Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City

by K. J. Parker

  So, where were we? The panic was over. The trebuchets had been stopped, the wall was still in one piece, I wasn’t dead, Faustinus was in charge of the City until I got better. A disaster, in other words, poised hovering, waiting to happen.

  And he was trying to do the right thing, bless him. He wanted to see the grateful, admiring look on my face when I came round and the first thing I heard was, the villain who’d knifed my Aichma was in jail awaiting trial and execution. So he had the Watch—can you believe that, the Watch—go down to the Two Dogs and find out who did it. Needless to say, when they got there the place was deserted, apart from Aichma and the doctors and nurses the Blues had sent to look after her. So the Watch started pushing the doctors around—they hadn’t arrived on the scene until six hours after the event, had seen and heard nothing, never mind—and when that didn’t work, they woke Aichma out of the first proper sleep she’d had since it happened and asked her. Goes without saying, she told them nothing, so they threatened her with jail for obstructing justice, whereupon she told them to go away, in that special way of hers; they left. Then they went to Blue headquarters and started arresting people at random on suspicion. Of course, of course, that led to a riot, and it was only the incredible forbearance and public spirit of the Blues and the personal intervention of Arrasc himself that got them out of there alive, though naturally a bit worse for wear.

  Faustinus realised he’d probably been going about things the wrong way. How he’d got it wrong he honestly didn’t know, but he could read between the lines. So he tried another tack; five thousand stamena reward for the name of the perpetrator. Could’ve told him he was making trouble for himself. Within an hour he had a list of a hundred names, all with witnesses who swore blind etc., even though they hadn’t been there at the time. While he was busy getting rid of these idiots, a Green who had actually been there walked up and gave him the genuine name: Solisper.

  Remember, this is Faustinus we’re talking about. Immediately he has the roll checked; there’s only one Solisper in the City, so he sends twenty Watch to arrest him. What he should have done, what any fool would’ve done, what any fool’s pet rat would’ve done, was ask Longinus of the Blues (remember, a Green laid the information) if the name Solisper rang a bell. Whereupon Longinus would have told him, yes, that’s my father.

  It’s been a long time since the Victory riots, and maybe people in Upper Town have forgotten just how grumpy the Themes can get when someone does something really stupid to annoy them, such as arresting the father of a Theme boss. Arrasc had managed to rein in the righteous indignation of the Blues, out of patriotic spirit and, I rather suspect, personal regard for me. But it wasn’t his old man who was sitting in the Watch House with chains on his wrists. To do him justice, I think Longinus did make at least a show of trying to calm his people down; they weren’t having it, and he quickly gave up and let them have their heads. Fair enough. If he’d made a genuine attempt to stop them, he wouldn’t have been Green boss for very much longer. Also, quite reasonably, he was mad as mustard. When it’s family, the hell with the City and doing your best for the public weal. And quite right, too.

  I maybe ought to mention that Solisper was indeed guilty. He was drunk, and he wanted to stab someone who’d insulted him, and Aichma tried to stop him, and he’d stabbed her instead. These things happen. The rights and wrongs of the matter were entirely beside the point. I imagine that, left to himself, as soon as Aichma was up to seeing visitors, Solisper would have crawled in there looking pathetic and sad, apologised profusely, meekly taken his tongue-lashing and lifetime ban from the Dogs and gone away. Then a substantial sum of money would have changed hands, honour would have been satisfied and everyone would have been happy; which is how things go in Poor Town, so long as the law keeps its sticky paws out of other people’s business.

  So; we have the Greens in arms, ready to loot and burn and smash the Watch House to rubble. It was therefore predictable and inevitable that Arrasc should have led the Blues out in full force to bar the way. That’s the very essence of the Themes. If the Greens want to do something—anything—it’s the bounden duty of the Blues to stop them. So there’s Arrasc, piously spouting the truce and the accords while his men gear up for a real good rumble; how, you ask, could Faustinus possibly make this atrocious situation worse? Good question. But he managed it. He called up the Corps of Engineers—my lads, who had important work to be getting on with, patching up the damage the trebuchets had done; my lads, who weren’t involved and who most definitely aren’t soldiers—to go and stand between the Themes and stop them butchering each other.

