The Folding Knife

by Parker, K. J.

  "We need to borrow a million nomismata," Basso said. "Which of the banks has got that kind of money?"

  Tragazes mentioned a few names. "But I doubt whether they'll lend to us," he said.

  "Why not?"

  "They suspect we're overcommitted," Tragazes said. "Which of course we are. Besides, they're struggling to maintain their own reserves."

  Basso nodded. "What can we sell? Quickly, I mean. How about the shipyard?"

  Might as well have asked him the way to the library. "No," he said. "It's a restricted asset. It can only be sold to the government or another Vesani-owned concern. Nobody who meets those criteria could afford to buy it."

  "Sell it cheap," Basso said. "One million."

  "Even at that price."

  Basso drummed his fingers on his knees. "All right, then," he said, "how about our share in the Mavortine mines? We must be able to get a million for that, even in these awkward times."

  "It's possible," Tragazes said quietly. "Would you like me to make enquiries?"

  "Yes. No," Basso said quickly. "Enquiries will mean our stock'll crash overnight. Let's start at the beginning. Who's got that kind of money?"

  The list was shorter than he'd expected. "And I think we can eliminate the Fair Outcome and the Herennii. They're extremely unlikely to do anything that would help us, even if they stood to make a lot of money."

  Basso scratched his head. "All right," he said. "Sound out the Spiritual Union. Make it sound like we've got some really big thing going, so big we're happy to sell off the family silver to pay for it."

  "I'll try," Tragazes said levelly. "Was there anything else?"

  "I need a million nomismata in the next forty-eight hours," Basso said. "I think that's enough for you to be going on with."

  Cinio wanted to see him, but he made excuses. There was a war supplies committee meeting; more excuses. He went home, spent a long time in the library looking for a book, then sat down by the window and started reading it. Velleius' Noble History; his mother used to read it to him when he was a boy and ill in bed, in between dosing him with her appalling medicines. He read two chapters, then put it back on the shelf.

  Command of the fleet was awarded to Servilius Gnatho. Basso announced the appointment to the House when he informed them about the naval expedition to Voroe. He was, he said, exercising his prerogative power as First Citizen; therefore, there would be no debate and no vote. For security reasons, he was not at liberty to disclose why the expedition was necessary. He walked out of the chamber in dead silence, and went home again.

  Gnatho wanted to see him. He didn't want to see Gnatho, but decided he had to. The new admiral of the fleet was about thirty-two years old, tall and remarkably handsome, a laureate of the Studium and author of several influential monographs on naval tactical theory. He'd been on a ship once, as far as Auxentia; he came home the long way, by land.

  "I've got no idea whether you'll have to fight or not," Basso said. "It could be a false alarm, you could be on your way to the most important sea battle in Vesani history. If I were you, I'd assume the latter."

  Gnatho was still stunned. He said: "Shouldn't we have seen this coming?"

  Basso looked at him. "You're the bloody naval expert. Did you?"

  "No." Gnatho licked his lips, like a cat. "I confess, the possibility didn't occur to me. However, I'm not in the inner loop for intelligence reports."

  "There's just the one report, and you've just seen it," Basso said sharply. "Now you know just as much as I do. I assume you can take it from here."

  Gnatho looked as though he'd been told it was his turn to muck out the lions. "Naturally you'll want to be consulted about the--"

  "No," Basso said. "I don't know anything about naval warfare. Correction: I know just enough to be dangerous. Go away, get on with it and try not to spend any more money than you can help."

  Naturally, Basso had Gnatho closely watched. As far as he could tell, from the reports and his extensive reading, everything was being done more or less right, and Gnatho certainly wasn't hanging about.

