The Two of Swords, Part 3

by K. J. Parker

  She gazed at him in mock astonishment. “You mean to say there’s something you don’t know?”

  “Quite.” Not funny. “And I’m not exactly thrilled about sharing a ship with an unknown quantity, let alone an important secret mission. Bastard’s as tight as a miser’s arse. Oh, he’ll talk to you all day long, but he never actually says anything.”

  There was genuine unhappiness in Oida’s voice, and for the very first time she thought there might just possibly be aspects of this job that she might enjoy. “I think we can go on the ship now,” she said.

  “The proper term is embark. After you.”

  It was going to be a slow, lazy voyage. The sea was mercifully flat, with just enough wind to keep them moving at slightly more than fast walking pace. She found a barrel next to the forecastle stairs to sit on. She’d brought three books. She could think of ever so many worse ways to spend five days.

  Oida, bless him, was bored silly. Just before daybreak each morning he did his voice exercises, a combination of roaring noises, scales, arpeggios and snatches of heartbreakingly lovely melodies suddenly cut off in the middle. At noon precisely he did scales on the flute and chords on the mandolin. The rest of the time, when he wasn’t being seasick, he prowled round the deck getting in the way of the crew, or came and stopped her from reading.

  “I have no idea,” he said suddenly, “where we are.”

  She closed the book around her forefinger, to mark the place. “Of course you do. Just there” – she pointed to the place on the deck where he was standing – “is the exact centre of the universe. Nothing else really matters very much. Better now?”

  He grinned. “Seriously,” he said. “I tried figuring it out from the position of the stars last night, but I must’ve got it wrong, or we’d be in the middle of the desert somewhere. I hate not knowing where I am. I mean, if the ship sinks, which direction do we swim in?”

  “This far out? Makes no odds. You’d drown anyway.”

  “Thank you so much.” He sat down cross-legged at her feet, which annoyed her intensely. “I don’t like the way this ship is run. It’s all so bloody haphazard. All over the place, like the mad woman’s shit.”

  “You know a lot about seamanship.”

  “No,” he said. “But it’s obvious. Half the crew spend half the time just lolling about.”

  “That’s because the wind is gentle and constant. What do you want them to do, get out and push?”

  He scowled at her, which she took as a slight victory. “We need to get our heads together and decide what we’re going to do.”

  “We know what we’re going to do. It’s in the briefing.”

  “Yes, but we need to plan.” He looked round. “Have you seen that creep Cruxpelit? I haven’t set eyes on him for days.”

  “You sat next to him at dinner last night.”

  “Well, hours, then. But he disappears. How can anyone disappear on a poxy little ship?” He picked something up off the deck, a nail; looked at it and threw it over the side. “Someone could’ve trod on that,” he said. “And he’s never seasick.”

  “Nor am I.”

  “Yes, well, you’re the proverbial woman of steel. But he’s a little fat man. He ought to be chucking his guts up all day long.”

  “Like you.”

  “I’m much better now, thank you for asking. We need to plan,” he repeated. “Work out a detailed plan of action, with alternatives and fall-back positions. This really isn’t the sort of thing we should be making up as we go along.”

  It occurred to her that maybe he hadn’t done much of this sort of thing before. “I wouldn’t bother,” she said. “Detailed plans and fall-back positions generally don’t help, in my experience. Usually they just get in the way.”

  He looked at her. “Is it true you murdered a political, just to get his place on a boat?”

  She closed her eyes, then opened them again. “Yes.”

  “I see.”

  For some reason she couldn’t explain, she felt a need to justify herself. “It was him or me,” she said. “There was one last ship out of Beloisa. Everyone left behind was going to die. What would you have done?”

  He didn’t answer that. “Talked to the diplomats much?”

  Sore point. “They don’t want to talk to me,” she said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were scared of me.”

  “Probably they are.”

  “Don’t be stupid. But it’s true. I can barely get a civil word out of them.”

