by K. J. Parker
That was that settled, then. “What about Muri Achaiois?”
Pause: the longest he could ever remember his aunt going without saying anything. “I’ll have to give it some thought,” she said. “Maybe Clea Andron, in Lowertown. She’s a widow now, so there’d be no problem with the parents.”
“You’re joking,” Alces said; without thinking, because Aunt Gorgo never joked.
“I said I’ll think about it,” Aunt Gorgo replied testily. “Anyway, that just leaves the youngest Gaeon boy.” She smiled. “And he won’t be a problem. I’ve got just the girl in mind for him.”
“Be reasonable,” her father said wearily. “At least think about it.”
She shook her head, and the ends of her hair slapped her cheeks. “No,” she said. “Absolutely not.”
Her mother pursed her lips. “You could do worse,” she said.
“No I couldn’t.”
“You already did,” her father muttered. “But you got lucky and he died.”
She gave him the full force of her scowl. After twenty-seven years he was used to it, but it still shook him. Such an enormous force of malevolence trapped behind her eyes. “That’s a disgusting thing to say,” she said.
“It’s true.” Her mother couldn’t be scowled down so easily. “He was a disaster. He got drunk, he hit you all the time, he chased other women, he never did a day’s work in his life . . .”
“He was my husband,” she said icily. “And I loved him.”
“That’s not what you said the time you came home with two bust ribs,” her father said. “You wanted me and Ennepe to go round your house and kill him. You practically pleaded.”
“I didn’t mean it,” she yelled at him. “I was upset.”
Her father sighed. “Of course you were upset,” he said patiently. “He’d been bashing you with a spade handle. He was a worthless, vicious bastard and he deserved what he got.”
She turned her back on him, but all that achieved was to bring her nose to nose with her mother. “Be sensible, Clea,” her mother said. “You’re on your own, you’re not young and you’re not pretty. Take what you’re offered and be grateful.”
It could have gone either way, but in the event she dropped down on to the chair and started crying. If you could call it that, her father thought: there were tears, no shortage, but she roared like a lion. “Your mother and I love you very much,” he said awkwardly. “But you’ve got to face facts. He left you with nothing, and who’s going to look after you when we’re gone?”
“It’d be different if you could even hold down a job,” her mother added (her idea of reasonable, positive persuasion). “But you can’t, can you? Even at the laundry you didn’t last five minutes. You open your big mouth and that’s it, finished. It’s not like you’ve got a choice.”
She stopped roaring like a lion and started bellowing like a bull. “Your mother’s right,” her father said sadly. “I’ll be honest, it’s not what I’d have wanted for you. But—”
“For crying out loud, Dad, he’s weird.” She broke off in mid-howl and glowered at him. “They all are, everybody knows that.”
“Just because they went away for a while . . .”
“Dad.” Instinctively, he moved out of the way. “You know what happened to his first wife. You want the same for me?”
“That was just wicked lies,” her mother said.
“That’s not what you said at the time,” she pointed out, quite truthfully. “You said they should’ve thrown a rope over the nearest tree.”
“Sometimes I say things I don’t mean,” her mother said briskly. “That’s just silly gossip, it doesn’t mean anything. You really think I’d let you marry him if I thought for one moment . . ”
Clea got up, deliberately knocking over the table with her hip. “I don’t know why we’re even talking about it,” she said. “I’m not marrying him, and that’s final. I’d rather starve in the gutter.”
The house was only a wooden frame, boarded in with slats salvaged from big crates from the docks. It shook from floorboards to rafters when she slammed the door.
“She’ll come round,” her father said, after a moment’s silence.
“Course she will,” her mother said brightly, picking up her mending from the floor. “You know how she likes to have her bit of drama. But she’s not stupid.”
Her father pressed himself back into his chair, gripping the arms. “What do we know about this Achaiois man, anyway? He was a soldier, wasn’t he?”
Her mother sighed. “He wasn’t just a soldier,” she said. “He was one of Teuche Kunessin’s lot.”
“Oh.” Her father frowned. “What was all that about a first wife?”
