by K. J. Parker
The ship waiting for them at Languil was Blemyan, but the crew were all Lodge, from both empires. It was small, low in the water and very fast. They rounded Cuir Point with a perfect following wind, which obligingly turned southerly exactly when it was supposed to and blew them across the straits to Glous; it was obviously a tame wind, it would probably feed from your hand and lick your face if you told it to. “There’s a problem,” she told Corason, as the red sandstone cliffs appeared on the skyline. “About me in Blemya.”
“I know all about that.”
“And?”
“You’ll think of something.”
She clawed hair out of her mouth. The wind was playing with it, like a naughty kitten, but this wasn’t a good time. “Are you coming with me to the city?”
“You bet. I don’t let you out of my sight until we find Oida.”
It was time for the awkward question. “You know Axio pretty well, don’t you? You were telling me last night, you’ve worked with him a lot.”
He pulled a face. “Feels like half my life.”
“What’s he like? I’ve never met him.”
Corason took a moment to get his words into formation. “They say he’s off his head, but that’s not true at all. Or, at least, it’s a gross simplification. He’s no loon, that’s for sure. I guess you could say he follows different rules. What I mean is, there are things he would never do, even if doing them was to his advantage. Just, not the same things you or I would have trouble with. And by the same token, lots of things we’d have problems with wouldn’t bother him for an instant. His tragedy is, every bit of him was designed and bred for one purpose, being a mid-rank nobleman, but the Great Smith had other uses for him. It’s as though a carpenter set out to make the best flagpole he possibly could, and inadvertently designed the perfect spear.”
She thought about that for a moment. “What does he want?”
“Nobody knows. Him least of all. But one thing’s absolutely sure and not susceptible to doubt in any shape or form. He’s Lodge to the core, and he’ll do exactly what he’s told, without a moment’s hesitation. That’s why he’s got to be the emperor.”
“Does he want to be?”
“Ah.” Corason grinned. “We haven’t told him about that bit yet.”
The first thing she did when she reached the city was borrow three angels from Corason to buy a knife with—
(“That’s a lot of money for an everyday utensil.”
“I’m an artist. I need exactly the right gear, or I can’t realise my full potential.”
“Yes, but three angels. This is my money we’re talking about, not Lodge funds.”
“You’ll get it back.”
“I’d better.”)
It was for her brother, she explained to the man on the cutlery stall. It was his eighteenth birthday, and the family wanted him to have something special. The man gave her a cold stare, then pulled out a box from under the table. She took her time and chose carefully.
“You know a lot about knives,” the man said. It wasn’t meant as a compliment.
“My father told me what to look for. Have you got anything else?”
“No.”
“Oh. In that case, I’ll take this one.”
“Fifty stuivers.”
“My father said, don’t pay more than thirty-five.”
The man wanted to get rid of her. “All right. What does your brother do, then?”
“He’s assistant huntsman to the Duke of Aurec.”
Leaving her with two angels sixty-five; to which, add ten stuivers if she sold the boots Corason had bought for her on the ship and replaced them with a cheap pair from the dead-men’s-shoes stall – not enough to get far enough away in the very short space of time available to her once Corason realised she’d run out on him. But the trouble with Blemya is, there are only three directions: downtown, the sea or the desert. And she couldn’t walk on water, and sand wasn’t much better. Killing Corason was an option, but there was an annoyingly high level of law and order in Blemya, which meant homicide wasn’t something to rush into. Also he was a Commissioner of the Lodge, whereas Oida was just another Craftsman—
So she crossed the square from the cutlers’ market, followed the main street up as far as the Painted Column, then the left fork – the heat was stifling – then a short cut through the alleys that brought her out in Horsefair. The Western Embassy was the single-storey sandstone building with the iron gates.
The sentry sent for the duty officer, who recognised the five-word code that meant Imperial Security. He went white as a sheet and took her to see the deputy proconsul.
