by K. J. Parker
‘We’ve only just got here.’
‘So? Anything special you were planning on doing while we’re here?’
Once again he thought of the lump of fused gold in the back of the cart, and what better time to tell her about it than now? Somehow, though, it didn’t feel right; whether it was the thought of how she’d react when she found out he’d been keeping the good luck from her, or perhaps a little scrap of suspicion, a trace element from the stranger he used to be that had survived the melt, or something else that was buried too deep to be found. ‘I just don’t see what the problem is, that’s all,’ he said. ‘If this Cleapho’s so very important, why the hell should he have the slightest interest in us?’
She looked at him. ‘Define us,’ she said. ‘Oh, I know exactly who I am. You, on the other hand . . .’
He hadn’t thought of that. Something the big, bearded man had said, You don’t recognise me, do you? It had seemed to fit the context perfectly well at the time. Remembered in isolation, it could be made to mean all sorts of things. ‘You think he knows who I am? From before . . .’
Copis looked away. ‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You think he knows me,’ Poldarn said, raising his voice a little. ‘What’s more, you think I’m the reason he’s here.’
She tried to walk away but he grabbed her arm. He was gripping hard enough to hurt, but she didn’t say anything about it. ‘You think a man like that’d come all this way just to look at a mouldy old painting?’
Poldarn let go a little. ‘It’s a religious painting. He’s a priest. For all I know it could be really, incredibly important.’
‘Did he make it sound like it was, when he was talking to you?’
‘How should I know? I don’t know how priests talk. I don’t know how anyone talks.’ He closed his eyes, breathed out, tried to clear his mind. ‘Think about it. You’re suggesting he’s come here on purpose to find me. How the hell would he know to find me here? Even we didn’t know we were coming here till a few days ago. How long would it have taken him to get here from Torcea? Or are you saying he just packed a bag and set off on the off chance that he might bump into me somewhere in the northern provinces?’
Copis pulled a face. ‘Yes, all right,’ she said irritably, ‘point taken. It’s not just unlikely, it’s impossible.’ She lifted her head and looked him in the eyes. ‘I still think we should clear out of here,’ she said. ‘When someone like that suddenly turns up, no civic reception or marching bands or little girls coming forward to present bouquets of flowers, it means something’s up. Which means trouble. Which means sensible people like me leave town. Which is why—’
She was staring at something over his shoulder. He turned his head to see what it was, and saw two soldiers walking quickly across the yard towards them. Once again, they didn’t look anything like any of the other soldiers he’d seen; they were magnificent creatures in burnished steel breastplates and gorgets with plumed open-face helmets carried in the crooks of their arms. Their clothes were clean and pressed, and their boots weren’t even muddy. No prizes for guessing who they’d arrived with.
For a very brief moment Poldarn felt himself making a tactical assessment, but this wasn’t some open plain in the middle of nowhere, without witnesses or bystanders, and besides, his sword was back in the cart. He dismissed the option from his mind. That left running away or staying put and finding out what was going on. Another choice. What fun.
‘Next time I say we should leave town,’ Copis hissed, but he shook his head. The soldiers were headed straight for them; no chance now that they’d turn out to be on their way somewhere else, nothing to do with them. It was at times like this, he reflected, that he really wished he knew what his real name was.
The soldiers stopped about a yard in front of them and, amazingly, saluted. Not having a clue about how to salute back, he kept still and waited for them to say something. Which they did.
‘Lord Cleapho’s compliments,’ was what they said, ‘and would you both care to join him for dinner?’
Chapter Seven
‘Thanks,’ Copis said, ‘but we’ve just eaten.’ The soldier smiled. ‘You can’t call the slop they dish up in there food,’ he said. ‘And besides,’ he added, nodding at Poldarn, ‘he barely touched his, he was too busy looking at the pictures. This way.’
Poldarn stepped between Copis and the soldier. ‘Just a moment,’ he said. ‘While I was in there eating my dinner, you were watching me?’
‘Not me,’ the soldier said, ‘but you were being watched. What do you take us for, peasants?’