Maybe she hadn’t heard him. “It’ll be all right,” she said. “One thing’s for sure, he can’t be worse than Geraie Andron.”
“True.” Her father shrugged. “Ennepe’ll have to be told,” he said.
But her mother shook her head. “No time,” she said. “It’s all got to be done in a hurry, apparently, before they go away. Ennepe won’t be back until after the wedding.”
Her father stroked his chin. “I don’t know about all that,” he said. “Doesn’t it sound a bit odd to you? Rushing it like that.”
“They’ve got their reasons,” her mother said firmly. “It’s all to do with getting there in time for the planting season, otherwise they’ll lose a whole year. Gorgo did explain it to me.”
“That’s another thing,” her father said grimly. “All that way. We’ll never see her.”
“No different than if she married someone down in the valley,” her mother replied. “Not being realistic it isn’t. They get married, they go away, you don’t see them from one year’s end to the next, that’s just life. Got to accept it.”
He sat still and quiet while she unpicked a seam; then he said: “So they’re all of them getting married, then. The whole lot of them.”
“So Gorgo said.”
“That’s very strange,” he said, his chin on his chest. “You can’t say that’s normal.”
“Don’t make difficulties,” said her mother. “Look, you know as well as I do, nobody’s going to want our Clea if they could get anybody else. Can’t be helped, it’s just the way she is.”
“Kunessin and his gang. In the war. Weren’t they some sort of special unit?”
Her mother shrugged. “Don’t ask me, I don’t know about that stuff. What I do know is, there’s no shortage of money there. Take that Aidi Proiapsen, for instance. They’re saying he’s sold his business, got a very good price for it. And Kunessin himself, apparently he’s been buying up everything in sight. Even bought a ship, would you believe.”
“A ship.” Her father stared blankly at the wall. “What’s he want a ship for?”
“To get where they’re going, I suppose. But what I’m saying is, he couldn’t buy a ship if there wasn’t plenty of money.”
“But Achaiois works at the tannery.”
“Used to,” her mother corrected him. “Packed all that in when Kunessin came home. He’s going to be footing all the bills, so they’re saying in town.”
“Well.” Her father stretched his feet a little closer to the stove. He toyed with the phrase “rich son-in-law”, but he was like a buzzard with a pigeon: too big to swallow. “All that way, though, some island nobody’s heard of. What if she doesn’t like it there? What if she’s not happy and she wants to come home?”
Her mother didn’t look up from her work. “She’d better bloody well like it, then,” she said.
Gorgo Alces hadn’t yet told Muri Achaiois about his good fortune; so far, she’d only reported back to Aidi Proiapsen and Kunessin himself. Aidi had taken the news rather better than anybody had expected.
“That’s Teuche for you,” he told the others. Kunessin was still at the shipyard. “He’s out giving someone a hard time because some stupid little detail of the rigging isn’t just so, but a really big decision, like who we’re all going to marry,
he delegates to a crazy old woman . . . No offence, Fly,” he added quickly.
“None taken,” Alces replied with a grin. “I hate her, always have.”
“Quartermaster General Kunessin,” Aidi went on, “issuing wives from the stores. Makes you wonder if there’ll be kit inspection. Stand by your beds and look sharp for the officer.” He smiled, but nobody followed suit, so he changed tack. “I’m not complaining, mind,” he said. “Saves me a job, after all.”
“Just a minute.” Kudei Gaeon had been sitting still and quiet in the corner, reading through a stack of invoices. “You used to know her, didn’t you?”
Aidi grinned. “Well remembered. In fact about three years ago I asked her to marry me.”
Alces made a sort of neighing noise; Muri stared. “And?” he said.
“She turned me down,” Aidi said, “needless to say. Her father wasn’t best pleased, but she was adamant. She’d rather stick her head in the grist-mill, was how she put it, I believe.”
There was a long silence, then Muri said, “And now she’s changed her mind?”
