The Folding Knife

by Parker, K. J.

  He put back the last two black pieces. "You don't believe in your gods, but you believe in sin," he said. "That's a contradiction."

  "Yes." She smiled at him. "You seem very interested in my people," she said. "I'm surprised at that. I'd have thought you'd consider us to be mere savages."

  "I like savages," he said. "In moderation, of course. Enough to marry one, at any rate."

  "Ah." She pulled a stern face. "But I'm not a savage any more. I'm civilised."

  He nodded. "Just as well one of us is, I suppose."

  "All Vesani are civilised," she said. "The definition of civilisation is being like the Vesani. It would never occur to you to take seriously the idea of a universe adapted from the ribcage of a bear."

  "True," Basso said. "We'd ask where the bear came from in the first place."

  "Indeed. Where do you think the universe came from?"

  "I neither know nor care." He stood up. "I'm feeling much better now. I think I'll go and do some work."

  She nodded. "It would help," she said. "Shall I tell them to send you up some tea?"

  "Yes, thanks." He paused to look at her. "My sister's a hell of a chess player," he said.

  "As good as you?"

  "No," he replied. "But she really hates to lose. Her idea of a deeply satisfying game is a bitterly contested draw. Bassano, on the other hand, either wins in the first twelve moves or loses interest and makes stupid mistakes."

  "I've been thinking," she said.

  He walked back to his chair and sat down. "Well?"

  "A job for him. Not a career," she added. "Start him off with a job, and see how he takes to it. That will help you decide what he's best suited to."

  Basso raised an eyebrow. "I think I follow," he said. "What did you have in mind?"

  She folded her hands in her lap. "You told Sentio you had reason to believe that the governor of the Mint is dishonest."

  "Yes. And?"

  "Dismiss him," she said. "Appoint Bassano in his place."

  Basso frowned. "I'm not so sure about that," he said. "It's a serious job."

  "Give him someone to advise him," she replied. "It has to be a serious job in order to engage his interest. You should tell him you need him to do it, since there's nobody else you can trust. In the present circumstances, trustworthiness matters far more than experience or even ability. You can also point out that the job will be temporary, while you choose a suitable permanent replacement."

  "I'm still not sure," Basso said. "It'd all depend who I put in with him. I can't spare Antigonus. I suppose we could do without Tragazes for a couple of months, but I don't know that Bassano would work well with him. Also, he's looking after the twins."

  She moved her shoulders very slightly; not really a shrug. "I'm sure you can find someone," she said. "You asked me for a suggestion. I wouldn't presume to advise you about the details."

  Basso clicked his tongue. "Why is it," he said sadly, "that when people duck out of the difficult, boring stuff and leave it all for me to do, they call it not presuming?" She laughed. He knew she had no sense of humour, just a very good sense of timing. "That's all right," he said, "I'll think of someone. And yes, it's a good idea. Thank you."

  She accepted his thanks with a slight nod, like an emperor acknowledging the loyalty of his troops.

  "It's the most extraordinary place," Bassano said. "The people are all lunatics, and the noise is unbelievable. They've put extra-thick curtains on the back of my door so I can hear myself think when I'm actually sitting in my office, but once you go outside into the main shop..."

  "But you like it there."

  "God, yes. It's..." Bassano grinned. "It's different."

  Overhead, a single beam of light sliced down through the red, blue and purple of the round window, directly above the altar. The idea was that the first light of dawn should fall directly on the huge (to Basso's way of thinking, rather vulgar) golden statue of the Invincible Sun, striking the mirror in His outstretched left hand and reflecting onto the central panel of the jewelled triptych on the centre of the altar; at which point, so the theory ran, He was considered to be present in Temple, and the service could begin. It was unfortunate that Basso should have chosen to get married on a cloudy day. The light kept darting around (all over the place, his father would have said, like the mad woman's shit) but so far it had managed to avoid the mirror. That meant Basso and Bassano were trapped over on one side of the chapel, Melsuntha and her lot were hunkered down out of sight on the other side, and nothing could happen.

