The Folding Knife

by Parker, K. J.

  "No," Basso said. "If we start debasing now, we'll damage confidence overseas. Look what happened to the Auxentines when they tried it ten years ago."

  "That was a ten-point debasement," someone replied. "We're only asking for three."

  "And the Sclerians have increased the purity of theirs by two," Basso pointed out, "with the result that we're now paying four nomismata on the Sclerian drachma instead of three, which is way out of proportion to the actual gold content. The Sclerians are buying nomismata, melting them down and minting them into drachmas. It's insane. If you cut the nomisma by three points, it'd be like writing the Sclerians a draft for half the reserves in the Treasury. No, what we ought to be doing is putting more gold in, not taking it out." Then, when they scowled at him, he went on, "In fact, let's do that. We'll purify by one point, up to ninety-eight, and see what happens."

  They gave him a hard time over that, but he had the authority, and wouldn't let them leave the room until they'd all signed the order, which was sent straight to the Mint for immediate action.

  ("Why?" Sentio demanded later.

  "Because they got on my nerves," Basso replied. "Besides, it's the right thing to do, especially now. It shows we've got confidence in the economy, in spite of our recent spot of bother. It's all right," he added, "the Bank's got enough cash in hand to cover the immediate shortfall."

  Sentio shook his head. "Must be nice," he said, "to be so rich you can personally guarantee something like this out of your own pocket."

  "Yes," Basso said. "It is. It means I can indulge myself in little fits of temper without ruining the economy of the Republic.")

  Later that day, he announced his decision to the House, explaining in detail the many and complex factors that had led him to make the decision. To be sure, he said, in the short term, a debasement would have eased the public deficit quickly and relatively painlessly, but the long-term cost would, he believed, have been more than the Republic could afford, disproportionate to the short-term advantage, and causing lasting damage to the foreign trade on which the state depended. Instead, he proposed that both the deficit and the purification of the nomisma should be funded by an emergency tax; not a tax on private citizens, but on the larger corporations, those with a capital value in excess of one million nomismata.

  When he was able to make himself heard again, he pointed out that he himself would be facing the biggest tax bill in the Republic. If the House saw fit to approve his proposal, he would find himself having to pay over to the Treasury more money than he'd inherited when his father died. He wasn't asking anybody else to make anything like such a sacrifice. As far as he was concerned, it was the least he could do for the survivors of the plague, and he had sufficient faith in the integrity and public spirit of the House to recommend the proposal to them.

  "Passed unanimously," Cinio said, after the session closed. "I'll have to look it up, but I think that's the first unanimous vote for seventy years."

  Basso's hands, he noticed, were shaking slightly. "I certainly didn't make any new friends today," he said. "Did you see how they were glowering at me? I reckon I was lucky to get out of there in one piece."

  "Was that true?" Cinio asked. "About your tax bill being bigger than your inheritance?"

  "Perfectly true," Basso replied. "I wouldn't dare lie about something like that, not when I was making the grand gesture. Mind you, it's still considerably less than the profits we've made on short-term land deals." He grinned. "If we had an Opposition worth a damn, someone would've pointed that out, but I can only assume they're all too stupid to do simple arithmetic. Bonosus would've been onto it like a snake on a rat, God rest his insufferable soul."

  Cinio looked at him. "You really want an effective Opposition?"

  "Of course not," Basso said. "What I'd like is for everybody who disagrees with me about anything to get eaten by wild dogs. Otherwise I wouldn't be in politics."

  He stayed late in his office in the House, dealing with the horrendous backlog of work that had built up during the emergency: bills to be signed into law, bills to be amended, diplomatic correspondence, viability assessments, interminable reports. As a reward to himself for being good and doing his homework, he wrote a letter to Bassano, though he hadn't yet figured out a way of getting it to him. While he was there, Tragazes called to see him; the twins were doing very well at the Bank, he said. They showed considerable promise.

  "Good," Basso said. "What does that mean?"

  Tragazes explained that they'd done all the work they'd been assigned quickly and efficiently, and that they'd been no trouble at all.

  "And?"

