The Company

by K. J. Parker

  If he’d been hoping she’d lose interest, he was wrong. Her frown grew darker and deeper, and he wondered if something had snagged her attention that he hadn’t seen for himself. He couldn’t very well ask, though: might as well throw the key to the city gates down to the enemy. (Indeed, he thought; and what’s all love except constant siege warfare with the occasional sortie and skirmish?)

  She was looking at him. “If he wants you to go off somewhere with him, will you go?”

  “Of course not,” he replied, too quickly. “My life’s here now, and besides, I’m through with all that.”

  “You’d better get ready for afternoon class,” she said. “You were going to put new tips on the foils, remember.”

  The glue had set hard in the bottom of the little kettle he kept in the cupboard in the corner of the schoolroom. He lit the spirit lamp to warm it up, and eased the bristles of the brush against the palm of his hand to soften them and make them supple. Everyone lies to their wives, he thought. It’s necessary, human beings couldn’t function otherwise. Curiously, though (he broke off one of the old, worn tips; it came away quite cleanly, without splintering), he’d never really lied to Enyo, not that he could remember. She had a way of coming out to meet him halfway, so that either he told the truth or the subject was suppressed before a lie could take place.

  If he wants me to go off somewhere with him - well, of course. Immediately, without hesitation, if needs be, without stopping to put on my shoes. That went without saying. But the situation would never arise, since what could General Teuche Kunessin possibly want him for? Where the case is so hypothetical as to be absurd, normal criteria of truth and falsehood can’t be made to apply. He was sure she realised that. It was like asking him: if there was a fire and you could only save one of us, me or it, which would it be? To which the answer was: that’s why I don’t keep it here.

  After he’d finished, he opened the window to get rid of the smell of the glue. From the window bay, he could see the corner of Lattengate, where the Glory of Heroes was, and he thought: yes, but what could be tamer, safer, than drinking tea out of a blue-and-white cup in the parlour of the Glory? What possible harm . . . ?

  After class (at one point he allowed his attention to wander, and got rapped across the knuckles with a foil. The student actually apologised), he went down into the street, turned right instead of left, walked up to the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall, through the great double doors and down the circular marble stairs to the vault. The guard on duty recognised him but asked for the password anyway. He gave it, and was let through into the long corridor. Once, before the war, the hall had been part of the duke’s palace, and the small, windowless rooms off the long corridor had been used for long-term storage of men. For some reason, he had difficulty turning his key in the lock.

  It was, of course, much emptier than the rest of the cells in the row. The Adventurers kept their valuable stock in them: quality fabrics, mostly, some bullion, luxury goods (tableware, artworks, presentation-grade arms and armour), bonds, indentures, deeds, loan notes. In his cell, Alces kept the lease of the school, a thousand thalers in cash that Enyo didn’t know about, five hundred she did know about, a chest of old clothes, a sallet and brigandine on a home-made wooden stand, and a cloth bundle, five feet long, slim, wrapped in two blankets, propped up in the corner. The blankets were soaked through with camellia oil, and the sweet smell stank the place out.

  He unwrapped the bundle, just enough to see the white flare of the steel in the yellow glow of the lamp he’d brought with him, and to test the surface with his finger to make sure the oil hadn’t dried out. Then he wrapped it up again, put it back and turned to go.

  On the way out, he met the vault steward, and stopped him.

  “I was wondering,” he said. “What precautions do you take in case of fire?”

  The steward looked puzzled. “It’s all stone,” he said. “There’s nothing that could possibly burn.”

  Alces nodded. “Fair enough,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. By the way, I think you’ll find you’re behind on the rent.”

  He smiled. “My wife handles all that sort of thing,” he said, and left.

  Even if he’d been a stranger in town, he’d have had no trouble at all finding the tanner’s yard, even with his eyes shut, even with a scarf wrapped double round his face. Something you got used to, he presumed, if you really had to.