“The ambassador’s not here,” the proconsul explained. “He got called back home for a briefing.”
She ought to have known that. “You’ll have to do, then,” she said. “Do you know who I am?”
The proconsul shook his head, but she could see his mind slowly grinding away: a woman, who knew the top-level code. If he knew anything at all about Intelligence, he’d realise there was only one woman of such exalted rank in the Service, and she was a wanted fugitive. But why should he? The ambassador would’ve known – probably – but he wasn’t there, was he? She decided to make it easy for him.
“My name’s Telamon,” she said, and watched for a reaction, which didn’t happen. “A while back, I was arrested on a murder charge. I broke out of the Guards’ barracks. People died in the process.”
The proconsul stared at her. “I’m not making this up,” she said. “If you want, you can go away and look it up in despatches. I don’t mind waiting.”
“I believe you,” he said.
“Splendid. Well, I’m here to give myself up.”
He didn’t move or say anything. She wasn’t sure he was even still breathing. “I said, I’m giving myself up. Arrest me. Now.”
“I can’t do that.”
“What?”
She couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. “I can’t,” he protested. “For a start, I haven’t got the authority, I’m only diplomatic grade six, I don’t have that sort of authorisation. Also, we haven’t got the facilities, or the staff. This is basically a trade delegation. We’ve got six rooms, three sentries, a clerk and a local woman who dusts and cleans. I’m sorry, but we just don’t have the capacity here.”
Calm, she told herself, calm and peaceful. “You can hand me over to the Blemyan authorities,” she said, as gently as she could. “As a matter of fact, they probably want to talk to me about a couple of murders.”
“I can’t do that.” He was genuinely horrified. “I can’t go surrendering custody of an Eastern citizen without a formal warrant.”
“Then get one.”
“A warrant from home. Do you have any idea how long that would take? And I’m not allowed to request one, I’m only grade six, I told you. You’d need the ambassador for that.”
She breathed out slowly through her nose. “Maybe I forgot to mention,” she said, “I’m also a double agent for the Lodge. And there’s a three-line directive about Lodge traitors, which gives you authority.”
“No it doesn’t.”
“Yes it does.”
“No it doesn’t.” The poor man was sweating. “Besides, if that’s true, there’s no way I can hand you over to the Blemyans: that’d be unlawful rendition, that’s a criminal offence. Please,” he said, gazing at her desperately, “can’t you just go away until the ambassador gets back?”
“When?”
“Not more than three weeks. Six at most.”
She stood up. “I’m sorry,” she said, “clearly I’m wasting your time. By the way, none of it was true. I’m not Intelligence, and I’m most definitely not Lodge. I was just playing games with you.”
That left the Blemyans. She went to the Watch headquarters in Belltower Yard.
“I’m a criminal,” she said. “Arrest me.”
The duty sergeant looked at her and sent for the captain. “Fine,” he said. “What did you do?”
; “I murdered a government minister. And several soldiers.”
The captain smiled. “Sure you did. What were their names?”
She realised she couldn’t remember. Nor could she call to mind the dead minister’s portfolio. “It was about a year ago,” she said. “When Oida came here to give Her Majesty a copy of Procopius’ symphony.”
The captain frowned; a bell tinkling in the back of his mind. “No,” he said, “that wasn’t you.”
“Yes it was.”
But he shook his head. “No,” he said firmly, “because they caught the man who did that.”
“They couldn’t have.”
The captain sighed. “They did,” he said. “It was my old CO who made the arrest. Look, I don’t know what your problem is, but I don’t think I can help you. Maybe you’d be better off with a priest, or a doctor.”
“All right,” she said. “Arrest me for wasting Watch time.”
“Please go away,” the captain said.
“Assaulting an officer?”
He grinned at her. “Maybe if I wasn’t so busy.”
