by K. J. Parker
'Xipho Dorunoxy. Like I said, I asked around. She took you in a cart to some village.'
Monach nodded. 'That's right,' he said. 'Cric, it was called-it was where the God in the Cart had predicted the destruction of Josequin. Only it turned out that she was the priestess, and the god had been another old school friend of ours, by the name of Ciartan; but that's a very long story-'
'Never mind,' Spenno said. 'Go on.'
'If you're sure.' Another raindrop landed on Monach's neck, making him wince. 'For some reason I never did find out about, Xipho was under orders from Father Tutor to play some sort of mind game with this Ciartan-he'd had an accident and lost his memory, hadn't got a clue who he was, let alone who she was, if you can believe it.'
'You'd be amazed what I can believe when I want to. Like I said, I got faith.'
Monach wasn't quite sure what to make of that, but he put it out of his mind. 'That's what Xipho was doing, anyhow: she was going round with this Ciartan, pretending that she hadn't known him since we were all kids together, that he was just somebody she'd met on the road a few months before. The Order wanted him for something; but whatever their grand scheme was, it got lost in the wash when Deymeson was taken out. So there was Xipho, at something of a loose end, and she happened to find me. So she took me back to Cric, where the locals reckoned she was the priestess of the Second Coming, and spun them some yarn about me being the Redeemer out of some old legend or prophesy, and how I'd fought off the God in the Cart and stopped him bringing about the end of the world. Only while I'd been about it I'd taken one hell of a pounding, so it was their religious duty to help her look after me till I was on my feet again.'
Spenno nodded. 'Little white lie, then. Where was this Ciartan while all that was going on?'
'We had no idea-he'd just sort of vanished. Anyway, while I was healing up in Cric, the story Xipho'd told them-all complete bullshit, incidentally, there never was any such prophecy-it got around, and loads of people started showing up to give thanks to the Redeemer, the sort of mass hysteria you get when there's wars and disasters. But in with all the peasants and knuckle-draggers there were a lot of sword-monks, pretty well all of us who'd escaped from Deymeson. It was Xipho's idea to round up all these misfits and turn them into a sort of army. To begin with, I think it was just that she was bored with waiting around to see if I'd die or not, and it was something to do. Anyway, by the time I was out of bed and on my feet again, she'd got them believing I really was some sort of great hero, and basically they refused to go away again. So there we were with an army, not knowing what the hell we wanted it for or what we might find to do with it… Like a huge, violent lost puppy that hangs round your door whimpering till you throw a stick for it. I don't know.' Monach cupped his hands over his face. 'I was too stunned by what'd happened, I guess, I didn't really care. And I didn't do anything, it was all Xipho, making speeches and leading prayer meetings and all sorts of stuff. And then when the baby was born-'
'Yours?' Spenno interrupted.
Monach grinned. 'Not likely. No, Ciartan was the father, which only goes to show how dedicated Xipho is to the Order, because she can't stand him. But she spun the troops some ridiculous yarn about an immaculate conception or something of the sort, and the poor fools believed her. She's really good at manipulating the weak-minded.'
'Sounds like it.'
Monach nodded. 'I asked for that, didn't I? Anyway, that's about it. Ever since, we've been wandering about the countryside, living hand to mouth out of what we can scare people into giving us. We've had a few skirmishes with government troops, a couple of minor collisions with the Amathy house, and for some reason nobody ever saw fit to explain to me, we sort of ended up here, in Tulice. Probably Xipho had some reason for wanting to be here, because I have an idea she's always got a reason for everything. But she's gone-not dead or anything, she just disappeared a short while back. Took the baby, but left me to mind the army. The baby would've been less trouble-I've been landed with a thousand helpless infants to keep fed and changed.'
'I see.' Spenno was sitting with his elbows on his knees, looking at Monach like a painter studying a spider's web before making his preliminary sketches. 'And the troops: they still think you're the true Redeemer?'
