The Folding Knife

by Parker, K. J.

  Bassano shook his head. "That's a reason," he said.

  "All right." Basso sighed. "The reason is, to annoy your mother. Make her son the most powerful man in the world, whether she likes it or not. What better reason could you ask for?"

  Bassano nodded. "That's a reason," he said. "Coming from you, I'll accept that."

  "And you'll do it?"

  At that moment, Melsuntha came back in with the brandy and the honey-cakes.

  She arrived late one evening, just as the clerks were putting out the lamps and getting ready to leave. They sent for the duty guard sergeant, who wasn't even aware that the First Citizen had a sister. She demanded to speak to his superior; he went away and came back with the only officer still in the building, a young Cazar lieutenant who ran the Pay Office. He knew the First Citizen had a sister, and that they didn't get on. He sent a clerk to ask Basso if he wanted to see her.

  "What?" he said, looking up from his work.

  "Says she's your sister, sir," the lieutenant said nervously. It was the first time he'd been in the great man's presence, and legends about what happened to officers who disturbed Him when he was working were many and exaggerated.

  "Oh." Basso laid down his pen. He looked mildly stunned. "Send her up. No, just a moment. Give me a few minutes, then show her into the cabinet room. Get someone to light some lamps, and a fire."

  The cabinet room had been gorgeously decorated by Basso's father; it was one of his few lasting achievements. The walls were covered with a fresco of Trade and Liberty presenting gold crowns to the personified Vesani people; the buxom, slightly stout woman who represented the Republic was supposed to be either the painter's wife or the First Citizen's mistress (some historians later claimed that she was both). The table, cut from a single board of Auxentine walnut, had been taken from an unarmed Auxentine merchant ship as reparations for the expulsion of some minor Vesani diplomat. The chairs had been borrowed from the Studium, the unwanted gift of a rich and tiresome benefactor two hundred years earlier; they were gilded and painted, in the late Rationalist style. The ceiling, which Basso's father hadn't got around to altering, was gilded mosaic, left over from when the room was the Chancellor's private chapel. Basso had made them remove the gilt-ivory statue of Prosperity that his father had borrowed from the Sutlers' Guild; he hadn't given it back to the Sutlers, and it was crated up somewhere in the basement, along with the rest of the junk.

  "Bassano told me," she said, before he could open his mouth.

  "Fine," Basso said. "I thought he probably would."

  She sat down, perching on the edge of one of the Studium chairs. She was thinner than when he'd seen her last, and her hair was going grey at the sides, something he found hard to accept. She looked like a stallholder in the market.

  "I won't allow it."

  "Oh for pity's sake," Basso said wearily. "Why ever not?"

  "I know why you're doing it," she said. "You're trying to steal him from me."

  Basso nodded. "Obviously," he said. "He's all I've got."

  "He's all I've got," she replied. "And we can't both have him."

  Basso met her glare. It took some doing. "Then surely it's up to him to choose between us."

  "No." She said it quietly. When you're really angry, you tend not to shout. "You have more to offer. But I won't allow it."

  "Think about it," Basso said, trying to keep his voice even. "It's the best opportunity he could ever have. He'll be a magnificent First Citizen, and it'll give him tremendous satisfaction. Don't you want him to be happy?"

  "Under other circumstances, of course."

  Basso closed his eyes. "You mean, you hate me more than you love your son."

  She clicked her tongue--a sharp but everyday rebuke. "If you insist on putting it in those terms."

  Basso opened his eyes again and looked at her. "That's dreadful," he said. "You ought to think about that."

  "It's not what I'd have chosen," she replied. "And if it's as bad as that, you're to blame. This whole thing is entirely your fault. You murdered my husband. If you had a shred of decency, you'd have left me my son."

  "Fine." Basso realised he couldn't be doing with this discussion. "You won't allow it. What do you propose doing about it?"

  Her face was closed right down. "I'm going to file charges against you," she said. "For Palo's murder."

