by K. J. Parker
“Nico,” I said. “Shut the fuck up.”
15
Had it worked or hadn’t it? I remember talking to a man once, a captain in the regular cavalry, who was in some battle. He’d been given his orders—ride over to that hill there, cut out their light cavalry, turn round, come back here. So he did that, and (according to him) did it supremely well. The enemy didn’t see him coming until it was far too late, so he was able to roll them up like a carpet and slaughter pretty nigh the lot of them, with none of his boys killed, two or three with minor scratches. So, done that, collected up his men and trotted back over the hill, which of course had masked his view of the rest of the battle. Whereupon he found his general dead, the infantry massacred, the light cavalry running like deer across the skyline, the enemy in possession of the field. He did the only thing he could: crept back over the brow of the hill and got the hell out of there.
The general feeling in the City seemed to be that, yes, we’d won. At least, we’d killed a lot of the enemy, forced them to pull back a quarter of a mile, burned their siege tower and made them look very, very stupid. People were out on the streets like they hadn’t been since it all started, cheering, shouting, as though it was League Final day in the Hippodrome. The sight of them made me feel angry, and if Nico hadn’t bustled me inside the Palace I’d probably have started yelling at them.
Artavasdus and Longinus of the Greens came busting in to congratulate me; brilliant, magnificent, we really showed them, didn’t we? Showed them what, I didn’t ask. I told them to go away and get on with some work—Longinus laughed, Artavasdus was offended and stomped out in a huff. Then Faustinus came in and told me he’d always known I had what it takes, and surely now they’d realise they stood no chance, and go away.
I cleared everyone else out of the room. “We’re in deep trouble,” I said.
Not what he’d been expecting to hear. “What? What trouble?”
“The bloody Seal,” I said. “That clown of a forger can’t copy it. We need the real thing. I’ve got a stack of requisitions and warrants a foot thick, and no seal. Any minute now, people are going to realise there’s a problem, and then we’re screwed. No money. No authority. Probably they’ll hang us.”
He looked as though I’d just hit him. “That’s terrible,” he said, usefully.
“Isn’t it? Listen, we need to find the real thing. Someone in this town knows where it is.”
He looked at me. “If I’d stolen the Great Seal,” he said, “I’d get rid of it, damn quick. I’d throw it down a well or a garderobe, before I got caught with it. Everyone knows it can’t be sold. It’ll be long gone by now, I’m sure of it.”
“It can’t be,” I said. “We need it.”
He had that dazed look, as though he couldn’t believe this was happening to him. “Well, you’d better get your Green and Blue friends to find it,” he said. “They control all the thieves in this city.”
“Don’t be so stupid.” I hadn’t meant to shout. “I can’t let them know that all the paper I’ve been paying them with is worthless, or that all the promises I’ve made them are just bullshit. That’d be the end. We won’t need the enemy to trash the City, the Themes’ll do it for us.”
He was silent for a while, letting me get a grip. “You’ll have to tell them,” he said. “Otherwise, it can’t be found. Only they can find it.”
I drew in the breath to tell him he was crazy, out of his mind, but I knew he was right. “Get Arrasc and Longinus,” I said. “Right now.”
Credit where it’s due, they took it quite well. There was a deadly silence. Longinus was looking murder at me; God knows how anyone ever had the guts to face him in the arena. Then Arrasc sort of shook himself, like a wet dog.
“Right,” he said. “What are we going to do about it?”
Longinus gave him a horrified look. I ignored him. “Find the Seal,” I said.
But Arrasc shook his head. “Don’t hold your breath,” he said. “It’ll be in the Bay by now.”
Didn’t want to hear that, so I looked at Longinus instead. I could see him forcing himself to think about something other than ripping my head off. “Who have we got to fool?” he asked, quite quietly.
Arrasc didn’t understand; I did, after a couple of heartbeats. “Everyone who has to authorise payments on government scrip,” I said.
“Meaning?”
The man was a genius. Actually, there weren’t that many of them. “Paymaster’s office,” I said. “Treasury department. Works and Ways and Means.” I paused, hardly able to believe my luck. “That’s about it.”