Monach laughed. 'I doubt it very much,' he said. 'About three-quarters of the original mob have quietly deserted since Cric. I think the ones who're still here just don't have anywhere else to go, or they don't like the idea of working for a living. Xipho didn't seem too bothered about the desertions, so long as the sword-monks stayed with us; and most of them have, though don't ask me why. I'm pretty much convinced none of them think I'm the Son of God or whatever; most of them've known me since I was fourteen.' He smiled bleakly. 'I was the little fat kid who hung around with the big tall ones so as not to get bullied. The Earwig, my nickname was. Hardly your ideal solar-hero material.'
'That's interesting,' Spenno said neutrally. 'And now here you are, and you've got hold of the first working prototype of the Poldarn's Flute project, which is the biggest military secret in the whole Empire. And you reckon it just sort of happened that way, more by luck than judgement.'
Monach yawned. 'It's possible,' he said, 'but so are three-headed chickens. No, I think Xipho planned all this, like she plans everything. I think that she's got a little bit of paper tucked down her front where she's written down every time I'm going to take a shit for the next five years, assuming I'll be allowed to live that long. But I'm used to that-I was brought up to run errands for Father Tutor. It was what I could do for religion.'
Spenno was silent for a while; then he said; 'Do you think she's got another bit of paper headed "Ciartan"?'
'Probably got bits of paper for everybody in the whole world. A bit like a god, really.' He looked up, smiling crookedly. 'You know, maybe I got it wrong, back when I was sent to find the god in the cart. Maybe she was the one I was meant to be tracking.'
'Sorry?' Spenno said. 'You lost me.'
'Doesn't matter. Anyway, I don't believe in gods, only in religion. You know what I'd really like to do? I'd like to wait till it's pitch dark tonight, and then crawl out under the gate and get as far away from here as I possibly can.'
'Wouldn't we all?' Spenno said. 'But where'd you go?'
Monach pursed his lips. 'Oddly enough, I've thought about that. There's other countries, you know, a long way away across the sea. There's the one Ciartan came from, for one. Or the place where the raiders live, though I don't suppose they'd want me. Still, I'm not exactly welcome here, either.'
Spenno looked at him for a while; then he said: 'You know what? For an educated man, you don't think much.'
'Wasn't brought up to think,' Monach replied. 'Thinking blurs the moment, remember? Don't think, just draw, that's the whole point of religion.'
It was Spenno's turn to yawn. 'If you say so. I think I missed that bit, or else I'd left before we got on to it. So what's you going to do?'
'Not sure. I think that when Brigadier Muno shows up, I'm going to point your Poldarn's Flutes at him and hope they don't blow me up when I give the order to set them off. How does that sound? Reasonable?'
'Don't ask me,' Spenno replied. 'I'm just the engineer.'
Monach looked up at him, and something dropped into place in his mind. 'Are you, though?' he said. 'I'm not so sure about that.'
'What do you mean?'
Monach straightened up a little in his chair. 'For one thing,' he said, 'you're sounding different. The folksy turns of phrase, and the Tulice accent you could cut with a knife. They were out of place anyway,' he added, 'for someone who spent-how long were you at Deymeson? Three years?'
'Four.'
'Four years. They'd have kicked that accent out of you inside a month. All sword-monks talk like they've just burned the roofs of their mouths drinking hot soup-it's the rule. And how did you come to be here, anyway? You never did tell me.'
Spenno grinned. 'Same way as you,' he said. 'There's some bugger somewhere with a little bit of
paper with my name at the top.'
Monach thought about that for a moment. 'You were sent here. Posted, like a soldier.'
'Sort of. More like a merchant company or a bank; in places that aren't important enough to have a regular office, they have an agent, someone who looks after their interests there when the need arises. Same with me. What I do for a living is cast bells, because that's what I'm good at, it's what I'm for; but one day a year every five years or so I have to do a little job for the Order. It's no big deal.'
For some reason, Monach felt his skin crawl, and at the back of his mind he thought of how a flock of crows sends out its scouts to see where it's safe for the main body to feed: one tiny part of the great group mind, but containing the whole. 'But that doesn't matter any more,' he said. 'The Order's over and done with, isn't it? Ever since Deymeson-'
Spenno nodded slowly. 'Of course,' he said. 'I'd forgotten, you're right. Good riddance, too. I never did figure out what good it was supposed to be to anybody.'
