by K. J. Parker
The nervous man looked shocked and sad, and didn’t say anything; the rest of the company kept quiet too, weighing their natural scepticism against the undoubted authority of Bigal the drover. After a while the bony-wristed man stood up and said that he had a living to earn even if the rest of them didn’t, and if Perico could spare an hour from speculating about the gods and the end of the world, maybe he’d get on and shoe his black mare, like he’d promised to do that morning. The nervous man nodded guiltily and left with him; the man in the blue shirt finished his drink and went away; and it wasn’t long before Poldarn had the settle to himself.
Without the conversation to distract him, he found himself thinking about Copis, though it wasn’t a train of thought he was happy with. Sure, he couldn’t blame her in the least for clearing out as soon as she smelled trouble – she’d been absolutely right, and she’d done her level best to warn him, too, and of course she didn’t know about the lump of fused gold in the back of the cart because he hadn’t trusted her enough to mention it, so that was his fault, too. Nevertheless, he was sorry she’d gone, particularly in such a hurry; if they had to part company, he’d have liked a few moments just to thank her, since she’d practically saved his life that night when he met her, and in spite of all the trouble he’d caused her she’d never let him down or even really complained. More to the point, she was the only friend he had, but he couldn’t help but reflect that she’d certainly be a good deal safer away from him, given his habit of attracting trouble like a fresh honeycomb drawing wasps. On the positive side, at least he wasn’t going to have to pretend to be the god in the cart again. That was an experience he was in no hurry to repeat.
The inn wasn’t nearly as crowded as it had been when he came in, and the taproom was empty enough now to make a man sitting on his own after everyone else had gone back to work look conspicuous. It was time he was going as well.
This time he carried on past the livestock market and headed for the centre of town. There were a lot of people in the streets now, far more than he’d seen before, and they all seemed to have a definite destination in mind. He allowed himself to be swept along with them, and eventually found himself in what he recognised as the main square of the city.
It was so crowded that after a while he couldn’t go any further, so he scrambled up on the back of a big stone lion, like a man standing on a stepping stone in the middle of a river, and tried to make out what was going on.
The central third of the square was divided up with posts and railings into a series of stalls, rather like the livestock market had been, but these stalls were full of men and women, all crammed in together, and a walkway had been roped off right the way round the edge. There he saw some other people, not nearly so tightly packed, and they were looking over the people in the pens – mostly just glancing, but occasionally stopping for a closer look, and now and again shouting and beckoning to attract attention. Poldarn watched as one of the penned-up people, after talking to a man on the outside for a while, scrambled over the rail and followed the man he’d been talking to down the walkway and out of sight. At once two or three men from the crowd tried to climb into the pen, whereupon a couple of harassed-looking men with long sticks appeared out of the crowd and pushed all but one of them back.
This was so curious that he had to ask someone. He didn’t have long to wait; a young man of about nineteen jumped up on the lion’s back beside him, rubbing his shin and pulling a face. He asked the young man what was going on.
The young man didn’t understand the question.
‘I’m new in town, you see,’ Poldarn said. ‘Actually, I’m from Thurm.’ (He dredged the name up from the cellars of his mind just in time.) ‘Whatever this is, we don’t have anything like it back home.’
‘Really?’ The young man clearly found that hard to believe. ‘Then how do you people find work if you don’t have hiring fairs?’
Ah, he thought, right. ‘Oh, we’ve got them all right,’ he replied confidently. ‘We just don’t do it like this, that’s all.’
‘Oh,’ the young man said, and went back to examining his shin. Meanwhile, two more men had been chosen from the pens, and a dozen or so others had tried to take their places and been herded back by the men with sticks. Poldarn got the impression that in Sansory there were more people needing work to do than there was work to go round; he remembered what Copis had told him, about this being a place you ended up in. Depressing thought.
All the same, he was going to have to start earning a living soon, and if this was how you went about finding work in Sansory it’d probably be a good idea to get in line. First, though, he did a little more reconnaissance, and fairly soon worked out that each stall represented a trade. That complicated the issue, since he didn’t have one. ‘Excuse me,’ he said.
