by K. J. Parker
Poldarn frowned. ‘Is it?’
‘Of course – or don’t you know that bit of the song?’
‘Which bit?’
She laughed. ‘The bit you don’t know, of course.’
‘Oh. That bit.’ He looked away. ‘Tell me how it goes, it might come back if you jog my memory.’
‘If you like.’ She frowned. ‘I won’t sing it, because I’m not very good at singing. It goes something like –
Old crow sitting on the chimney top,
Old crow sitting on the chimney top,
Old crow sitting on the chimney top;
Dodger lit the fire and he made him hop.’
Poldarn thought for a moment. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t remember that bit at all.’
‘Oh. But you could’ve been telling an untruth when you said that.’
Poldarn smiled. ‘And you could’ve just made it up, to worry me. I’d never know, would I?’
‘I suppose not. That’s a thought,’ Elja said. ‘It means I could tell you a whole lot of stuff that isn’t true, and you’d never find out. That could be very good.’
Poldarn shook his head. ‘I’d know,’ he replied.
‘Bet you wouldn’t. Not if I was careful.’
‘All right,’ Poldarn said. ‘Let’s try it out, shall we? You say something, and I’ve got to guess if it’s true or not.’
She laughed again; she was good at laughter, unlike most of these people. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Oh, now I can’t think of anything to say.’
‘True.’
‘Silly. I hadn’t started yet.’
‘Also true.’
‘Stop it!’ Elja’s face was glowing with unexpected happiness, as if this was something she’d dreamed about once or twice but never believed could actually happen. ‘You’re teasing me. Now, let’s start again and play the game properly.’
Poldarn twisted his face into a mask of terrible solemnity, making her burst out in giggles. He could feel four pairs of eyes boring holes in the back of his head, and was surprised at how very easy it was to ignore them. ‘Ready?’
She spluttered. ‘Yes.’
‘Not true.’
‘Not fair!’ It was the joyful rage of a ten-year-old, everything forgotten except the game. ‘If you’re going to cheat, I’m not going to play any more.’
‘It’s not cheating.’
‘It is too cheating. I can’t see what you’re going to say next.’
That brought Poldarn up short. For a while there, he could almost have believed he was talking to a regular human being, albeit a very young one. Now, though, she’d taken that one enormous difference and dropped it down between them. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘we won’t play any more. Besides, I think it’s making your father nervous, all this laughing.’
Elja shook her head. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘He’s a bit taken aback and he’s trying to figure out whether he approves or not, but he thinks he probably does. You know, on balance. Because, well, if I like you, he might as well like you too, since we’re all going to be family.’
Poldarn nodded. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘And you can read all that, can you, without even looking round?’
‘Sure.’
He sighed. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘at least it explains why you people don’t go in much for jokes. No point, if the other person can see the punchline in your head before you’ve even started.’
She frowned a little. ‘You think it’s not as funny that way?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I was wondering,’ she replied, ‘how you can ever make jokes, if you’ve got to do it a bit at a time. We see the whole thing all at once. You know,’ she added, ‘I’ve never actually thought about it before. It’s really strange, talking to you. It makes me think about a lot of stuff I’ve always taken for granted.’
‘Glad to be of service.’
‘I’m not sure it’s a good thing,’ Elja said seriously. ‘That’s the whole point about being able to take things for granted, you can rely on them without having to check up on them all the time to see if they’re still there. You know, like shoes, or the roof of your house. There’s enough difficulties already without making new ones.’
Poldarn shrugged. ‘Must be nice to be able to take things for granted,’ he said. ‘Not so easy when you’re my age, and you can only remember back a few months. You can’t really assume anything.’
Elja’s eyes were wide as she looked up at him. ‘It must’ve been terrible,’ she said. ‘I mean, not even knowing who you are, let alone other people. I bet you’re glad you’re home again, after all that.’
Poldarn thought before answering. ‘I was,’ he said, ‘for a couple of days after we set sail. Actually, I’d had rather a rough time just before we left the Empire, I was really glad to see the back of it. Even here, though, it’s not coming easily. There’s so much about – well, us, I guess, that I don’t know; and nobody’s prepared to tell me, because it’s usually so basic they can’t begin to imagine I don’t know it already.’
‘Oh. Well, that’s easily solved. You can ask me, and I’ll tell you.’
‘Truthfully?’
‘On my word of honour.’
‘That sounds impressive.’
‘I mean it. I can explain stuff you don’t know, and the other way around. Like,’ Elja went on, ‘this thing with the mountain. What did you call it?’
‘A volcano,’ Poldarn replied. ‘At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what it is. But really, I hardly know anything at all about them, except that they exist and that’s what they’re called.’
‘That’s more than any of us do. And you knew about the flash flood, which is why Rook went to Lyatsbridge.’
Poldarn shook his head. ‘I just figured that out for myself,’ he said. ‘And it’s far more likely that I was wrong and there’s no problem at all, and the Lyatsbridge people will wonder what the hell we’re making such a fuss about. At least, that’s what I’m hoping.’
That thought soured the conversation somewhat, and neither of them said anything for a while. Elja’s next words didn’t improve matters, as far as he was concerned.