She drew the knife and lunged at him. He sighed, smacked it out of her hand, tucked her arm behind her back, marched her to the street door and shoved her out. He shouldn’t have been able to do that, but he had. She picked herself up, put her tongue out at the people who were staring at her and went back to the cutlers’ market, where she bought another knife at a different stall.
“Good choice,” said a voice directly behind her. She turned and saw Corason grinning at her. “Better than the first one. Shorter, and better edge geometry.”
She scowled at him. “You were following me.”
“Me personally? God, no, I haven’t got the energy.” He laid a gentle hand on her arm and led her across the street to a teahouse. “Out of interest,” he said, “was that just for my benefit? Because if not, you weren’t trying very hard, were you?”
“Wasn’t I?”
He shook his head. “If it was me,” he said, “I’d have stabbed a perfect stranger. Two, probably, to be on the safe side.”
She slumped back in her seat. “Yes, and then they’d have put me in the Watch lockup, which would’ve been a real pain to get out of. Also, it’d have been murder.”
“That doesn’t seem to have bothered you in the past.”
“That was orders.”
He smiled gently. “So’s this. But you could’ve done something a bit less dramatic. Robbed a market stall, or got in a fight without actually killing or maiming anyone. Face it,” he said, “your heart’s just not in it.”
She didn’t answer that; not straight away. “If I’d succeeded,” she said, “what would’ve happened?”
“If you’d got yourself locked up, you mean? I’d have had to get you out again, at God knows what level of aggravation and expense. I’m really glad it didn’t come to that.” He poured the tea. “It says in your file that you’re a real pain in the bum.”
That shocked her. “Does it?”
“Oh yes. Fifteen operatives who’ve worked with you say, never again. You’ve got forty-seven discommendations and twelve provisional demerits. Also, they say you’re not to be trusted with money.”
“Thank you for telling me that.”
“That’s perfectly all right.”
“Does it say anything nice about me?”
He grinned. “Now, then,” he said. “This is what you need to know. Oida is at the palace, right now. His room is on the seventh floor of the West wing, with a window facing out over the main quadrangle. The windows are shuttered, and he bolts them every night before he goes to bed. The good news is, there’s a hypocaust directly under the floor – of course, I forgot, you know all about the heating system, so that’s probably your best way in, except he’s put his travelling chest on the grill, and it’s oak with heavy iron fittings, weighs about four hundredweight. Otherwise the only way in is through the door, and the only way through the door is if it’s opened from the inside. Three-ply oak, cross-grained, it’d take half an hour to cut your way in with an axe.”
She’d never known Oida to travel with cumbersome, inelegant luggage. A thought struck her. “Does he know?”
“That someone’s after him? Good question. We have no reason to believe he does, but he’s been acting like he’s scared of something. Clever precautions, though nothing explicit enough to give offence to his hosts. Like pretending he’d gone to Permia. We didn’t tell him to do that.”
She frowned. “I’ve known him a long time,” she said, “and he never seems to bother about anybody wanting to hurt him. I mean, why should he? Everybody loves him; he’s the most popular man in the whole world.”
Corason sipped his tea, then put his bowl down gently in the middle of the table. “It’s odd, isn’t it? All right, yes, I personally believe that he’s scared of something or somebody. I don’t think it’s you. If that had been the case, he’d have arranged for you to be put in the Guards, not broken out of it.”
“You know about—?”
He confirmed that with a slight frown. “But,” he went on, “he’s skittish about something, that’s reasonably certain. Not the East or the West, because they’ve had plenty of opportunities to nail him since the trouble started, and they’ve shown no interest in doing so. And apart from about a thousand outraged husbands and fathers and maybe a few of the more perceptive music critics, he has no other enemies I’m aware of, so if someone’s on his case, it has to be the Lodge.”
“Which is true.”
“Yes,” Corason said irritably, “but we know he doesn’t know about that. About you, I mean, and you’re the only officially sanctioned move against him, and you’re on the narrowest possible need-to-know basis, and we know that’s rock-solid. Also, this furtive dodging about started before the decision about him was taken, so it can’t be that.”