  He yawned, not covering his mouth, an uncharacteristically vulgar moment. “They’re a poor lot,” he said judiciously. “At least, the men are. Place-fillers. The Imperial woman’s got brains but no charm, and the other one—”

  She nodded. “Charm but no brains. Like the fairy tale about the three sisters with one eye between them.”

  “Indeed.” He looked impressed by the analogy. “Mind you, they’re just camouflage. I think—” He lowered his voice. Still too loud. “I think the main reason they were picked was because they’re expendable.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Expendable. Nobody will miss them terribly much if they never come back. As in, if we make a bog of it and get caught and strung up, no great loss.”

  She considered that. “Same goes for me, I suppose.”

  That startled him. “I don’t think so. They chose you because you’re good.”

  “And expendable.”

  “No, not especially. After all, they chose me, too. And I’m definitely not expendable.”

  She couldn’t help laughing. “Well then,” she said, “that puts paid to that theory. If they’re prepared to risk a national treasure like yourself—”

  He gave her a serious look. “They wouldn’t hang me,” he said. “That’d risk pissing off the West and the East. No chance of that.”

  She nodded. “Hence,” she said, “the portable euphonium made in the Eastern state munitions factory.”

  He grinned. “Clever old you. Well, it does no harm to drop the odd hint.”

  “Of course. Just out of interest—”

  “Yes?”

  “Whose side are you on?”

  Big smile. “Silly girl. Ours, of course.”

  You must – all the old travellers’ accounts insist, you must – approach Ezza for the first time from the sea. True enough, the approach from the landward side is very impressive, particularly if you’re coming up the old Mail Road, and the first glimpse you catch of the city is the breathtaking view through the gap in the Axore mountains; and then you slowly descend through the lush river valley with its orchards and olive groves, until eventually you enter the city through the amazing Bronze Gate. But for the full effect – the authorities are united on this point – nothing compares with the long, almost painfully slow progress between the seamarks of the lagoon in the early morning, before the mist has lifted, culminating in the first heart-stopping vision of the white marble Sea Gate, with its four impossibly tall, slender columns and the massive statue of the Forgotten Goddess, vast and hideously, wonderfully, eroded into an abstract monstrosity by two thousand years of salt winds. Next, you begin to make out the gold and copper domes of the twelve fire temples crowded together along the Foreigners’ Quay; to begin with, they’re just vaguely disturbing coloured lights; then, as the sun breaks through, they become burning beacons, convincing you that you’ve arrived right in the middle of an invasion or a civil war; and then they resolve themselves into symmetrical, artificial shapes, a row of enormous chess pieces facing you across a board, daring you to make your first move. If you’ve come to Ezza, they seem to be saying, you’d better have brought your best game, or we’ll have you.

  This was, of course, her second time. The first time, she’d come to Ezza by night and been hoisted up over the wall in a herring basket. She’d felt horribly sick and her hair smelt of fish for two days.

  Three days of diplomatic receptions. How she endured it all she wasn’t entirely sure. Mostly she stay
ed close to Oida, like those little sucker fish which hitch rides on sharks. Everybody wanted to talk to Oida, and Oida just wanted to talk. She heard all about his early influences, his views on the development of the symphony, where he got his ideas from; she found him loathsome in this vein, but slowly it dawned on her that it was all just armour, interlocking plates of arrogance and charm, designed to attract and repel at the same time. That she could understand, even admire. But the other epiphany was simply baffling. Oida wasn’t really interested in music.

