by K. J. Parker
“Of course.” Aimeric looked at her again, but she was better fortified than Perimadeia.
“That’s fine, then. What did you want to see him about?”
He hadn’t prepared an answer to that. “To be honest, just curiosity, really. I’ve never met a dead man before.”
She gave him a puzzled, faintly amused look. “I beg your pardon?”
“He died, didn’t he? In the sea-battle. It says so, in the official record, which is infallible and can’t be called into question. And if he’s dead, he can’t be walking round the streets buying pumice. There might be a man who looks remarkably like him, but it can’t be him, because he’s dead.” He turned away slightly. He didn’t really want to see how she reacted to that. “Just see to it he understands that, all right?”
“Leave it to me,” she replied solemnly. “And I’m reluctantly forced to the conclusion that the man who’s been passing himself off as the late Teudel must be an impostor. But he’s very good at scraping down parchment, so I won’t fire him just yet. Is that acceptable?”
She was doing that not-quite-a-smile that made a mockery of all his defences, but maybe the time he’d spent with Calojan had had some effect; he avoided it neatly by looking past her. “Now then,” he said. “The text.” He reached in his pocket and took out a sheet of parchment, folded small and thick. “Also,” he went on, “we need you to predict a fire in the Silver Court. It’ll be completely destroyed, but from the ashes, phoenix-like, a golden shrine will arise that will do something or other that Sechimer will like. Is that all right?”
“Not a phoenix,” she said. “No phoenixes in Imperial literature until the late Mannerists. First reference is in Sarsimer’s Ode to Light. Dead giveaway.”
“It’s a prophesy,” Aimeric said. “The prophet peered into the future and saw phoenixes.”
“No.”
“Fine.” He scowled. “The archdeacon will not be happy. He specifically wanted a phoenix.”
“He can have a fire-dragon instead,” she said helpfully. “They do basically the same stuff and they’re immaculately period.”
“All right, then. Just translate it as phoenix in the fair copy for the Court. They won’t know the difference, and I won’t get moaned at.”
“Funny man.” He’d got it wrong again. “Now please go away and stop getting under my feet. And if you want to make any changes or put anything else in, you’ll have to let me know by this time tomorrow at the very latest. Once I start actually writing the thing, I won’t be able to stop. I’ll have twelve hours, maybe fourteen if I’m very lucky and the weather turns cold, and then the base medium starts to dry and basically you’ve got to stop, or else you can spoil the whole thing. Come back in three days and you can have a look.”
When she’d heard his footsteps on the stairs and the street door closing, she went into the back room and said, “Well?”
Teudel was cutting gold leaf into thin strips with a tiny pair of shears. “Well what?”
“You heard what he said.”
“Of course I did. You intended me to.”
She beamed at him. “Anyway,” she said, “he’s no trouble to anyone. How are you doing?”
“You don’t need me,” he said, dropping the shears on the table. “Not for this, anyway. I shudder to think what it is you really need me for. I’ve done forty-six little strips and I’ve got thirty-seven still to go.”
“Splendid. Keep at it.”
“Orsella,” he said, trying to grab her wrist; he was very fast, but she was faster. “Just out of interest. What do you need me for?”
“Menial tasks that even a child could do,” she replied. “But I need you to do them. All right?”
He looked at her, but couldn’t see anything he could understand. For a split second he was reminded of the thing he feared most in all the world. It was called the Divine Clemency of the Emperor, and it was a punishment reserved for extreme forms of treason; forging coins counted as treason, but Divine Clemency was usually reserved for the gang bosses rather than the lowly strikers and die-cutters. Instead of killing you, they cut out your tongue, gouged out your eyes and slit your nose open lengthways. Then you were sent to a confessional, which was a sort of prison monastery, usually on a small island in the middle of the sea. The lay brothers looked after you—there were no cramped dungeons or rats, but every day they woke you up an hour before dawn and led you in a long shuffling procession to the chapel, where you stood or knelt according to the gentle pressure of a hand on your shoulders and heard the sequence of offices sung by a choir. There were two meals a day, bread and vegetables mashed into a sort of porridge, and at night you were led back to a sort of stone box where you were kept when not in use. Sooner or later you died; but the diet was healthy, the place was kept spotlessly clean and there was virtually no chance of meeting with an accident, so people tended to live for a very long time. He thought: I hear her voice, but I can’t see her, I can’t make her hear me and there’s absolutely nothing I can do; the music, on the other hand, is particularly soothing, once you get the taste for it.
