by K. J. Parker
Raffen peered at it. He’d picked up basic reading quite quickly while he was in the City, but the writing was very small and cramped. “Once it’s signed, do we get to keep it?”
The ambassador smiled. “Sorry, no. The original will be kept in the imperial cartulary in the library of the Golden Spire temple—”
“I’ve been there,” Raffen said. “Very impressive building. But I wouldn’t keep anything valuable there if I were you.”
The ambassador didn’t know what to make of that, so he moved smoothly on. “You will, of course, receive a copy in due course.”
“Just like this one?”
“More or less. A bit smaller, perhaps.”
Raffen frowned. “I think we’d like one just like this,” he said. “It’d look really good up on that wall there. Keep the draughts out, too.”
The junior ambassador smiled. “We’ll see what we can do.”
“Splendid. All right, where do I sign?”
The junior ambassador produced a beautiful traveller’s writing case from inside his coat. It was ivory, with a lid that folded down to give you a firm place to write on. There were two ink bottles, one gold and one silver, and two ivory pens with gold nibs, and a small flask of fine white sand for blotting, and a tiny file for touching up the nibs if they got blunt, and a stick of dark red wax, and the smallest oil lamp anyone had ever seen, for melting the wax. Raffen, who’d been practicing with a sharpened reed and soot shaken in rainwater, wrote RAFFEN IMP in remarkably good Classical capitals; he’d seen writing like that on wall-paintings in the imperial palace, he explained, and he’d based it on that. The ambassador congratulated him on his fine hand and knowledge of formal abbreviations, but pointed out that IMP was short for emperor; as a king, he should more properly have written RAFFEN R. Raffen offered to scrape it out with his knife and try again, but the ambassador said it was done now and not to worry. Raffen pulled a sad face when the junior ambassador started to pack away the writing case. The junior ambassador’s smile froze on his face and he said, please keep it, as a gift. Sadly, the delegation couldn’t stay for the feast and drinking contest; they had to get back to the City as quickly as possible. They’d send the copy of the treaty as soon as it was ready, and it was a pleasure to have done business with them all.
When they’d gone, Raffen asked if anyone knew anything about the people who lived to the north of Selbst. A man called Gulbrand, from the North Quarter, replied that he’d been to Sceaf when he was young, and it was pretty much like Selbst, except the grazing was poorer and the same went for the people. “But they’re no trouble, really,” Eyvind assured him. “We get a few cattle raids when times are hard up there, but we always pay them back in kind. We don’t tend to bother them otherwise; they haven’t got anything we want.”
“And what’s beyond Sceaf?” Raffen asked.
“I’m not sure,” Gulbrand replied. “People do live up there, but nobody knows very much about them. There’s stories, like half the year it’s pitch dark, even in the daytime, and the other half the sun never sets. But that’s just ridiculous.”
“See if you can find out any more,” Raffen said. “I’d be interested.”
Later, when they were alone, Sitry asked him, “Why were you asking about Sceaf all of a sudden?”
“Was I? Oh yes.” He was taking off his boots. After he’d eased them over his heels, he stood them up in the corner of the room, like a tiny parade of soldiers. “Just curious, that’s all.”
She picked up her comb. He always watched her comb her hair, just as he’d watched her sister. “I think it’s because the sight of all those soldiers is making you think dangerous thoughts.”
“Dangerous?”
She nodded. “I think living in the City, you may have caught imperial fever.”
“Let me guess.” He grinned. She saw him, in her mirror. “Symptoms are a burning desire to invade other countries.”
“Something like that.”
“You may be right, but I hope not. You can die of things like that. Maybe I’m more concerned about other people invading us.”
“Mphm.” She had to tug a little to pull through a tangle. “Well, it could be argued that sending all your soldiers to a foreign country might be seen as a temptation. But I don’t think the Sceaf are like that.”
“Aren’t they?”
