by K. J. Parker
And? I asked.
That’s when I wake up, she said. And then I lie there, listening to him breathe, and gradually the dream fades away, but I feel like I’ve done something really bad, something horrible.
I seem to remember saying something, I have no idea what. I hate him, she said, I wish he was dead. You don’t mean that, I told her. He’s not a bad man really, he’s my friend. You sleep with him then, she said.
Is that the problem, I asked. Not that it’s any of my business. Part of it, she said. He makes my skin crawl, like a spider on your face.
Ogus’s Sichelgaita wasn’t just a pretty face. I’d done my old pal an injustice, assuming he’d picked her for her looks. She was smart, shrewd, sharp, bright, cheerful, funny, and when she cupped her face in her hands and listened to you, only then did you realise just how wise and brave you actually were. I seem to recall talking a lot about building bridges, and I swear she was hanging on my every word.
But that was all right because Ogus was there, and I was happy to be his little friend, his pet monkey; we weren’t talking business and I knew she was being polite. Fine, until someone in a shiny breastplate pushed aside the tent flap and told Ogus he was needed for something. Won’t be a moment, he said, and there I was, alone with my best friend’s wife.
She was still and quiet for about ten seconds. Then she leaned forward and lowered her voice.
“You’re his friend,” she said. “Can’t you talk some sense into him?”
“You’re his wife,” I remember saying to her. “Can’t you talk some sense into him?”
She looked at me. “Why should I want to?”
(Aichmalotus had just got himself carved up in the arena. The other guy, of course, was carried out on a door, but Aichmalotus nearly died, too. It’s time you called it a day, I told him as he lay there in the hospital, you’ve got nothing left to prove. He just grinned at me. It’s what I like doing, he told me. How could you, I asked, how could anyone enjoy killing? And he grinned some more and said, the man who’s tired of killing is tired of life.)
“I can’t wait,” she said, “for them to come from the arena, looking all solemn, and break the news. I’ll probably scream and sob and tear my hair out, because you’re supposed to, aren’t you, but when they’ve gone I’ll dance round the room singing. The thought of it’s the only thing that keeps me going.”
“You don’t mean that,” I said.
No reply.
“He’s my friend,” I said.
She nodded. “You’re very loyal,” she said. “He’s your friend, so you’re on his side, no matter what. That’s a wonderful way to be. I envy you.”
Third evening that week that I’d stayed and sat with her while Aichmalotus was in the hospital. Look after her for me while I’m laid up, he’d said, there’s a pal; and then, you’re a true friend, Orhan. Indeed. But that wasn’t really why I was there. Other men’s wives. A true friend would’ve made an excuse and set off for Olbia.
I fell in love for the first time at the age of thirty-four. It’s like other childhood ailments. If you catch it when you’re a kid, it doesn’t do much harm, and then you’re basically immune. But if you get it when you’re grown up, it can be very serious indeed.
So, that evening, while my best friend was in the Guild hospital, his wife and I put our heads together and figured out how to get rid of him, for good. Murder, we decided, wasn’t our style; too risky, neither of us could live with the worry of getting found out; besides, there really was no need, given Aichmalotus’s line of work. All I had to do was find the Greens a new champion, someone really good. How hard could that be?
It took me eight months. His name was Bestialis (I kid you not) and I met him for the first time when his sergeant brought him up on charges: fighting; grievous bodily harm to a fellow soldier, to wit, biting off one ear; assaulting an officer. Son, I said to him, you’re just not cut out for an engineer, but have you ever considered a career in the arena? His eyes lit up. It’s all I ever wanted, he said, but I never got the breaks, you need to know people, you need contacts. Funny you should say that, I told him.
Bestialis had the most meteoric career in the history of the Hippodrome, rising from unknown newbie to Green champion in an incredible twelve weeks; fought thirty-six, won thirty-six, all clean kills. When he fought Aichmalotus, there wasn’t a seat to be had for any money—they’d been queuing all night to get in, and the lines went right back to the South Gate. I wasn’t there. I don’t like watching that stuff.
