Sharps

by K. J. Parker

  “Rather a good marriage for a merchant.”

  Phrantzes shrugged. “They lost a lot of money in the War. I sort of got the impression that they were glad to get her off their hands. Of course, Corbulo and Xanthe are devoted to each other.”

  “You know Rhangabe’s brother, the Senator, was killed recently.”

  Phrantzes nodded. “It was quite a shock,” he said. “Not that Xanthe and her uncle were particularly close. But a man like that, getting stabbed to death in his own home …”

  “Defending his daughter’s honour.” The abbot frowned. “What do you think should happen to the young man responsible?”

  Phrantzes shrugged. “I really couldn’t say,” he said. “Hanging him wouldn’t bring the Senator back.”

  “You surprise me. I’d have thought you’d want to see justice done.”

  “Well, he’s been caught.” For some reason, Phrantzes felt he should choose his words carefully. “I’m sure he’ll get a fair trial, and the court will do what’s best.”

  “You have a touching faith in our justice system.”

  “Well, yes. Or I used to. Look, I’m sorry, but what’s all this got to do with me? Please, tell me what you want and I’ll do it. I just want to get out of here.”

  But the abbot didn’t seem to be listening, or maybe he was a bit deaf. “Mihel Rhangabe was a radical,” he said. “Do you agree with what he was trying to do?”

  Phrantzes pulled a confused face. How could he be expected to remember details of points of current affairs that didn’t really concern him very much, when he’d just been arrested on a spurious charge and interrogated by an elderly lunatic? “By and large, I suppose,” he said. “I mean, banning slavery, that makes sense.”

  “Go on.”

  Phrantzes considered for a moment, collecting his thoughts like a general rallying his surviving troops after a massacre. “You’ve got two dozen or so aristocrats owning huge factories producing high-volume, low-quality woollen cloth,” he said. “They’ve got a thousand or so slaves working hand looms; practically no overheads, they produce the raw material themselves, so they can trim their profit margin and make their money by selling in bulk to the Western Empire. But in the Empire, they don’t have slaves, instead they’ve got machines that’ll do the work of a hundred men and only need one man to work them. What we should be doing is buying in those machines. But we can’t, because there’s no money in it, because the big landlords have their slave factories. Get rid of slavery, you can take the woollen cloth trade away from the aristocrats, which is the only way you’ll be able to keep it in this country in the face of Imperial competition. Carry on the way things are now and we’ll be reduced to selling raw wool instead of finished cloth, and that won’t last long, believe me. We’ll be in exactly the same mess as Permia, or maybe even worse.”

  “Interesting,” the abbot murmured. “Go on.”

  Phrantzes wanted to stop and consider what the question really was, but by now he couldn’t help himself, just as a drowning man can’t help thrashing his arms. “Also,” he said, “you’ve got thousands, tens of thousands of slaves, all getting fed barley bread, which we’ve got to import from the West, which just makes the balance of payments problem worse. Free those men, put them on farms of their own in the Demilitarised Zone, where they can feed themselves and produce a saleable surplus, and you’re a big step closer to solving the foreign exchange deficit. Also, once we’ve got people living in the Demilitarised Zone, with a damn good reason for defending it, maybe the Permians won’t be so keen to invade it again. At the moment, it’s just empty, practically a desert. We can’t send our own people there, we lost so many men in the War we can’t farm our own country, let alone colonise the DMZ. Get rid of slavery, you solve two problems in one go, and it won’t cost the Exchequer a bent trachy.”

  The abbot pursed his lips. “It’s refreshing,” he said, “the way you address the issue without any recourse to arguments based on morality. In my line of work, I hear so much about right and wrong, I sometimes lose sight of the real issues. Thank you.” He stood up, staggered a little, put a hand on the table to steady himself. “Cramp,” he said. “I find sitting still for too long very trying.” He walked slowly and painfully to the door, and opened it. “I think that’s everything,” he said. “For now.”

  Phrantzes opened his mouth, closed it again, said, “I can go?”

  “Not quite,” the abbot replied. “But you can wait out here in the corridor instead of in a cell. Progress of a sort, I’m sure you’ll agree.”

  A guard came in and stood over Phrantzes; he took the hint and stood up. His left foot had gone to sleep, and the pins and needles made him wince. He walked to the door, suffering agonies because he daren’t hobble. Then he paused, because there was one question he had to ask, come what may.