“Too busy fighting each other, from what I’ve heard. Which isn’t much,” she added. She pulled against another tangle, then clicked her tongue. “Damn,” she said. “That’s another tooth broken. Do you think I could have a new comb? This one’s pretty much had it.”
He didn’t reply, and she remembered that the comb was one of a pair; their father had bought them when she and her sister were girls. “Sure,” he said, turning his head away slightly. “You don’t need to ask, you’re the queen. Where do you get combs from?”
“Oh, there’s a pedlar who comes round. Actually, I don’t think I’ll bother. This one’ll do just fine.”
“Suit yourself.”
Something was wrong, she could feel it. She didn’t think it was her fault, but she could probably make it worse if she said the wrong thing. Probably best to change the subject. “Do you think all the high-class imperials are as bad as that? The ambassador was so far up himself he was practically coming out of his own ear.”
He smiled. “The ones I met varied,” he said. “Some were like that, others were fairly straightforward. Of course, the circumstances were different.”
“They’re just not like us, though. You can’t really imagine them doing anything. They’re like the clothes you keep for best.”
“They can do things when they want to, believe me.”
He didn’t often speak with such feeling. It was like being caught up in brambles; the more she tried to get free, the more she got snagged and caught up. Oh well, she thought. When all else fails, say what you’re really thinking. “What’s the matter? What’s bothering you?”
“I haven’t forgotten them, you know. I act like nothing happened, but—” He shook his head, as though the thoughts were flies. “I look at you, but I see her. I’m sorry. It’s not like I do it on purpose.”
“I know,” she heard herself say. “It’s all right. For what it’s worth, I think you’re a very wise man.”
“Do you?” He sounded surprised, almost disappointed. “Sometimes I think I must still be in the forest, eating tree fungus. It’s like that’s the last thing I can remember, and everything after that feels like a dream. You know; you believe it’s real, but deep down you know it isn’t.” He was very still, making himself stay still, like you do when you’re trying to catch the bull when it’s spooked and burst out of the pen; you look it straight in the eye and you don’t move, and gradually it calms down, but the slightest twitch will send it shying and frisking away, wilder and madder than ever. “I really do need to get a grip,” he said. “Dwelling on the past isn’t going to solve anything.”
She couldn’t bring herself to respond to that. Instead, she said, “When the army leaves, will you be going with them?”
He took so long to reply that she wondered if he’d heard her. “Yes,” he said eventually. “I suppose I ought to. What do you think?”
“I think it’s not up to me.”
“You don’t think I should go.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Fine. I’ll go.” He appeared to relax, as though he’d just achieved something substantial. “Shouldn’t be away for long,” he said, “it’s not like I’ll be leading them into battle or anything. I’ll just lead them to where they need to be and leave them to it.”
“That’s fine,” she said. She’d finished combing her hair; he’d been preoccupied, and missed it. “Are you coming to bed?”
“Not yet.”
“Mind if I blow out the candle?”
“Go ahead.”
The last she saw of him, before she blew, was a man sitting forward, elbows on knees, hands gripp
ing wrists; he was staring at an empty space in the middle of the floor, as if he could see something there, and his eyes didn’t blink. For some reason, she got the idea that he could see as well in the dark as the light, the way some animals do. When she woke up next morning, his side of the bed had been slept in, but he’d gone.
Calojan to Aimeric de Peguilhan.
I need forty thousand half-armours, munitions grade. Any old rubbish will do. Delivery in nine days, earlier would be nice. Confirm acceptance by return of this messenger.
He read it three times before he was forced to concede that it said what he’d thought it said. Forty thousand. Forty thousand.
The messenger was waiting, looking at him. He cleared his throat noisily. “That’s fine,” he said. “Tell him it won’t be a problem.”
Forty thousand half-armours. The key was, to keep calm. Making all that stuff in nine days was out of the questions, so he was going to have to think where forty thousand helmets and forty thousand cuirasses might be lying hidden, forgotten, unwanted, their owner just waiting for someone to come along and make him an offer. It didn’t seem likely, somehow.