Copis was tugging at his sleeve like a little girl, trying to warn him about something. He took no notice. ‘Then you know who I am?’ he said.
‘Of course we do,’ the soldier replied, looking at him. ‘Now can we please get out of sight, before everybody in Sansory figures out what’s going on?’
Copis was pulling hard now; he was tempted just to push her away, but instead he turned round and asked, ‘What?’
‘I’m going back inside,’ she said. ‘You don’t need me there.’ She was looking at the soldier. ‘Really you don’t.’
The soldier shrugged. ‘You can do what the hell you like,’ he said to her, then turned back to Poldarn. ‘Now come on, before you get me into trouble.’
It didn’t look like he had any choice in the matter, which suited him fine. He’d had enough of choices to last him. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘After you.’
The soldier led the way; his colleague waited for a moment, then fell in behind Poldarn, making him walk fast to avoid having his heels trodden on. Whoever he was, they weren’t in awe of him to any serious extent.
‘All right,’ he said to the first soldier, ‘who do you think I am?’
The soldier laughed without turning round. ‘I could tell you exactly who I think you are,’ he said, ‘but I’m not supposed to insult His Grace’s guests. Low doorway, mind your head.’
The door led through into a little hidden courtyard, beyond which was another small archway leading to a narrow spiral staircase, with an uncomfortably steep pitch and rate of turn; by the time they reached the top, Poldarn was tired and more than a little dizzy. The soldier knocked three times on a very solid-looking oak door, and they went through into a cramped, circular room, presumably the top of some tower. In the middle of the room was a plain round table, with two straight-backed chairs; Cleapho was sitting in one of them, and there were three or four brass tubes with the ends of rolled-up papers sticking out of them. Two more soldiers stood behind Cleapho’s chair, in front of another stout door. No sign of any food, drink, cups, plates or cutlery.
‘You’re a bloody fool,’ Cleapho said, frowning. ‘What the hell was all that about?’
Poldarn opened his mouth to speak, but realised that he didn’t know where to begin. Before he had a chance to order his thoughts, Cleapho went on: ‘I know it’s all part of the mystique, this deliberately walking around in plain sight because you’re so cool and daring, but next time please leave me out of it. Dear God; when I saw you standing there looming over me, I nearly had a heart attack.’ He shook his head, then went on, ‘I’m assuming you’ve got plenty of your people here, because this’ – he indicated the four soldiers – ‘is all I’ve brought, and after your stunt in the hall I’m starting to feel nervous. Damn it,’ he added, ‘I’m not used to this sort of thing, all this cloak-and-dagger stuff. If this is the way you conduct business, I’m not sure I want to get involved with you.’
I could try and explain, Poldarn thought. And I could end up at the bottom of those stairs with a broken neck. Still, this man knows who I am. It’d be nice to find that out, even if I don’t live very long to savour the knowledge. ‘Please,’ he said, as appeasingly as he could, ‘I want you to listen to this as patiently as you can. I promise I’m not fooling about. You see—’
‘Oh, forget it,’ Cleapho interrupted. ‘If you get some kind of morbid pleasure out of taking silly risks, that’s up to y
ou. Let’s get down to brass tacks; to be precise, this business up the road. The point is, I appreciate why you did it, but it was too early. Tazencius and his people aren’t ready. He hasn’t even started recruiting openly yet – dammit, he hasn’t had anything to recruit for, that’s my point, there’s been no build-up, just this; suddenly, wham. And if this is your idea of an opening gambit, please put your ear up against the stable pump and wash your brain out, because the supply of large cities in these parts is somewhat limited; we can’t go torching one a week until Tazencius has got his act together, we’ll run out of the bloody things. Unless we can get Cronan—’
He stopped short, held up his hand for silence. Something was going on down below.
‘Shit,’ Cleapho said. ‘Oh, that’s wonderful. You two, hold them on the stairs.’ The two soldiers who’d brought him there disappeared immediately through the door they’d just come through. ‘We’ll go out this way, on to the roof. That’s assuming, ’ he added with a scowl, ‘that they aren’t up there already, which they probably are. God, what a mess.’