  That, Tragazes said, was all he had to report on the matter.

  "So they're doing as they're told. I see, thank you. Please carry on."

  The interview left him feeling vaguely depressed. He realised he must have been expecting considerably more of them, without quite knowing what. I expected them to surprise me, he told himself, which is basically ridiculous.

  It was dark by the time he left. Ever since the time he'd escaped his escort and gone drinking, his guards had taken to treating him like a dangerous prisoner, on whom they daren't turn their backs for an instant. Usually he submitted meekly, since it really wasn't their fault. But he was still feeling out of sorts after his meeting with Tragazes; so, when he told the guard sergeant to take him home by way of the Rug Market instead of by the usual route and the sergeant replied that he was sorry but that wouldn't be possible, he lost his temper.

  "Why the hell not?"

  The sergeant looked deeply unhappy. "Operational reasons, First Citizen."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  The sergeant didn't know, and why should he? "I'm very sorry, First Citizen, but I've got my orders. I can't..."

  Basso scowled at him and stomped to the door where the covered chair was waiting. He was acting like a child, and knowing that made him angrier. "Come on, then, if we're going," he snapped, and slammed the door.

  Four bearers, two torchbearers, six soldiers and the sergeant: thirteen grown men, just to see him safely home. He wriggled in the seat, trying to get comfortable, and ended up throwing the cushion out of the window. He saw the sergeant stoop and pick it up, which made him feel like an idiot. The sergeant handed it back, and he put it down on the seat beside him.

  There were three alternative routes from the House to Basso's home; it was up to the sergeant to decide, on the spur of the moment, which one to take. Today, they were going across the Lion Square, through the Blue Portico, down Linenyard to the Winches, from which Basso deduced that the sergeant was a cautious, unimaginative man. He found his place in Machaeon's Auxentine Paradoxes, and started to read.

  He was interrupted by a yell: a drunk, he assumed, or a lunatic, which meant they must be passing under the Portico, where those people tended to gather. But the chair stopped suddenly, and he heard a thump, a bit like a nail being driven into wood. The chair tipped over; he grabbed at the door, then bashed his head against one of the uprights. Something touched his cheek, at the same time as another nail-in-wood noise. He opened his eyes, and saw a feather.

  Odd place for a feather to be. Then he saw that it was one of three, the fletchings on a crossbow bolt, which had buried its head in the wood of the upright he'd been clinging to a second or so earlier. Made no sense. Who'd be stupid enough to go loosing off a crossbow in the middle of town?

  The chair lurched again and hit the ground, jarring his back and knees, and he heard a scream, a man in great pain. Accident, he thought, we've been run into by a cart or something. No, because we're not on a carriageway. In which case--

  He kicked open the door and slid out feet first onto the pavement (reddy-pink marble slabs; the Portico). As his head emerged through the chair door, he could see two pairs of legs, a soldier and someone else, a civilian. Another nail-in-wood noise, and the soldier fell over. He'd been shot.

  Now he understood. Very bad. He had no idea what to do: try and run away, wh
ich would mean standing up in the open, or crawl back into the chair, very low-quality cover and he'd be trapped. He looked up, as a soldier rushed past him, banging Basso's shoulder with his knee. Then he went down too, with a bolt in the small of his back.

  Someone yelled, "Where is he?" One of the torchbearers appeared out of nowhere; he was wrestling with a man, trying to twist a knife out of his hand, but he wasn't strong enough. The man punched the torchbearer in the stomach with his other hand, then stabbed him in the neck. As the torchbearer dropped to the ground, Basso and the man with the knife found they were staring straight at each other.

  There was a moment when nothing happened. Then the man with the knife called out, "Here." He didn't move. Another man came up behind him. He had a deep cut on his cheek, from just below the ear to an inch short of his chin, and he was holding a hunting sword with a closed brass hilt. Oh, Basso thought.

  The swordsman barged past the man with the knife and took a long stride forward. Basso tried to push himself backwards onto his feet, but the chair was in the way; he was stuck, on the ground. The swordsman drew back the elbow of his sword arm, the first stage of a thrust. Without thinking, Basso shoved out his left hand, presumably to try and block, and saw a steel triangle appear through the back of it. No pain; just the enormous incongruity of seeing something coming at him through his hand, like some kind of conjuring trick.