  There were fifty thousand names on the naval reserve register; every Vesani with any seafaring experience was obliged to register, and in theory was subject to call-up on thirty-six hours' notice. Four squadrons called for twenty thousand men: ten thousand oarsmen, five thousand deck hands, four thousand artillerymen and marines and a thousand officers of various grades. Aelius had made sure the register was up to date, had stockpiled conscription notices and trained the City Guard for press-gang duty. Of the fifty thousand, twelve were unavailable because they were already at sea, serving on merchant vessels. The gangs had relatively little trouble catching the twenty thousand slowest-running draftees, who were rounded up in Portway Square, issued with three days' rations and basic kit, and marched down to the docks, where a hundred warships, built not by the government but by the Severus yards, were ready to be hauled out of their sheds, loaded and launched. It was a long time since the Vesani had had to make good on their boast that they could launch a fleet in forty-eight hours. To everybody's surprise, they were ready with forty minutes to spare.

  The first, and best, copy of the great map had been pasted to the top of a table in the cabinet room. The idea had been to have little statues carved to represent the various units, but nobody had got around to it. Basso had therefore sent out for a dozen chess sets. The castles stood (reasonably enough) for castles. The knights were Hus cavalry units. Archpriests, black queens and black kings were infantry divisions, represented according to size and quality. The white king was Aelius. White pawns were Vesani auxiliary units. The black pawns were the enemy.

  It had been a good enough idea at the time, but it didn't work. There simply wasn't enough room on the one road that led into the forest for such a large number of pieces. Someone had suggested removing them all and replacing them with dried beans (each with the name of its unit inscribed on it in tiny letters), a suggestion which made Basso angry. He'd had all the chess pieces packed away and replaced with small wooden chips.

  A great many people wanted to know where he was. A smaller but significant number knew he was in the war room, as it had become known, but nobody was being let through without explicit instructions. Gnatho had been in there, for about ten minutes, on his way to the docks. Tragazes had spent an hour in there, and come out looking as though he'd died peacefully and been skilfully embalmed. Various clerks from the Bank had been in and out; nobody knew who they were, and they wouldn't speak to anybody. A few servants had gone in with food and drink, or to empty the chamber pot. They were slightly more forthcoming, but not much--

  "What's he doing in there?"

  "Sitting."

  "What else?"

  "Nothing. Just sitting."

  "Where?"

  "By that big table with the map on it."

  "He must be doing something."

  "No."

  A secretary was sent for, and came out holding a letter, his hand carefully clamped over the address. Furio, the interior minister, stood in the ante-room doorway and wouldn't let him past.

  "Show me the letter," he said.

  The secretary apologised. Not allowed. Very sorry. Furio stayed where he was.

  "Let the man go," Sentio said. "He's only doing his job."

  "I want to know who he's writing to."

  The secretary cleared his throat. That, he said, polite and sad, was unfortunately not possible. Furthermore, he had to insist that the minister stand aside and let him through. He was, he pointed out, authorised to use force if obstructed.

  "Like hell you are," Furio said. "I'm a member of the cabinet and an elected representative of the Vesani people. Lay one finger on me and I'll have you strung up."

  The secretary repeated his request twice. Then, moving deceptively quickly, he grabbed Furio's arm, twisted it behind his back, moved him eight inches to the right and left the room through the resulting gap.

  There was a long silence after that. Then Sentio said,
"I think I'll go back to my office now. If anyone wants me, I'll be there till sixish."

  The room emptied quickly. Furio hung on for a while, with only the guards for company, then left the House and went home to draft his resignation.

  Three days after the fleet sailed, Melsuntha came. She told the guards she wanted to see her husband. Sincere apologies; not possible.

  "Tell him I'm here," she said.

  They did. Still not possible. She left immediately.

  There were several emergency sessions of the House. Since the First Citizen was not present, and since he had not replied to the members' demand that he appoint a deputy to take his place while he was indisposed, no motions could be officially lodged and no votes taken. This didn't stop the House from debating, lodging motions and voting on them, even though they all knew they were wasting their time. Among the motions passed was one to strictly curtail the First Citizen's prerogative powers, with particular regard to the declaration and conduct of war and the right to govern without the House in wartime. Written copies of these motions were taken to the war room, but the guards were under orders not to take in anything from the House in session. The leaders of the Opposition therefore tried stuffing them under the door, but there wasn't quite enough room; they got stuck halfway and stayed there.