It was just another archery contest, second from last event in the funeral games of a man Chauzida hadn’t known; he was rich but not important, and the mourners seemed suspiciously cheerful. Apparently his wife had died some time ago and his only son had been killed in the war. They’d put up a white falcon as the archery prize. It stood, hooded and jessed, on a post hammered into the ground to mark the fifty yard line. The targets were Sashan boiled-leather breastplates, with rings painted on them for scoring. Your arrowhead had to go through and come out the other side, to stop people from cheating by using light practice bows or flight arrows.
Joiauz was having a bad day. He was expected to win, because he was the regent, but he’d woken up with a headache, and he was pulling his shots. The first two had been outers, the third was all right, but the fourth barely clipped the target and went soaring off into the long grass. Chauzida could see he was trying too hard. Each bad shot made him tense up and hold too long on the loose. The bowstring should, of course, slip from the fingers like a perfectly ripe apple dropping from a tree. That wasn’t happening for Joiauz today, but Chauzida decided against telling him what he was doing wrong. People claimed to lay a lot of store by the truth, but there were times when they really didn’t want to hear it.
“Quick.” Joiauz was deliberately not looking at him. “Get your knife out. No, don’t be obvious about it, we don’t want anyone to see.”
Chauzida had learned a lot about not being seen over the years. He caught the top of the handle in his palm, between the base of his fingers and the mound of his thumb, and eased it forward out of the sheath so that the whole knife was hidden behind his palm and wrist. “Now what?”
“Just run the edge across my string,” Joiauz muttered. “Just enough to fray it, that’s all.”
The string was twenty plies of very fine linen. He manipulated the knife so that the edge was outwards. “Drop the bow,” he said.
“What?”
“Drop it on the ground.”
Joiauz let it fall; Chauzida knelt down to pick it up. He grazed the string about a quarter of the way through, in the middle. It was very delicate work. “Here you are,” he said, handing the bow back.
“Thanks.” Joiauz took it in his left hand, nocked an arrow, drew and loosed. It was a fine shot; a little low and right, but cleanly inside the central ring. Chauzida handed him another arrow. Joiauz nocked it and drew, and the string broke. The bow sprang forwards out of his hand and cartwheeled twice over the grass before dropping on its side. “Shit,” Joiauz said loudly, rubbing his wrist.
A man called Dreitz, who was winning with four middles and an inner, gave him a sour look, but Joiauz quickly gathered up his bow and remaining arrows, and left the line. “Thanks,” he said, as they walked away. “Neatly done.”
“Why did you—?”
“If I’m out of the match I can’t lose,” Joiauz said. “Losing
to Dreitz would be mildly humiliating. But a broken string is just bad luck.”
Chauzida had already guessed that much. He eased his knife back into its sheath. “So Dreitz will get the falcon,” he said.
“So what?”
“I wanted it,” Chauzida said. “It’s white, we haven’t got a white one.”
“They’re very rare,” Joiauz said. “They come from Permia. They don’t fly any better than the ordinary ones.”
“Can I have a go in the contest?” Chauzida asked. “I’m quite a good shot, and it’s an easy target.”
Tactless. Joiauz frowned. “Your bow wouldn’t go through the leather,” he said.
“They could change the rules.”
Joiauz thought about it for a moment. “I don’t think so,” he said. “It’d be fine if you win, but if you lose it’ll look bad. Sorry.”
“All right.” He waited a moment, then said, “I’d quite like to stay and watch the rest of the match.”
Joiauz shrugged. “Go ahead.”
Chauzida waited till Joiauz had gone, then ran back to his tent and got his bow and quiver. Then he went back to the line and stood near the judges until they had to notice him. “Excuse me,” he said. “I know I can’t take part officially, because my bow’s not strong enough, but can I shoot just for practice? I’d like to see what sort of a score I could get.”
