The Folding Knife

by Parker, K. J.

  "During morning confession."

  When Renno was really amused by something, he had this knack of silent laughing; his mouth opened in an enormous grin, but no sound came out. "Well," he said. "That would probably do it, yes."

  The boy looked down at his hands. "Best part is, it was the day after his uncle Naso got made Patriarch."

  Renno breathed in deeply, the sign of great happiness. "There are times when I think there might still be hope for our family," he said.

  "I don't," the boy said sharply, and got to his feet. "Still, who cares about that? Let's go down to the fencing school and see if we can steal someone's coat."

  They succeeded, and in the pocket they found a purse containing twelve gold eagles and a considerable sum in provincial silver. They handed it in to the watch, and said they'd found it in the street.

  "I bought a bank," his father said.

  The boy stared down into his porridge. He knew why his father had chosen family breakfast to make his announcement. With the children present, he'd be safe from the hellstorm of uncurbed opinion he'd have come in for if he'd confessed his misdeed in private. In front of the children, she could only say, "Oh." Which she did.

  "Best deal I ever made," his father said, a little bit loud and a little bit fast. He paused, anticipating a request for further information, which didn't come. Mother was keeping quiet, a truly ominous sign.

  Father chewed some bread, and went on, "The Macer brothers. Perfectly sound business, only they came unstuck over a government loan. Well, they called it a loan but really it was state theft; it's not like they had any choice. You will lend us this money or else. No security, obviously."

  Even Mother had her limits. "Really," she said. "So you bought a failed bank."

  "It hasn't failed yet," Father replied, a little nervously. "Won't fail, either. All it needs is capital."

  "Ah." Mother put down her spoon. "Really, that's a bit like saying all a dead horse needs is bringing back to life. But I'm sure you know what you're doing."

  Father frowned. Actually, he was winning. He'd goaded Mother into breaking silence in front of the children, which meant that she'd be fighting the battle with both arms tied behind her back. "The government won't default," he said. "It'll just take its own sweet time about paying. In the mean time, the Macers are stuck for liquidity, and I made them an offer. Their bad luck, our opportunity."

  Mother sighed. "How much is the loan?" she said.

  The boy and his sister exchanged swift glances. If Mother was prepared to allow actual numbers at the breakfast table, things were bad. "Six million," Father said. "I gave the Macers a million for the business, so basically..."

  Mother turned to her children. "Finish your breakfast and go upstairs," she said.

  For once--the one and only time--Mother was wrong. Father mortgaged everything and raised the money, and shortly afterwards the Treasury repaid the forced loan to the bank, with interest in full, out of the proceeds of the naval victory at Eupontis. Within eighteen months, the Charity & Social Justice Bank was in better shape than ever, and Severus Maurus, officially listed as the fifth-richest man in the Republic, was thinking seriously about resuming his political career.

  "You know what this means," Basso's sister said, as they picked figs from the tree behind the house.

  He shrugged. "Enlighten me."

  "Your marriage," she said.

  "What about it?"

  She stood on tiptoe, grabbed at a high branch, missed and staggered a little. "It'll be off," she said. "You just wait."

  He wasn't quite sure he understood what she was trying to say. "Off?"

  "As in cancelled."

  Still not making sense. "It can't be," he said. "It's a legal contract."

  She laughed. "Oh, sure," she said. "And if Father wants to get out of it, his lawyers'll see to it in five minutes flat."

  He was curious. "Really? Could they do that?"

  "Of course, stupid. Technicalities. Degrees of affiliation, for one thing."

  "What's--?"

  "Consanguinity." She sighed. "It means you're not allowed to marry your relations."

  "I know what it means. But we're not--"

  "Oh yes we are," his sister said firmly. "Generations and generations ago, quite likely, but you can bet we're related to the Licinii somehow or other, and the lawyers'll use that to bust up the deal. Or there's other stuff. Procedural defects. Time limits for registering the betrothal not complied with. It goes without saying they'll have made some tiny cock-up or other in the formalities. They always do, just in case either side needs to back out later."