  Goes without saying, no normal Engineer officer would’ve stood for it. But who’s in charge of the regiment while I’m sleeping peacefully in the Temple infirmary? Nico. Nico the Imperial gentleman, Nico the Slave of Duty. Of course he told Faustinus he was being a bloody fool and fifty times more dangerous than the enemy on the other side of the wall. But Faustinus had given him a direct order, so he had to obey it.

  From time to time I say harsh things about Nico, all of them true to some extent. But when he hasn’t got me breathing down his neck he’s no fool. He has his own way of doing things, and from time to time I find myself wondering if perhaps he might be safe out on his own without a nursemaid one of these days.

  I want you to imagine you’re coming up Fish Street with the Greens. You’re mad as hell because the authorities, with whom you’ve been collaborating like mad, against a lifetime of instinct and experience, because we’re all supposed to make nice to save the City, have arrested Longinus’s dad and thrown him in jail. Now you’re coming up to the crossroads with Horsefair; on the other side of which are the Blues, taking this opportunity to stab your Theme in the back, well, we’ll see about that. And once we’ve dealt with them—

  Well, there are the Blues. They’ve come to a dead stop and they’re all bunched together on the north side of the Horsefair junction. So, this is where it’s going to happen. Fine. But as you get closer, you get the impression that they aren’t lined up to fight. It’s like there’s something in the way; a sinkhole’s opened up in the street, or angels with fiery swords are blocking their way. So you crane your neck for a better view; and there, in the middle of Horsefair, is this man sitting in a chair.

  He’s in ordinary clothes—well, ordinary Rich Town clothes, not a uniform is the point—and he’s clearly unarmed but the chair he’s sitting in is an army folding camp chair, and you recognise him as Nicephorus Bautzes, the milkface Engineer’s top sidekick. You’ve seen him often enough, rushing about telling people what to do. You have no opinion about him one way or another. But there he’s sitting, in his chair, wine jug on the ground next to him, reading a book.

  The Blue front rank opens and a man comes forward. You know him, of course, it’s Arrasc, the Blue boss. He walks up to General Bautzes, who appears not to have noticed him. He stands there for a moment, clears his throat, but it must be a really good book because Bautzes doesn’t seem to have heard him.

  As a Green, you naturally find this amusing, which makes Arrasc look a fool. You can practically smell him struggling to keep his temper. He takes a step forward and says something; Bautzes suddenly notices that he’s there, puts a bookmark in the book to keep his place, gives him a friendly greeting. There’s a short conversation, which you can’t hear, though I imagine you get the gist of it. Then Arrasc stomps back to his line with a face like thunder. Cue raucous Green laughter.

  Then you notice that Longinus, in the Green front rank, has got that look on his face. He’s not happy at all; but he steps up, and Bautzes greets him politely, and they talk. You can see Longinus getting angry; he’s waving his arms about, but Bautzes just shakes his head. Nothing doing. Longinus comes back to the Green lines. The Blues are hooting and sniggering, which is pretty hard to bear, considering that their man got humiliated in exactly the same way a moment ago.