The judges looked worried. They wanted to discuss the problem but didn’t feel they could with the Great Chief standing there looking up at them. “I think that would be in order,” the oldest judge said.
Chauzida thanked them politely, then walked to the place in the line where Joiauz had been standing. When the end was over, the stewards pulled the arrows out of the target and set it up again. Dreitz had scored eight middles and two inners.
Chauzida strung his bow against the calf of his leg, took a good stance and addressed the target. The bow had been specially made for him; it was very light and easy to hold at full draw, but with a surprisingly good cast. He had a dozen arrows shafted in a special sort of dense reed, so well matched that there was only one barley-grain of weight between them. The others were all using war-bows; no matter how strong you were, they tended to snatch the string out of your fingers, so you had to loose the moment your thumb brushed the corner of your mouth. The rings painted on the breastplate were a bit bigger than those on the straw bosses he practiced with. I can do this, he thought, so long as I pretend it doesn’t matter.
His first shot was very good indeed, which was worrying; if the first one was bang in the middle, he usually tended to pull the next one, or the one after that. He could feel the worry tugging at him, but all he could do was try and ignore it. The second shot was in, just cutting the line. He took three deep breaths, in slow and out slow, and the third arrow pitched so close to the second that it made it quiver. That was dangerous. He badly wanted to do exactly the same again, because so far he’d got away with it, but he was right on the edge of the ring. He forced himself to raise his aim just a little, and the fourth shot pitched high and left, just inside the circle. He shot the fifth without thinking. It followed the fourth but pitched just outside the line; an inner, not a middle.
He drew a deep breath, counted to four and let it go. He was still in the game, but he couldn’t afford to drop another one. Suddenly he realised that he was doing a very stupid thing, just for a stupid white hawk, and Joiauz had expressly told him not to. The game wasn’t a game any more; it was politics and honour and war, and the outcome would walk alongside him for the rest of his life. Unfortunately, he’d got himself into it now. He’d made four good shots, but it’s not the hits that matter, it’s the misses. He wished he could do the trick with fraying the bowstring, but unfortunately that option had been taken from him.
He told himself; you’ve made this really difficult for yourself, but it’s still not difficult. You can drop in five out of five, you’ve done it before, you’re perfectly capable. But that, he knew, wasn’t the way to think about it, he was implicitly threatening himself with failure, and that really didn’t help. Instead, he told himself; the sixth arrow is already in the middle, I shot it and it went in just nice. Now let’s step back and see how I did that.
He drew, and saw the tip of the arrowhead, and looked over it at the aiming mark. There was nothing else in the world except that mark, he was standing in the desert under a bare blue sky and he was completely alone. The shot had already hit the target, so all he had to do was let go of the string; neatly, of course, but that’s no big deal. So he let go, and the arrow flew, and it pitched just to the left of his first shot, where he knew it would. He put two more just under it. The ninth shot went in just fine, but at a slight angle, so that the shaft masked most of the open part of the middle ring. It happened that way sometimes; it was bad luck and nobody’s fault. His left arm felt paralysed, and he had to make himself breathe in. It was as though he’d walked into a clearing in the woods and found himself eye to eye with a boar, nesting in a tangle of briars; it had seen him, and if he moved at all, it would charge and tear him open.
He negotiated with himself. He’d already scored eight middles, which was enough to equal Dreitz, if he could only drop the tenth shot somewhere in the inner. A draw would be all right, not a victory but not a defeat, he could probably get away with that and come out of this mess without lasting damage. But, he knew, if he shot for anything less than dead centre this time, he’d pull it or flog it and be lucky to scrape a three. He tried to see the tenth shot already in the target, but he couldn’t, because the ninth shaft was in the way. He was standing in front of the gates of the City, and the great bronze gates were shut.
Diplomacy, he realised, wasn’t going to help him here. In fact, there was no help for him anywhere, not from any living man, not from any tool or artefact, not even magic. He was about to do something that mattered more than anything he’d ever done, completely alone, as if in the desert. There was no artifice, no self-deception, and the target was now very, very small. He suddenly realised that he was drawing the bow and that it was too late to stop the draw. The knuckle of his thumb pressed down into the corner of his mouth; it felt cold and dangerous. The bowstring told him it was time to let go, as if he was seeing someone he loved for the last time. The resistance in his fingers faded and the string pushed past them.