  (“Well, no, actually,” he confessed, when she taxed him with it, during a brief ceasefire in the middle of the deputy chief minister’s reception. “I used to, but not any more, not for a long time. But I’m so good at it—”)

  So she stopped fighting from behind his shield and took the battle to the enemy; in particular, the Blemyan ministers’ wives. They found her fascinating. With one huge, obvious glaring exception, women didn’t participate in Blemyan politics. There were priestesses, of course, quite senior figures in Temple, but they confined their activities to reciting Scripture and enacting ritual, very occasionally being consulted on fine points of doctrine (but only in their capacity as conduits of the divine). There were no female craftsmen above the second degree; she got the impression that their principal function in lodge was baking honeycakes and arranging flowers. As for a woman doing a regular job of work in return for money – God, she thought, what a country.

  The ministers’ wives asked her three questions: is it too terrible having to work for a living; what’s Oida really like; what are they wearing in Rasch? She had to struggle to get anything much in return. It wasn’t that the wives were discreet or cagey. They simply didn’t know anything, about politics or trade or the economy or sectarian divisions. That just left malicious gossip, and, although that wasn’t too hard to obtain, she didn’t really know enough about the people and the issues, though she was learning fast. All in all, not the three best days of her career so far.

  “And the food,” she protested to Oida, when they were finally clear of the finance minister’s reception. “How can they eat that muck? If I see another sun-dried bloody tomato—”

  He gave her a seraphic smile. “You know the two barrels I brought with me?”

  “Yes, I—” Wasn’t able to see a way of getting them open without being obvious. “Was wondering about them.”

  “One of them’s a side of boned salt beef, Dirian-style.”

  “Oh God,” she moaned.

  “And the other’s spring greens preserved in honey.” He looked at her. “It’s such a shame you don’t like me. Otherwise, I’d be delighted to share.”

  “I never said I don’t like you.”

  “Some things don’t need saying.” He shrugged. “Salt beef Dirian-style with six different kinds of pepper,” he said. “There’s a little man in Cousa who makes them for me, to an old North Imperial recipe. So tender you can carve it with a blade of grass. But I imagine you’d rather preserve your integrity and eat couscous.”

  “I’ve always liked you, Oida. You know that.”

  He laughed. “You don’t,” he said. “That’s why I find you so intriguing and irresistible. Don’t spoil it, please.”

  “Fine,” she said. “You’re arrogant and vain, you wear scent and you stand too close to people when you talk to them. Also, I don’t like your vocal music. The instrumental stuff is fine, but you can’t write songs for olive pits.”

  They were walking under the soaring pink granite arch of the Friary, where they were staying. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear the last bit,” he said. “The rest is freely admitted. I am who I have to be.”

  She found that statement rather unsettling. “And your attitude to women—”

  “Ah.” He shrugged. “The moths revile the flame, and why not? Let me tell you something. If I’d wanted to get you into bed, I’ve had done it long since.”

  She was aware that she was glowing red, like coke under the bellows. She hoped it was anger.

  “But,” he went on, “I don’t sleep with colleagues, it’s a rule. Just so happens, you’re the only woman I count as a colleague. But it’s a rule.”

  “You’re so completely full of—”

  “Yes,” he said gently. “It’s how I make myself useful. Let me put it another way. I don’t sleep with women I care about.”

  She looked at him. “That’s just silly,” she said.

  He shrugged. “Thankfully it’s a very small category. And most of them are over seventy. Do you want some salt beef and greens or not?”

  She gave him a solemn look. “I should very much like some salt beef and greens.”

  “All right, then. Because once it’s opened, it’ll only keep a couple of days.”

  And then they were presented to the queen.

  Afterwards, long afterwards, she tried to picture her, but all she could bring to mind was the image of a huge golden throne – its arms were lions, its legs were elephants, and two gold and ivory double-headed eagles perched on the headrest – flanked by the biggest human beings she’d ever seen, head to toe in gilded scale armour; and it was as though someone had left a heap of bizarrely exotic ceremonial regalia piled up on the seat of the chair, intending to come back for it later. Somewhere under all that stuff – the lorus, the divitision, the greater and lesser chlamys, the purple dalmatic, the Cope of State with jewelled pendilia, the labarum and orb flammiger – she sensed the presence of someone small, frightened and angry, but she couldn’t lay her hand on her heart and swear she’d seen her.

