screws up, all because of a little spot of rain. Should’ve known better than to trust—

  ‘Are you coming or not?’ someone was yelling. ‘They’re coming up the east road. There’s bloody thousands of them.’

  And why are wet boots so much harder to get your feet into than dry ones? That said, a man in charge, commander of the garrison of the most vital strategic point in the world, ought surely to be entitled to more than one pair of fucking boots—

  Monach stumbled out of the drawing office, trying to find the right hole in his sword belt by feel alone and failing, and splashed through the puddles on his way to the watchtower stair. People everywhere, of course; most of them foundrymen, standing about looking miserable, muttering, not showing any inclination to make themselves useful – damn it, better that they should be trying to open the gates and let the enemy in than just standing about getting under hard-working soldiers’ feet. If they were actively hostile, we could massacre the whole useless lot of them, and then we’d only have the enemy to put up with—

  Wet boots on the wet wooden stairs, squelch. Rain gets in your eyes, makes them blurry, stings. Up to the top of the stairs, up to the rampart – people getting out of his way, that’s more like it – and look over, and – never seen so many people all together in one place before in my life. Not a parade in Sansory, or Torcea hiring fair, or Formal Service at the Chapel Royal, when everybody who’s anybody piles into the great courtyard, pushing and shoving and trampling each other underfoot to get a seat and hear the Chaplain in Ordinary’s sermon (Cordo, shooting his mouth off in front of all those people; must be a sight to make a pig laugh). Yes; you measure scenes like that by the thousand, but this is tens of thousands, a huge army—

  The enemy, coming to get us, the defending garrison. Shit.

  Never wanted to be a soldier. Not cut out for soldiering, let alone being in charge. Perfectly happy doing research in the library, teaching school, running murderous little errands for Father Tutor, rolling out of bed at three in the morning for the first office of the day. Leading armies, preparing defences, no. We must’ve done defending small wooden fortresses against overwhelming odds in sixth year, but maybe I was off sick that day, or I had a music lesson.

  ‘Right.’ The loudness of his own voice shocked Monach. But ‘right’ was always a reasonable place to start. ‘I want five, seven and eight companies here on the front elevation. Two, three and four on the other three sides. One, six and nine in reserve in the yard, ten’s going to be a flying reserve on the walls – I want you to stand by, wherever the action is, get yourselves there soonest. There’s a fucking lot of them, but the only way they’re getting in is through the gate or over the wall, and it’s like my old gran used to say, doesn’t matter how big the bottle is if it’s only got a little tiny spout. Now, unless they’re incredibly stupid, they won’t try and burn us out with all this volcano dust on the premises, so that’s one less thing to piss ourselves about—’

  ‘Sir,’ someone said (someone really insignificant, because of the half-hearted attempt at respect), ‘the Flutes. Aren’t we going to use the Flutes?’

  Monach rolled his eyes; theatrical gesture, helps relieve the pent-up fury. ‘Don’t be so stupid,’ he growled, ‘it’s raining. The Flutes don’t work in the wet, remember? That’s why we haven’t even tested them yet.’

  ‘Actually.’ Another interruption; painfully familiar voice. Meanwhile, the front line of the enemy is now so close, we can see the buckles on their belts. ‘Actually,’ Spenno whined, ‘so long as we take care not to let the wet get into the volcano dust or the touch-holes—’

  ‘Fuck you, Spenno, you told me they wouldn’t work.’

  The most annoying man in the world shook his supremely irritating head. ‘That’s not quite what I said. I said we ought to hold off testing till it stopped pissing it down, because they might not work in the wet and you really do want optimum conditions for scientific testing of a prototype. They may work. They may not.’ You evil bastard, Spenno, I ought to have you stuffed down the throat of a Flute and farted up into the biggest cloud in the sky. ‘Got to be worth a try, though, surely.’

  ‘No.’ Monach surprised himself by the amount of pleasure he got from just that one word. ‘Use your common sense, why can’t you? They know we’ve got the Flutes, they’re expecting us to use them. Means they’ll be holding back, expecting us to lure them into a trap, with the Flutes as the spring; us not using them’ll confuse the hell out of the bastards. We try and set them off and they don’t go, we’ll lose the only advantage we’ve got.’ Not bad, Monach had to admit, for the spur of the moment, when I’m still three parts asleep, not bad at all. ‘We do this the old-fashioned way, like I tell you to, or we might as well open the gates now and have done with it. Now, is anybody else going to waste my time making me explain things, or can we get on with the job?’

  Moment’s embarrassed silence – confidence-inspiring generals don’t throw temper tantrums – followed by wholesale scurrying about. Monach paused, standing still while everybody else was moving, and spared a moment to review the dispositions he’d just made. Again, not bad at all. The three best companies, full stren
gth, best morale, haven’t yet realised about the hiding-to-nothing aspect or don’t care, to maintain the point of maximum impact; three companies in the yard, standing by or holding ready if they burst straight in through the gate. Flying reserve: where did that idea pop up from? Must’ve read about it in some book. Monach peered out to see if there were battering rams, scaling ladders or siege towers anywhere among the advancing multitudes, but all he could see was rain and more rain. Fucking arsehole-of-the-universe Tulice.

  For what seemed like a very long time, they seemed to be moving very slowly – until they were very close, and then it became apparent that they were in fact moving very fast. I’ve forgotten something, I’ve bloody forgotten something shrieked a voice in Monach’s head as the soldiers of five, seven and eight company bunched up against the rampart palings, trying to make themselves as small as possible under helmets, behind stakes. There must be something I’ve forgotten to do, because I haven’t really done very much, just these men here, those men over there; surely a general ought to be studying maps, sending runners, busy, busy, busy. He shouldn’t just be standing here waiting for stuff to happen—

  The enemy had stopped. Monach hadn’t seen them stop, he’d been kneeling down trying to get his toes the last three-quarters of an inch into his boots, and when he’d looked up again, there the bastards were, standing still in the rain, getting wet, not moving. Why’re they doing that? What’re they up to? Shit, I wish we had something nasty we could throw at them or shoot at them. He leaned out as far as he dared (not very far) hoping to see something significant, but all he got was two eyefuls of cold water.

  Do something, please, don’t just stand there. But there was something; the front the-gods-only-knew-how-many ranks were standing still, but behind them there were large, rain-mist-shrouded contingents of men moving about; the enemy taking up his position, skilful chess moves that a competent general ought to have been able to read like a book, but Monach couldn’t; all he could see was vague grey shapes shifting about through a curtain of flying wet. Calm down, he told himself, let’s think about this. They’re out there, we’re up here, exactly how much scope is there for tactical genius? Still only got two options, you bastards: through the gate, or over the walls. And they’re both covered (assuming I haven’t forgotten something).