“Presumably.” Aidi was grinning again. “Bear in mind, three years ago she was eighteen, and there was still time. Now, I guess, she’s coming round to the view that an old, ugly, creepy husband - her choice of words, not mine - is probably better than no husband at all. Or maybe I’ve mellowed, I don’t know. Do you think I’ve mellowed, Fly?”
Alces smiled pleasantly. “Like store apples in April,” he replied. “All wrinkled and soft, and rotten to the core.”
Aidi shrugged. “I gather she had a string of disappointments, let’s call them. No,” he went on, “I’m quite satisfied with the way it’s turned out. It’s really just as well she turned me down when she did; we’d have made each other profoundly miserable. After all, what the hell would I have to talk to an eighteen-year-old about? Practically a different species at that age. Now, though . . . Well, we’ll see. I have to admit, I had no plans to get married again until Teuche started giving orders.”
“Who’s this Dorun Oxy?” Alces said. “I can’t say I’ve heard of her.”
“They’ve got a farm over to South Reach,” Kudei said. “I may have met her father once, I’m not sure. Hill farmers,” he added, as if that explained everything.
“How does your aunt go about it, anyhow?” Aidi asked Alces. “Does she just draw names out of a hat, or does money change hands at some stage?”
Alces laughed. “Actually,” he said, “I think she believes she goes to great pains to make a good, solid match. She knows everybody this side of the Mnester, and she reckons she’s a fine judge of character. And from time to time she gets it right, in accordance with the laws of averages. This encourages her to carry on.”
Aidi nodded. “Altruism,” he said. “Next to earthquakes, the most destructive force known to man. That figures. Well, bloody good luck to her, and give her my sincere regards next time you see her.”
“Which won’t happen, if I see her first,” Alces said. “Meanwhile, I’ve been looking at this map.”
He had their attention. “Map?” Kudei said. “What map?”
Aidi was already on his feet and looking over Alces’ shoulder. “A map of the island of Sphoe,” he said quietly, “drawn by order of the surveyor-general.” He frowned. “Why the hell can’t they write their dates in numbers like everybody else?”
“Ten years ago,” Alces said. “I found it under a load of other stuff in that pile over there.”
“Let’s see,” Muri said.
“It begs the question,” Aidi went on, “why we weren’t shown this earlier. There’s a distinct possibility we weren’t meant to see it. Move your arm, Fly, I can’t quite . . .”
“If that’s the harbour he told us about,” Kudei said, pointing, “then those must be the old ordnance department buildings there, look.”
“Is that a river?” Muri said. “It’s either a river or a road.”
“You never could make head or tail of a map,” Aidi said indulgently. “That’s a river. It rises in these hills here, look, and flows down through these contours to the flat - I’ll bet you that’s all marshes there.”
“That fits,” Alces said. “You remember, he said there were bogs where you could pick up great chunks of iron ore, big as your fist.”
“Forests all down the side of these hills,” Kudei said.
“Birch, probably, or conifers.” Aidi frowned. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that there is an extinct volcano.”
Muri raised his eyebrows. “How do you make that out?”
“More or less round, with a lake right on the top,” Aidi said. “In which case, all this lot here’s probably rocky and barren, where the lava slopped down.”
“These low-lying plains look promising,” Kudei said. “Water-meadows here. A lot depends on which direction the wind’s from. It could be everything he said.”
“If they built the harbour here, on this side,” Aidi said, “then the prevailing wind must be easterly. Otherwise they’d have used this big cove here, on the other side; it’s a better position.”
“If the wind’s from the east, this whole valley ought to be nicely sheltered,” Kudei said. “You could fetch the cattle down into these combes in autumn and not have to bring them in till February.”
“Assuming the soil’s any good.”
“Bound to be,” Kudei replied. “There should be plenty of good dirt washed down from the hills. There’s nowhere else they can drain to.”
“Why isn’t there a scale on this thing?” Alces complained. “I’ve got no idea of the distances involved.”
“Standard survey department practice is a mile to the inch,” Aidi said. “Which fits more or less with what he told us.”
Alces reached past Aidi’s head and measured distances with his thumb. “Everything you could ask for in easy walking distance,” he said. “That’s good.”
