by K. J. Parker
Calojan checked to make sure that the flaps of his bag were securely buckled down, then took a deep breath and sprang up onto the balustrade. It wobbled just a little under his foot as he applied force to it; then he was sailing through the air; then he felt a greater than anticipated jarring sensation in his left ankle as he touched down on the flat roof of the Great Hall. He let his legs fold, and ended up squatting, his back to the gap he’d just jumped over, while he caught his breath.
Idiot, he thought. Still, he was here now, safe, apparently undetected. Might as well carry on, having come this far.
The Great Hall was fifty-seven yards long. At the south end, it was a relatively simple matter to drop down onto the balcony of the royal belvedere; from there, he was able to trot down the stairs to ground level in a civilised manner. His right ankle was protesting a little—he was lucky to have got away with such a trivial level of injury—and he had a feeling he’d pulled something in his neck hopping down onto the balcony.
At first light, on a day when there’s no ceremony in the parade yard, the southern end of the old palace was practically deserted. All approaches from outside were covered by the watchtowers on the curtain wall; anybody approaching the towers from behind had to have come from inside the palace and would therefore not be deemed a threat. Calojan grinned. For the first time in a long time he was alone and out and about, and nobody knew where he was.
The view he’d chosen was from the raised semicircular platform at the top end of the parade yard, where the musicians usually stood when the emperor reviewed the Guards. From there, he could see out over the box hedges of the rose garden to the half-mile gravelled walk through the Inner Park. There was still a touch of morning mist, so he couldn’t make out the Mardonius Gates at the far end; but he knew what they looked like, and could add them from memory. He set up the lightweight folding easel he’d had made in Mondhem, laid the thin limewood board in the groove of the shelf and took a stick of thin willow charcoal from the box.
“General.” He closed his eyes. “There you are. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
He laid the charcoal down carefully, so it wouldn’t roll off the easel and shatter. “Apsimar,” he said. “You’re up early.”
“My uncle sent for you,” Apsimar said. “Nearly an hour ago.”
Unlikely, Calojan decided. An hour ago, he was still in his room, carefully rubbing down the limewood board with pumice dust. Even Apsimar would’ve tried his bedroom first. “Fine,” he said. “I’m on my way. Where is he?”
“North tower. Must rush. Be seeing you.”
Oh, Calojan thought. Sechimer had been spending far too much time up there lately. He disappeared up there for hours on end, and was always quiet and moody when he eventually came down. He collapsed the legs of the easel and packed it away in its canvas case.
It was dark in the tower room. Sechimer had closed the shutters; the only light came from a single taper, and its reflection in the gold halo of the Invincible Sun in the icon on the wall. He didn’t look up when Calojan came in. “Where were you?” he said.
“Outside, in the grounds. I’m sorry I kept you waiting.”
Sechimer shifted his weight a little; he was kneeling in front of the icon. Beside him on the floor was the divitision—silver-embroidered cloth of gold, massive, heavy as a cavalryman’s mailshirt; folded neatly on top of it was the lorus, laid out as if for kit inspection. Sechimer was wearing a hemp grain sack, slit for the neck and arms. Even in the dim light, Calojan could see where the coarse fibres had chafed his neck and shoulders raw red. You wouldn’t notice it, of course, under the great robes of state, whose monstrous weight would grind the sackcloth into the skin, like sandpaper. Calojan took a deep breath. “Exactly what do you think you’re doing?” he said.
Sechimer straightened his back, rested his hands on his knees. “Atoning for my sins,” he said. “Only I have a feeling it isn’t working like it should. I asked the Master of the Studium, and he said this was the approved method. Maybe I’m not doing it right.”
“What sins?”
“Oh, well, let’s see,” Sechimer said wearily. “Rebellion, oath-breaking, regicide—”
“Sorry,” Calojan said. “You’ll have to do better than that. Not regicide so much as pesticide.”
“All right, then. I was responsible for an act of the most unforgivable arrogance, to celebrate a victory which wasn’t mine but His. Will that do?”
“I was under the impression I won that battle,” Calojan said mildly. “Yes, all right, flooding the Westponds was a pretty crass thing to do, but it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t actually do it. At the time you were completely off your head and out of it. Furthermore,” he added, “and you’ll have to forgive me if I’ve missed the finer points, but if He was upset with you for that, surely you’d know about it by now. There’d be plague, or earthquakes, or enemies at the gates.”
“That would seem to suggest,” Sechimer said quietly, “that my penances have proved acceptable. For now, at any rate. I don’t feel forgiven, though. Quite the reverse.”
“You could try not wearing that horrible thing, for a start. That’s enough to make anyone depressed.”
Sechimer laughed, and stood up with a quick, fluid movement. In the golden light, his skin was the colour of honey. “Also,” he said, “the war would appear not to be quite as over as we thought. Read this.”
He handed Calojan a short brass tube, slightly thicker than a thumb. Inside was a single sheet of reed paper. “Oh,” Calojan said. “Him.”