  "I'm glad you've settled in so well," Basso said.

  "Me too. And astonished," Bassano added. "After all, it's the first actual job of work I've ever done. I fully expected I'd be useless at it. Mind you, your man Bringas is keeping a very close eye on me, which is just as well. I like him. He's got a very dry sense of humour."

  News to me, Basso thought. Maybe he's one of those tiresome people who think you can only show proper respect by being boring. "It hadn't occurred to me that the noise would be a problem," he said.

  "In the Mint? Are you kidding? Close on a thousand men with hammers bashing steel dies all day long." Bassano shifted a little; cramp, presumably, from standing still in one place for so long. "There's one particular note," he went on. "Actually, there's about five; but four of them mean a slight misstrike. The fifth one's what you get when a coin's been struck perfectly. It's like a thousand-part orchestra all playing the triangle, very slightly out of time."

  The light flashed off the silver shield of Victory, on the other side of the nave. Way off target. "I'm amazed anybody can work there," he said.

  "Oh, they're all deaf," Bassano said. "Which means they shout all the time, even when it's quiet. I imagine you'd know all about that."

  "Bringas says you're doing a good job," Basso said.

  "Well, he would."

  "Not to me." Basso smiled. "We went through that when I gave him the assignment. If he says you're doing well, I believe him."

  Bassano shrugged. "I was about to say it's no big deal, it's not exactly difficult, but that's not true. It's not difficult like advanced calculus, or differentiating between primary and secondary premises in applied logic. It's just there's so much of it."

  "So much of what?"

  "Everything." Bassano grinned. "The moment you've dealt with one thing, there's something else needing to be done immediately. You haven't got time to think, you just do stuff, all day. That's what I mean by different."

  "Welcome to the real world," Basso said.

  "I like it. Maybe not for the rest of my life, but--"

  "We're on, I think." The mirror was flashing, and the priest had come scurrying forward. "You've got the ring?"

  A private service, in the chapel of the House. Father Chrysophilus, late of the Studium, now chaplain-in-ordinary to the First Citizen (a three-hundred-year-old sinecure Basso had revived specially for him), conducted a brief, slightly nervous ceremony in front of fifteen people, four of them armed guards, who kept looking round for hidden assassins even while they were joining in the hymns. Cinio and Sentio were there for the government, with Senator Olybrias (at Basso's particular request) representing the loyal Opposition. Antigonus hadn't been able to make it, so Tragazes represented the Bank. He had a loud singing voice, like a drunk in an alley. The whole thing reminded Basso of a pauper's funeral, the only difference that he could see being that it wasn't being conducted at the public expense.

  When it was over, he went with Cinio and Sentio straight to a highways oversight committee meeting. Bassano and Melsuntha rode home together in a hired chaise.

  "It went well," she said.

  Bassano didn't comment on that. Instead, he said, "I'm very fond of my uncle."

  "I know." She gave him a look that wasn't a smile, but which conveyed approval. "So am I."

  "Good," Bassano said. "You know all about what happened, with him and my mother."

  "Of course."

  He thought: it won't change an
ything. "I'm a bit concerned he's off his guard where my mother's concerned. He beat her fair and square over Olybrias, but..."

  She shook her head. "He's well aware of the threat she continues to pose," she said. "But he loves his sister very much, which rules out any sort of pre-emptive strike on his part. He will wait for her to attack again, and react as best he can when the time comes."

  "Ah." It would be some time, Bassano decided, before he got used to her way of talking. "That's all right, then."

  "How are you getting on at the Mint?" she asked, and he was able to turn on the charm and the wit, which saved him the trouble of thinking. She listened to him for a while, and then they were back at the Severus house. Job done.

  "I'd better get back to work," Bassano said. "You know, every time I say that it sounds strange. Just the thought of me and work together in the same sentence."