The young man looked at him.
‘Sorry to bother you again,’ he said, ‘but what do you do if you don’t have a trade? Where do you go to find someone to take you on?’
The young man grinned. ‘No trade? At your age? In that case, you might as well forget it.’
Poldarn frowned. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But assuming I’m mad enough to try, what’s the drill?’
‘Suit yourself,’ the young man replied equably. ‘Look, you see that big pen there, right at the back? You go there. I’ll tell you, though; if you get in the line now, and if you’re really lucky, you might just get in the pen by the time the fair closes.’
‘I see. And when’s that?’
‘Day after tomorrow.’
‘Fine.’ Poldarn frowned. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘which trade’s in most demand these days?’
The young man thought for a moment. ‘That’s a tough one,’ he said. ‘Clerks, probably. Not just copy clerks, mind; I’m talking about counting-house clerks, the sort who can do figuring and accounts and stuff.’
That didn’t sound promising. Nevertheless, Poldarn asked which pen the clerks were in. The young man pointed; it was only slightly less crowded than the others.
‘Of course,’ the young man went on, ‘what they’re really crying out for these days is drill instructors – you know, for the companies. Only they’ve got their own fair, end of the month. And it’s not here, it’s in Mael.’
‘Not much help to me, then,’ Poldarn replied. ‘Is there anything in that line around here?’
The young man shook his head. ‘Not unless you could do bodyguarding,’ he added. ‘Mind you, there’s a line of work where there’s always more jobs than bloody fools wanting to do them. There’s a reason for that, though.’
Poldarn had the feeling he was being set up as a straight man. But that didn’t matter. ‘Oh? What’s that?’
‘They keep getting killed, of course,’ the young man replied with a grin. ‘You’d have to be mad or bloody desperate to go in for that game.’
Poldarn nodded. ‘I expect you’re right,’ he said. ‘So where do I go to get taken on?’
It wasn’t hard to find, in spite of the young man’s rather elliptical directions: a small booth, rather than a stall, on the far western edge of the market. There were a couple of sad-looking types sitting outside, and three large men lounging in the doorway. Poldarn asked if he could get through. They didn’t move. He asked again. One of the large men told him all the jobs were taken, and suggested that he should go away. Poldarn wasn’t inclined to believe him, since over his shoulder he could see a line of men inside the booth waiting to be inspected. When he pointed this out to the men in the doorway, one of them tried to push him out of the way.
A few moments later, a man in a long plush robe came out of the booth. He looked at the three men lying on the ground, and then at Poldarn.
‘You’re hired,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ Poldarn replied, rubbing his elbow where he’d made it worse by jarring it on someone’s teeth. ‘When do I start?’
‘Right away, if you like,’ the man said. ‘What did they do to you?’
Poldarn shrugg
ed. ‘They didn’t want me to apply for the job.’
‘Oh.’ The man frowned. ‘Serves them right, then. What’s your name?’
‘Poldarn.’
The man raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s interesting,’ he said. ‘Southerner?’
Poldarn nodded. ‘From Thurm province,’ he said, hoping he wasn’t making a big mistake.
‘That figures,’ the man replied. ‘My father always used to say they’re all a bunch of vicious psychotics in Thurm. My name’s Falx, by the way; Falx Roisin.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Poldarn said. ‘May I ask what line of work you’re in?’
Falx grinned. ‘You really aren’t from these parts, are you?’ he said. ‘I’m a carter.’ He smiled. ‘Just like any other carter, really, except that last time I looked I had over a hundred carts. Plus six hundred horses, a dozen warehouses, more clerks than anybody could possibly have a use for, and what they do all day I’ll probably never understand. Most people in Sansory know me, for one reason or another.’
‘I see,’ Poldarn said. ‘But you need a bodyguard.’
Falx nodded. ‘Well, sort of,’ he said. ‘More like a sergeant-at-arms, if you know what that is. Look, I don’t like standing about in the middle of all this chaos, even if you do. My house is just across the way. Come and have a drink.’