Longinus nodded. “Most of the clerks will be Greens,” he said. “Get rid of the ones who aren’t and replace them. Then let me handle it.”
Time for Arrasc to look daggers, but I couldn’t be bothered with him right then. “You can square them.”
He nodded. “No problem. I’ll tell them it’s our scam, they’ll believe that.”
Now that woke me up, like a smack round the face. Call me an innocent; it hadn’t occurred to me that, at a time like this, the Themes would even contemplate ripping off the desperately cash-strapped government. The way Longinus said it, I got the impression that it wasn’t just a matter of contemplation. Still, I told myself, it’s all pretend money anyway. Either we were all going to die, in which case it didn’t matter, or else we’d survive, and some other poor fool would be left to deal with the apocalyptic mess I’d made of the Imperial finances, in which a little mild peculation by the Greens would be neither here nor there. The labourer is worthy of his hire, after all.
I looked away from him and turned to Arrasc. “You have to be all right with this,” I told him.
I could feel the weight on his shoulders. Nothing in it for him, apart from the survival of the City. He took a long time to find his words. Then he said, “We’ve got a forger, a good one.”
“I’ve tried that. Can’t be done.”
Arrasc shook his head. “Our forger is very good.”
“You can’t copy the Seal.”
It’s nice when you give people opportunities to enjoy themselves. I’d done just that. “We already have,” he said.
The things you learn. “You’re kidding me.”
He grinned at me, not a kind smile. Then he told me what to look up, in which archive. Copies that had already passed muster and been accepted. “We don’t use it very often,” he said. “It’s sort of a last resort.”
Longinus was half out of his chair by now; one of the documents Arrasc had just referred to was a death warrant, that of a leading Green. Then he sat down again.
“We’ll do both,” I said. “I’ll replace all the honest clerks with Greens, and I’ll pay you a million stamena for your Seal. Agreed?”
That stunned both of them. Then Arrasc said, “You’ll pay us a million stamena for a fake seal we could have used to write warrants for ten million.”
“Yes.”
“And you’ll seal it with the fake.”
My turn to smile. “It won’t be the fake by then,” I said. “It’ll be the real thing.”
“Oh look,” she said. “The conquering hero.”
My belief is, either you understand things or you understand people. Nobody can do both. Frankly, I’m happier with things. I understand stuff like tensile strength, shearing force, ductility, work hardening, stress, fatigue. I know the same sort of things happen with people, but the rules are subtly different. And nobody’s ever paid for my time to get to know about people.
“Get me a pot of tea, would you?” I said. “I’m gasping.”
Aichma gave me a look that would’ve stripped rust. “Coming right up,” she said.
I’d seriously considered going somewhere else—the Blue Posts, or the Victory; but all the good bars are Blue or Green, and if I went to a Blue bar I’d have the Greens imagining treachery, and vice versa. The Dogs was the only neutral ground in Lower Town. Also, nowhere else did tea. As it was, as soon as I walked through the door the w
hole place went quiet. I didn’t like that at all. I’m used to walking into the Dogs and everyone there knows who I am. This was different. You remember the old parable about the holy prophet who got thrown into the lions’ den. I felt like a lone lion in a den of prophets.
She slammed the pot down in front of me. “Fifteen trachy,” she said.
“You what?”
“Fifteen trachy.”
Never ever, in my entire life, have I paid for a drink in the Two Dogs. I stared at her, shocked half to death, then dug around in my pocket and found a single tornece. A good one, too, government-made. “Keep the change,” I said.
She breathed out through her nose. “Thank you,” she said, and walked away.
The hell with this, I thought. But I’d arranged to meet some Theme bosses, two Blue and two Green; it had to be either the Dogs or the Palace, and they were nervous about going Uptown, so I had no choice but to sit there until they showed up.
Hapax, the Green, turned up early. I knew him from way back, and he’d known Aichma’s father. He gave me a funny look as he sat down.
“What’s got into her?” I asked.