  The foreman pointed him in the right direction, and he saw a wooden vat, seven feet tall and about the same in diameter, standing in the middle of a high-roofed wooden shed. Two men were next to it: one at the top of a ladder, the other down below, handing up a large wooden bucket. The man at the top dipped it in the vat and handed it back, and as he came closer, Kunessin saw that the bucket was full of greyish-white jelly. He shuddered. Everybody knew they used the stuff in the tanning process, but knowing and actually seeing are two very different things.

  (Seen worse, he reminded himself, but it didn’t really help.)

  “Hello, Muri,” he said.

  The man on the ground looked round, saw him and (regrettably) dropped the bucket. His colleague on the ladder asked him what the hell he’d done that for. A fair question.

  The last seven years, Kunessin couldn’t help but notice, hadn’t been kind to Muri Achaiois. His cheeks had turned into jowls, and there were pads of soft, folded skin under his eyes; his hair was thinning on top, and he’d made the mistake of growing a beard, or trying to, on a less than fertile chin, with the result that the sides of his jaw looked like briar patches, while his chin reminded Kunessin of downland pasture, sparse and closely cropped by rabbits. He’d put on weight, too.

  “Teuche,” he said, apparently unaware that his shoes were covered in spilled brains. “Where the hell did you jump out from?”

  “Who’s he?” the man up the ladder was saying. As far as Muri was concerned, he didn’t exist.

  “Can you get away for five minutes?” Kunessin asked.

  “Sure.” Immediately, Muri started to walk towards him; the first step he took put him on notice that something was wrong. He looked down at his feet, and sighed. “Carry on without me,” he said, to nobody in particular. The man up the ladder told him what he thought of that idea, but he didn’t seem to hear.

  “How’d you find me?” Muri said.

  “Your cousin Erys,” Kunessin replied, taking a step back as Muri came within arm’s length. “She told me what happened. I’m sorry.”

  Muri shrugged. “Does everybody know? The others, I mean?” “I don’t think so. I just saw Fly; he knows you’re working here, but that’s all. I don’t know about Kudei, we didn’t have a chance to talk about old times, and I haven’t seen Aidi yet.” He frowned. “Your friend over there looks like he’s a bit upset with you.”

  “Fuck him,” Muri said succinctly.

  “Fine,” Kunessin said. “I don’t want to be responsible for you losing your job, that’s all.”

  Muri smiled broadly. “You know what,” he said, “I’m not too fussed. Hang on, there’s a trough out in the yard. I guess I’d better wash my boots off.”

  “No, it’s all right.” Kunessin shook his head. “You get back to work. I’m staying at the Glory. Drop by this evening and we can talk properly. All right?”

  Muri scowled at him, like a child who thinks he’s been cheated out of a promised treat. “At least tell me what’s going on, Teuche,” he said firmly. “You didn’t come all this way just to see me drop a bucket.”

  “It’ll keep,” Kunessin replied. “See you tonight.”

  By the time he’d gone, the other man had climbed down the ladder, and was sweeping the white, dusty mess into the gutter with a yard broom. Curiosity had pushed out anger, and he asked, “Who was that?”

  Muri Achaiois looked at him. “You were in the war, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “That,” Muri said, “was Teuche Kunessin.”

  The other
man stopped what he was doing. “Oh,” he said.

  Aidi Proiapsen was easy enough to find. Left out of the tannery gates, down the hill until the narrow alley turned out into broad, well-paved Ropewalk, turn right and look for the biggest, bravest shopfront in town. Aidi was waiting for him in the doorway, leaning on a barrel of store apples; a tall, wide, curly-haired man behind a shield-like grin.

  “Hello, Teuche,” he said. “I heard you’re back in town.”

  Kunessin nodded. “This is all very splendid, Aidi,” he said. “You must be next best thing to respectable.”

  Aidi laughed. “You could say that,” he said. “Vice-chairman of the Adventurers’, deputy town clerk and justice of the fucking peace. Talking of which, I ought to have you run out of town for vagrancy. Unless you tell me what you’re here for, that is.”