“You’ve heard of him.”
“Met him,” Calojan said. “He turned up in camp, claiming to be the heir apparent of the Sashan. Bullshit. The real Hunza was executed years ago. I know, I was there. This Hunza’s just some chancer.”
Sechimer had carefully shifted the lorus to one side and was unfolding the divitision. Calojan took it from him and helped him into it. The weight hurt his elbows. “Well,” Sechimer said, “he may just be an impostor but it seems he’s got an army. Sorry, but—”
“Of course,” Calojan said. “I’ll leave in the morning.”
“Thank you.”
“In return.” He paused. Sechimer was looking straight at him, as though this moment was somehow very important. “In return,” he said, “if we win, I want you to accept it as a sign of divine favour and stop getting your underwear from the corn chandlers’. Agreed?”
Sechimer smiled. “No,” he said.
“Up to you.” Calojan got as far as the door, then said, “Really, you’ve got nothing to feel guilty about. And anyone who tells you otherwise is up to something.”
“We’ll see.” Sechimer had his back to him; he was kneeling down, eyes fixed on the icon. “I’m sorry to make you go off soldiering again,” he said. “For a nation finally at peace, we do seem to have had a lot of war lately.”
“Oh, we’ve finished dinner, this is just the cheese and dried figs. Perfectly normal.”
“If you say so. I wouldn’t know. I was in the Navy.”
“Exactly,” Calojan replied. “Never done an honest day’s work in your life.”
He heard Sechimer laughing as he closed the door, but the gloom and the gold light stayed with him until he was outside in the sun.
The messenger, Joiauz explained, was a Carchedonian, from the province of the empire closest to Mezentia. It was very hot down there, and the people had lived in those parts so long that the sun had turned their skins brown. It was rude to stare.
“So if I went and lived there for a long time—”
Joiauz grinned and shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that,” he said. “People don’t change that much just because they live somewhere else. You always stay what you are to begin with. That’s life.”
Chauzida made that slight movement with his head; not forward to signify agreement or backwards for dissent, just a slight motion that took official notice and declined to comment. “What does he want?”
Joi
auz sighed and put down the whetstone. He enjoyed sharpening things; it relaxed him. Chauzida could understand why. A man in his position must take pleasure from being able to improve something, immediately and perceptibly and without having to shout. “The emperor wants us for another war,” he said. “Not a very big one, apparently.”
Joiauz’ voice was getting softer as he spoke, which usually meant he was undecided about something. “Apparently?”
“Not quite sure what to make of it,” Joiauz replied. “The messenger wanted me to believe it’s just a minor mopping-up operation, no big deal, everyone home in time for dinner. On the other hand, he wants seven thousand men. That’s a lot for clearing up loose ends.”
“You think he was lying.”
“I think he was lied to,” Joiauz replied. “What I mean is, he was given his instructions, told what to say, and whoever gave him those instructions wasn’t telling the whole story. Still,” he added, “general Calojan’s still in charge, so presumably it’ll be all right. It’s the Sashan again.”
“I thought they were all dead.”
Joiauz smiled. “I think they’re like rabbits,” he said. “You think you’ve got the last one, and suddenly there’s forty-six eating the spring grass. Bear in mind, it was a vast empire and a lot of people lived there. Calojan wiped out several armies, but even he can’t exterminate an entire nation in a handful of battles.”
“So we’re going,” Chauzida said.
“Yes,” Joiauz replied, and now he sounded sad; more so than Chauzida could ever remember. “I think we have to.”
“Why?”
Joiauz shrugged. “They pay well, and we need to stay on good terms with them. If the empire’s overthrown and the Sashan come back, they’re likely to make a lot of trouble for us. Also, we’re obligated. It’s a matter of honour.” Rather late, Joiauz had recognised something in the tone of the original question. “Of course, it’s up to you. You have to decide. But your council will advise you strongly to agree.”
Something prompted Chauzida to say, “But I don’t have to.”
Was Uncle shocked, or just surprised? “No,” he said, “but there’d have to be a very good reason, which for the moment I can’t think of. Maybe you’d care to explain it to me.”
It’s so difficult for him, Chauzida thought; he’s not quite my father and not quite my servant. One minute he’s telling me to polish my boots and tidy my tent, the next he has to ask my permission to go to war. He felt an enormous surge of affection, which he struggled to put aside. “I just wanted to know why we’ve got to go,” he said. “Because surely, if we don’t have to, it’s better if we don’t.”
“Peace is better than war.” Joiauz was trying not to smile. “Now there’s a novel point of view for a Great Prince.”
“Is it?”
“The Cosseilhatz nation is permanently at war,” Joiauz said. “Officially. You know that. It’s why all meetings always start with the war. We fight like fish swim.”
“That’s how it’s always been.”