He tried not to look.
It was in; middle right, cleanly inside the line. He felt no pleasure. He had the feeling of having just made a bargain with an enemy, which he would later come to regret. Then someone slapped him on the back—one of the Councilmen, a familiar face with a name that temporarily escaped him; well done, the man was saying, clearly not understanding the full implications of the moment. He tried to look pleased.
No, Dreitz insisted, of course he should have the falcon. He’d shot the better score, it was only right and proper. But he couldn’t get out of his mind the wounded look Dreitz had given him, and the backward glance at the lightweight bow and the matched flight arrows, as if to say what harm did I ever do you? To which, of course, he had no answer; Dreitz had simply been the other man, the opponent, the enemy, as innocent and irrelevant as the target he’d just shot ten arrows into.
“What you’ve done is,” Joiauz said later, “you’ve invented yourself. You’re now the king who, as a boy, outshot the grown men. We know all about him, people will know what to expect from now on. I’m not entirely sure that’s who you ought to want to be, but it’s done now. I don’t know what Dreitz did to deserve a public humiliation. That said, I never liked him much anyway.”
I only wanted the falcon, Chauzida didn’t say. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Sorry,” Joiauz repeated, as if the word was in a different language. “No, don’t be sorry. The man you’ve just invented isn’t sorry when he does things like that. He takes huge risks when there’s absolutely no need, and if he wins it’s marvellous and the people love him, and if he loses and a whole army gets slaughtered—”
“He’s soon gone and quickly forgotten,” Joiauz said harshly. “That’s the sort of man he is; no half measures, no cautious hedging of bets, no way back from the edge of the cliff. If you can keep on hitting middles, they’ll be singing songs about you five hundred years after you’re dead. If not—” He shrugged. “You must’ve thought it was worth the gamble or you wouldn’t have done it.”
“I don’t want the hawk,” Chauzida said. “Would you like it?”
Joiauz shook his head. “It’s just as well you don’t want it,” he said, “because you can’t keep it. You’ll have to give it to someone. The problem is deciding who to give it to. It’ll be a supremely noble gift, so it’s an extremely delicate decision. If it’s all the same to you, I think you should leave it to me.”
“Yes, please,” Chauzida said gratefully.
That made Joiauz smile. “Cheer up,” he said. “We’ve accomplished a great deal on what looked like it’d be a perfectly ordinary day. Just, next time—”
“Ask you first?”
Joiauz thought about that. “No,” he said, “because I won’t like it, the next time you do something I’ve told you not to.” For some reason he looked sad and almost angry for a moment, but it passed quickly. “Next time,” he said, “just make bloody sure you hit the middle. All right?”
It only remained to be seen whether the balustrade would bear his weight. He considered it carefully. It was original, therefore (since this was the east wing, added by Florian IV as part of his somewhat overambitious expansion of the palace) over six hundred years old. On the other hand, it was stone, and stone doesn’t get brittle with age. That said, it was a purely ornamental feature, not designed with load-bearing in mind. He knelt down and looked carefully; the top rail wasn’t intregral with the pillars, so there had to be some sort of join. He couldn’t see mortar, or evidence of pinning, so presumably all that held it in place was a tight fit between a tenon and a hole. But, he told himself, I’ll only be standing on it for a fraction of a second, so if it does give way—He tried to visualise the process, the way he imagined troop movements in the heat of battle. He decided it might well give way, but not instantaneously. By the time it collapsed, he’d be in mid air, on his way across the gap. That left the issue of what would happen to the debris. He took a firm hold on the window-frame and leaned out until he was looking straight down. At least ninety feet of sheer drop; if the broken balustrade fell, and someone happened to be passing underneath at the time, the result couldn’t help but be fatal. Yes, but the courtyard below was a restricted area, and the guards didn’t patrol along that line, therefore the risk of someone being down there was acceptably small. I’m dithering, he realised, that’s not like me at all. True, but I so very rarely have the luxury of time to dither in—