By that time, she was dead, in childbirth; the father wasn’t Aichmalotus, though my dear friend didn’t know that. I remember him saying to me, before he went to the arena for that fight, the biggest of his career; if anything happens to me, you’ll look after little Aichma, won’t you? She means everything to me. And then, you’re a pal, Orhan. I know I can rely on you.
Bestialis lasted about two minutes. Aichmalotus came out of it without a scratch. He told me afterwards, it’s a great help in the arena if you really don’t give a damn if you make it or not.
He lasted another twenty-six fights, and then he turned his ankle over in the middle of a stupidly flamboyant volta—I think that’s the technical name for it—and that was the end of him. Showing off, because the crowd loved it. They cheered him to the echo when he pulled off stunts like that, and they cheered the man who killed him. Say what you like about the Hippodrome crowd, they don’t let favouritism get in the way of their appreciation of true skill.
I hated them all that day. If there’d been an enemy laying siege to the City, I’d have opened the gates, because while my friend lay dying they were cheering for his killer. Well, there you are. Bestialis was no great loss, but he’s on my conscience. So is she, the only woman I ever loved, and the fact that I killed her with my dick rather than a knife is neither here nor there.
“You’re his friend,” Sichelgaita said. “Can’t you talk some sense into him?”
It took me a moment to recover from that. “If he won’t listen to you,” I said, “what chance have I got?”
She looked at me as if I was stupid. “You don’t get it, do you?” she said. “You mean everything to him. You’re all that’s left of what was taken from him. As far as he’s concerned, there was a disaster and only two survivors, you and him. Everybody else doesn’t matter, they don’t count, not real people. I thought maybe if you really talked to him—”
I was too stunned to think straight. “I tried,” I said. “But it’s hard. I agree with him. That makes it really difficult.”
I wasn’t winning many points with her. “Then open the stupid gates and let him win,” she said. “You know he will sooner or later. At least it’ll be over quicker, and then perhaps we can put all this behind us. The way it is now, I don’t know how much more I can take.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t think I can do that.”
She sighed. “In that case,” she said, “we’ll just have to kill him.”
Other men’s wives. “Why would I want to do that?” I said.
I really wasn’t making a good impression. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “End the war at a stroke and save your stupid city from annihilation? It’s the only way. You know that, don’t you?”
“He’s my friend,” I said. Of course, she didn’t know I’d said that before.
“Well, you’re just going to have to sort your priorities out, aren’t you? One or the other, because you can’t have both. Sorry, but it’s a hard world.”
I looked at her. A tiny, stupidly unrealistic part of me was clinging to the hope that this was all a trap, to see if I’d betray my friend for a pretty face and the salvation of a city. But she meant it. Superb communication skills, on top of everything else. You always knew exactly what she wanted. “Why don’t you leave him,” I said, “if he’s such a misery to live with?”
She laughed at me. “You can’t just leave someone like that,” she said. “I wouldn’t last five minutes. Don’t get m
e wrong,” she went on, “I’m used to men like him and most of the time we get along just fine. But ever since we came here, it’s all been different. He’s obsessed, and I can’t stand it. Have you ever tried living with a lunatic? It’s slowly killing me, I feel like I can’t breathe. So, either the city’s got to go or he has. I’d rather it was the city—actually, I’d rather he gave the whole thing up, he’s got the rest of the world, this is just ridiculous, but he won’t give up, it’s not in his nature.”
She was fascinating. Listening to her, I’d stopped noticing what she looked like. “It’s only a matter of time,” I told her, “you said so yourself. Can’t you hang on and tough it out till the City falls? That’s got to be better than murdering your husband.”
Her face said, I should’ve known better than to expect sympathy from the likes of you. “Frankly, no,” she said. “I know him. He wants to give you a chance. Chances. If he’s got to fight you, it’s got to be with one hand tied behind his back. So it’ll take months, and I simply haven’t got that much patience left. Come on, I made you an offer. You won’t get an opportunity like that anywhere else.”