  Later, he was quite proud of the way he let the shock break over him. "I think you'll find you've left it too long," he said, crisp and businesslike. "There's a limitation period of fifteen years--"

  "Not for murder," she replied, quick and precise, like someone dead-heading a rose. "Really, Basso, you of all people ought to know the law. Murder, treason and gross incompetence in public office have no limitation period. I can bring charges whenever I like."

  Basso nodded. "Quite right," he said. "You don't think that'd be something of an overreaction, bearing in mind that all I'm trying to do is give your son the best possible start in life?"

  "It's a question of motives," she replied. "Like I just said, you took away my husband. I won't let you have my son as well."

  Basso nodded, as if he could see the sense in that. "In that case," he said, "you go ahead. In fact, I'd like that. I must say, I never thought you'd actually do it, but I won't pretend it hasn't been a worry at the back of my mind over the years. I'd be pleased to get rid of that particular threat. So yes, go ahead." He paused, to see if she'd react, then went on: "Of course, I could have the charges quashed just by signing a bit of paper. The Optimates are in no position to make a fuss about it, because I'm backing their war--something they never expected me to do, of course, which is probably why I did it. While the war's still in hand, they can't really make trouble for me about anything."

  "You're very sure about that," she said, but she was frightened.

  "Even if they tried to," Basso went on, "I've got a two-to-one majority in the House and nobody on my side wants me to fall--a pretty unusual state of affairs, I grant you, but if you don't believe me, ask around. Too many people owe me money. Or," he went on, not allowing her a chance, "I could let the charges go ahead. There isn't a hope in hell that any jury would convict me of anything right now. I could refuse to offer a defence, and they'd still acquit. Or I could defend the action, pointing out it was self-defence--which is true, of course--and asking the jury to consider your motives in bringing the charges after such a long time. I could make it impossible for you to stay in this city. You'd have crowds outside your house throwing rocks through your windows."

  She looked at him. "Is that what you want?"

  "No, of course not," he said angrily, then checked himself and went on: "As you know, once someone's been acquitted of a charge, it can't be brought again. So, if you try anything now, that'll be it. Your last hold over me will be gone for ever. I think I'd like that."

  She didn't say anything, and the look on her face broke his heart. He managed to draw breath, and said, "All I want to do is give Bassano a chance to be really happy. He's one of those very rare people who only get pleasure out of doing the right thing. There's not a trace of selfishness in him; do you know how extraordinary that makes him? If he spends his life ambling along, doing no harm and no good, he'll be utterly wretched by the time he's my age. He needs this opportunity. I've done it all just for him. For God's sake, you're his mother, can't you see I'm right?"

  "I'm not disputing that," she said. "But I can't let you win. I have to stop you winning, no matter what it costs. And everything bad that happens as a result is your fault."

  He didn't reply, or move. He was just waiting for her to go.

  "I shall consult my lawyers," she said (he thought: what a formal way of putting it, like a business letter). "I believe I stand a good chance of winning, or at least of ruining you."

  She stood up. He stayed where he was. "Will you tell Bassano what you've got in mind?"

  "Of course," she said. "I shall tell him that unless he refuses your offer, I shall press the charges.
If he refuses, I shall let you go." A spurt of anger crossed her face; she froze it. "He's devoted to you, so of course he'll refuse the offer, to save you. I shall then insist that he comes home, and never has any contact with you ever again. I believe that takes care of everything."

  She left the room, and Basso couldn't be bothered to send a clerk after her, to show her the way out. Let her spend the night roaming the corridors.

  For a long time, he sat perfectly still, staring at the lamp in front of him, until it guttered and went out.

  Eleven

  Antigonus died in his sleep three days before the first anniversary of Basso's election victory. When Basso came to see the body, he was amazed at the way the old man had lived. He'd never been in Antigonus' private chambers before; nor, he realised, did he have any strong preconceptions about what they would be like. He knew Antigonus had simple but refined tastes and wasn't short of money; he was always plainly but respectably dressed, his hair always trimmed in the same style to a constant length, so you'd be forgiven for forming the impression that it never grew at all, his fingernails immaculately cut and shaped, his clothes freshly laundered and pressed, his teeth (the full set, in spite of his age) impeccably white and even.

