She froze, then laughed: a long, silvery laugh, a middle-aged echo of a girl laughing. "Honestly, Basso," she said, "you're pathetic. People think you're so hard and strong, but really you're a pushover. Are you really that scared of Olybrias?"
The lump was gone but his throat and chest were burning, as though he'd been running hard. "No," he said. "No, I couldn't give a shit."
"Really."
"Really." He turned his head away, so as to be able to speak. "But if you hate me that much, I'll do it. Just so you can have your revenge."
She sniffed. "Oh dear," she said. "Melodrama." She opened the door. "And please don't fool yourself," she said. "I've barely started."
Some time after she'd gone, he left the House and headed for home.
In the back lobby, his guards were waiting for him. For some reason they hadn't heard him coming; he found them sitting on the mosaic floor, under the statue of Victory. (The giant gilded bronze used to tower over the front steps on a six-foot marble pedestal, but thirty years ago, one of Her wings broke off, and She was moved out back. A specialist had been sent for, from Auge, to braze the wing back on. He hadn't turned up yet.) They were playing cards and passing a bottle round.
Basso watched them for a moment, then tapped the ring he wore on his left hand against the pillar he was standing next to. They all looked up immediately.
"Go home," he said.
They would probably have argued, pointing out that it wasn't up to him; they'd been assigned to accompany him every time he went out in the public streets, and they took their orders from the City prefect, not the civilian administration. But they must have seen from the look on his face that he wasn't in the mood for that sort of thing. They scrabbled up the cards, the bottle and their helmets and left quickly.
Just Victory and me, Basso thought. He looked at Her, but Her eyes gazed straight out over his head; and besides, the sockets were empty. The bust-off wing was in storage somewhere. He smiled, and bent down to pick up a ten-nummi bit that the card-players had left behind. Of course, he'd never had any trouble with money. It came to him, the way some people attract dogs. He flipped it over and saw his face: three-quarters, looking back over his shoulder, a very fine likeness of someone he'd have liked to have been, once. But it was just soft copper (to help pay for the street improvement programme, he'd halved the amount of tin in the alloy), and so his hair and beard were almost worn away, and there was just a trace left of one eye. That's me, he thought; but even so, I'm worth two bottles of Eburan resinated any day of the week.
He put his hat on, left the House and walked slowly down the Golden Acre to the knot of little streets at the back of the Artillery. There he drank himself; and when he'd finished himself off he drank his father, and two-thirds of Favonius Maeso, who was a sort of second cousin on his mother's side, until his stomach felt bad and he was sick of the taste of resin. At that point, he decided to go home. He stood up; the manoeuvre lacked precision, and he barged into a big, fat man in a leather apron who was propping up the bar.
"Sorry," he said.
The fat man looked at him. "That's all right," he said. "No harm done." Then he frowned. "You know what?" the fat man said. "You look a bit like him."
"Do I?"
"Yes, you do. A lot like him."
"Which him would that be?"
"You know." The fat man frowned. "Him. The big boss man. The chief bloody artichoke. You know. Basso the fucking Magnificent."
"Oh, him," Basso said. "You reckon?"
The fat man looked at him. "Spit and image," he said. "Cut your hair, tidy yourself up a bit. Here, you could earn good money. You know, being Him. In pantomimes and stuff."
Basso raised both eyebrows. "You really think so?"
"Course." The fat man did something with the index and middle fingers of his left hand, and immediately the barman brought two drinks. Not the resinated stuff. When Basso lifted his glass, he reflected that he was holding wine to the value of the back of his own head, and maybe even an ear as well. "There's that bloke, you know. Does Glabrio in the Horse Fair. Sits there on a big sort of throne, and you get five eggs at him for a shilling."
Basso nodded slowly. "Good point," he said. "But people want to throw eggs at Glabrio. You reckon they'd pay a turner to chuck eggs at Basso?"
The fat man laughed, so that every square inch of him shook. "A turner? They'd pay a fucking gold bit. I'd pay a fucking gold bit, and I'm a poor man. You could clean up, mate. You could coin it."
Basso nodded. "But they'd be throwing eggs at me."
"So bloody what? It all wipes off, and then there you are, fistful of money for doing fuck all."