  “How did you know to search my house?” he asked.

  The abbot beamed at him. “Now that,” he said, “is a really good question. Goodbye.”

  They’d been given a different room to sit in. This one had at one stage been a salle d’armes. It still had the polished oak floor, scuffed and shining, the pale oak-panelled walls and the high windows, placed to catch the early light. But someone had filled it with chairs and put in a fireplace, a huge grey stone affair rather ineptly carved with the arms of the Guild. At the far end was a large board, inscribed with dozens of columns of names in small gold script. Giraut guessed they were the past winners of some prize or other, but he couldn’t be bothered to look.

  At least their shared misery had got them past the sulking stage, though they still weren’t talking much. The girl had lent Addo her book (he recognised the title; a two-hundred-year-old verse epic of forbidden love and high-minded anguish among the ruling elite of the Eastern Empire, written by someone who’d never been there), and he was sitting in the far corner reading it. The girl had found a stack of blank writing paper, and was carefully folding each sheet into the shape of some stylised animal, before slowly tearing it to pieces. Suidas was doing his midday exercises, a revolting sight. Not for the first time, Giraut considered the probability of there being a guard outside the door; but even if there wasn’t, where would he go, and what on earth would he do for money?

  Suidas completed his course of fifty one-arm press-ups and started doing star jumps. This, apparently, was more than Iseutz could bear. “Do you have to do that?” she snapped, and he stopped, scowled at her and then suddenly grinned.

  “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just, when I’m feeling like shit, I exercise.”

  “That would explain why you’re so healthy,” Iseutz said. “I vote we go out into the corridor, find someone and demand to know what’s going on. Well?”

  “You can if you like,” Suidas said.

  “Fine. How about you?” She hadn’t aimed the question at anybody in particular. “You,” she said, turning in Addo’s direction. “Mister Born-in-the-Purple. Well?”

  Addo looked up from the book. “We could do,” he said. “If you think it’d help.”

  Iseutz clicked her tongue. “How about you? Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Giraut. And no, I don’t think it’d serve any useful purpose.”

  “Fine. We’ll all just sit here till we die of old age.”

  “Or starvation,” Giraut said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry.”

  “Well, there you are, then.” Iseutz stood up. “Let’s go and find young Mister Giraut something to eat, before he fades away. There’s got to be a kitchen or something in this place.”

  Addo said, “I’m not sure we ought to just help ourselves without asking.”

  “Who’s going to stop us?” Iseutz laughed, rather high and scratchy. “We’re the finest swords in all the Republic. We’ll cut our way through to the kitchen if we have to.”

  “It’s not midday yet,” Suidas said. “The angle of the sun through the window,” he explained. “I’ve been watching it, and I make it about an hour bef
ore noon.”

  “Please yourself, then.” Iseutz sat down, folded her arms and scowled at the floor. “At least they could’ve given us a chessboard or something like that.”

  Addo looked up. “Excuse me,” he said. “Do you play chess?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I’ve got a chess set in my pocket. You know, the little travelling ones.”

  Giraut was impressed. They were made in a far province of the Eastern Empire; ivory and some kind of incredibly hard black wood. You could rest them on the palm of your hand. Each piece had a tiny peg in the base, which fitted into holes in the middle of the squares. You could buy one second-hand for less than the price of a town-centre house, but they didn’t come up very often.

  Iseutz glared at him with barely controlled fury. “Why the hell didn’t you mention it earlier? We could’ve been playing chess, instead of sitting here like idiots.”

  “I didn’t think anybody would want to give me a game. I’m not a very good player.”

  “Excellent. I don’t like losing.”

  “I’ll play the winner,” Suidas said.

  “If you want. But we’ve got to make it interesting. Say, five nomismata?”

  Suidas frowned. “I haven’t got five nomismata. Sorry.”

  “That’s all right, you can owe me. What about you, Giraut? Do you want a game, after I’ve slaughtered these two?”

  Giraut thought about it for a moment. “For five nomismata.”

  “Yes.”

  “All right.”