At that moment, she walked in, carrying a tray of tiny pots. “Are you still here?” she said. “I thought you were going out.”
He turned and looked at her. “Any idea where I might buy forty thousand suits of armour?”
“New or second hand?”
“I’m not bothered. Look—”
She put the tray down and moved a stray curl off her forehead. “If you don’t mind used stuff, you could always try the Ceuta brothers.”
That didn’t make any sense. “They’re scrap metal dealers. I want—”
“Scrap metal.” She smiled at him. “Seventy per cent of enemy equipment salvaged off the battlefield ends up as scrap. About half of that is fixable, but usually it’s not worth the cost of fixing, bearing in mind that the market for bulk used arms and armour is pretty circumscribed, while everybody wants scrap. If you want a lot of gear in a hurry—I take it you’re in a hurry.”
“Oh yes.”
She smiled. “Then the Ceuta boys are your best bet. You’ll have to be a bit careful how you go about it. Trading in used arms legally will be a new and strange experience for them.”
How did she know all these things? He decided he was never, ever going to ask. “Thanks,” he said. “You just saved my life. And probably the empire.”
“Another day, another miracle. You know where their yard is?”
“Yes. No,” he amended. She gave him directions; then, knowing him too well, she drew him a little map.
The Ceuta brothers had three sheds, each about a hundred yards long, on the east bank of the river, just up from Westponds. When the Festival committee made the arena for the sea-battle, they’d dug a special drain to make sure the Ceuta sheds weren’t flooded out. Since then, the brothers had acquired a patch of the reclaimed land and were building two more sheds, about half as long again. Aimeric’s father had bought scrap plate armour from them—breastplates and backplates, mostly, pieces big enough to cut up into the small plates they used for scale and lamellar. There were four brothers, but nobody could remember ever having seen the eldest. It took quite a long time for Aimeric to persuade them that he was serious; once he’d made the breakthrough, however, they were wildly enthusiastic. Sure, they told him, we’ve got loads of good stuff, just right for you, new stock, just in; a quick scrub down and a few taps with a hammer, good as new.
They weren’t exaggerating. They took Aimeric to the nearest of the three sheds. This is the Grade A, they told him; the other sheds are B and C, but it’s all good stuff. It took Aimeric a while for his eyes to adjust to the gloom; then he realised what he was looking at.
While he was at the University, he’d strayed into a geography lecture. It wasn’t on his timetable, but in the Republic they let girls attend some of the courses—they couldn’t take a degree, naturally, but they could turn up and listen, so long as they didn’t make nuisances of themselves. Geography was one of the specified courses; the others were mostly medical, and Aimeric didn’t fancy watching a dead body being cut up. In the event he did indeed get a girl out of it, though she wasn’t up to much and anyway, he couldn’t seem to concentrate. Instead, his mind kept going back to something the lecturer had said. The great chalk cliffs at Phianassa, he’d asserted, weren’t stone at all. Rather, they were the compressed remains of the shells and bones of millions and millions of little fish, who’d died some absurdly long time ago and drifted to the sea bed; their flesh had long since rotted away, but their bones survived, and the sheer weight of all that water—it weighs ten pounds a gallon—had slowly compacted the bones, like cheese in a press, until it could be mistaken for rock. Then something drastic had happened, an earthquake or a volcano, and the sea had been thrown back and the sea-bed had been pushed up clear of the water, and that’s what the White Cliffs really were; enough tiny dead things to make a mountain.
It was, of course, absurd. Nobody believed it, except as a rather lame analogy (and he much preferred the one about dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, which was far more elegant and amounted to the same thing) but for some reason the image had stayed with him, maybe because when he was a boy he’d been taken to see the great ossiary on the Isle of the Dead, where the monks of the Studium dumped the bones of their long-dead predecessors, when the graveyard got too full. The ossiary was a great hill of bones, with peaks higher than a tall tree—they had cranes to winch the sacks of bones ashore, because the hills were too high to be safely climbed—and just suppose all that lot got crushed down into powder, the way they made mortar out of limestone, and stamped flat by some unimaginable weight. Just imagine.