  The diplomats did the actual handing over of the gift: a silver box containing the score, dedicated to Her Majesty by Procopius in his own handwriting. Nothing else with it – an eloquent gesture, that, because anything else would be mere junk in comparison, so why bother? A chamberlain took it from them and put it on a large circular silver tray carried by four enormous guardsmen, who lugged it away somewhere behind the throne. The chamberlain thanked them and made a sort speech, stressing the friendly relations between the kingdom and the empire. The chief diplomat then made a short speech stressing the friendly relations between the empire and the kingdom. Everybody bowed to everyone else, then everyone bowed to the Throne, and then it was time to go.

  For sharpening knives she used three stones: first the red sandstone, then the coarse grey millstone, finally the black water stone, a tiny chip out of a mountain somewhere in the Casypes, a semi-mythical range in the far north of the Eastern empire, the only place in the world where the stuff had ever been found. Black water stone, weight for weight, was slightly more expensive than emerald, much harder to get hold of, and illegal to own in the West. She wore hers in a brooch, with a highly ornate silver setting.

  Carrying the knife about would be easy. The Director of Protocol back home had sent the Blemyan Chamberlain’s Office a twenty-page summary of Imperial court dress; on page seven, under Priestesses, was a list of sacred and ceremonial items which a priestess was required to have with her at all times: a mirror, a small silver phial of holy water, a tinderbox, a knife, a pair of white linen gloves for handling the sacramental chalice. The Blemyans had objected that no weapon of any kind was allowed inside the palace precincts unless expressly authorised by the Count of the Stables. The Director replied that the empire would of course respect Blemyan law, and it was a shame that the visit would have to be cancelled over so small a detail; however, no embassy could set out without a priestess, and no priestess could discharge her duties without a mirror, a small silver phial of holy water, a tinderbox, a knife and a pair of white linen gloves for handling the sacramental chalice. The Blemyans quickly responded by issuing the mission’s officially designed priestess with written authority to carry a small ceremonial knife, signed and sealed by the Count of the Stables. Simple as that.

  She gave the blade five more strokes each side on the water stone, for luck; then she wiped the slurry off her brooch with a small pad of cotton waste, which she threw on the fire, and slip
ped the knife into the pretty velvet sheath they’d run up for her in the lodge workshops. It was dark red (so practical as well as fashionable) and decorated with three rows of tiny freshwater pearls. She longed to hang on to it after the mission was over, but she was pretty sure they’d make her give it back. Lodge property, after all.

  She took off her shoes.

  Now, then. Time to go out and kill a perfect stranger.

  Three essentials of the perfect political assassination: a sharp knife, a plausible excuse for being in an inappropriate place, if challenged, and a really accurate map.

  She could see maps. One good long look, and she could see it in her mind, up to three days later. So,out of her door and turn right, down a long marble-floored corridor, past a statuary group representing Blemya Marrying the Sea, at the end of the corridor turn left; fifteen yards, second mezzanine, up six flights of stairs, left, then right, then thirty-two yards (she had a pair of excellent dividers, which doubled as a cloak pin), the door on the right. As anticipated, the room was empty and dark. She crossed it slowly and carefully, guided by the slight change in temperature, until she reached the unshuttered window. Out on to the ledge – she hated that – and shuffle along twelve feet in a state of blind, weak-kneed terror, until her groping right hand felt the wood of a shutter. Next, the horrible part; the shutters opened outwards, of course. She inched along, letting her fingertips trace the shutter panels, until she found the line in the middle where they met. She crept on, two feet precisely, and inserted her fingertips into the join. If the shutters were latched, that would be that – mission aborted, try again later. But they weren’t; she felt the right-hand shutter lift away from the wall. If it creaked and woke him up, she’d have no alternative but to jump. Eight floors up. No chance.