by K. J. Parker
That seemed to annoy Gain; a worthwhile objective in itself. 'I'm going over to the shack, see if he's there,' he said.
'No, stay still.' That was more like the old Copis. (How would I know that?) 'Keep still and try and be patient for once in your life.'
'Yes, but what if anything's-?' Gain caught sight of the expression on her face and subsided. 'Well, he should've been here to meet us,' he muttered. 'I mean, this is the right place, and-'
'Shut up, Gain,' Copis said softly. Poldarn looked across at the blurry shape that was probably a shack (unless Gain had been lying), but he couldn't see any movement in that direction. But Copis was pointing, like a bird-dog.
'Told you he'd be. here,' she said, apparently to herself, and as she spoke a shape pushed through the curtain of fine rain: a big man with broad shoulders, exaggerated by a bulky coat and hood. He wasn't in any hurry; he wasn't walking so much as processing, like someone used to having to be dignified in public. Even at that distance, fifty yards or more away, he looked familiar 'I know him,' Poldarn whispered. 'Copis, he's that man we ran into in Sansory, at that inn, where we got separated. He's the man who-'
She didn't say anything. Poldarn searched his mind, looking for the name, which he'd put in a safe place. It was only when the man walked calmly up to the cart and pulled back his hood that Poldarn remembered it. Cleapho; Chaplain Cleapho. Second most important man in the empire, or something like that 'Hello, Xipho,' he said, with a benign smile, 'Gain.' The smile didn't change when he shifted his head very slightly and added, 'Hello, Ciartan. Thanks for coming.'
When he'd spoken, Xipho had closed her eyes just for a tiny moment: relief, pure joy at having completed the task and handed over to her superior officer. Then she pulled herself together, tightened back up.
'Hello, Cordo,' she said.
Chapter Fourteen
'And now,' Copis said, 'everything should be blindingly obvious.'
Poldarn didn't even look at her. 'You're Chaplain Cleapho,' he said. 'I met you-'
Cleapho smiled, and Poldarn felt a gentle glow of benediction, as if his sins had been forgiven. Presumably just force of habit. 'That's right,' Cleapho said. 'At the Charity and Diligence at Sansory. You had rather a hard time there. I'm sorry. My fault; back then I didn't know about you losing your memory. Someone,' he added, not looking at Copis, not needing to, 'should've warned me in advance, but there was a breakdown in communications. Still, you handled yourself very well, and there was no harm done.' He paused, then smiled again. 'It's good to see you again,' he said, his voice lowering just the right amount to convey sincere concern. 'Though I can't say you're looking at your best. I heard about-well, what happened, from Gain here. It was a very brave thing to do, we're all grateful to you. We've got to stick together, after all. Particularly now,' he added, looking at Copis.
'What's been happening?' she said quickly. 'We're so out of touch-'
'Not so good,' Cleapho said. 'He's getting quite blatant about it, and that fool Tazencius doesn't seem to give a damn; too upset about his grandson, they reckon, though that doesn't sound like him to me. Anyhow, the latest news I heard was that they're coming. Might save us some trouble if they run into Muno along the way, but apart from that, it's looking a bit grim. Do you think those monks of yours can do any good?'
Copis shook her head. 'I wouldn't rely on them to cook dinner,' she said bitterly. 'And that Spenno character's no better, from what I've heard-either crazy or stupid or both.'
'It doesn't matter,' Cleapho replied calmly. 'Remember, we don't need them ourselves, it's just important that he doesn't get hold of them. And the Earwig won't let us down.'
'Yes, but does he understand-?'
'I've written to him, it's all right.' Cleapho shrugged the whole topic aside. 'Well, are you going to make me stand out here in the rain all day, or shall we make a move? I hate this rotten bloody country, it never stops.'
He scrambled up onto the cart, stepping over Gain and settling himself in the back, fussily, like someone's mother. 'Xipho,' he called out, 'your bloody canopy's got a hole in it. There's water all over the floor.'
'Sorry,' Copis replied. 'We'll get it fixed at Dui Chirra.' She stopped short, then looked over her shoulder at him. 'We are going to Dui Chirra, aren't we?'
'Well, of course we are,' Cleapho replied. 'And the sooner we start, the sooner we'll get there.'