'First,' Copis said, 'I need to know how much you remember. Just so we don't waste time telling you things you already know.'
The fire was struggling to stay alight on a diet of wet twigs and sodden leaves. The rain was still falling, and the best they could do by way of shelter was the canopy of the cart, rigged as a rather inadequate tent on four ash poles. Poldarn felt cold through to his bones, even though he was so close to the fire that his hands were stinging. It occurred to him to ask where the baby was, but he decided against it.
'All right,' he said. 'And the answer is, not very much. I'm pretty sure that my name is Ciartan and that my father was Tursten; he was killed before I was born. When I was about sixteen, I joined the order at Deymeson. You two were in the same class as me; we learned swordfighting, mostly. Also, I think Prince Tazencius had something to do with it. I may have married his daughter, even. Apart from that-'
Gain and Copis looked at each other; then Gain said: 'That's all true. Actually, you know a lot more than that, because I told you myself.'
'You didn't ask what you told me, you asked what I can remember. There's a difference.'
Copis smiled. 'Meaning, Gain might not have been telling the truth. Fair point. After all, I lied to you from the moment I found you, back in the Bohec country. But what you just said: that's what you can actually remember?'
Poldarn shrugged. 'I'm not sure,' he said. 'It's getting hard to know what's memories and what's stuff I've been told. The things that I know are memories aren't particularly helpful-like, I can remember sitting in a hide in a field of peas, killing crows with a bucketful of stones, and I can remember going with my grandfather to see the hot springs on the mountain above our house. They're proper memories, sharp and clear. But a lot of it's just remembering dreams that I've been having lately, and for all I know they're just my mind chewing over stuff that people have told me-like you,' he added, looking at Gain, 'and other people I've run into who reckon they know me. It's hard to believe that everybody's been lying to me-there'd have to be a very good reason. But what if there is a reason that good? I just don't know, is the straight answer.'
Copis poked the fire with a stick, stirring up a little swarm of sparks. 'You still think like a member of the Order,' she said, 'which is what I'd expect. And you're very suspicious, which is all part and parcel of the scientific method. What I don't understand, and it bothered me when we were going round in the cart together, is how it's like you don't really want to know; like you're aware you've done some terrible thing you're scared to remember so you're tiptoeing round it so you won't wake it up. That's not how we were taught.'
Poldarn looked at her. 'Isn't it?'
'Of course not,' she said briskly. 'The whole purpose of religion is to annihilate doubt; and fear's just a kind of doubt, after all. The reason we learn how to fight with the sword is so that, once we've been trained, there's nothing on this earth that we need to be afraid of, nothing we can't kill. Once we know that-really know it, believe it-that's fear disposed of, and once we've got rid of fear we're free of the biggest restraint on us, we're at liberty to act purely in accordance with religion. That's absolutely basic, essential. Fear and doubt are what stand between the impulse for the draw and the cut itself. Once the draw's so perfect that it no longer exists, there's no longer any room for fear or doubt. It's what religion is for.'
'You've got to excuse Xipho,' Gain interrupted. 'She learned all that by heart for sixth-grade tests, and it sort of got stuck in her mouth, like a fishbone. She pukes it all up once a week, and then she's fine.'
Poldarn ignored him. 'Well,' he said, 'that's not the way I think. Yes, I'm afraid there's something I did that I don't want to know about. In fact, I'm absolutely terrified of it, and when Gain showed up and-well, threatened to tell me, that's what it comes down to: yes, I really didn't want to know. In fact, I only let him say what he did because by then I'd seen enough of him to form the impression that he wasn't to be trusted.'
Gain burst out laughing. 'Screw you, Ciartan,' he said. 'You were always saying things like that. No wonder nobody liked you.'
'Shut up, Gain,' Copis said, like a mother to a fractious child. 'Well, at least I can set your mind at rest on that score-assuming you'll believe me, of course, but that's up to you. Look, I can't tell you about anything you may've got up to before Deymeson, but I do know everything that's happened to you since then. And yes, you've done some pretty severe things, including killing people, and not just soldiers or enemies in a fair fight. But there's nothing you've done that you need to be afraid of. Nothing you can't live with, I mean.'