The tea was strong and a bit too spiced for her liking; also hot enough to take all the skin off the roof of her mouth. She put the bowl down again. “All right, then,” she said. “In that case, it can’t be anybody.”
But Corason just frowned, as if a nagging tooth had started playing him up again. “Actually, it could be.”
“What? You just said—”
“Be quiet and listen.” He closed his eyes and opened them again. “There’s something odd going on, actually inside the Lodge. Yes, I know, that’s impossible, it could never happen, and I’m imagining the whole thing. But I have a horrible feeling I’m not.”
She opened her mouth, but no words came.
“Cast your mind back,” he said, “to that time I wandered off, as you so sweetly put it. I had an errand to run, and this dreadful woman attached herself to me. I had no idea who she was, basically she was just a nuisance, until she kicked me in the head and stole my horse. And then I found out – I won’t bother you with how, just take my word for it – I found out she was Lodge. One of us. A Craftsman.”
She stared at him for a long time. “That’s—”
“Impossible, yes. So everybody keeps telling me: my fellow Commissioners, my superiors, everybody. I’ve made a point of asking everybody who had the authority to send her to spy on me, and they all said, no, that wasn’t me, and I believe them.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“No, of course it bloody well doesn’t. In order for it to make sense, you’d have to posit the possibility of factions inside the Lodge, differences of opinion, a division, schism, something less than an absolute unity of mind and purpose. God’s right hand not knowing what His left is doing.” He sighed and shook his head. “Accordingly, I must have imagined it, or else misinterpreted the slender piece of evidence on which I based my conclusion that that bloody woman was Lodge. Except that now here we have Oida, acting like he knows something about Lodge business that we don’t. Which is why I’ve condescended to tell you about it.”
She looked at him. “I was wondering about that.”
“Yes, well. Orders are, you’re
to be given all possible necessary facilities to do the job, and in my judgement, knowing about this business is a necessary facility, just in case it’s relevant. Not that I think it is, but since I don’t know what all this is about, I can’t form an informed judgement as to whether it’s relevant or not—” He made a despairing gesture. “I asked Axio,” he said. “I asked him, would Oida take to lugging around a bloody great iron-bound chest unless he had a damned good reason. Axio just looked at me. No, of course not, he said, Oida travels light.” He shrugged. “You know what this feels like? It’s like I’ve just happened to stumble on a dirty great crack in the back wall of the Universe, and if nothing’s done about it the sky’s going to fall into the sea and the sun will go out and that’ll be that, finished. Only, who can I tell about it? Nobody, because it isn’t bloody well possible.”
The waiter was hovering. She beckoned him over and paid for the tea, and he went away. “Have you asked—?”
“Who?”
“You know.” She realised she had no idea how to put the concept into words. “Him. The boss.”
She’d lost him. “You mean prayer?”
“No, I mean whoever’s the top man. The very top. The head of the Lodge.”
He gazed at her as though she was stupid. “Have you been listening to a single word I’ve said?”
“Yes. But—”
“In that case, no. No, of course I haven’t, because I haven’t got the faintest clue who he is. You know that.”
“Yes, but you’re a Commissioner.”
“So bloody what? I don’t know who the head of the Lodge is. Neither do my superiors, or their superiors. I think, but most definitely don’t know, that the next layer up knows who he is, but for all I know there’s another two, three, four levels after that.” He glared at her. “You sit there and tell me you honestly believed that I know who’s running everything? Dear God. You think, if I knew something like that, they’d have me running about loose? You’re an idiot.”
“I’m sorry.”
He sighed. “Forget it,” he said. “Doesn’t matter. My fault, for talking to you under the misapprehension that you’re a grown-up. Anyway, you now have all the information you need in order to do the job that’s been assigned to you.” He gave her a big, unfriendly smile. “And so,” he said, “I suggest you get on with it.”