I knew he wasn’t going to tell me, though he knew what it was. “Women,” he said.
Fine, I thought. I wasn’t going to embarrass myself by pressing the issue. “You’d better buy your own drink,” I said. That made him grin.
Then the others showed up, and we conducted our business in a reasonably civilised manner, made a deal and went away. I was headed down to the sawmills. I was nearly there when someone I didn’t know ran up to me, waving his arms. He was out of breath and looked terrified.
“You’d better come quick,” he said.
“Slow down,” I said. “Who are you and what do you want?”
“There’s been a stabbing,” he said. “At the Two Dogs.”
I went cold all over. I just knew. The message itself was like—well, suppose someone stopped you, all wild-eyed and breathless, and told you the sun had risen that morning. There’s always a stabbing at the Two Dogs. To make it newsworthy, therefore—
“Is she—?”
“I don’t know, do I?”
Sometimes I wonder why they made me an officer. Other times—like this—I knew they made the right decision. It’s all to do with how your brain works.
I grabbed his left hand and stuck a gold five-stamena in it. “You know Cartgate?”
“Yes.”
“Sixteen, Cartgate,” I said. “Doctor Falx. If he’s not there, they’ll know where he is. There’s another one of them when you’ve got him to the Dogs. Run.”
He stared at the coin in his hand, then at me. Then he ran. I’ve seen men running for their lives, but he was faster. Incentive is everything.
He’d gone, and I needed support staff. I ran down Temple Court. There were two sentries, Parks and Gardens men, outside the Admiralty building. “You two,” I panted at them. “Know who I am?”
“Sir.”
“You,” I told the one on the left. “Get me a horse and cart, or a chair. Anything that moves, the first one you see. Bring it back here. You have absolute authority, understand?”
The look on his face. But he jumped to it; he had no choice, because of the look on mine, and that’s why they made me an officer. “You,” I told the other one, “I want ten sheets of parchment, pens, ink and the Admiralty seal. Move.”
Temple Court’s a good place for hijacking vehicles. Even with all the restrictions I’d imposed, there’s always some senator or permanent secretary paying a call. The sentry came back a minute or so later with a chair and four porters. I recognised the livery painted on the door; under any other circumstances, I’ve have pissed myself at the thought of the enemy I’d just made. I fished in my pocket and found four half-stamena, one in each of their big, damp hands. They looked at them; like the Ascension. You believe it exists, at some level you hope one day you might get to see it in the distance, as one of a crowd of blessed pilgrims; you never imagine it might actually happen to you.
Then the other sentry came out. There was a clerk behind him, dragging on his sleeve, being towed along like a small, inefficient plough. “Stop him,” the clerk was yelling. “He’s stealing the Seal.”
Of course the clerk hadn’t been on the wall, didn’t know who I was, so I hit him. He went down hard, which I regretted, but there just wasn’t time. I grabbed the Seal, the bits of paper and the pens and hauled myself into the chair. “Know the Two Dogs?”
“Sure,” said one of the chairmen.
“Quick as you like,” I said, and they were off. I only just had time to beckon the two sentries to follow me before we were out of sight round the corner into Salt Street.
My enemies have always done best for me, but complete strangers come a fairly close second. The chairmen ran their hearts out, and all for a few bits of metal. That’s magic. Reminds me of a story. A man sets up a stall in the market. For five dollars, he says, I’ll sell you a magic token which will make anyone give you anything you want. Fine, says a passing merchant, here’s five dollars, prove it. So the showman leads him to a baker’s. He pulls out a penny. Give me, he says to the baker, a loaf of bread. Indeed. That’s real magic.
Bloody doctor hadn’t got there yet; if he’d been there, I’d have smashed his face in for not being there yet—which is how your mind works when you’re in that sort of a state. I jumped out of the chair—the sentries hove in sight behind me, panting like tired dogs—and grabbed the first man I saw. “Where is she?” I yelled at him, like it was all his fault.
He gave me a terrified look and pointed. I spared his life, ran inside.