Poldarn looked at her for a long time. 'You reckon,' he said.
'I know for a fact,' she answered briskly. 'You did things in self-defence, or to protect other people, or to help the cause, religion. You did things that would've been unforgivable without the right motive. But the justification was always there. Nothing you did was-well, evil, for want of a better word. And each time, it's hard to think of what else you could've done, in the circumstances. Now it's true,' she went on, 'what I said to you that time, at Deymeson, when you were with the raiders, attacking us.'
'I remember,' Poldarn said quietly. 'You told me I was the most evil man in the world. You wanted to kill me.'
Copis nodded. 'I know,' she said. 'I was wrong.'
Next to her, Gain whistled. 'Did you hear that?' he said. I never thought I'd live to-'
'Be quiet. I was wrong,' Copis repeated. 'At the time, there were things I didn't know, hadn't been told. They were things I couldn't be allowed to know if I was to do my job as your keeper. Once that job was over, it was necessary that I should be told, so I could do the next job that was lined up for me. So now I understand a whole lot more about you, why you did those things.'
'Those things,' Poldarn repeated. 'What sort of things?'
Copis shivered a little, probably because of the cold. 'Well, for one, taking part in the attack on Deymeson, not warning us or helping us fight back. At the time, I didn't understand; I thought you could've got away from the savages before they launched the attack, come and warned us what they were going to do. I thought you'd betrayed us out of selfishness, because they'd turned out to be your people, where you came from.'
'Copis,' Poldarn broke in angrily, 'I'd just escaped from your fucking Order, they'd been setting me up to believe I was General Cronan himself, or someone else I wasn't; they were playing some horrible trick on me, as part of some grand strategy. I wanted to help my people kill every last one of the bastards.'
'I know,' Copis replied calmly. 'At the time I thought that was wrong. But now I know it was right. Deymeson had to be taken out, obliterated. It was in the interests of religion for it to be destroyed. And before you say that wasn't why you helped the savages,' she went on, before he could interrupt, 'actually, it was. The Deymeson Order had to be taken out because it was following the wrong path, and the error it was making was what prompted it to try and use you, the way it did. So yes, you were r
ight and I was wrong. I hope,' she added stiffly, as though proposing a toast at a formal dinner, 'that you can forgive me for that.'
Poldarn decided not to reply to that. 'What else?' he said. 'What other things?'
This time Copis smiled. 'Are you sure you want to know?'
'I think so, yes.'
'Excellent-we're making progress. Well,' she went on, 'first, you betrayed someone who trusted you; someone who'd always shown you nothing but favour, kindness even. Including giving you his own daughter.'
'Tazencius,' Poldarn said.
'Tazencius. He was your sponsor at Deymeson. He got you a place there, because you were brought up by the savages and he wanted someone to be a go-between for him with them. So he got you the best possible education, and then he bound you to him with a marriage alliance, to make sure of your loyalty. But you betrayed him: you took all the advantages he'd given you, the training and the skills and the contacts, and you sided with his enemies. Not just a spur-of-the-moment thing, you knew right from the start, from before you married Lysalis, that that's what you were going to do. But you did it for the right reason. For religion.'
Poldarn frowned. 'You mean for the Order,' he said.
'Same thing,' Copis replied, almost casually. 'Father Abbot and Father Tutor knew what Tazencius had in mind for you; you told Father Tutor yourself, as soon as you realised. And he asked you to go along with it until the time was right, and then you betrayed Tazencius-to the Order. To us.' She paused, probably for emphasis. 'And when you did that, you betrayed your wife as well; she loved you, and I think you probably loved her, in a way; and your son, too, as a father should. You had to betray both of them, and you did, because it was the right thing to do.'
'Was it?' Poldarn asked.
'Of course. Tazencius was going to throw the whole Empire into chaos, because of his ambitions, his lethal feud with General Cronan, who was the only hope against the savages. Thanks to you, we stopped him dead in his tracks. It saved the Empire. It was the right thing.'