“Let me think about it,” I said.
“Oh, for crying out loud,” she said. “What’s there to think about?”
Not long after that, Ogus came back. I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my entire life.
The more people try and impress me, the more nervous I get, so I didn’t like the guest tent much. The silk sheets made me itch, and the scented pillow turned my stomach. I lay on my back, waiting for that idiot Lysimachus, and worried.
One thing that didn’t worry me; it was all right that she’d opened up to me like that, because a woman that beautiful would never for one moment imagine that a man would betray her confidence; besides, she expected I’d take her up on her offer without a moment’s thought. I worried a bit that at that moment she was telling Ogus a plausible story and showing him her torn dress, but, no, she was too shrewd for that. Ogus knows me too well.
I worried because I didn’t want to take her up on her offer. She was right, of course. The siege would be over, the City would be saved, I’d have won and Ogus was an obsessive, a menace, he had to be put down. Ogus was right, too, about the empire. It was an abominable thing, intolerable. How could any sane man want to protect it? My duty was to stamp on its head until it stopped twitching.
I’m an engineer, I told myself. People bring me problems, and I fix them. I’m an engineer; my answer to any and every problem is a gadget, a trick, a device. I don’t consider the politics or the ethics. If a bridge needs to be built, I rig something up with logs and ropes. If the system is so hopelessly fucked up that I can’t get pay or supplies for my men, I manufacture coins and seals. If the City is threatened with a fate it richly deserves, I modify and improve catapults, improvise armour out of bedlinen, manufacture, sorry, forge (both senses of the word) new communities—fake ones, naturally, authorised by a fake seal. I fix broken people with things, with stuff; with tricks, lies, devices. I’m resourceful and ingenious. I don’t confront, I avoid; and one of the things I do my best to avoid is justice, and another one is death.
People don’t fix easily, and neither does the world they live in. If I’d been the Creator, we’d have ten months, each month ten days long, each day ten hours, each hour a hundred minutes, each minute a hundred seconds; it’d work so much better, it’d be efficient, it’d be convenient, and everyone would know what was going on, and why. It would be sunny all day and rainy all night, and the snow would fall on time in the right places, and everyone would get on with everyone else, and there would be no more love—
Where did that suddenly come from? Best not to ask.
Sichelgaita had been rather helpful, though she didn’t know that. In order to convince me of the hopelessness of our position, she’d told me that Ogus had ordered to be built fifty enormous barges—he’d had to capture the dockyards at Phyle intact in order to do it—on which he could mount trebuchets, catapults and cranes. These barges, escorted by the Sherden pirates, would sail into the Bay and bombard the docks to cover a fleet of landing craft, bringing in fifty thousand soldiers. There was absolutely nothing I’d be able to do about it. The barges were already on their way, they’d be here in a week or so.
Thank you, I said. Forewarned is forearmed. She laughed. You idiot, she said, don’t you get it? Fifty barges, fifty thousand men. You can’t bounce stone balls across water. You haven’t got a chance.
Ah, I told her, but I do. I happen to have it on very good authority that the Fleet is on its way. No disrespect to your people, but they’re the ones with no chance, not against a squadron of Imperial warships.
She looked at me. Don’t know where you got that from, she said, but it’s bullshit. Your fleet’s still holed up the wrong side of the lighthouse. It’s cost Ogus fifteen thousand men to hold that promontory against your precious marines, but, guess what, we’re still there and you’re nowhere. So, sorry, no fleet. Think again.
So; thanks to her I now knew two things I hadn’t known before. I knew the nature and timing of the grand assault, and I knew we were still on our own. When you know all the relevant facts, all you have to do then is figure out the solution.