“Walking was never your favourite occupation,” Kudei said with a grin.
“Life’s too short,” Alces replied. “Bear in mind, my legs aren’t as long as yours. Well,” he went on, “if this is anything to go on, it looks pretty good. Maybe Teuche wasn’t exaggerating after all.”
“Put it back where you got it from,” Aidi said. “You know what he’s like.”
Alces put the map back, and arranged the other papers on top. “Yes, that’s encouraging,” he said.
“Makes me wonder why the government washed its hands of it,” Aidi muttered. “I’m not sure about those marshes. I’d hate to have made it this far just to die of malaria.”
“You’re a cheerful bastard, Aidi,” Kudei said.
Alces grinned. “He’ll be on about wolves next.”
“Unlikely, on an island that size,” Aidi said gravely. “Snakes, now . . ”
“Don’t encourage him,” Kudei said.
Aidi sighed, as if to suggest that he’d been wilfully misunderstood all his life. “I’m still a bit puzzled, though,” he said, “as to why Teuche hid the map from us. It’d be understandable if it contradicted everything he’d told us, or there was stuff on it he didn’t want us to know about. But all it does is bear out what he said.”
Kudei yawned. “It was under a pile of papers,” he said. “That’s not hidden, necessarily. By your criteria, I’ve got a whole load of secret unwashed clothes back home.”
“Yes,” Aidi conceded, “but you’re a slob by nature. You couldn’t ever accuse Teuche of that. Even Sergeant Major Mache had to work really hard to find something wrong with his stuff at kit inspection. So if Teuche puts a map under a pile of stuff, that’s precisely where he wants that map to be.”
Muri frowned. “If he wanted to keep us from seeing it, why not lock it in his trunk? Or keep it in his pocket? That’s what I’d do.”
“You’re just trying to make trouble, Aidi,” Alces said. “Admit it, you just love to brew up little mysteries wherever you go.”
“True,” Aidi conceded, with a broad, graceful
sweep of his arms. “But if I’m devious and twisted, it’s because I spent my formative years around you lot. As you know, I’ve always had a morbid fear of pranks and practical jokes, and you people—”
Alces threw a cushion at him; he parried it easily with his left forearm, caught it with his right hand and threw it back. Alces ducked; it cleared his head by an eighth of an inch.
“One thing that does bother me, though,” Kudei said, ignoring the sudden outbreak of violence, “is why, if this place is uninhabited and the earthly paradise and nobody else wants it, Teuche feels the need to take quite so many weapons. Here, look at this,” he went on, holding out a sheet of paper, which Alces intercepted just before Aidi could get to it. “That’s a lot of stuff.”
“What does it say, Fly?” Muri asked.
Alces cleared his throat. “Swords, Type Fourteen, issue, two dozen. Swords, Type Fifteen, issue, one dozen. Bows, long, self, yew, two dozen. Bows, short, composite, two dozen. Bows, cross . . . You’re right, Kudei, this is quite a list.”
Kudei nodded. “You haven’t got to the field artillery yet. And this one here’s armour,” he added, showing them another document. “Two dozen black-and-white half-armours, a dozen almain rivets with bevored sallets, three dozen coats of double-riveted mail . . .”
“What’s he paying for it, Kudei?” Aidi asked.
Kudei looked, then whistled. “Either he’s being seriously screwed over by a very brave man, or this stuff must be premium grade.”
“Dear God,” Alces broke in. “He’s only gone and bought a trebuchet.”
“You’re kidding,” Aidi said. Alces handed him the paper, pointing out the entry. “He’s right,” Aidi said, his voice distinctly awestruck. “Nine hundred thalers. No, this is ridiculous. We’ve got to talk to him about it.”
The room went quiet. Then Kudei said, “What did you have in mind?”
Aidi frowned. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s going to be awkward working it into the conversation.” He noticed that Muri was looking agitated. Alces just looked stunned, Kudei was deep in thought. Part of Aidi wished he’d never seen the paper. “There may be some perfectly rational explanation,” he said.