  The sword-point pulled away. As it left his hand, he felt a staggering wave of pain, which he forced himself to ignore. He could see the swordsman's elbow going back for another thrust. He scrabbled with his right hand for something to pull himself up by, and felt his fingers close in the soft fabric of the cushion. Why not? he thought, and threw the cushion at the swordsman's face.

  The swordsman ducked out of the way, but he'd stopped his thrust, and Basso realised that he'd come half a pace closer in, as he moved his feet in avoiding the cushion. It was, in essence, a simple question of distance. If he was close enough, it might work. If not, that would be that. Please, Basso said to himself, and kicked out hard with his right leg.

  He'd intended to kick the swordsman in the groin. Instead, he got his right knee, which turned out to be even better. The swordsman froze, just for a moment; then his right leg buckled, like a tree falling, and he collapsed, twisting sideways, bashing his head against the base of a pillar.

  Basso arched his back, edging forward like a caterpillar, and pushed against the ground with his right hand. That got him on his feet, but the man with the knife was suddenly in his face, and he knew he wasn't going to be able to do anything quickly enough to stop the knifeman stabbing him. A pity. He waited.

  It didn't happen. A man charged into the knifeman: the sergeant, with his sword drawn. The knifeman pivoted on his back leg, letting the sergeant pass him, and as he stumbled forward, the knifeman lifted his blade just a little and let the sergeant cut his own throat on it as he went past.

  (I've read about that, Basso thought. There's a name for it, in Auxentine.)

  The swordsman was getting up, but he'd dropped the hunting sword. The hilt was closer to Basso's hand than to his. Unfortunately, on Basso's left side; he snatched it up but it immediately fell out, the fingers refusing to close and grip, and clattered on the marble. He saw the swordsman dive for it, and in the process block and get tangled up with the knifeman, whom he hadn't seen.

  I could run, Basso thought. There may be just enough time.

  He turned. Nobody in front of him, just an empty five yards of pavement to the Portico steps. He threw his weight forward and ran: four paces, and then he was falling, and then the pavement hit him like a trip-hammer.

  A woman was standing over him, looking at him, frowning. There was a silver bowl in her left hand, and a sponge in her right.

  He tried to remember what they'd taught him when he was a boy. Clearly not Victory; she holds a torch and a wreath, and wears a fiery garland. Charity has a bowl, but carries a banner on a long pole in the other hand. Mother Earth holds a basket, not a bowl. None of the goddesses or the allegorical personifications, to the best of his recollection, has a sponge. Also, for that matter, they tended to be younger. Prettier. Better dressed.

  If you don't know, ask. "Who are you?" he said.

  The woman didn't answer. She was ignoring him. Maybe, he thought, she's Death. The artistic convention was that Death was a tall king in black armour, but how the hell would anybody know? Maybe Death was a dowdy old woman with a bowl and a sponge.

  "Are you...?" he started to say, but she'd left the room. Probably not Death, then. It occurred to him that maybe she was just a human. A (there's a word for it). A nurse.

  He closed his eyes, because seeing is such a lot of effort, and when he opened them again, she was back. Beside her, an elderly man with a face like a cat. Doctor. Doctor?

  "I'm sorry," he heard himself say, "I can't remember your name."

  "Lystill," the doctor replied. Odd sort of a name. No, lie still. "You're all right. Concussion and two stab wounds in the lower back; amazingly, they missed everything important." The doctor frowned, almost reproachfully. "You were very lucky."

  For some reason, that was really funny, but laughing hurt a lot. Not so funny after all. "They," he said, but the rest of the words wouldn't come out. His head was suddenly cloudy, like a badly poured glass of wine. Lie still, he told himself. Good idea. Even better, go to--

  "You wanted an effective Opposition," said a voice from far above him. "I think you've got one."

  He opened his eyes. "Cinio," he said.

  The face began to take shape through the blur. "You're lucky to be alive," Cinio said.