‘You knew Egil when you were young,’ she said.
Statement, not question; but clearly inviting comment. ‘So he tells me,’ Poldarn replied, ‘and when I saw him I thought maybe I recognised him. But that’s really as far as it goes.’
‘That’s strange,’ she said. ‘Because he’s really afraid of you, for some reason. He’s trying really hard not to think about it, and I don’t think Dad or Barn have seen it in his mind yet. But I’m closer to him than they are, I can see things they can’t.’
‘So,’ Poldarn said uncomfortably. ‘Can you see what it is he’s so frightened of?’
‘No. That’s buried so deep, you’d never be able to get it out without his help. It’s odd, though. All the years I’ve known him, all my life, and I never thought he had anything in his mind I didn’t know about.’
‘The word “privacy” doesn’t mean a lot around here, does it?’
‘The word what?’
At first Poldarn thought Elja was making a joke; then he realised he’d used a word from another language. These people (his people) didn’t have a word for it.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about it – just me getting things muddled up.’
She shrugged, as if to say that he could keep his rotten old secrets for all she cared. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever talked this much in my whole life.’
Poldarn grinned. ‘You’re a quick study,’ he said. ‘Do you like it?’
‘What?’
‘Talking.’
Elja considered for a moment. ‘Actually, it’s good fun,’ she said. ‘Like a game. I’m not sure I’d want to have to do it all the time, but it’s interesting. Helps pass the time on a long walk.’
‘Can’t say I’d ever seen it in that light,’ Poldarn confessed. ‘But they all reckon I’ll be back to normal bef
ore too long. Not sure how I feel about that. I mean, it must be very convenient to be able to see inside people’s heads, but I can’t say I’m happy about everyone being able to see inside mine. Especially,’ he added, ‘since I can’t. How do you think it works? I mean, do you think you’ll be able to see all the memories I’ve lost?’
‘I don’t know. Can’t see why not.’
‘Then I don’t like the idea at all. You’d all know more about me than I do. And some of the stuff might not be very pleasant.’
‘I can’t believe that,’ she said. ‘And besides, it stands to reason that if you get back the trick of seeing inside heads, you’ll be able to see into your own, and then you’ll know all about yourself.’
‘Yes,’ Poldarn said. ‘That’s what I’m worried about.’
Elja looked at him as if he was talking in a foreign language again. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said.
‘I’m not. Come on, think about it. What if it turns out that really I’m the most evil man that ever lived?’
‘That’s even sillier. Of course you’re not. I can tell you that, and I’ve only known you for a couple of hours.’
‘But you can’t be sure. I might be lying.’
‘I’m sure, really. I’d know if you were the most evil person ever. It’d be in your face.’
Poldarn shook his head. ‘All you can see is what I’m thinking. Now, suppose I’d done all manner of dreadful things but I’d managed to make myself believe that I haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘Well, then,’ she replied, ‘in that case it wouldn’t matter if we could all see inside your head, would it?’
‘There’s no point arguing with you, is there?’
‘No, not really.’
By the time they got back to the house, Poldarn was distinctly worried. Since he’d woken up beside the river in his nest of blood-soaked mud, he’d had the problem of confronting a wide range of problems and perils, mostly unprepared, on the fly, and so far he’d managed to cope, in the sense that he was still alive and on his feet when a great many of the people he’d so far encountered weren’t. Much more of this sort of thing and he’d start thinking of himself as resilient, resourceful or at least monstrously lucky. But the prospect of falling in love – for the first time, to all intents and purposes – was an emergency he simply wasn’t prepared for; and the talents he’d so far excavated in himself, basically consisting of an ability to get a sword out of a scabbard and into an enemy faster than most people could do it, weren’t going to be much use to him in this particular arena. So far, he reckoned, he’d managed to stay free and upright by virtue of that very isolation that his loss of memory had afflicted him with. Under all circumstances he’d been on his own, both imprisoned and protected by the wall of his enforced solitude. Without loyalties, attachments or encumbrances he’d been able to walk away from each threatening situation he’d found himself in – so long as he could get clear with his bones unbroken and the clothes he stood up in, he’d had all the options and choices in the world. Even here, where he had a real name and family and an inheritance, he’d been an outsider, an offcomer, unable to read or to be read; and if things went badly, he could always leave.
Falling in love would wreck all that. Love would arrest him, like a criminal nailed to the courthouse door by his ears, or a prisoner whose legs were smashed to make sure he couldn’t escape. He’d have no choice but to participate, belong, get involved. He’d be stuck here, for ever.
Oh, there were worse places; the Bohec and Mahec valleys, for example. If Poldarn were still the boy called Ciartan who’d never left the farm or gone abroad, he couldn’t have wished for anything more than love and stability. But he wasn’t. He was someone out of a fairy story, the peasant’s son who gets mistaken for the prince and just manages to pass himself off as royalty for a week or a month or a year until inevitably he gets found out (but then it turns out he really is the prince after all, and that’s all right); and the point at which the reckless young fraud comes unstuck is always when he makes the mistake of falling for the princess, getting involved, the point where he sinks into the mud above the knee and finds he can’t move any more.