  He had lived, it turned out, in three rooms just north of the docks: a dressing room, where all his clothes were hung on racks, orderly as a shop; a bathroom, containing a cheap copper bath, a very old polished-steel mirror, a table for razors, strigils and soap, and a chamber pot, slightly cracked; and a bedroom, containing a bed. Antigonus' servant, who had been with him for thirty years and looked like he was older than his master, had washed and shaved him, looked after his clothes and brought him his meal every evening: a bowl of soup and half a loaf of hard barley bread from the dockers' canteen at the bottom of the street. Always the same, the servant said, and he insisted on the two-day-old bread, stale but still edible, and half-price. When he came home from work, the servant went on, Antigonus immediately changed out of his good clothes and put on a long woollen tunic, very old and covered in darned patches, which he'd once said had come from his own country. He would sit on his bed to eat his soup and bread; then the lamp would be put out, to save oil, and Antigonus would lie in the dark till morning. He slept badly, especially in the last year, when the pain of his illness kept him awake. The servant, who slept on the dressing-room floor, handed Basso a folded yellow document, Antigonus' will, dated five years earlier. In it, Antigonus had left Basso everything, with the proviso that if he should die before his planned return to his home village, his body should be buried with the minimum of expense (there were detailed instructions on how to save money at every stage of the process) in the common graveyard on Corvis Island. All his savings were held at the Bank.

  Although he'd been sorely tempted over the years, Basso had never looked to see how much money Antigonus had. It came to just over a million nomismata, the fifth-largest estate since records began. Basso followed the funeral instructions to the letter. He gave the servant twenty thousand nomismata, pretending that it had been a legacy from his master. The old man was so shocked that Basso thought he was going to die on the spot. Later, he heard that he'd given two-thirds of the money to the Studium, to endow a perpetual chantry for Antigonus' soul.

  When he went to Antigonus' office, he found everything in perfect order, as he'd expected. He also found a book, in the old man's own handwriting, addressed to himself. It proved to be a detailed analysis of every aspect of the Bank's business, setting out its strengths and weaknesses, with copious suggestions and recommendations. At the end, Antigonus had written:

  I have served you, my lord Bassianus Arcadius Honorius Severus, to the best of my ability. The Bank has been my life's work, and I am satisfied that, when you read this, you will find it in good order. My service has been involuntary; it was duty, not choice. I served your father with just as much effort and application, although I never could stand the man; I thought him foolish and reckless, his only redeeming feature being luck. Duty, however, is sacred. You, on the other hand, I have always loved as though you were my own son. The only joy in my life has been to see your triumphs. The only sorrow worth mentioning has been to see how little comfort your success has brought you. Wise as I am (and I know of no one wiser, except you, of course), I have no suggestions to make as to how you may be happy. I fear that will not be possible. I hope I am wrong.

  Goodbye, my lord Bassianus, Basso, my beloved master, my friend. My only regret is that I can serve you no longer. Forgive me.

  Your servant,

  Antigonus Poliorcetes (formerly Genseric son of Dedric of Oesey, of the White Reed clan of the Jazygite nation)

  Tragazes succeeded Antigonus as chief cashier of the Bank. In turn, Basso gave his job to a young clerk from the counting office, by the name of Lascaris. Both appointments had been written down in Antigonus' book; Lascaris, he'd said, was bright, imaginative but cautious, with a good head for detail and an infinite capacity for work. At the same time (again on Antigonus' recommendation) he promoted the twins to be joint Controllers, and assigned them both to the foreign exchange division. They were delighted and thanked him, profusely and (as far as he could judge) sincerely. He didn't tell them that he was only obeying orders, and wouldn't have done any such thing if left to himself.

  The second attempt on his life was a relatively quiet affair, although it nearly succeeded. As he said to Sentio at the time, "Someone tried to kill me and I didn't even notice."