36
Bloody Lysimachus didn’t come that night; too busy lolling in bed, the idle turd. So, next morning, breakfast in the Commander’s tent with my old pal, dressed today in an old tunic and hobnail boots, with the lovely Sichelgaita reclining next to him on a gold and ivory couch and asking if she could tempt me to another honeycake. Then Ogus had to go and see to something, and we were alone together. Again.
“Well?” she said.
“I’ve thought about it.”
“And?”
“What do you need me for?” I said. “If you want to kill him, kill him. A pillow over the face, or funny mushrooms in his soup. It’s hardly catapult science.”
“I need you,” she said, “to take command, the moment he stops breathing. Otherwise all hell’s going to break loose, with all the contingent and regional commanders tearing each other to bits over who takes his place.”
“I don’t follow,” I said. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Ogus will have made a will,” she said, “naming you as his heir. His best friend, and all that. They raise you on a shield, you pardon them for mutiny, they go back to their provinces, everything’s how it was. I know where he keeps his seal,” she said. “And it’s common knowledge, you being his friend from back home.”
You can warm to people. That’s what I’d have done, in her shoes. “You don’t need me,” I said. “Write him a will naming you as heir. You’re his wife.”
Scornful look. “You’ve been away too long,” she said. “That lot aren’t going to accept a woman. It has to be a man, and you’re the only one I can trust.”
“Wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I told her.
“Because our interests coincide exactly,” she said. “All right, I’ll make it easy for you. I’m going to kill him anyway, whether we make a deal or not. So; do you take advantage of the situation to save your blueskin city, or do you waste it and wait for those barges to sail into the Bay, albeit under the command of someone else? You’re not the sharpest arrow in the quiver, Orhan, but even you should be able to figure out that one.”
Wait for those barges to sail into the Bay—that rang a bell at the back of my mind. Then, quite suddenly, I knew how I could defeat the barges and the seaborne invasion. Brilliant; only I had to wrench my mind away from it and deal with her instead. Some people have lousy timing.
“It occurs to me,” I said, “that the soldiers probably won’t accept you just because you’re his widow, and they may not accept me just because I’m his friend and the heir in his will. But if I was his friend and heir, and married to his widow—” And I let it hang in the air, like a worm with a hook inside it.
She kept a straight face, which showed strength of character if nothing else. “
That’d do the trick.”
“I think so,” I said. “ And, anyway, it’s time there was something in this for me. If I’ve got to betray my friend, I ought to get something out of it, wouldn’t you say?”
She nodded sagely. “Perfectly fair.”
“And a reasonable result for you,” I went on. “You’d go on being queen or chieftainess or empress, that’s got to be worth something.” I grinned at her. “I’ll try not to be too much of a pest. How about it?”
“I like powerful men,” she said. The ghastly thing was, I think she probably meant it.
We sealed our bargain. Not my finest hour, though she was very polite and long-suffering. But it had been a long time and, besides, my mind was on other things; winches, lifting gear, the reliability of Polynices’ Histories, the effective range of trebuchets and the drying time of my special pumice mortar. Not even my not-finest hour. More like fifteen minutes.
37
It was a long day, what with one thing and another. I was tired and went to bed. I’d just dropped off to sleep when this idiot woke me.
His hand was over my mouth. I couldn’t breathe.
“It’s me,” he said.
I remembered, just in time, that the last time I saw Lysimachus he was dead. He relaxed his fingers. “You’re alive,” I whispered. “I thought—”
“Shh.” There’s gratitude for you. “We’re getting out of here.”
Yes, I know. About bloody time, too. “How can we? There’s guards everywhere.”
I couldn’t see his face in the dark but I bet he was smirking. “I brought a hostage.”
Oh God. Well, he would, of course. The sort of man who’s never properly dressed without one. I peered into the gloom but I couldn’t see a damn thing. “I’ll just get my shoes,” I said.
He hissed something uncouth about my shoes, so I left them. Getting soft, is my trouble. I didn’t wear shoes till I was seven, but now I can’t go a few yards barefoot without hobbling.