'Just a moment,' Gain called out. He stood up, nodded to Poldarn to shift along the bench, and then sat down where he'd been sitting, boxing him in. 'Not that you're going to jump off and make a run for it, why should you?' he explained.
Poldarn looked at him. 'Why, then?'
'Oh, I like looking about me on long cart rides.'
It turned out to be a very long cart ride, at least in perceived time: a ford that Xipho had been planning on using proved to be flooded and impassable; the bridge ten miles further down had been washed away; the road they went back up so as to loop round and join up with another road that led to another bridge had turned into a quagmire they didn't dare set wheel to; then Gain suggested that when all else failed, there was no dishonour in looking at the map; so they fished the map out of the chest under the box, only to find that the rain had got in it and reduced the map to porridge; then Gain said that didn't matter, he was pretty sure he knew how to get to the second bridge… Come nightfall, they were stuck up to the axles in mud, in a high-walled lane so narrow that the wheel hubs had been striking sparks before they eventually ground to a soggy, inglorious halt 'Fuck,' Xipho announced, peering at the circle of pale yellow light thrown by her storm lantern. 'We're stuck in the mud and jammed solid against the wall. We're going to have to knock the wall down, pack the rubble under the wheels, and try and back up the way we came as far as the top of the slope.'
'The hell with that,' Gain snapped. The lane had been his idea, and guilt was making him irascible. 'I'm positive we can squeeze through, if only we can get a bit of pace-'
'In this swamp? Don't be ridiculous.' Xipho was getting shrill. Cleapho, for his part, was mostly staying out of it, limiting his participation to the occasional tongue click and sigh, to remind them both how disappointed he was in them. 'Wall's got to come down, it's the only way.'
'Well, it's not my fault,' Gain shouted. 'Besides, what kind of idiot'd build a walled lane right out in the middle of bloody nowhere?'
'The same sort of idiot who'd drive down a walled lane in the middle of a monsoon,' Xipho inevitably replied. 'Right, we'll need the hammer, the crowbar-'
'What hammer?'
'You didn't bring a hammer? Fucking hell. We'll just have to use the axe.'
'What axe?'
'Oh, for-'
Poldarn lifted his head. It was tones of voice, nothing more, the sheer musical pitch of their shouting and bickering that he recognised; but it was as familiar as if he'd last heard it a week ago. Where, though? He closed his eyes, trying to fit a place to the sound 'And you're no fucking help,' Copis yelled at him. 'Wake up, for crying out loud. This really isn't the time to fall asleep.'
'I'm not asleep, I'm thinking,' he replied.
'Then don't, it always causes trouble. Just get the crowbar, and-'
He grinned, hoping she wouldn't see in the dark. 'What crowbar?' he said.
'Fucking hell! Of all the idiots!'
And then it dropped into place like the wards of a lock: the same words, the same shrill fury; of all the idiots-It had only been a dream, unreliable evidence that he had been justified in disregarding; and he'd put it carefully to one side, where it wouldn't be in the way. Until now.
Cordo; Cordo in the library, when they'd broken in to steal the book. Cordo, not dead 'Shut up a minute, both of you,' he said, so firmly and quietly that they were shocked into compliance. Then he shifted round in his seat, awkward because one of the canopy hoops was in the way and he had to crane his neck round it. 'Cordo,' he said. (Strange to hear himself saying the name out loud; it was as alien as a word endlessly repeated.) 'Didn't
I kill you, in seventh grade?'
Absolute silence, except for the inevitable drumming of rain. 'No,' Cleapho replied. Pause. 'You tried,' he went on, 'but you cocked it up. Don't obsess about it, though,' he added. 'Nobody's perfect.'
The bitterness lay in the casual delivery, a matter-of-fact drawl spread thin over twenty years of anger. Which was, of course, only reasonable.
'I can't remember very well,' Poldarn said slowly. 'But I stabbed you-'
'That's right,' Cleapho said. 'My sleeve caught fire, and so did a whole lot of books. Actually, it wasn't nearly as bad as it looked, but you panicked, must've thought the whole library was about to take off like a hayrick. I'm guessing here, but I think you reckoned the only way any of you would get out was if you could stop Xipho and Gain trying to save me, so you stuck me in the guts with that big pig-sticker knife of yours. And then all three of you pissed off and left me there in the smoke.'