  Iseutz disposed of Addo in a dozen moves, though Giraut had the feeling he wasn’t really trying. He counted the coins out of a heavy green silk purse. Suidas refused to play, which made Iseutz extremely angry. Giraut stepped in to keep the peace, and found himself sitting across the tiny board, facing a standard opening.

  He tried to spin it out, but he was never much good at deception. As soon as he’d taken her queen (in self-defence; what she lacked in skill she made up in aggression), it was obvious she was going to lose, but she fought on until he couldn’t stand it any more, and executed a simple checkmate. She looked at him, her face milk-white and her lips an impossibly thin line, and pushed Addo’s five coins across the table at him. Then she got up and stood beside the window.

  There was a long silence. Then Suidas said, “I’ll give you a game, if you like. Not for money.”

  What the hell. He enjoyed chess, and he was good at it. He found that Suidas was a high-class player, maddeningly slow at times, extremely cautious, with a defence he couldn’t break down, in spite of some quite inspired gambits he hadn’t thought himself capable of. In the end he lost deliberately. Suidas thanked him for the game, in such a way as to suggest he didn’t want another. They left the chess set on the table. Addo made no move to reclaim it.

  Giraut must have fallen asleep. He woke up in a spasm of terror, and for a moment he was sure the man standing in the doorway must be the hangman, or at best the chaplain waiting to hear his last confession. But the newcomer walked past him, an old man levering himself along with a stick; so much effort and determination required to accomplish something Giraut did without thinking. If that was me, he thought, would I go to all that trouble just to move myself five yards?

  “Ladies and gentlemen.” His voice was high, dry and brittle, and he spoke quietly, to make them all shut up so they’d be able to hear him. “You don’t know me. My name is Symbatus, and I’m the Abbot of Monsacer.” He saw Addo lift his head. “For my sins, I’m one of the organisers of the tour you’re about to take part in. Don’t worry,” he went on, “I’m not going to preach a homily. I’d like to introduce you to Jilem Phrantzes, who’s kindly agreed to be your coach and team manager.”

  Understandably enough, given its history, Permia is not a religious country. There are a few Eastern Didactic monasteries in the mountains, where a few grim old men still recite the Seven Offices, and the capital has a fire altar and a temple of the Invincible Sun, mostly for the convenience of foreigners. By and large, however, the Permians have no great interest in the divine. Occasionally, one or other of the mildly hysterical mystery cults that periodically sweep through the Eastern Empire breaks out in some of the smaller fields and is allowed to burn itself out. Nothing of the kind is allowed to take hold in the major fields, with their necessarily large and volatile populations, for fear of disruption and lost production.

  Director Kalojan was, therefore, something of a curiosity. A highly placed Board member, responsible for seven major mines in the Home fields, he’d been a sincere and open devotee of the Divine Flame for most of his adult life. It was generally accepted that he’d picked up the habit as a student in Chosroene, at that time the third best university in the Eastern Empire, where he’d been sent to study mathematics and natural philosophy. Although he made no secret of his faith, he never seemed to allow it to interfere with his duties as a company officer; nor did he ever try to convert any of his colleagues, although he was delighted to discuss moral and spiritual issues. He gave a quarter of his income to the poor each year, endowed a chaplaincy at the fire altar, and wore a small silver signet ring engraved with the insignia of the faith. That was all.

  Kalojan did, however, attend services at the altar, which made the assassin’s job relatively simple. At the conclusion of the morning office, celebrants are required to file past the altar steps, dropping a handful of incense into the brazier as they pass it. They then leave the building through the narrow door, which symbolises the true way of the believer. Part of the symbolism lies in the fact that only one person can go through it at a time (just as no teacher or priest can achieve another man’s salvation; each believer must find truth on his own). Thus, when Kalojan walked out of the altar house into the fresh air on the morning of his sixty-third birthday, he was alone; his usual bodyguards were only a pace or two behind him, but that was enough of an opportunity for the killer to step forward and stab him through the right ear with a Mezentine left-hand dagger. Two of the bodyguards gave chase, but the killer eluded them easily in the crowded streets of the Fruit Market. Kalojan died instantly.

  The first reaction to his death was astonishment. Company directors used bodyguards because, by the very nature of their office, they could expect to be attacked at any time. Of all the Board members, however, Kalojan had been considered the least offensive to the greatest number. He belonged to no permanent faction, had no ambition to seek higher office, had made no serious enemies and was, unusually for a Board member, liked and respected by the mine workers.