The barman, he noticed, was staring at him; then their eyes met, and the barman scuttled away, very fast. A perceptive man, and wise with it. "I'm from out of town," Basso said. "What did you say they're calling him now? Basso the..."
"The Magnificent." The fat man laughed again, and this time the bar shook too. "Basso the Magnificent. What a laugh, huh? There's times I just don't understand people, you know?"
"Nor me," Basso said. "That's quite a handle, though. What did he ever do?"
"Bloody good question." The fat man raised his glass and gobbled down a nose's worth in one convulsive swallow. "Bloody good question. Yes, there must be a good few people round here who'd like to know the answer to that one."
"Yes," Basso said pleasantly. "But why Magnificent? Why not the Great or the Wise or...?"
The fat man laughed again; it was a pity he was drinking at the time, because the spray went everywhere. "That's a fucking charm, that is," he said, wiping his beard on his sleeve. Then he lowered his voice. "You know he killed his wife."
"Everybody knows that."
"And his brother-in-law. Found them, you know, at it, and killed them both. Chopped his balls off with a bloody great axe and ripped her open like a letter. And a man like that gets to be First bloody Citizen. You wouldn't believe it if you read it in a book."
"Quite," Basso said. "So why the Magnificent? Seems odd to me."
"You and me both," the fat man said, "you and me both. Still, no skin off your nose, right? That's what you should be doing, I'm telling you; get an old cart and a few buckets of eggs, and a bit of old curtain, you can paint Basso the Magnificent on it in big letters. Six months, you'd be a rich man. Got to be better than what you're doing now." He stopped and frowned. "What're you doing now?"
"I work in a bank."
"Well, there you go, then. Got to be better. Trust me. Six months, you won't know yourself."
"You know," Basso said, "I'm going to have to think about that very seriously." He paused. "You really think I look like him?"
"Just like him." The fat man reached over and patted the back of his hand. "Could be twins, mate. Could be twins."
Basso laughed. "Maybe we are twins," he said. "Maybe we got separated at birth, like in the play."
The fat man frowned. "Don't talk soft, pal," he said. "Stuff like that doesn't happen. Besides, you don't want to go saying stuff like that where people might hear you." He lowered his voice again, and spoke so softly they'd have had trouble hearing him in the next street. "He's got spies everywhere, you know. Every-bloody-where."
"I'll bear that in mind," Basso said meekly. "There's another thing, though. Do you think it's time he got married again?"
The fat man gave him a look of deep scorn. "You what? Come on, get real, listen to what you're saying. Who the fuck in their right mind would marry a man like that?"
Basso turned to the bar to order another bottle, then remembered that the barman had left; so he put a silver siliqua down on the bar-top, reached over and pulled a bottle out of the rack. "I'm going to buy you a drink," he said. "To say thank you."
"No need for that," the fat man said gruffly.
"I think there's every need," Basso said cheerfully. "The man who may have launched me on the road to fame and fortune, of course I'm going to buy you a drink. And what's more, you're going to tell m
e your name and where you live, so that when I'm rich and famous I can send you ten per cent."
The fat man looked at him. "You serious?"
"Absolutely serious. In fact," Basso said, "I'm going to make you a solemn promise. Everything I make out of having eggs chucked in my face, you get ten per cent. No nonsense, no messing about. One tenth. Take it or leave it."
"Five," the fat man said. He was slurring his words. "Five per cent. Ten's too much."
Then the fat man told him his name and address, which Basso recorded by carving it into the sole of his shoe with his gold-handled penknife. "You want to be careful, carrying something like that around," the fat man warned him. "You get caught with that, it's an offensive weapon." He had to have three tries at saying "offensive". "You could wind up in jail, you know?"
"I'm allowed," Basso said. "Clerk, see? I've got to be in a position to sharpen my pen at any time."