  "Oh," the boy said. A wasp was buzzing round his head. He kept perfectly still. "But why would he want to?"

  "You're kidding, of course," his sister said. "If Father's got his heart set on going into politics again, he's not going to waste his only son on a bunch of nobodies. He'll need both of us free and clear for sealing big political alliances. Not," she added cheerfully, "that I'm complaining. I'm bound to do better as a political pawn than if I'd just been an heiress."

  "Right." Clearly she didn't know about her own betrothal (a long-term job, his father had called it). He supposed he ought to tell her, at some point. The wasp, meanwhile, was bobbing up and down in the air, two feet from his head. He stuck out his left hand, bracketed the wasp with his thumb and forefinger, allowed for the wasp's escape attempt and snapped his fingers. He'd judged it well. He crushed the head and thorax without being stung.

  "I wish you wouldn't do that," his sister said.

  "I think it's pretty impressive."

  "It's creepy."

  "Suit yourself," he replied equably. "Next time I'll let it go and it can sting you."

  "I don't mind when it's spiders," his sister said. "But bees..."

  "It was a wasp." He wiped his fingers on his sleeve. "I don't know," he said. "I don't suppose it matters very much. It's just, I'd got used to the idea."

  She laughed. "You've never even seen her. Not properly."

  "That's beside the point." He jumped up, caught hold of a branch and swung himself astride it, then started to pick the upper branches. "It's different for you," he said. "It's your one big chance. For me, really, it's just something to deal with and get out of the way."

  His sister made a disgusted noise. "Whoever she turns out to be," she said, "I feel really sorry for her. Your attitude stinks, you know that?"

  "I can't hear you," he said. He was only six feet or so off the ground, but the perspective was different. He could see over the orchard wall, into the street. It looked different from there. "Look out," he said, and started dropping figs for her to catch.

  She put on a display of offence taken after that, and wouldn't discuss the matter further; but it preyed on his mind for the rest of the day, and he slept badly. The next morning, he went to see his mother. He found her writing up the accounts in the east day room.

  "Whatever gave you that idea?" she said. "Of course the marriage is going ahead. Your father went to see Licinius Strato only the other day, about the settlement trusts."

  He knew about that, as it happened. He'd overheard Father discussing the negotiations with one of his business friends--it was useful that everybody treated him as though he was stone-deaf, when his right ear was as good as anybody's, maybe even better. At the time he'd wondered why Father was badgering the Licinii into increasing the cash settlement. Even so; for the chairman of the Charity & Social Justice, the sums in question were trivial. Best deal he ever made, he thought, and grinned.

  "What's the joke?" his mother said.

  "Nothing. Who's Placidia betrothed to?"

  He'd caught her off guard, for once. "Nobody. What a thing to say."

  "Oh." He shrugged. "Only, I had an idea Father had arranged something, quite some time ago. A long-term job, he called it, and he said it needed careful planning."

  As he spoke he realised: she doesn't know. Father hadn't told her. He made a giant effort and kept his face pe
rfectly straight. There'd be an interesting discussion later. He wondered if there'd be any chance of listening in.

  "Nonsense," his mother said, but already she'd practically forgotten about him. She was thinking of things to say to her husband. The boy made an excuse and left. On his way down the stairs, he wondered why his father would keep something like that a secret. He always told Mother everything, as soon as it happened, though from time to time he chose a tactically advantageous occasion. Placidia's marriage, though; that made no sense. For one thing, he'd want her advice.

  No matter. He crossed the inner courtyard, stopped by the fountain and peered into the bowl. Sometimes visitors threw small coins in there, for luck, and Father had had visitors that morning. Sure enough, there was a coin, right at the bottom, half buried in the silt. He rolled up his sleeve and grabbed it, but it was only a penny--his father's issue, ironically enough, and sadly worn. Most of the detail had gone on the portrait: the eye, the ear, most of the hair. Cheapskates, he thought sadly, and stuffed it in his pocket.