Damn, Poldarn thought. But there’s not a lot you can do about it when it happens, when you’ve already put your weight on a hidden patch of quicksand. No use looking where you’re going after you’ve got yourself stuck.
The farmyard was black with ash.
Rook hadn’t come back yet, and Colsceg decided it would be sensible to get home, just in case something had happened or was happening. Of course, his horses were waiting for him, saddled and bridled and groomed, all his belongings stowed in the saddlebags, with an additional packhorse, heavily loaded with something or other in two coarse wool sacks. Elja didn’t say goodbye as she crossed the yard to the mounting block and got on her horse, she didn’t even look at Poldarn. Almost certainly there was no significance in the omission, but it didn’t stop him thinking about it all afternoon, as he bashed a piece of inoffensive iron into a pair of very undistinguished pot-hooks.
Chapter Five
The vestry roof was burning.
When they told him, he was extremely annoyed.
Damn it, he thought, as he yawned awake out of a delightfully pastoral dream (something about being a blacksmith on a farm, making pot-hooks), this is ridiculous. I’m a soldier, I’m supposed to be conducting an orderly defence of a fortified position, not fooling about with buckets of water. If they wanted a fireman, they should’ve hired a specialist.
But he left his post in the charge of a thoroughly terrified captain of archers, and hurried down the narrow spiral staircase. Twice he nearly lost his footing – the soles of his boots had been worn thin and smooth on the parade ground, and the stairs were polished – but luckily there was a guide-rope at the side he could catch hold of. Just as well; this wouldn’t be a good time to fall and break his leg.
(There was a crow in this dream; but it was floating on top of the hot air rising from the fire, a long way out of stone-throwing range. It called to him in crow language, but he couldn’t understand what it was saying. Its presence implied that he was still dreaming, though he could distinctly remember having woken up. Were there really such things as crows when he was awake? Or were they some species of fabulous beast, the sort you can only believe in when you’re dreaming?)
From the courtyard he had a good view of the problem. At some point during the night, the enemy had got tired of lobbing stones and arrows over the wall into an empty square with nothing left in it to break or hurt and had started sending over firepots instead. Most of them had smashed harmlessly on the flagstones and burnt themselves out – throughout the attack, he’d been convinced that his greatest asset and ally was the enemy’s chief engineer, who clearly couldn’t read a scale or set an accurate trajectory if his life depended on it – but one or two had overshot the yard completely and pitched on the vestry slates, where their burning oil could drip through the cracks made by their impact into the roof space below. It was a pity, all things considered, that the monks had decided to use the roof space to store a thousand years’ worth of archives.
‘I say let it burn,’ said the ranking engineer, third from the top in the chain of command and clearly not happy at being woken up in the middle of the night. ‘After all, it’s freestanding – even if the wind changes it’s not going to spread to the other buildings. And it’s got no strategic importance, it’s just a chapel.’
He couldn’t agree more; but unfortunately he had his orders. ‘Unacceptable,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to put it out. What I’m asking you is, how?’
The red and yellow light of the fire made the engineer’s face shine grotesquely in the darkness. ‘That’s a very good question,’ he said. ‘Once a building like that makes up its mind to burn to the ground, there’s not a lot you can do. What with the confined space and the lack of equipment, you’re down to a lot of men with buckets. There’s the well in the yard, but it’s too dee
p and narrow to give you enough water for this job. You’d be better off with a longer chain, drawing off the carp ponds or the aqueduct. Both would probably be best.’
‘Fine,’ he replied. ‘All right, you round up every bucket and basin you can find.’ He turned to face the guard commander. ‘You get anybody who can move, I want a chain from the ponds and another from the aqueduct, like he just said. See if you can get up the back stairs as well as the front; if we can tackle the fire from both ends at once, I reckon we’ll have a better chance.’
Neither of them looked exactly hopeful as they scurried off on their respective errands, and he couldn’t say he blamed them; from where he was standing the fire was already fairly well established, and even a slight breeze would turn the whole building into a furnace. He’d seen enough fires in his time to know that.
(And yet, when you’re camping out in the cold rain and what you need most in the whole world is a nice cheerful roaring fire, can you get one to light? Can you hell as like. Just like when you’ve got a busy day ahead of you in the forge, and the coal’s damp and there’s no kindling in the bucket. The fire god’s sense of humour isn’t his most attractive attribute.)
They did the best they could in the circumstances, but that was never going to be enough. A hundred men dragged out of desperately needed sleep and told to put out a well-established fire in an entirely superfluous building with an inadequate supply of buckets and water were always going to be wasting their time. When the rafters and joists were starting to burn through and the situation got too dangerous to justify the risk, he called them off and told them to forget it. By that stage they were too exhausted to get back to sleep, and most of them stood aimlessly in the yard, watching the building gradually subsiding into the flames. They didn’t seem to care particularly, one way or the other.
‘It was a lost cause,’ said a voice beside him. He looked round, and saw the diminutive figure of the vice-chaplain, whose name he couldn’t remember offhand.