  And while all this has been going on—first the curiosity, then laughing at
the Blues, then sort of laughing inside where nobody can see at Longinus getting the same treatment; somehow, the burning rage that made you want to kill people and break things has sort of gone off the boil a little. You can figure out what’s happened. Bautzes has told both of them, politely but firmly, that if they want to have a bloodbath followed by mass looting and storming the Watch House—fine, there’s nothing he can do to stop them, obviously. But first, they’re going to have to walk all over him, which is basically the same thing as walking all over Colonel Orhan and everything we’ve all been doing for the City; and he’s so quiet and calm and so unfazed by it all, because he knows that deep down we’re all sensible people who want to save the City, and the only way to do that is to stop fighting each other, pull ourselves together and start acting like grown-ups. In other words, the moment has passed. We’re not a mob any more, we’re six hundred or so responsible adults who can see painfully clearly what a bloody stupid thing we were on the point of doing, and probably the best thing would be to go home and never mention all this again—

  “I was scared shitless,” Nico told me. “Naturally. But I just couldn’t think of anything else to do.”

  So I went to see Longinus, and handed him his father’s release order, so he could be the one to deliver it to the Watch. Thank you, I told him, for not killing my boy Nico, and thank you for not trashing the City. Don’t mention it, he said, and I’m really sorry about what happened to your girl. He meant it, too. He’s a decent enough man, apart from the duplicity and that vicious streak.

  18

  And then, finally, I was free to go down to the Dogs and see if she was still alive.

  “Oh,” she said, “it’s you. I was wondering if you were ever going to bother to show up.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I got sidetracked.”

  She looked awful, sort of grey and brittle, as though if she fell on the floor she’d shatter. “You look like death,” she said. “I gather you got a bump on the head or something.”

  “Something like that.” I took a deep breath. “I let Solisper go. I had to. Longinus was foaming at the mouth.”

  “Arsehole,” she said. “Still, it’s more that lunatic of a Prefect’s fault than yours. You ought to put a muzzle on him. He’s a menace.”

  “I intend to have words with him,” I said, “when I’ve got five minutes. How are you feeling?”

  “Awful,” she said. “Oh, and I’ve got a bone to pick with you. Your bloody Supply Commissioners have been here saying I can’t have any more booze for my customers. How am I supposed to run a bar with no alcohol?”

  My Supply Commissioners. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but it’s got to be the same for everyone, you know that. Damn it, you were doing the job yourself, you should know better than anyone—”

  “Oh, shut your face,” she said. “What’s the point of being friends with the top man if nobody’s going to make a few small exceptions?”

  “Aichma—”

  “And another thing. There’s no black market in this town. Really. You just can’t get anything. And you know why?”

  “Listen—”

  “Because you’ve got the bloody Themes, who should be running the stupid black market, going round telling anyone that if they sell so much as a cashew nut off ticket, they’ll get their legs broken. That’s just not right. It’s tyranny.”

  “Aichma, shut up and listen.” She gave me that shocked look, as though I’d just kicked a kitten. “Aichma, you were in charge of it, you know perfectly well why it’s got to be that way. Just a minute,” I added, as the penny finally dropped. “Have you been trying to buy stuff off ration?”

  “Yes, only there isn’t any. I’ve tried the Corason brothers, I’ve tried Lampadas and Streuthes, but they’re all petrified. It’s barbaric. You simply can’t do that sort of thing, you’re the government.”

  “For crying out loud,” I didn’t shout, not quite. “Have you the faintest idea how it would look if it came out that my—a personal friend of the Colonel’s been trying to trade on the black market? How could you be so irresponsible—?”

  “Fuck you,” she said. “I’ve got a business to run, it’s my living. I can’t run a bar with no booze.”

  My head was hurting, and I don’t think it was the concussion. “All right,” I said, “fair enough. You figure out how much money you’re losing, and I’ll make it up to you. Now I can’t say fairer than—”

  “You’re missing the point.” She yelled so loud she scared me; I didn’t want her busting stitches. “I don’t want charity, I want to run my bar, and you’re stopping me. You know what those bastards did? They came round here with a handcart and took away all my flour, all my dried meat, all my figs and raisins and olives—”

  “Well, of course they did. And you got paid, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, right. They gave me a stupid bit of paper, like that’s worth anything. And they weren’t Watch or Town Hall, they were bloody Greens. My own Theme, marching in here and stealing my stuff. I ask you, Orhan, what’s the point of fighting those savages out there? They aren’t going to do anything much worse to us than that.”