If Falx Roisin seemed rather more affable than Poldarn would have expected for a man who owned so many carts and horses, that probably wasn’t a bad thing. Falx led the way: down an alley into a small square, down another alley, over a bridge across something that looked like a stream and smelt like a drain, through an archway into a courtyard filled with carts, so tightly packed together that Poldarn had to edge sideways to get through. Beyond that was a big, flat-roofed brick building, which Poldarn assumed was one of the warehouses Falx had referred to. Once inside, though, he realised it wasn’t.
The most bewildering thing about it was the colour. Every square inch of wall, ceiling and floor was either painted or covered with mosaic, depicting a wide range of subjects from deceptively realistic vases of flowers and bowls of fruit to cavalry battles and storms at sea to scenes from religion to elegant pornography. The quality of the work was as diverse as the subject matter, and since all the colours were fresh and none of the mosaics were scuffed or chipped it was a reasonable assumption that they were fairly new and that Falx Roisin had commissioned them.
‘I like your pictures,’ Poldarn said, lying.
It was the right thing to say. ‘Thank you,’ Falx replied. ‘My son – that’s the eldest boy – he’s the painter; my daughter and my niece do the mosaics. Later on I’ll show you the long gallery; what used to be the drying-loft when this place was a flax warehouse. Nearly all my family are artistic, in one way or another.’
Poldarn nodded. If there were a lot of art-lovers in Sansory, that would explain the need for bodyguards. Falx pulled out one of the two chairs (painted all over, except for the parts covered with ivory and lapis lazuli inlay) that were the only furniture in the room, and waved Poldarn into the other.
‘I think I ought to warn you,’ he said, as a door opened behind him, apparently in the middle of the sail of a large, rather impractical ship, and a woman came in carrying a jug of wine and two cups on a little brass tray with legs. ‘Because you’re not from around here, you can’t be expected to know what you’re getting into. I believe in being straight with people.’
Poldarn nodded again. If Falx required absolute honesty from all his workers, sooner or later he was going to have to point out that the laughing dryad on the wall just above Falx’s head had one leg that was drastically longer than the other, but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He tried not to stare, but it wasn’t easy.
‘The fact is,’ Falx went on, ‘your predecessors didn’t live very long. I’ve had five men doing your job in the last eighteen months; one left after a week, in the middle of the night, and the others—’ He sighed. ‘Sent ’em home to their families for burial, it seemed like the least I could do. And of course it doesn’t cost me anything.’
It was very good wine; light and sweet without being cloying. ‘What does the job involve, exactly?’ Poldarn asked.
‘Well, part of it’s genuine bodyguarding,’ Falx replied, ‘and that aspect of it’s relatively safe. I don’t pick fights if I can help it, and people don’t tend to pick fights with me as a rule; certainly not twice. It’s the other part where it starts getting dangerous. You see,’ he went on, pouring himself a refill, ‘I send a lot of letters, for other people: important messages, letters of credit, business negotiations, the sort of thing you don’t want to entrust to just anybody who happens to be going in the right direction. It’s very good business once you’ve got a reputation for making sure the letter gets there, and since I’ve got carts and couriers going all over the place all the time I can make good money with no additional costs. The trouble is,’ he went on, fidgeting with the stem of his cup, ‘I have some customers in that line who are very good customers, very good indeed, which means that if they want a letter carried, I can’t really refuse to handle it, even if I’ve got an idea it’s likely to be trouble.’
Poldarn frowned. ‘You can tell in advance?’
‘From where it’s going and who’s sending it, yes.’ Falx nodded. ‘Complicated stuff you don’t need to bother yourself with. Anyway, when I’m lumbered with one of those letters, I don’t really have any choice, I’ve got to send someone along with it to make sure it gets through. Nine times out of ten, it does. The tenth time – well, forty letters, four dead guards. How are you at mental arithmetic?’
Poldarn thought for a moment. ‘Forty letters in eighteen months,’ he said. ‘That’s nearly one a week. How far do these letters have to go?’