He stood up, as the other two soldiers pushed open the door behind them and led the way into a dark passage. ‘Well, come on,’ he said. ‘I had an idea you’d be more trouble than you’re worth. Next time, maybe Tazencius’ll listen to me, instead of teaming up with a bunch of pirates.’
Poldarn could hear unsettling noises from the stairwell: shouting, banging, sharp, crisp metallic noises. It occurred to him that Cleapho had just sent two men to their deaths and they’d obeyed him without a moment’s hesitation, obedience being for them an instinctive action, like the drawing of a sword. He decided to follow Cleapho.
The passage led out into the open air. To his right was a battlement, below which he could just see the main courtyard; on his left was the sloping side of the roof, presumably of the refectory (though he wasn’t at all sure; going up the spiral staircase had messed up his sense of direction). It was just starting to get dark, and the yard was flooded with yellow light from the chambers beneath. ‘Well, that’s all right, then,’ Cleapho was saying as the soldiers in front of them kicked open another door that apparently led into the refectory roofspace, ducked under the low lintel and climbed in. ‘It’s just as well one of us took the trouble to figure out the geography of this place. And I thought you were the one who was supposed to be so careful about details.’
Then it started to go badly. One of the soldiers who’d just gone through backed out again, struggling to draw his sword but without enough room to do so. It was a moment or so before Poldarn noticed the blood on his face. Cleapho swore, pushed past the soldier and started to run. Before Poldarn could follow him, someone else came through the doorway – another soldier, or at least a man in a mailshirt with a sword; he swung at the wounded guard, who ducked out of the way as another man emerged and lunged at him with a halberd, stabbing him just under the lower lip of his breastplate. The guard made a quiet, wordless noise, and then the man with the halberd pushed hard, shoving him backwards over the battlement like someone pitching hay. Then he turned to face Poldarn, while his colleague set off after Cleapho.
Poldarn stared at the halberd blade, then quickly at the man behind it, then back at the weapon. He seemed to hear a voice in the back of his mind: watch the blade, not the man, it’s the blade that’ll kill you if you don’t. He didn’t recognise the voice but he could appreciate the value of what it was telling him. His enemy (assuming he was an enemy, not a rescuer) seemed more concerned with keeping him where he was than attacking him, but Poldarn reckoned he’d had enough of holding still and waiting to see what happened. It didn’t look like there were any more of them coming up from the roofspace – no sound of footsteps or signs of movement – which implied that if he could get past this man he might have a means of escape. That was good; life had just become a lot simpler.
The trick would be to get a firm grip on the halberd shaft without being stabbed or sliced in the process. He started forwards; then, just before he was due to stick himself on the point of the halberd, he slid his rear foot down, ducked his head out of the way and let himself fall backwards on to his outstretched right hand, grabbing for the halberd shaft with his left. Disconcertingly, the soldier tried to pull the blade out of the way, as if determined not to let him hurt himself, but Poldarn was quicker anyway, got his grip and jerked the halberd out of the man’s hands just as he hit the ground. The other man jumped out of the way, unable to decide for a moment whether or not to draw his sword; someone else, it appeared, who had problems with choices. He’d just made up his mind to draw when Poldarn scrambled to his knees, swung his shoulders round and threw the halberd, hitting him on the little strip of bare flesh above the collar of the mailshirt. The bone of his neck deflected the blade a little and it flew out over the courtyard, but the man wasn’t a factor any more; Poldarn was clear to get away through the door. Simplify; always simplify.
He had to duck to get through the doorway into the roofspace, and the passageway he found himself in was pitch dark. His fingers recognised the feel of rough-sawn timber on either side of him. He kept his head well down, guessing that there wasn’t enough room to stand upright. It occurred to him that he should have taken the dead soldier’s sword, in case he had more fighting to do, but he wasn’t inclined to go back for it; fairly soon the enemy at the foot of the spiral staircase would get past the two men Cleapho had sent to die (what great cause were they dying for, he wondered; did they know what it was? Did they approve?). It would be nice to get as far down this passage as he could before they came in after him. It was likely that the passage led somewhere, or else how had the two enemy soldiers appeared from it? As to where it led, he hadn’t a clue, but that held true of all passages, roads, avenues, paths and doorways as far as he was concerned. At least it appeared to be straight, without turnings to left or right to mar his brief illusion of simplicity.