  As the weather grew warmer, he took to working at the Severus house in the small herb garden rather than his office. In his grandfather's day it had been a courtyard, a place where the grooms could comb and tack up the horses. Grandfather had built new stables on a piece of land he bought from the government, adjoining the west side of the house. He knocked down the old stables and built a cloister (very much the fashion at that time), and dug up the paved yard, built a wall round it and planted it with pear trees and herbaceous borders. In the afternoons, the house shaded the garden and blocked out the wind. Basso's father had had a fountain put in (they'd had to dig up the main water pipe, which ran directly under the house--weeks of chaos and ruinous expense); Basso's only contribution had been to train espaliered fig trees up the back wall, install a retractable canvas awning for morning shade, and knock a doorway through the east wall to give access to the narrow alley behind it. He called it the sally-port, and often used it when he wanted to slip out of the house without anybody knowing.

  On the day in question, he was working out complicated calculations on a portable chequerboard: costings for the Mavortine expedition, though the future of the project was still in doubt. He hadn't heard from Bassano since his sister's visit. There had been questions in the House, but he'd stalled, saying that the enterprise was too important to be rushed through. The sums of money involved were so large that, after a while, he found he'd run out of counters. As he stood up, to go into the house for the spare box, he noticed something that most definitely hadn't been there a few minutes ago, when he'd last looked up. There was an arrow, stuck in the wooden pillar that supported the canvas awning.

  He looked at it for several seconds, bewildered by the incongruity. For one thing, it was an unusual arrow: too short to have been shot from a bow, rather on the long side for a crossbow bolt, and extremely thick, nearly half an inch in diameter. It had gone in deep--all he could see of the head was the socket and the points of the barbs, and it had split the pillar down the grain.

  It was only a noise from the alley (inconsequential, as it turned out) that made him think about the implications. If it hadn't been there before, it must have arrived recently, while he'd been sitting in the garden, not very far away. Someone had shot it at him.

  As soon as the thought entered his mind, he made a dive for the cloister door; stumbled over his own feet, nearly fell on his face, grabbed the door to pull himself upright, fumbled it open, collapsed through it, slammed it shut and shot home both the bolts. He ran into the
house and yelled, "Hello?" (it was all he could think of to say), repeating it several times before a flustered-looking clerk came out of the library.

  "There's been an attack," he said.

  Understandably, the clerk looked confused. "Sir?"

  "I was in the small garden. Someone shot an arrow at me." He realised he was gabbling, and pulled himself together. "I want you to find the guard sergeant and tell him to send a runner to General Aelius. I want the house and gardens searched."

  It was, of course, a complete waste of time, achieving nothing further than throwing the entire household into panic for the rest of the day. As Aelius explained, slowly and patiently, as to an imbecile, it was extremely unlikely that the assassin had ever been on the premises at all.

  "The arrow tells us that," he said. It was lying on the table in the counting room (a good-sized room with no windows). "Just as well you noticed it when you did, really."

  "Meaning?"

  "It's an artillery bolt," Aelius explained. "From a scorpion; that's a light field catapult. Usually they're mounted on carriages and used to lay down a barrage just before the start of a battle, though we've started using them on ships, to pick men off the rigging. They're extremely accurate out to two hundred and fifty yards."

  Basso tried to organise the geography of the neighbourhood in his mind, but couldn't. Fortunately, Aelius had brought a map. "Most likely," he said, spreading the map out on the table, "they set it up in the tower of the Great Light Temple. It's the only building within shot that's tall enough to see into your garden."

  Basso frowned. "That's unlikely," he said. "How the hell could they have got something like that up the stairs without anybody noticing?"

  Aelius smiled grimly. "In pieces, I imagine," he said. "Must've broken it right down and rebuilt it up in the tower. Otherwise, you'd need a crane. My guess is," he went on, "they loosed off the shot just before you got up. It takes a good minute to crank the thing up again. By the time they'd reloaded, you were on your feet and walking about. Scorpions are accurate, but they're not up to picking off a moving target at long range. They must've cursed you for not holding still."