Grim silence, practically unbearable. Cleapho was making it sound as though he was describing a game of knuckle-bones, or a barn dance. 'That was so like you in those days, Ciartan, you went to bits at the first sign of trouble. I think it's because of your upbringing, those people you grew up with. As I understand it, they don't make decisions like we do, it's sort of like a nationwide referendum every time one of you can't make up his mind whether to stop for a pee. In your case, once you came over here, it sort of worked the other way; you made decisions at the speed of lightning, never stopping to think. Like that night. Soon as my sleeve caught alight, you'd already raced ahead, you were thinking burning building, trapped inside, falling rafters, collapsing walls, coughing to death in the smoke: so you stabbed me. Religion, Father Tutor would have called it, the impulse to act followed by the completed action without the intervening moment. Only, if you'd stopped to think for just one tiny fraction of a second, you might have remembered the trapdoor down into the stacks…'
'Oh.' Xipho's voice, horrified.
'Yes, I know,' Cleapho went on, 'you were just as bad as he was, almost; and you, Gain, though I wouldn't have expected you to remember. But you, Xipho-anyhow,' Cleapho went on, 'fortunately, I remembered; and I crawled to the trapdoor, pulled it up and dropped through. Then it was just a matter of walking down the corridor-bleeding like a stuck pig, I might add, but it was only a flesh wound, fortunately-and across the yard to the infirmary.'
'But-' Xipho, struggling to understand. 'We thought you'd died. You let us believe-'
'Ah.' Poldarn could practically hear Cleapho's sardonic smile. 'So I did. And that's why I've forgiven you, all three of you. I guess you could say I owe you everything, because of that night. And coincidence, of course, or you could call it serendipity. Is that the word I'm looking for? It'll do. The point is, I staggered into the infirmary, believed dead by all concerned, on the very evening when Father Tutor realised he needed the services of a ghost: someone who didn't exist, someone with no identity. When the nurse called him over to the infirmary-I was yelling blue murder, I wanted to have you three hung, drawn, quartered and then thrown out of Deymeson in disgrace, in that order… But Father Tutor explained to me that it was just fine, couldn't have worked out better if he'd planned it that way, and he wanted to offer me a really splendid job opportunity-which, once he'd told me about it, I was delighted to accept.' He yawned. 'Now I won't bore you with all the in-between stuff, or we'd be here for days. Suffice to say, the end result, after many years of hard graft and brilliant planning, was me becoming Chaplain-in-Ordinary, supreme head of religion in the whole wide world, under the amusing name of Cleapho.' He paused. 'A joke that nobody's ever appreciated,' he added, 'or else they've kept it to themselves. Cleapho in Old High Thurmian means "partly dead". And all,' he went on, accentuating the drawl, 'because I remembered a silly old trapdoor and you three forgot about it. I guess it was one of those moments in religion when everything in the universe suddenly changes, but too fast for anybody to notice: one moment we're all facing south, next moment we're all standing on our heads facing north, but everything looks the same because the scenery's been switched round too, and it doesn't occur to anybody to consult a compass.' He sighed, pure affectation. 'And all this while you-and the Earwig too, I dare say-you've had it in for poor old Ciartan here because you blamed him for killing me, when in fact it's because of him that I got to be the most powerful man in the world. Well, nearly the most powerful, but we're working on that, aren't we?'
Poldarn wanted to laugh; because if this was the most powerful man in the world, how could he be marooned on a cart stuck in the mud in a narrow lane in the middle of the wilderness, in the driving rain? 'Is that what we're doing?' he asked mildly.