  Kunessin looked past him into the shop. He could see a boy unrolling a bolt of cloth on a long table, and a middle-aged woman weighing out rice from a big white jar. “Staff,” he said, with a grin. “Do they know who they’re working for?”

  “God, no. They’d run home screaming.”

  “Justice of the peace is a good joke,” Kunessin said.

  “I looked them up in a dictionary,” Aidi replied. “Justice and peace. Strange idea, both of them. You’d better come inside; you’re scaring away the customers.”

  He nodded, and followed Aidi through the shop into a storeroom at the back. It was crammed with barrels, boxes, jars and cases, and there were rat droppings on the floor. Aidi pointed him at the only chair, and perched on the edge of a cider barrel. “It’s good to see you again,” he said.

  Kunessin shook his head. “You won’t think so in a moment or two, when I tell you what I’m here for.”

  “I gathered you’ve called a sort of army reunion,” Aidi replied. “At the Glory. I can wait till then, if you’d rather.”

  Kunessin smiled. “You’re going to say no,” he said, “and I don’t want you putting off the others. So I thought I’d get you over and done with first.”

  “Fair enough,” Aidi said. “You’ve finally packed in the army, then.”

  “Yes.”

  Aidi nodded. “About time, too. No kind of life for a grown man.”

  “Quite,” Kunessin said. “No, what I’ve got in mind is something rather more worthwhile, for a change. But I can see you’re settled, doing well for yourself. You won’t be interested.”

  Aidi yawned. “Probably not,” he said. “But try me anyway.”

  There was no easy way to describe how Kunessin changed, but the difference was too extreme to overlook. He sat perfectly still, but he seemed almost impossibly tense, like a rope just about to snap. His voice was suddenly much softer; always a sign of trouble. “Did you ever hear of a place called Sphoe?” he asked.

  Aidi thought for a moment. “It’s an island, isn’t it?” he said. “Somewhere off the northern peninsula. Didn’t their third fleet have a base there, late in the war?”

  Kunessin nodded slowly. “I’ve been there,” he said. “Looting, basically. We went to see if they’d left any stores behind that we could use - masts, planking, that sort of thing.”

  “And?”

  Kunessin wasn’t looking at him any more. “Nothing we could use,” he said. “They’d cleaned it all out before they abandoned it, but they left the buildings standing, and they’d done a lot of work there - wells, drains, storage pits, you name it. It’s a wonderful place, Aidi. Nobody lives there, it’s twenty square miles of good deep soil sheltered by a mountain range, with a big fat river running straight through the middle. We found a furnace they’d built, so we think they’d found iron there, and the entire south side is one big oak forest. You should see some of those trees, Aidi, there’s nothing that size left on the mainland. There’s deer, and wild pigs, bloody great birds living in the woods that’d feed a family for a week, and it’s an island, so of course there’s all the fish you could ever want, and there’s a cove on the north shore where turtles come up twice a year . . .”

  Aidi was looking at him, his head a little on one side, like a puzzled dog. “That’s wonderful, Teuche, and I’m very happy for you, but what’s this got to do with us?”

  Kunessin could see in his face that he’d already guessed the answer. “I want us to go there,” he said. “You, me, Kudei, all of us. Just take it for our own and live there, like we used to talk about.”

  The door opened, and a tall, thin boy, fifteen or sixteen, appeared in the doorway. “Sorry,” he said immediately. “I didn’t . . .”

  Aidi beckoned him in with a flick of his hand, like someone swatting at a vexatious insect. The boy took a jar off a shelf and scurried away.