For some reason, they both found that unbearably funny, and the fat man laughed so much, he suddenly felt something shift ominously inside him, and lurched out back to get rid of it in a seemly fashion. Basso took the opportunity to escape through the front door into the street, where the fresh air made his head spin. But not for long. Half a dozen long, deep breaths solved the problem, and he walked home without any further incident. He took the precaution of drinking two pints of water before going to bed, overslept, and woke up with nothing worse than indigestion. In fact, he felt absurdly cheerful. True, he was going to have to think of something if he wanted to keep up his friendship (he liked to see it in those terms) with his nephew, while the remarriage business, hers or his own, was going to have to wait until his head was fully clear again. But his sister wasn't going to marry his worst enemy after all, and as for that other stuff--
He remembered there was something he had to do. He retrieved yesterday's shoe from under the bed, and rang the bell for a footman, who went and fetched a clerk.
"I want you to send two cases of the reserve Eburian to this address." He'd written it out on a piece of paper. "Covering note on parchment, with the City seal." He thought for a moment, then dictated: " 'Bassianus Severus thanks you for your advice, which he will most certainly act on should the occasion arise; in which case, he will consider himself bound by his contract.' "
The clerk bowed crisply and left, and Basso finished dressing, combed his hair and beard carefully and went down to his breakfast meeting.
"Where on earth did you get to last night?" Sentio demanded. "You were supposed to be coming to us, remember. And then the soldiers said you'd sent them away."
Basso shook his head. "Don't ask," he said. Then he shrugged. "Actually, I made a good deal. Maybe the best I ever made, I don't know yet. Something to fall back on if things don't work out."
Cinio raised his eyebrows. "Considering a change of direction?"
"It's an option," Basso said. "Basically, I've discovered I could make a good living pretending to be myself, though when you think about it, that's not much different from what I'm doing now. While I think of it," he added quickly, "there's something I want to ask you. What do people call me?"
There was an awkward silence. Then Sentio said, "That's an odd question."
"I'm serious," Basso said. "Have they got a name for me? You know, like a nickname, or a--well, an adjective. Like Caelius the Great, or Macrinus the Wise."
Cinio and Sentio looked at each other. "No, nothing like that," Sentio said.
"Oh." Basso frowned. "Anything? Anything at all?"
Cinio picked up a bread roll and drove his thumb into it. "That bastard is probably the one I've encountered most," he said, "with that clown coming in a poor second." He cut off a knob of butter and pressed it into the hole he'd made. "There are others, mostly suggesting unnatural relations with various farm animals. Why do you ask?"
"No reason," Basso said.
When the Donatives list was published, two names in particular caused widespread comment. Nobody was particularly surprised to discover that Olybrias was now a citizen, although there was quite a lot of speculation about what was going to happen next. The unexpected name was General Aelius Perigouniacus, the first high-ranking foreign mercenary officer to be thus honoured in over two hundred years. It was a gamble, people said; barbarians who made a career in the Republican military had always been excluded from citizenship to discourage them from taking any part in politics, for obvious reasons. But if there was to be an exception to that rule, others were happy to argue, Aelius had as much claim to the honour as anybody. He'd never been known to make any sort of political noises, he'd won two good wars, and by all accounts he was a decent enough sort of a person, for a foreigner. So long as nobody saw it as a precedent, there really wasn't any harm in it; and that business with the aqueduct, and the cowshit...
"He's got a genius for giving really valuable presents that you don't actually want," Aelius said, looking through the window at the parade ground. A thousand new recruits, recently shipped in from Perigouna, were being marched across the main yard to the long shed where they'd have their heads shaved and their feet inspected. He'd been through that shed himself once.
"It's a great honour, sir," said a young lieutenant whose name never quite stuck in his memory. "The first time in over two centuries--"
"Yes, I know." He hadn't meant to snap. "And now I can marry a citizen, which I have no intention of doing, and I can own land, which I have no intention of doing, and I can vote in elections, which I definitely have no intention of doing. And besides," he added, "it's wrong. Soldiers shouldn't be citizens. It's a really sensible convention." He turned away from the window. "Right," he said. "What am I supposed to be doing today?"