  It was, everybody agreed afterwards, an efficient wedding. The bride's family delivered on time, the priest was competent, nobody was obviously drunk or screwed up their lines. Because it took place in the middle of the day--it had originally been scheduled for the evening, but it had to be moved forward to accommodate a crucial business meeting--there was no torchlit procession through the streets. Instead, they did the whole thing in-house.

  One minute he was standing in the temple, alone, nervous and troubled in his digestive organs (no need for plums this time). The next, a strange creature in a white cloud fell in beside him, and he realised, with the objectivity of a historian, that nothing would ever be the same again. He glanced sideways, but there was nothing to see.

  A small blunder, after all. They'd put him on the left, so he couldn't make out what the old fool was saying. Fortunately, he'd taken the trouble to learn his lines, which were straightforward enough in any case. He watched the priest's lips. She was on his right, so he could hear her perfectly well. She mumbled, and got her own name wrong.

  During the priest's address he allowed his attention to wander. He was standing directly in front of the altar, above which there was the usual small window, precisely placed so that the first light of dawn fell on the massive iron wheel supposedly inhabited by the divine presence. Across the window a spider had spun an almost perfectly symmetrical web, a work of great skill and diligence. The spider itself hung motionless in the centre, and as the gentle breeze ebbed and flowed it swayed backwards and forwards, moving like the chest of a man breathing slowly. He wasn't the least bit superstitious, but it did occur to him to wonder whether so striking an image had been arranged somehow, put there on purpose for him to see, or whether it was the sheer wastefulness of coincidence. Such a perfect web, and the spider so exactly centred, felt more like art than nature. Under any other circumstances, of course, he'd have squashed the spider immediately. It was second nature, because his mother and sister were both terrified of spiders, and he'd learned to take pre-emptive action as soon as he walked into a room. He'd been scared of them too, at one time, but once he'd mastered every aspect of the art of killing them, he found he wasn't afraid any more. He'd moved smoothly from victim to aggressor, without being conscious of any change within himself, so he supposed that really there was no difference between the two, apart from whether you happened to be the stronger or the weaker.

  The actual wedding was, of course, only a small part of it, just as actual fighting is only a small part of a war. After that, they were whisked away into the formal garden. She was swept off to do something or other, while he had to stay still and be introduced to people: distant relatives, business associates, important people generally. Roughly half of them spoke to his deaf side, which was no bad thing. He'd been trained for that sort of thing, so he knew how to be cripplingly bored without giving offence.

  As some fool of a woman twittered in his face, he thought for the first time in years about his grandfather, who'd died when he was ten. No big deal; he just remembered something the old man had said, which he hadn't understood one bit at the time, but which for some reason had stuck with him, like a tune you don't actually like but can't help humming. Arranged marriages, he'd said, amortised loans and the Republican Navy are what keep this city from going under. He realised, in a moment of pure insight, that Grandfather and Father had never really liked each other very much. He examined his memories of the two of them together, things said, tones of voice, nuances of words, body language. It had never occurred to him before that the relationship between them had been anything but entirely orthodox, love and respect in the appropriate proportions. Somehow he'd always assumed that love was something you didn't really have any say in, like rules and the law and the times when meals were served. Parents loved their children, children love their parents, likewise with siblings; husbands and wives were different, he knew that, but it wasn't the same, because marriage was a matter of human choice rather than natural inevitability. Even then, so he'd been informed, husbands and wives grew to love each other over time, through a combination of shared experience and force of habit. The one thing that had nothing to do with love was choice. But Father and Grandfather, it now appeared, hadn't even liked each other. He wondered about that, and felt the assumptions that supported his understanding of the world like the cables of a bridge suddenly go slack. Presumably I shall love my wife, he thought, in time, in due course. Or maybe not. It would be interesting, he decided, to find out.

  They met up again briefly after the main reception but before the wedding dinner, by chance rather than design. Escaping from the crowd in the garden, he sneaked away into the little cloister, through the wicket gate at the end and into the courtyard. There was someone already there, standing beside the fountain; a girl in a big white dress that looked familiar. At her feet was a pile of white gauze, which could have been the veil. She looked up at him.