The boards under his feet creaked, and he felt cobwebs in his face (they made him shudder; apparently he was one of those people who don’t much care for spiders. He made a mental note, coloured in one more tiny part of the bare outline, and moved on). Every few steps he stopped briefly to listen – for footsteps in front or behind, noises from below that might tell him which part of the inn he was above – but he heard nothing helpful. He carried on, making the most of his unhindered progress. One step following another. Easy.
He nearly fell through the trapdoor at the end of the corridor; all that saved him was the intuitive feeling of being about to rest his weight on nothing, which made him hesitate and prod for a feel of the floor with his toe. Having found out that there was a hole, he knelt down and explored its extent with his fingertips; it was about a shoulder’s width square, which suggested a trapdoor or a hatch. Shuffling along on his backside, he let his legs dangle over the side until his heels located what he took to be the rungs of a ladder.
It was a long climb down, and still it was too dark for him to be able to make out anything, not even vague shapes or different tones of shadow, so his sight was as useless to him as his memory. He only realised he’d reached the bottom when his heel jarred on a solid surface, and some cautious exploration with his toe confirmed that he was at the foot of the ladder, standing on something thicker and more solid than boards. Now, of course, he had to choose a direction to go in. The feeling was familiar, and he was getting heartily sick of it.
He took a deep breath, turned left and started to walk, holding his hands in front of his face in case there were any low beams or other unpleasantnesses. Twelve paces or so brought him to a wall – rough brickwork, quite a distinctive texture. He felt his way along it, bearing left again, and was rewarded by a different texture, planed wood, a doorframe and a door. Next he found cold metal, a ring about a hand’s span wide. Pulling it achieved nothing, but turning it resulted in a flood of yellow light.
That complicated matters. He dodged out of the way of it, but not before he’d caught sight of someone running towards him, a man
carrying a weapon. He flattened his back against the wall and, as the man came through the doorway, kicked the back of his knee, sending him stumbling to the ground. He tried to get up, but Poldarn was in a perfect position to bring a knee sharply up under the man’s chin; his head shot back too quickly, too far; he landed on his shoulder, and the sound of his head hitting the ground was loud and heavy.
As good a way of announcing myself as any, if there’s any more of them nearby. Well, he couldn’t stay in the dark for ever. He stepped through the doorway into the cruel and unwelcome light and saw that he was in a small, empty room, which might once have been a scullery or store. He was facing yet another open door, through which he could see a big fire in a stone hearth, and machinery suspended in front of it from brackets mounted in the wall. He could feel the fire’s heat from where he was standing, and hear the clattering of ratchets and clockwork from the machine; there were strange-looking tongs and ladles and cutting tools in racks on the walls or hanging from the lower beams, and at the edge of his vision was an enormous copper vessel, a crucible or cauldron. It was only when he noticed the small pile of cabbages on the table in the middle of the room that he realised it must be a kitchen, and the ferocious machine was a spit.
Somehow the thought that he was standing outside a kitchen made him feel both relieved and foolish, though he knew perfectly well that both emotions were unjustified. He listened again, heard nothing helpful, and tried in vain to remember what the buildings had looked like from the outside, in particular, whether there was direct access from the refectory to the kitchens. Common sense suggested that there should be, but common sense didn’t seem to have had much to do with the design of this place. Then he remembered that when he’d sat down to dinner he’d noticed a fireplace as big as this one in the wall at the near end of the hall. Intuitively, he decided that the dining-hall fireplace and this one shared the same chimney, being divided by the wall directly in front of him, in which case the doorway to his left would lead to open air and flagstones; the food would go out of this door on a long stretcher, down the wall five yards, and into the back door of the hall to the serving-table, where the servers would collect and distribute it. He gasped with relief, like a man putting his head up above water after being under for a little bit too long. For once, he actually knew which way to go.