They’d got her lying on a table. Blood everywhere. She was wearing the smock I’d seen her in an hour before, except that there was a gleaming red patch the size of a ham. There were men and women standing round her, not doing anything, gawping. Get out, I told them. I looked round for water and a cloth, couldn’t see anything like that. I had no idea what to do.
Enter Doctor Falx. Ex-service, retired before they threw him out, some nonsense about embezzling from regimental funds. Since then, he’s been the patcher-up in residence at the Hippodrome, except when he’s in the Watch House for practising medicine while disqualified, and nobody on God’s earth knows more about puncture wounds. He doesn’t like me one bit, possibly because it was the Engineers’ funds he was caught thieving from, and it was me who did the catching. He looked at the thing on the table, then at me.
“Friend of yours?” he said.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I assume that means she is.”
I think that if he could have let her die, he would have. But he didn’t, of course, any more than a savage dog can help biting if you tease him. I watched his face as he worked. I’d seen him in action before, notably when he pulled a splinter of wood ten inches long out of the side of my neck. He looked worried. That wasn’t good.
“Why have you stopped?” I yelled at him. He didn’t answer. He stood there, his hands red to the wrists, doing nothing. “Look, if it’s money, you can have what you want. Or your licence back. Both. Just for God’s sake—”
He looked at me. “I’ve finished,” he said.
Oh. “Will she—?”
He shrugged. “It’s a deep cut from a long, thin knife. She’s lost a lot of blood. It could go either way from here.” He plunged his hands into a basin of water, which turned pink. “Absolutely no way of knowing.”
“What else can we do?”
“Nothing.”
I turned away, sat down, wrote him a draft on the Admiralty for fifty thousand stamena and sealed it with the Admiralty seal and beeswax from a candle. I handed it to him. He glanced at it, dropped it on the floor. I can never understand people who bear grudges.
“Thank you,” I said.
He wiped his hands on the only clean towel in the place. “Drop dead,” he said. “After I’ve gone,” he added, and walked out.
16
I wanted to
stay but I couldn’t. Some fool came looking for me. The enemy had brought up trebuchets.
Trebuchets, for crying out loud. We knew about them, because about forty years ago someone smuggled a copy of a book out of Echmen. There’s a description, which makes no sense (problems with translation, I assume), and a highly improbable picture; and ever since we’ve been trying to build one, only it can’t be done.
The idea’s quite simple. You have a lever, balanced round a fulcrum, mounted on a massive frame. The lever has a short end and a long end. On the short end, you hang a heavy weight—crate full of rocks does just as well as anything. At the end of the long end you fix a sling. Pull on the long end with a rope to raise the counterweight, then let it go; the short end drops, the long end whips up and the sling hurls a stone a very long way. In theory.
Can’t be done, was the conclusion reached by the standing committee. The stress on the long, thin end of the arm is too great; it snaps like a carrot as soon as it reaches peak load. Also, you can’t get the sling to release; and the stone gets trapped in the net, whirls round, breaks the arm and falls on the heads of the crew. Also, the cradle shifts so much it tips over, assuming the arm doesn’t break around the axis pin under the weight of the raised counterweight. Therefore, the whole thing had to be wishful thinking by some armchair theoretician, and the reports of trebuchets actually being used in sieges in the far eastern provinces of Echmen were just misinformation and fake news. There’s no such thing as trebuchets; likewise dragons, elves and magic swords.
I plodded up onto the wall. It was starting to get dark. I said, “Some fool’s been spreading stupid rumours about—” One of my officers, his name slips my mind, put a hand on my shoulder and pointed.
Oh, I thought.
Five hundred yards is too far to see details, but plenty close enough for shapes. I’d seen the pictures—copies of them, anyway. At rest, the throwing arm leans slightly back, like a tall, spindly tree blown by a wind coming straight from behind you. The cradles were massive; probably oaks from one of His Majesty’s insufferable deer parks, where the shipwrights aren’t allowed to fell and trees grow huge. They’d built them on a small hillock, safe from our bouncing, trundling artillery balls. I counted seven.