  Basso scowled at him. "Some of the most distinguished philosophers in history would disagree with you there," he said. "Personally, I incline towards the later Formalist school, but only because they wrote in nice short sentences. What happened?"

  Cinio's face came closer, like the moon setting. "We still don't know who they were," he said. "But it was a very close shave. Well planned and well executed. Really, it's a miracle you weren't--"

  "Yes," Basso said, "thank you. That's not what I asked. What happened?"

  "Oh." Cinio nodded. "They had crossbowmen in top-storey windows on either side of the Portico. They shot the bearers, and about a dozen men with knives and swords, we don't know the exact number, rushed the guards. Somehow you got past them, because they found you lying a few yards away."

  "They?"

  "Passers-by," Cinio said. "They heard yelling and screaming and assumed there'd been an accident of some sort. When they got there, they saw this man standing over you with a sword, looking like he was finishing you off. Two or three of them rushed him--"

  "Just a moment," Basso interrupted. "You mean, ordinary people. People who just happened to be there."

  "That's right." Cinio nodded enthusiastically. "They got the man with the sword off you, but he killed two men and got away. The guards killed two of the bad guys, but the bodies haven't given us anything to go on. The archers up in the windows dumped their bows and ran; we found the bows, but we didn't catch anybody."

  "What about the guards? Did they see anything?"

  "Probably," Cinio replied, "but they aren't telling. They didn't make it. They got the torchbearers, too, and five civilians."

  "Five? You said..."

  "There was quite a crowd. They had to cut their way through."

  Basso stared at him. "That's eighteen people," he said.

  "That's right. Really, it's amazing that you--"

  "Shut up, Cinio," Basso said. "Listen, who knows about this?"

  "Aelius, naturally. And the watch captains, and the gatekeepers; we've closed all the gates, so they can't leave the city. Otherwise, we're keeping it quiet, for now. We reckon we'll have a better chance of catching them if--"

  Basso shook his head. "I couldn't give a damn about that," he said. "But keep a lid on it for as long as you can. Officially I've come down with something debilitating but trivial--food p
oisoning, I don't care. How long before I'm back on my feet, by the way?"

  "Not sure," Cinio said. "It's so hard to pin these doctors down to anything definite. At least a fortnight."

  "The hell with that." Basso tried to move, and discovered, much to his surprise, that he had no strength at all. "The point is," he said, "I don't want this to be public knowledge. Understand?"

  Cinio looked at him. "I'm not sure we can--"

  "I am. If there's rumours, deny them. Food poisoning. And find some excuse for someone to come and see me, someone people'll believe. The message is, I'm not dead, I'm a bit off-colour but I'll be fine, nothing's happened. Do you understand?"

  "Yes." Cinio's face made it obvious he was lying. "But that's going to make catching the bad guys rather difficult, if we can't--"

  "I don't want them caught. At least, I don't care one way or another. They're just some men who got paid to do a job of work."

  "But if we don't catch the assassins," Cinio said, a patiently-explaining-to-an-idiot voice, "we don't stand much of a chance of finding out who hired them. Surely--"

  "I'm not interested," Basso said. "That's the message. I don't think we're going to find out who planned this, even if we catch the hired hands. So, if I can't catch them, I want to do the next-best thing."

  "Meaning?"

  "I want to annoy them," Basso said. "As much as possible."

  Cinio looked very sad. "I don't follow."

  "Think about it," Basso said. "You've planned something like this. Against all the odds, it doesn't work, but you console yourself with the thought that, at the very least, the City'll be turned upside down, everybody'll be thrown into a panic, and you've put it in people's minds that the First Citizen was only a hair's breadth from being killed, and he might well not be so ridiculously lucky next time. That's at least a third of your objectives achieved. People who've been with me so far will start to think, what'll become of me if Basso gets killed and the other lot get in? What do you think'll happen to the Bank if people start thinking I might not be around this time next year?" He paused for a moment; his weak, useless body had caught up with him and he was completely out of breath. "Figure it out for yourself," he said. "There was no attempt on my life. A simple case of the running shits. I'll be up and back to work before you know it. All right?"