  "I have work to do as well," she said (and of course, she was still his social secretary, or director of protocol, or whatever the title was). "Are you dining with us tonight?"

  Bassano nodded. "These days, I'm too tired in the evenings for riotous living."

  "The twins will be here."

  "Splendid," Bassano said, maybe with a little too much enthusiasm. "Haven't seen them for ages."

  It wasn't a particularly enjoyable meal. Clearly the twins had done something wrong and were in disgrace, but whatever it was, nobody was inclined to mention it. They were polite, mostly silent but very quick to answer when asked a direct question. Otherwise, they ventured no opinions. Apart from a polite, rather formal greeting, neither of them spoke to Bassano all evening.

  Melsuntha went to bed early. Basso had work to do, and stayed up late.

  Nine

  On the third day after the Kalends of Histamenon of the plague year, AUC 997, six caravels sailed into the bay. Nobody remembered seeing them, which direction they came from, whether they came singly and held station off the Point until they'd all arrived, or whether they came in convoy. Citizens of the Republic tended not to see caravels in the bay, in the same way they didn't see pigeons roosting on the guttering.

  One of the few definite facts about their arrival is that they tied up on Pier 7 at twelve minutes to noon. This was vouched for by the captain of an Auxentine brigantine, who happened to notice the time on the harbour arch clock as he pulled out, vacating a post on Pier 7 where one of the caravels subsequently moored. That they put in relatively late in the day supports the theory that they came separately, not in convoy, and rendezvoused at the Point; the delay, it is argued, suggests that one or more of the caravels was held up and arrived late.

  In accordance with standard procedure, two customs officers were waiting on Pier 7 to receive them, inspect their bills of lading, calculate any dues, make the usual cursory search for contraband or items bearing special duty. The furthest caravel on the right put out a gangplank, in the usual way, but before the customs men could board, a number of men from the ship (estimates vary between three and nine) came on shore, produced hand-axes from inside their coats, and killed the customs men without hesitation or saying a word. Remarkably, there were only two eye-witnesses to the actual killing; one of them was sure he'd misinterpreted what he'd seen, and went about his business. The other took a moment to recover from the shock, then ran to the harbour master's office.

  Exactly how many men disembarked from the caravels will probably never be known. The general assumption was that they were loaded to capacity and had come straight from their home port, in which case, each ship could theoretically carry something in the order of ninety men, putting the total number at five hundred and forty. The weight of the evidence--the speed with which they disembarked, the sheer inconvenience of landing so many men on the cramped space of Pier 7--suggests that there were rather fewer, and best estimates put the total at somewhere between three and four hundred. Accounts also differ wildly concerning how the men were armed. Some witnesses claimed to have seen mail shirts, helmets, shields and spears. Most, however, make no mention of armour, and limit their armament to bows, cutlasses, hangers, axes and knives. A few did carry small shields, since two were recovered later.

  One thing of which there is no doubt is that they knew precisely where they wanted to go. From the pier, they marched directly towards the harbour master's office, where nine members of the harbour guard were on duty. In their citations, it is stated that they held their ground and fought until they were wiped out. At least one witness says they broke and ran, but were shot down before they'd covered five yards. The harbour master and his staff were inside at the time, and didn't come out until the armed men were long gone.

  Inevitably, a crowd had started to gather. All the witnesses to this stage of the attack talked of a sense of complete bewilderment, a certainty that what they appeared to be watching couldn't possibly be happening; instead of running away, therefore, between fifty and eighty people actually approached the harbour master's office, in an attempt to figure out what was going on. The raiding party immediately started shooting arrows into the crowd at random, killing six men and two women and injuring an unascertained number. At this point, most of the crowd fled; others would appear to have been so stunned that they froze and didn't move. The raiders charged, but it would seem they were more concerned with punching a hole through the crowd and getting past than inflicting casualties; two men were killed, and there were a number of injuries, mostly sword-cuts and broken bones.