‘Depends,’ Falx replied with a shrug. ‘Some of them a day either way; some of them it’s a ten-day round trip. Just the job for someone who likes to get out and about a bit.’
‘I can see that,’ Poldarn said. ‘And these other four men. What sort of things happened to them?’
‘Let me see.’ Falx steepled his fingers around his nose. ‘Gusson was loss of blood – got stabbed in the stomach on the road, beat them off all right, didn’t actually notice he’d been carved up till he reached the next town and tried to get down off the cart. Bello – I liked him, good sense of humour – he got shot with a crossbow at long range; one moment he was there, the driver told me, the next minute gone, just like that. Hell of a thing to happen. The man after him, name’s on the tip of my tongue, he got opened up with a halberd in an inn halfway between Weal and Boc. They tried to make out it was a bar fight, but whatsisname was the quiet type, didn’t go in for all that. Stupid part of it was, he was on his way back, they must have been watching the inn and hadn’t realised he’d already delivered the letter. And Sullis, he had his head bust with a quarterstaff, not half an hour from the Eastgate; he’d probably have made it if it hadn’t been chucking it down with rain, so that people were hurrying past and not likely to notice someone lying in a ditch at the side of the road. Generally, it’s just two or three of them, never more than five; discharged soldiers, free company stragglers, well, you know the sort, I’m sure.’
Up in the far corner of the room, Poldarn happened to notice, there was a picture of a large dark bird. At first he thought it was a crow, but when he moved his head a little to one side, he realised it was meant to be a peacock.
‘Anyway,’ Falx said, ‘that’s the work. I was paying Sullis forty quarters a month, with board and expenses. You can have forty-five if you’re interested.’
Without much of a frame of reference to go by, Poldarn wasn’t quite sure how much forty-five quarters was. He thought of the price of a plate of bread and cheese, a horse, a crushed and straightened breastplate. On that basis, it sounded like good money. ‘Fifty,’ he said. ‘And you’ll save money in the long run, because I haven’t got any family to be shipped back to.’
Falx looked at him for a moment
, then laughed. ‘You’ve got a sense of humour too,’ he said. ‘I like that. All right, fifty; after all, it’s a rotten job, you’ll earn it. I don’t suppose you’ve got any references,’ he added. ‘No, I guessed not. Wouldn’t expect you had, or you wouldn’t be interested in the job. Still, I’ve been hiring men for twenty-five years on the basis of snap judgement; only been wrong twice and they were both clerks. You’ll do.’
That appeared to be that; Falx finished his drink and stood up. ‘Equipment,’ he said, ‘weapons, kit in general. Got any?’
Poldarn shook his head. ‘I tend to use other people’s, so I don’t have any of my own.’
Clearly, Falx wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you along to the stores, they can sort you out there, and I’ll get the duty foreman to show you your quarters, all that sort of thing. Anyway,’ he added, ‘welcome to the Falx house, and here’s hoping this is the start of a long and happy association.’
Sense of humour? Poldarn wondered. On balance, probably not. They left the gorgeously painted hallway by a different door, crossed a small, enclosed yard and entered another building, essentially a half-size replica of the first. This one wasn’t painted, however.
‘Right,’ Falx said, as an elderly man in a leather apron came out from a back room to meet them. ‘This is Eolla, my foreman; marvellous chap, been with the house since my father’s time. Eolla, this is Poldarn, he’s the new – he’s taking over Sullis’ job. Give him what he needs, make him feel at home, you know the drill better than I do. All right?’
Eolla nodded gravely. ‘Poldarn, did you say?’ he asked.
‘That’s right.’
‘Ah.’ Eolla dipped his head and formally noticed Poldarn for the first time. ‘Southerner?’
‘Yes,’ Poldarn replied, wishing he’d thought of another name. ‘From Thurm.’
‘You don’t say. Right, you leave him with me, that’ll be fine.’ He clamped a proprietorial hand on Poldarn’s shoulder. He had a grip like a leg vice. ‘Anything else?’