  She was starting to get on my nerves. So I thought what Faustinus would say at this point, or Nico, and I said it. “Fortuitously,” I said, “it doesn’t actually matter. After all, you won’t be running the bar for a good long time, not till you’re all healed up. So really, it makes no odds.”

  “You’re barred.”

  “You what?”

  “You can’t come in here any more. Take your horrible stupid tea and get someone else to make it for you.”

  19

  “I think you may have been right,” Nico said.

  He startled me. It was the way he’d said it, the very reluctant respect. “About what?”

  We were on the wall, inspecting the repairs. The masons’ guild had rebuilt the ramparts in soft, half-baked brick. Theory was, if it copped another direct hit it’d crumble, not shatter into a million razor-edged flying shards. We were talking about facing the whole length of the battlements with the stuff, as and when we had five minutes.

  “About them waiting for someone,” he said. “I didn’t believe you, but now I do, I think you may have something.”

  I felt like I’d just been handed a golden crown. “Thank you,” I said.

  “I think,” he went on, “that the trebuchets were meant to be ready for when he gets here, but not used till then. But when we launched our sortie it made them lose their temper, or else they felt they had to do something to restore morale. So they did something, but it didn’t work.”

  On that damned hillock they were hard at work, building seven new trebuchets. It seemed to be taking them a long time, and I guessed they didn’t have the same calibre of carpenters as us. Fair enough; it’s easy to forget when you live here, but this is, after all, the heart of the world. Naturally we have the best.

  “I think,” Nico went on, “that he, whoever he is, won’t be happy when he gets here and finds out they’ve blown their principal advantage. If they’d had seventy trebuchets instead of seven—”

  “We’d have smashed them to bits with bouncing balls,” I said. “He wasn’t expecting that, either. The idea was to pound us to dust from four hundred yards, when our maximum range is two-fifty. And he believed the trebuchets could crack the base of the wall, and they can’t. Probably we’ve saved him lives and embarrassment.”

  Nico smiled. “Maybe,” he said.

  I heard footsteps behind me; someone slipping on the smooth stone of the staircase and catching their balance by grabbing the wall. Sawdust; she’s one of the clumsiest people I’ve ever met. “Excuse me, but have you got a moment?”

  Something was bothering Nico. He looked panic-stricken. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said. “Things to do.” And he bolted off down the stairs, nearly knocking the poor girl over. Hello, I thought. But I could be wrong. I usually am.

  Sawdust, with something under her arm wrapped in a bla
nket. “What’ve you got there?” I asked.

  She unwrapped it. A sort of iron hook thing, and a ring for it to go in, and a catch of some sort, and the frayed end of a rope. “It’s the release mechanism from one of the trebuchets,” she said. “Lysimachus brought it back, did they tell you?”

  Vaguely remembered something of the sort. “Let’s see,” I said, and she handed it over.

  Refined, aesthetic types like you would get that sort of a thrill from seeing a Monomachus altarpiece, or hearing the monks at the Silver Star singing the Absolution. I’m an engineer. “It’s amazing,” I said. “So simple.”

  She smiled at me. “You just pull on the rope, and the slider falls back, and that drops the sear, and you’re away.”

  I pressed the catch and the hook fell into my hand; no fuss, no hesitation. So simple; but you could see how difficult the problem was, to which this was the perfect solution. Whoever made it did good work. But we had good workers, too. “That still leaves a whole lot of problems,” I said. “The beam snapping under impact. The shear force on the axis pins.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” she said, and from the sleeve of her tunic she pulled a brass tube, out of which she poked a scrap of paper.

  I have this flaw in my otherwise godlike character. I can’t help finding fault, if there’s any to be found. So I tried. I was silent for a long time, trying.

  “Have I missed something?” she said.