  The raiders had acted with remarkable speed and purpose. One consequence of this was that they entered the City before any of the fugitives, all of whom had run back towards the seafront because of the angle of the raiders' charge. It is more or less certain that they came in through the Portgate, killing the two gatekeepers, and marched straight up Portway. Needless to say a great many people saw them, and the sight of a large body of men marching in column up a main thoroughfare was certainly unfamiliar; even so, it simply didn't occur to anybody that they could be a hostile force. People stared and got out of the way, but nobody thought to alert the authorities; they assumed that whatever was happening was authorised, and someone official knew all about it.

  The first resistance the raiders encountered, therefore, was at the gate of City Yard itself. The raiders would appear to have been entirely successful in concealing their weapons in Portway, but a sharp-eyed guard on the Yard gate saw an axe in a man's hand as they turned right into the outer courtyard. He yelled to his colleagues on the gate towers to shut the gates immediately. There was a significant delay--the gatemen wanted to know why--but the gates were closed and the bars dropped just in time, and runners were sent through the side doors to tell General Aelius' office that something was going on at City Yard.

  Several commentators have speculated that had the message Aelius received been rather more specific, events might have taken a different turn. That, however, is unlikely. In the event, Aelius interpreted 'something going on at City Yard' as either a riot or an outbreak of fighting between Blues and Greens supporters (it happened to be a race day); accordingly, he sent twenty-five men in police armour, armed with batons and minimal side arms. When they reached the Yard, they found that the raiders had already burst through the gate, using benches from the Yard chapel as improvised battering rams.

  Captain Trachea, commanding the twenty-five guards, came in for the brunt of the criticism at the inquiry. This is understandable, if only because it's usually simpler and more conciliatory to established interests to blame a dead man with no family. With hindsight, it's hard to imagine what else Trachea could possibly have done. He commandeered every cart, barrel and bench he could find, and every able-bodied man he could catch, and built a barrier that proved, in the event, to be quite effective. As Basso said privately after the inquiry had reported, nobody in his right mind could have expected Trachea to lead his twenty-five men with sticks against six hundred with real weapons, and arrest them. As for the allegations of collusion, they rest entirely on the fact that Trachea w
as a Mavortine. Those who imply that, if there was no actual collusion, Trachea held back because he didn't want to attack his fellow countrymen ignore the fact that at that stage, nobody had any reason to know or even suspect that the attackers were Mavortines.

  There is no hard evidence; but educated guesses and reconstructions suggest that the time elapsed between the first raider setting foot on shore and the forced entry into City Yard was no more than twenty minutes. Trachea's men, marching at the double, would have taken six minutes to reach the Yard, at least five more to assess the true significance of the situation, decide on their course of action and take the decision to assemble the barricade. Actual construction of the barricade was, by all accounts, impressively swift; no more than ten minutes. It follows, therefore, that by the time the barricade was in place, the raiders had already been inside the yard for twenty minutes. The only aspect of Trachea's conduct for which it remains difficult to account is his delay in sending a message to Aelius, to tell him what was happening and call for reinforcements; it would appear that the runner was sent only after the barricade was complete. We can only assume that it slipped Trachea's mind in the heat of the moment, or that there was some misunderstanding as to who was supposed to go.

  The City Yard was at that time considerably less well defended than it is now. The encircling wall was only twelve feet high, and the three major buildings--the Mint, Treasury Storage and the Arsenal--were neither fortified nor guarded. Once past the Yard Gate, the raiders would simply have marched up to Treasury Storage, kicked down the door (assuming it wasn't already open, as was often the case), surged inside and started helping themselves to coined money from the stores.

  "I was trying to do long division," Bassano said, "which has never been a strong point of mine, and there was this dreadful row going on down in the Yard. I couldn't concentrate, so I went to the window to shout at whoever was causing it."