'No, of course not,' Cleapho said, as though explaining the blindingly obvious to a small child. 'We're fighting for the survival of the Empire, religion and civilisation; making me Emperor is just a side effect, like tanning salt is a by-product of horseshit.' Suddenly his voice changed; it bristled with sincerity, great big raw lumps of it. 'Have you got any idea of what's happening out there? You must have, if you've got half a brain. You've seen the ruins where great cities used to be, where the savages-no offence-burned them to the ground. I expect you know how that all started, a couple of hundred years ago, when the Empire rounded up the Poldarn-worshippers in Morevich and set them adrift on the ocean to die. Only of course they didn't; they floated across the sea to the islands in the west, and spawned like ants, and then they started to come back-because over there, where you grew up, there're so many things they don't have. No metal ores in the ground, so the only iron and steel your people had was what they brought with them in the ships, a few tools, the nails that held the boards together, the anchor chains and the deadeyes. Amazing what they did with what they had; because a hundred and twenty-odd years later, they were ready to cross the ocean and come here-and they knew what they wanted from us, and they were angry.' He paused; effect again. All those years of preaching sermons in Torcea Cathedral. 'They didn't want gold or silver or pearls or silks; they wanted wrought iron and brass and hardening steel, scrap-and they were prepared, no, they wanted to kill in order to get it. Oh, come on, Ciartan, you were there only recently. Didn't you wonder why every barn in the country is crammed full with rusty helmets and broken spear blades, and why the headman of every settlement is the blacksmith? To them, we're a species of domesticated animal, like cows or pigs: they kill our soldiers for their steel skins, and leave the meat for the crows. And when all's said and done, you can't really blame them for it. We started it, after all.'
Poldarn didn't say anything.
'No,' Cleapho resumed, 'they aren't to blame, for doing what they have to do, in order to get what they need. The evil-not too strong a word, I'm sure-the evil came from us. From one man, the man who thought he could use them, your people, as a means of getting what he wanted, and the hell with the consequences. That was when the evil started. Before that, your people only came here to get steel and iron, and the best and quickest way of getting the finest-quality material was taking it off the dead bodies of soldiers. So they hunted down our coastal garrisons, killed them and went away again. They weren't interested in towns and cities-not till one of us started talking to them, preying on their resentment, persuading them that what they really wanted, more than bits of broken metal, was revenge. Then the massacres began, the cities and towns, whole populations slaughtered with no survivors. Not their fault; our fault. The selfish ambitions of one individual.'
'Tazencius,' Poldarn said. Cleapho laughed.
'Not Tazencius, no,' he said. 'Oh, he was happy to take the idea, thought he'd stolen it, imagined he was being wonderfully clever-and so lucky, finding you like that, so that the plan could be put into effect. But he was simply being used, as you were; and as soon as he'd done what was required of him, he was lucky to escape with his life. Come on, Ciartan, you were a damn sight more perceptive than this when we were students together, or have all those bashes on the head jumbled your brains up? You know who I'm talking a
bout.'
A moment of silence; moments in religion, when two absolutes connect. 'Feron Amathy.'
'Ah.' At any other time, Cleapho's condescending tone would've been unbearably offensive. 'You got there in the end, that's something. Exactly so: Feron Amathy, the worst man who ever lived. It was Feron Amathy who taught the savages to exterminate whole cities, who betrayed everyone who ever trusted him, who treats human beings as expendable tools. As far as he's concerned, the Empire is a forest and he's a charcoal burner, he'll cut us all down and burn us just to make a few baskets of coals. Everything that's wrong with the Empire is his fault. Who do you think tricked General Allectus into starting a hopeless rebellion, just so he could sell him to General Cronan?' Cleapho paused, just for a moment, to catch his breath; Poldarn got the impression that the subject had almost run away with him, like a big dog on a long rope. 'Then who gave the savages-his own allies-to Cronan so he could prise the Emperor loose from the throne and put Tazencius there, simply because Tazencius would be easier to replace directly, once he'd finished him off? Every betrayal, every deception-and what's possibly the worst of all, the miserly parsimony, using the same people over and over again, twisting them backwards and forwards like you do when you're breaking off a green twig. To be the most evil man in the world, it's not enough just to do evil things; plenty of good men, saints, have done evil for the best possible motives, it's the rule rather than the exception when it comes to evildoing. No, it takes someone like Feron Amathy to do the things he's done in the way he's done them. That's what makes him such an abomination.'
Poldarn could hear the passion, the righteous fury in Cleapho's voice: quite a spectacle. A shame it was here, in the wrong context. It was meant for a cathedral, and didn't really fit comfortably in a small cart wedged between two stone walls in the rain. He's no better than the rest of them, Poldarn thought, the only difference is in what they've actually done.