The lieutenant recited a list of names and times, which Aelius couldn't really be bothered to listen to. Soldiers shouldn't be citizens. Soldiers shouldn't really be anything except pieces on a board, to be put back in the box when not in use. It was just as well that they had a use for him most of the time. It hadn't bothered him much over the years; he'd been too busy making something of himself, as his mother had urged him to do. Youngest commissioned officer, youngest captain, youngest colonel, second-youngest member of the general staff; he'd spent most of his life in offices, trying to figure out the quickest way of moving up the corridor. The trouble with that as a way of life is that sooner or later there's nowhere else to move up to; at which point, there's no alternative but to stop and see where you've ended up. Youngest ever Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the Republic; and now a citizen. He was fit and healthy, it could be thirty years before he died. What the hell was he going to find to fill in the time?
They brought him papers to sign, and then it was time for his first appointment.
Basso sent for his sons. They came in looking nervous, as if they were trying to figure out which of their misdemeanours had been detected.
"I've been thinking," he said, not looking at them. "And really, there's not much point either of you staying at the University. You're not exactly intellectuals, either of you."
Pio mumbled something, but Basso had turned his deaf side towards him. He fixed his eyes on a detail of drapery in the mosaic. "I think you'd be better occupied learning the family business," he said. "That's what I was doing at your age. My father didn't believe in universities, and I'm not sure I do, either."
"Cousin Bassano--" Pio started to say.
"Bassano's not like you," Basso said quickly. "Nature never intended him to work. Besides, work would cut into his free time. You two, on the other hand, need an occupation, otherwise you'll just fade away. And anyway, someone's got to succeed me, and you're the only eligible candidates. So I've arranged for you to sit in with Tragazes for a month."
To their credit, neither of them whimpered; but Festo said, "Just a second, Dad. Why can't we have Antigonus? He's the best, you've always said so."
"He's an old man and very busy," Basso replied. "Maybe later on, if things work out. Meanwhile, Tragazes can show you the basics per
fectly well. He's a first-rate administrator, and he's got an almost infinite capacity for patience, which he's going to need with you two under his feet all day." He turned to face them, rather unwillingly. "Now listen," he said. "He may not be the easiest man in the world to get on with, but that really doesn't matter. Part of your training is learning how to cooperate with difficult and charmless people. I don't just want you to behave yourselves. I want you to impress him. That's what I'm sending you there to do. I want to see if you can get a job done, even if it's no fun. Do you understand?"
Two less-than-happy faces looked back at him. "Yes, Dad," Pio said. "We're to make a good impression on Tragazes, and learn the business."
Basso nodded. "You think you can do that?"
"We'll do our best," Festo said.
"Of course you will," he replied, and something prompted him to add, "and if you make a good job of it, I'll let you go to Badava for the summer. Well? Is that a good deal?"
They were grinning at him, and he thought: they assume I'd planned that all along, the reward, the incentive. It's how a good father would've structured it; first the bluster and the stern eye, then the special treat, whipped out of the sack at the end. But Badava was just an afterthought, because I was feeling guilty. "But only," he heard himself say, "if Tragazes gives you a good report; and I mean good, not just all right. I want you to impress him so much, he'd offer you jobs if you'd just come in as stowaways on a grain ship."
They left the room cheerful, excited, grateful, with something to look forward to (and the Invincible Sun only knew what sort of mayhem they'd get up to let loose in Badava in the long summer evenings), and Basso thought: I have the knack of doing things well, even when my intention was to do them badly. So what would that make me? Basso the Fortunate?
That evening, there was a letter from Bassano. It arrived in a small wooden box of figs, which made him grin. He hadn't actually hollowed out a fig to hide it in, but it was the next-best thing.
My first day at the Studium. Very strange people. The dogma of the indivisibility of the Double Essence of Being in the morning; land management in the afternoon. Lunch not at all bad. Sharing a room with a very pale man from Vinessus who keeps wanting to talk about girls: what are they like, have I known many, have I ever you know, and if so how often and what exactly happens? Rather wearing. If I murder him, can I have a prerogative pardon? Otherwise quite relaxed, and a good library; they've got a pre-rescension Avitius, would you believe, with the five anathematised chapters. I bet even you never knew that. Hope the tiresome people aren't getting you down. If you felt like sending me twenty nomismata it'd come in very handy; we're not supposed to have money, and I do miss it dreadfully. Not necessarily to spend. I just like looking at the faces on the coins.
The Folding Knife Page 14