  The leading experts in constitutional law, two lecturers from the Studium, were sent for. They told the House that no established procedure existed for the removal of a First Citizen who became insane during his term of office. The nearest thing they could come up with was a general bill of impeachment, which would require the assent of two-thirds of the members of the House, together with certificates from the Patriarch of the Studium and the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. A motion was passed by the House amending these provisions--a simple majority would henceforth suffice, and the certificates were dispensed with. When they went to stuff a copy of this under the war-room door, they discovered that their earlier communiques were still there, still stuck, and there wasn't room to get even the corner of the page into the crack.

  The Optimate faction, which had grown considerably since the fleet sailed, chose a new leader: Raetius Stabularius, head of the Fair Outcome Mutual Bank, brother-in-law of the chairman of the Spiritual Union, the new owner of the Severus shipyard and a considerable portion of the Charity & Social Justice's stake in the Mavortine mines.

  Stabularius, or his advisers, came up with a new approach. A man convicted of a serious criminal offence, such as murder, could not be First Citizen. Should the offence be committed while the First Citizen was in office, he could only be tried for it if he was impeached first. But (Stabularius argued) if the offence had been committed many years before Bassianus Severus was elected to office, the requirement for impeachment would not apply; he could be tried, in absentia if need be, and if convicted would automatically be discharged from office. Furthermore, if a House committee, on taking relevant advice from leading experts, were to declare him insane and therefore unfit to plead, he could be tried in absentia even if he was physically present in the City.

  In the event, it was a close-run thing. The only vote needed was to ratify the selection of the committee to hear the medical evidence. The Optimates lost the vote, though only by six wards. Government supporters claimed that even if the vote had gone the other way it would've been invalid, since neither the First Citizen nor his appointed deputy had been present in the Chamber when it was taken; a fact which, though perfectly true, appeared to have slipped the minds of the assembled membership when the vote was called for.

  "They could still try him if they could get him out of the war room," Sentio pointed out.

  "They'd need soldiers for that," Cinio replied. "So far, the military's squarely behind us." He paused, then added: "This might not be the case if anything happened to Aelius, of course. It's him they're loyal to, not us."

  "What about Basso? Are they loyal to him?"

  "I have absolutely no idea." Cinio leaned back in his chair, looking tired. He hadn't shaved for three days, and the stubble on his chin made him look like a tramp, in spite of his elegant gown. "It all depends on this fucking war," he said. "If we win something in the next ten days, none of this will ever have happened. If Aelius gets killed, even if we win something, we're probably all dead. If we lose something but Aelius survives, it'll all depend on the general staff, and I for one haven't a clue what they think about anything." He grinned painfully. "I've put some of my people in there as caterers and servants, but whenever someone enters a room in headquarters, they all start talking in Cazar. I'm trying to find a Cazar-speaker who can pass for a barmaid, but so far, no joy."

  A messenger arrived in the early hours of the morning, nine days after the departure of the fleet. He was stopped at the front gate of the House; understandably so, since he was dirty, wild-looking and armed. He gave his name as Velleio Ripilio, and claimed to be a commander in the navy.

  An hour later, a guard captain arrived and was taken to see him in the cells at the back of the guardhouse. Ripilio produced his commission, signed by General Aelius and bearing the seal of the adjutant-commander of the Navy. The captain had never seen anything like it before and had no idea if Aelius' signature was genuine, so he sent to the Navy Office for confirmation. It was shut, of course; the nightwatchman found a piece of paper with the name of the officer who kept the duty rosters, who'd be able to say who was the right person to wake up.

  Two hours later, the duty officer arrived at the guardhouse and was able to confirm that the commission was genuine. Ripilio was immediately taken back to the House, where the First Citizen agreed to receive him.

  From Gnatho:

  ... Able to report that the enemy fleet has turned back and was last seen heading south-east, on a course that would take it directly to its home port at Flobis.

  As yet, we have not been able to quantify either our losses or theirs with any degree of accuracy. I believe (but cannot confirm) that we have lost twenty-one ships sunk, seven more damaged beyond recovery; extensive damage to a further thirty-seven. Of the remaining thirty-five ships, thirty-two are probably fit for active service without requiring immediate repair. As to casualties, the figure would seem to be somewhere between six and eight thousand dead or unaccounted for; at least three thousand whose wounds render them unfit for duty.