  “For crying out loud, Teuche,” Aidi said, and the edge to his voice was both annoyance and compassion. “You can’t seriously think—”

  Kunessin felt the anger spurting up inside him; the special anger, the sort that comes when you’re explaining something to somebody who’s too stupid to understand. “We used to talk about it,” he repeated, “all the time. You all liked the idea. We had an agreement—”

  Aidi laughed. In retrospect, he realised it was a serious error of judgement. “Oh, sure,” he said. “And when I was seven years old, the girl next door and me agreed we’d get married as soon as we were old enough. I even made her an engagement ring out of copper wire. We were young, Teuche, young and stupid and cold and wet and convinced we were going to die. I think you’d have an uphill struggle trying to hold us to it in a court of law. And that’s a justice of the peace talking,” he added, with a false grin. “Look,” he went on, lowering his voice a little, “that place we used to talk about finding. You know what it really was? It was being out of the army, where there wasn’t a war. And you know what? The rest of us found it, all of us except you. We don’t need any fucking island, Teuche. Really, all we needed was to get away. From the war.”

  Kunessin shook his head. “No.”

  “From the war,” Aidi repeated. “From each other. Oh come on,” he added, before Kunessin could interrupt. “You’re supposed to be clever; surely you can see it for yourself. We all came back here, after the war, after the service. We all live right on top of each other in this rat-arse little town, and we never see each other or talk to one another from one year’s end to the next. And you know why? It’s not because we all had some grand falling-out or hate each other; it’s just that there’s nothing left to say any more. And - well - I suppose it’s because we all remind each other of stuff we’d prefer not to remember. And you don’t need a chequerboard and a box of counters to figure that one out.”

  Kunessin realised he was standing up, which meant he was about to leave, and his leaving would be a statement of disapproval, quite possibly a severance of relations. He was sorry about that. “Good to see you again, Aidi. You’ve done well for yourself, I’m really pleased about that.”

  Aidi was shaking his head. “They’ll all tell you the same thing,” he said, “and then you’ll be pissed off with the lot of us and never speak to us again, and I don’t really think you want that. Why not just drop it? Tactical withdrawal to defensible positions? You always used to say, nine times out of ten, the best battle’s the one you don’t have to fight.”

  “We’ll see,” was all he could find to say. “You never know, maybe the others are better friends than you give them credit for.”

  Aidi’s face had frozen, as though he’d pulled down a visor. “So long, Teuche.”

  Kunessin walked out of the shop, and found that the sun had come out, slanting down over the roofs of the north-side buildings like a shower of pitched-up arrows. He found the warmth and light annoying, almost offensive.

  For a long time after he’d gone, Aidi Proiapsen sat still and quiet in the back room, staring at a corner of the ceiling. Then he got up, opened a drawer in the desk in the corner, took out a ledger and went through it, quickly and with purpose, jotting figures down on a scrap of paper. His lips moved as he did the
mental arithmetic. They’d laughed at him for doing it at the Military College, back when he was so young he actually cared what people thought about him. Now he did it as a deliberate affectation, because nobody would ever dare laugh at him again.

  He found the total, added up again to make sure, and wrote the result down on the palm of his hand. Less than he’d thought; he sighed, and put the ledger away.

  “Mind the shop,” he told the middle-aged woman behind the counter. “I’m going out for ten minutes.”

  He crossed the road, turned left, headed up the Ropewalk as far as the corn exchange. On the corner there was a small, rather miserable tea-house, shutters down and almost bare of paint, a door that stuck in the damp weather. He went inside, waited a moment until his eyes adjusted to the gloom, found the man he was looking for and walked over to where he was sitting.

  The man was drinking thin soup from a wooden bowl with an enormously wide spoon. At least a quarter of it was soaking into his shirt; his eyesight wasn’t good, but he denied the fact, like a king refusing to acknowledge the existence of a rebel government.

  “Proiapsen,” he said.

  Aidi scowled down at him. “You actually eat the muck they serve in here?”

  “It’s cheap,” the man replied. “Food’s just fuel. What do you want?”

  “You know perfectly well.”

  The man grinned and laid his spoon down on the bare table. “It can’t be anything to do with the offer I made you,” he said, “because you told me you didn’t want to know. In fact, you were quite offensive about it; a smaller man would’ve borne a grudge. So it must be something else, mustn’t it?”

  Aidi sighed and put the scrap of paper down in front of him. The man shook his head. “Can’t read that,” he said. “Your handwriting’s terrible.”