  The obvious suspects, therefore, were the Beautiful and Good, the only people who might conceivably have wished him harm, simply because he was a fair and honourable man with the interests of both the Company and the workforce at heart. Too obvious. It was soon being argued in the camps and taverns that if someone wanted to make it look like the Beautiful and Good were out to cause trouble, Kalojan was the perfect target; after all, nobody else could have wanted him dead, so it had to be them. Suspicion soon centred on the Board, who were widely suspected of preparing a last all-out campaign against the remnants of the military aristocracy. There were several riots in the western fields, and three miners were killed at the Blue Bird mine after the prefect sent in the Blueskins. The Empire, choosing to interpret the murder as motivated by anti-religious feeling, registered an official protest and demanded a full investigation, to be observed by three archdeacons of the Fire Church. Meanwhile the Rasen family made a statement, basically saying that the rumours were true and they had proof (which they didn’t offer to share), and calling on war veterans to rally to the family’s castle at Sirven and prepare to defend it against further Company aggression. All the Board could do at first was to draw attention to the fact that the murder weapon was of Mezentine origin, suggesting the involvement of the Republic, the Western Empire, or both, a hypothesis that met with no public interest whatsoever.

  With so much noise being made about the affair in every part of the country and stra
tum of society, the report of the investigating officer passed largely unnoticed, in Permia at least. The investigator admitted that he had no substantial clues as to the killer’s identity, allegiance or motive. The bodyguards had been unable to give him a helpful description – the man was medium height, medium build, inconspicuously dressed and masked, and all they could say about him for sure was that he could run very fast. Nobody had noticed any suspicious-looking strangers waiting outside the altar house at any time before the attack. The usual sources had nothing to offer on the subject of recent negotiations for the hire of an assassin, the provision of a safe house or the laundering of any substantial sums of money. The only concrete evidence was the weapon, which the killer had left behind presumably so as not to attract attention once he was clear of the scene. The weapon was easy enough to identify, though such objects were rare in Permia: a duellist’s dagger, designed to be held in the left hand, primarily to deflect the opponent’s sword; of exceptional quality and finely engraved with a characteristic leaf-and-scroll pattern, it bore Mezentine guild approval marks and the monogram of a famous sword-making firm. The guild marks revealed that it was over a hundred years old. It was, therefore, a valuable item in its own right, though worth considerably less on its own; weapons of this kind were almost invariably sold as part of a case (two exactly matching rapiers and daggers, for use in duelling), the value of a complete set greatly exceeding the sum of its parts. The investigator could only conclude that it had been acquired by theft, probably by a thief who had no idea of the true value of what he had stolen, and that the murderer had chosen it because it would be harder to trace back to him than, say, a newly made knife bought from a cutler’s stall in the market. However, no theft of such an item had been reported in the City in the last eighteen months, nor had any of the principal handlers of stolen goods heard of such a thing being offered for sale.

  Eurid Aten was able to make a certain amount of play with the report in his speech to the Conclave of Lodges a week after the murder. The dagger, he said, was, if honourable members would excuse the pun, a two-edged clue. It was all very well the investigating officer looking up his records for thefts of fancy knives in the City, where people couldn’t afford such things and wouldn’t want them if they could. A Mezentine-made duelling set was, however, exactly the sort of status symbol you’d expect to find in a Beautiful and Good castle or manor house; had the investigator bothered to write to the heads of families to ask if any of them had an empty space in a trophy of arms they couldn’t account for? In reply, Tepan Masav pointed out that a great many Beautiful and Good heirlooms had been sold off during and shortly after the War by impoverished households. Furthermore, at least two dozen castles and many more lesser houses had been stormed and plundered by the enemy – loot from these sources could easily have changed hands many times since the armistice. Equally, the Beautiful and Good had no monopoly on fine Western antiques, very few of which had ever been exported outside the frontiers of the Empire, so it was just as likely, if not more so, that the dagger had been acquired abroad (which, in Masav’s view, was where the assassin undoubtedly came from, and his paymasters as well). In any case, surely it was impossible to believe that a member of a great family would use or cause to be used a family heirloom for such a purpose, precisely because of the implications to which the honourable member had been good enough to draw Conclave’s attention.