  Enemy losses are even harder to assess. At this point, I believe that we sank nineteen of their ships, and a further three are believed to have been so extensively damaged that they are no longer seaworthy and will sink or be scuttled before they reach Flobis. I can state with a degree of confidence that we have captured twenty-six enemy ships: twelve intact, the rest damaged to a greater or lesser degree. We have no way of knowing the scale of enemy casualties, beyond the assumption that among the crews of the nineteen sunk ships, amounting to some seven thousand men, survival rates were low; we hold something of the order of four thousand prisoners rescued from the sea. Imperial policy is not to pick up enemy survivors, so we cannot assume that they hold an equivalent number of our missing.

  To summarise: we have driven off the enemy, and Voroe is secure. My belief is that the enemy fleet is in as bad a state as our own, possibly worse, and therefore poses no immediate threat; the Empire, of course, has an estimated nineteen further squadrons at its disposal, although these forces are mostly stationed a great distance away and have other responsibilities to attend to. Our losses, in ships and men, have been considerable, and at this time I consider that we have only one and a half squadrons available for immediate deployment. We also lack supplies, materials for repair, and ammunition for our artillery.

  Although I do not intend to describe the conduct of the action in any detail, pending my full report, which should reach you within the next three days, I should perhaps stress the last point. Our victory, if it can be described as such, was largely due to the superiority of our ship-mounted artillery, in particular the light mangonels and scorpions. Had it not been for the
advantage these gave us, I do not doubt that the result would have been very different. In terms of tactical ability and general seamanship, the Imperial navy is more than a match for us--a fact which you may perhaps wish to consider further.

  "The impression I got," Sentio said, "was that he was disappointed. Not the letter he was hoping for. Still," he went on, "at least he's talking to us again."

  The general consensus of opinion was that it was the most dramatic session of the House in living memory. The prolonged absence of the First Citizen, Stabularius' attempts to get rid of him, his extraordinary entry, unannounced, in the middle of a debate; the way he stalked (several witnesses used the word independently) across the Chamber to his seat, in dead silence, with everybody staring: it was theatre or melodrama, depending on affiliation and point of view, but nobody could deny it was memorable.

  No preamble. The Vesani navy, he said, in a loud, steady voice, had defeated a substantial Imperial fleet off Voroe. Had the Empire taken Voroe, the consequences would have been disastrous for the Republic; however, thanks to the decisive action of Admiral Gnatho and the skill and courage of the fleet, the threat had been averted. It was no exaggeration, he said, to say that they had saved the Republic.

  Exact casualty figures, he went on (total silence), were not yet available. Losses had, however, been heavy on both sides. However, he was assured by the admiral that, out of a total in excess of one hundred, twenty-two enemy ships had been sunk and a further twenty-eight captured. The Vesani fleet would, of course, remain at Voroe until it could be confirmed that the remnants of the Imperial armada had returned to their home port.

  A longer pause, and the intensity of the silence made the members nervous. Then he resumed his address. It had come to his attention, he said, that over the last few days, when he had been concentrating all his time and energy on the Voroe crisis and had therefore (much to his regret) not been able to attend sessions of the House, there had been a number of misguided attempts to pass illegal legislation. He found this difficult to believe. His isolation, made necessary by the requirements of absolute security, had not been of his choosing; it would sadden and disappoint him if he thought that members of the House had tried to exploit a national emergency for party political ends. The Attorney General had advised him that it was his duty to take legal action against those members who had proposed the illegal motions; the law on such breaches of privilege, he was informed, was very clear and gave him no choice but to pursue the offenders and press for the maximum penalty, death by hanging. However, he believed (if he was in error, no doubt the House would put him straight) that his prerogative powers allowed him to pardon those responsible; accordingly, before attending the current session, he had done so. Signing the necessary warrants had made him late for the session, and he apologised to the House for this discourtesy.