The shed was a bit like that. He thought of the lecturer and his mussels and oysters—the flesh dissipates, the shell stays behind—because the shed was packed solid with the shells of dead men, their helmets, breastplates, greaves, cuisses, tassets, pauldrons, cops and sabatons, the flesh has faded away but the shape is preserved in an iron shell, and every one of them had died a violent death; each shell fragment preserved that moment of violence and defeat with perfect, vivid clarity. He stooped and picked up a helmet, and saw where the steel had been torn apart by a cut. The lips of the tear were open, like a mouth screaming; like the splash when a stone hits the water, and the surface is ripped open, flows upwards and outwards from the violent displacement; the fluid movement of the splash frozen in steel, as if the life bursting out through the wound had chilled it to ice. He thought of the insects he’d seen in knobs of amber, permanently trapped in the torment of the moment of death; here, the fly had rotted away, but the incuse of its body was remembered in the savage failure of steel, the exposed crystalline grain and the sharp, twisted edges. And Calojan, it occurred to him, had done all this; one solitary man who’d built a chalk mountain.
“That’s nothing,” said the youngest Ceuta, standing next to him. “Few taps with a hammer, maybe braze on a patch, it’ll be fine. Just what you’re looking for.”
Aimeric threw the helmet back onto the heap. “How long has all this been here?”
“Oh, it’s all new stock,” another Ceuta said. “Pile it high, sell it quick, that’s our motto. All good Sashan iron, they don’t make any rubbish. And the stuff that’s past repair, you can cut it up for patches for the better pieces. No waste, see.”
“What you want,” the third brother said, “is stuff off men who got killed by the Cosseilhatz. Arrow-wounds, see. Neat round holes. Close up the burrs from the inside with a two-pound ball pein, you don’t even need a patch. Just right if you’re in a hurry.”
“Good for business, the Cosseilhatz,” observed the youngest brother. “This new lot the general’s got, they make a real old mess with their axes and all. We still get charged the same price, mind. But you can have your pick of the better stuff. No extra charge.”
They discussed money, then shook on it. Aimeric said he’d send his workers over straight away,
and left. He was glad to get out of the sheds. He walked home along the river, which was higher than usual. As part of the Westponds development they were reinforcing the embankments, to reduce the risk of flooding—a certain irony there, he thought, but logical. It wouldn’t do for the river to get loose, now that it knew what it could achieve once it got over the embankment walls. What if the whole City were to flood, and all the people drown, and their bones were to sink to the bottom and squash down; what sort of stone would they make, and would it be suitable for building with?
“Well?” she asked him. “Any good?”
“Like all your suggestions, it was brilliant,” he said. “Problem solved.”
He spent the rest of the day hiring; casuals to sift the heaps, find the least damaged pieces, make the minimum repairs; carters and their carts, to shift it all; porters to load and unload. He went to the sheds early next morning to find they were already hard at work. Five carts passed him as he walked along the embankment, heaped up with the empty shapes of men—like other carts he’d seen once, when the plague broke out in the Vesani Republic, other shells, other scrap. For the first time it occurred to him that he might just possibly pull off this miracle and be in a position to give Calojan what he’d asked for. After an hour at the sheds, Hosculd politely told him to go away and stop getting under people’s feet. He hitched a ride on one of his carts as far as Whitegates, then went to a concert at the Academy.
“One question,” Calojan asked him. They were unloading at the barracks. Calojan had called out the entire City garrison to help. “Why do you think it’s a good idea for my men to go into battle disguised as the Sashan?”
Aimeric shrugged. “Forty thousand half-armours, two days early, cheap,” he said. “You didn’t specify a particular pattern.”
“You’re selling me back my own plunder.”
Aimeric shook his head. “You sold it to the scrap dealers,” he said. “I bought it back and fixed it up. I know it sounds ridiculously simple, but you didn’t think of it. I did.”