  "Excuse me," he said. "Are you...?"

  She nodded.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't recognise you without the..." He twirled his fingers round his head to signify the veil. She was looking straight at him, and he had no idea what that look was supposed to mean. "Which is ridiculous," he added quickly. "I can see your face so I don't know who you are. What's your name?"

  No reaction. "Otacilia Licinia Secunda," she said.

  "That's not what I meant."

  It was as though she was making up her mind. Then she said, "Cilia. At any rate, that's what my parents call me."

  He nodded. "I'm Basso. Pleased to meet you."

  She laughed; rather cautiously, he felt, and because she assumed he'd want her to. "You escaped, then," he said.

  She nodded. "I couldn't stand being cooped up in that thing a moment longer."

  Thing? His imagination raced. "Oh," he said, "the veil."

  She kicked it. "I'll have to put it back on in a minute," she said, "I'm not supposed to take it off till the meal. But it's horrible and I hate it. It's like when you walk through a spider's web and you get the stuff all over your face and in your hair. Makes my skin crawl."

  Funny she should put it like that. "It sounds awful," he said.

  "Yes, well, you're not the one who's got to wear it," she replied. "Stop complaining, it's only for one day." She stabbed at it with her toe, and there was a faint tearing sound. "Shit," she said.

  He grinned. "I wouldn't worry about it."

  "Don't you believe it," she replied. "Mother'll be livid. I think she's planning to make it into curtains for the day room."

  He moved a step closer. "The hell with it," he said. "It's your wedding day, the most special day of a young girl's life. If you want to kick holes in your veil, you kick holes in your veil. Anybody's got problems with that, they'll have me to answer to."

  She smiled. Actually, she wasn't bad-looking. And she smiled instead of laughing; for some reason, he liked that. "If it was up to me, I'd tear it into little bits a
nd burn it. We'd better be getting back, or we'll be in trouble."

  We, she'd said. Ah, he thought, now I understand. "Suppose so," he replied.

  "Definitely." She started to bend down, to retrieve the veil, but stopped at approximately twenty degrees. "This dress," she said, "is impossible. There's half a whale's jaw in there somewhere."

  He stooped, rather self-consciously, grabbed the veil and straightened up. There was quite a large hole in it. "Give it here," she said, and started winding it round her head, but even he could see it wasn't going on right. "Sod it," she said, "I can't remember how it's supposed to go."

  "Let me," he said. "I think I can see..."

  He was being rather optimistic, and nearly throttled her before eventually figuring it out. "That'll have to do," she said. "Where's the hole?"

  "Round the back," he said. "Nobody's going to see."

  "Right." She straightened up, pinched at the skirts of her dress. "You go first. Well, we can't come out together, can we?"

  Oh, he thought. "All right," he said. "See you later, then."

  "You sure it looks all right? You can't see the hole?"

  "It's fine," he reassured her, and walked away.

  Much later, he said, "Do you know what to do?"

  She glared at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Only," he said quickly, "I don't, so I was sort of hoping you'd--"

  She looked at him, another unreadable face, then sighed deeply. "Oh for crying out loud," she said, and explained in detail.

  * * *

  Some time after that, he said, "I'm sorry for being ugly."

  "That's all right," she said, in a sleepy voice. "You can't help it."

  He lay still, trying not to think about the darkness. All his life he'd slept with a lamp burning, but there was no lamp in this room and he hadn't sent for one. "Was it...?"

  "Yes," she muttered. "You'll get the hang of it. I need to go to sleep now."

  On two out of three counts he wasn't sure he believed her. The third was clearly not negotiable. He lay back and tried not to disturb her by moving. He wasn't used to being in bed this early and he didn't feel the least bit tired. Later, when she started to snore, he carefully got out of bed, left the room, felt his way downstairs to the library, where he found a lamp and the book he'd been reading. Obviously he didn't want anybody to find him there, under the circumstances, so he went back upstairs, hugging the lamp close to him to smother the light, and crept through the bedroom into the dressing room. He shut the door, sat down and started to read.