Joiauz frowned. “Yes, I know it’s not a particularly satisfying argument. Hard to overcome, though. I guess—” He paused for a moment. “I guess every day in our lives is pretty much like another, and everything stays more or less the same, except in war. In war, you can suddenly become a great hero, or capture a cartload of gold. Or you can get killed, or have an arm or a leg chopped off. It’s the only way things can change. So, we embrace war.” He laughed. “You know, this is probably the first time I’ve thought about it, deliberately, I mean. So many important things are just there, like the sky, and you don’t think about them till you have to explain them to someone else.”
“It’s not like that for me,” Chauzida said. “It’s like I’m having to think about everything, all the time.”
“Quite,” Joiauz said gravely. “So, what do you think about this?”
Chauzida looked at him. “Is it really up to me? I can actually decide.”
“Yes.”
(Which struck Chauzida as very strange, but he was in no position to argue.) “You were telling me the other day,” he said, “about the other Aram nations, and the Goida, and how things are going to get much worse fairly soon. Was all that true?”
“Of course it was.”
“And you also said how nice it would be if we could all move inside the empire, into those places where people don’t live any more, and where we’d be safe.”
“Well, yes. But I don’t see the emperor ever agreeing to that.”
“How’d it be if we said, we’ll come and fight your war for you, but we don’t want any more gold and silver, we want to be allowed to come and live in the empty bits of your empire. If we explained it like you explained it to me, I don’t see how he could say no.”
“I do,” Joiauz said.
And Chauzida did too, though he wasn’t quite sure how. But he knew, which was enough. “In that case,” he said, “I’ve made my decision. We’ll go to the war if we can have land inside the empire, but not otherwise.”
Joiauz’ eyes were wide and he was very still. “That’s a very big decision,” he said. “Explain it.”
Chauzida nodded gladly. “The emperor will say no,” he said. “Calojan will go and fight the enemy without us. I imagine he’ll win, but he’ll really wish we’d been there, and he’ll talk to the emperor, and the emperor’s got to do what he says, because he wins all the battles. Then, next time we ask, the emperor will say yes.” He paused. It hadn’t sounded as authoritative out loud as it had inside his head. “What do you think?”
“You really want me to tell you?”
Oh, Chauzida thought. “Yes.”
“I think that’s what we’ll do,” Joiauz said. “It’s something I’d never dare do, on my own. But if you order me to, I’ve got no choice, have I?”
“Uncle—”
Joiauz shook his head. “Something my father used to tell me,” he said. “When all else fails and you’re alone and unarmed and they’re coming to get you, hide behind a child. He said it always worked for him.”
“That’s not very—”
“Sometimes,” Joiauz said, “sometimes it is.”
Three kettlehats came to the factory in the middle of the day. One of them (gilded pauldrons; lieutenant of the Personal Guard) asked to see Hosculd. They found him in the exchequer room, in the middle of a calculation so complicated that it needed three boxes of counters. He asked if they could wait just two minutes while he finished. No, they said.
The deputy supervisor decided they’d better tell Aimeric, so they sent a boy who eventually ran him down in the cold room of the bath-house of the New Metropolitan temple, where he was discussing long-term fiscal policy with the Chancellor and the assistant governor of the Treasury. He made his excuses and left at once, and was at the factory when Hosculd came back, shortly before sunset.
“Well,” Hosculd said, “they put me in this huge circular room with the most amazing painted ceiling. There was one chair in the exact centre of the room, and I sat down on it, and they went away, and about three hours later they came back and took me to see Calojan.”
Aimeric nodded but didn’t speak.
“He gave me a drink and asked me how things were going at the factory, the Type Seven helmets—he knows about the problem with the rivets, I have no idea how, but he didn’t seem unduly upset about it.”
“That was it?”
Hosculd frowned. “He asked me about the dead stock—you know, all the stuff we’ve been stuck with over the years and haven’t been able to find a buyer for. Wanted to know how much we’d take for it, as a job lot.”
“He asked you that.”
Hosculd shrugged. “Well, I told him I couldn’t say offhand, I’d have to look in the books. Then he started talking about—well, me, basically. Where I was from, when I left home, how long I’d been away, my family, stuff like that.”
Aimeric frowned. “Why?”
“No idea. I just answered his que
stions. He didn’t say much, so I just kept talking to fill in the spaces, so to speak. And he just sat there and nodded, and from time to time he’d ask another question.”
“Such as?”
“Oh, how many people lived in our village, are there many villages or just a few, was my family poor or well off, did we have chieftains and elders, that sort of thing. I’m sure I told him far more than he wanted to know, but he let me babble on. Then he nodded, said thank you, you can go home now. Then he rang a little bell, and two kettlehats came and brought me straight back here. And that’s all, really.”
“He had you arrested for a chat.”
“Something like that.”
Aimeric thought for a long time. “How much dead stock have we got?”
Hosculd grinned. “No idea. At least two warehouses, out in the suburbs. I don’t suppose anyone’s been in them since before your father died.”
“I want an inventory and current valuation,” Aimeric said. “By the morning.”
Hosculd didn’t whimper, but he clearly wanted to. “Understood.”
“And he just asked you questions, about the old country.”
