The Proof House

by K. J. Parker

  He watched the corporal die, then let his body slump to the ground. Nobody else moved. A great place for still people, Sammyra.

  ‘I’ll ask you again,’ Bardas heard himself say. ‘Who’s your commanding officer?’

  One of the soldiers said a name; Bardas didn’t catch it. ‘You,’ he said to the little innkeeper, ‘run to the prefecture and fetch the guard. The rest of you, get lost.’ A moment later, he was alone with the four surviving soldiers and the two dead men. It was easy to tell them apart; the soldiers were the ones standing up.

  After what seemed like a very long time the guard arrived, led by an unmistakable Son of Heaven in a gilded helmet with a very tall feather on top.

  ‘Bar fight?’ he said. Bardas nodded. ‘And this one –’ he prodded the dead corporal with his toe. ‘- this one took a swing at you?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Bardas said.

  The guard commander sighed. His collar made him out to be an ordinary sergeant, so Bardas outranked him. ‘Well, then,’ he said. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Bardas Loredan.’

  The guard commander frowned. ‘I know who you are,’ he said. ‘You’re the hero, right?’

  Gannadius?

  Gannadius pulled a face. ‘Not now,’ he said.

  Gannadius? You’re very faint, I can hardly—

  ‘Oh, for pity’s sake.’ Gannadius opened his eyes. Alexius was standing over him, looking worried. ‘No offence,’ he said, ‘but would you mind pushing off for a bit? I’m dying, and I’d hate to miss anything.’

  What? Oh. Oh, yes, you are, aren’t you. My dear fellow, I am most terribly sorry. How did it happen?

  Gannadius shrugged. ‘Oh, little things, really. I think it started with a fever and went on from there.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Am I dying?’ he asked. ‘Really?’

  Alexius looked thoughtful. Well, I’m not a doctor or anything, but—

  ‘I’m dying.’

  Yes.

  ‘Oh.’ Gannadius tried to make himself relax. ‘How can you tell?’

  Well – just trust me.

  Gannadius tried closing his eyes again, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. He waited. Nothing much seemed to be happening. ‘So,’ he said, ‘what’s next? Any hints?’

  No offence, Gannadius, but I wouldn’t know. If it’s any consolation, it’s a perfectly natural thing. He could see Alexius ransacking his brains for a valid but not too alarming analogy. Like childbirth was, apparently, the best he could come up with.

  ‘Really?’ he couldn’t resist saying. ‘Seems to me there’s at least one major difference.’

  You know what I mean. Does it hurt?

  ‘It did,’ Gannadius said. ‘Like hell. But not so much now. In fact, it doesn’t hurt at all.’

  I see.

  ‘That’s bad, is it?’

  On the contrary, it’s good. I mean, you wouldn’t want it to hurt, would you?

  ‘That’s not what I . . .’ Gannadius sighed. ‘So now what? Any idea what the drill is? Am I meant to do anything, or do I just lie here and wait?’

  You tell me.

  ‘Right; and then you can write it up as a nice prize-winning paper for the next big conference you go to. Sorry,’ Gannadius added, ‘that was small of me.’

  I quite understand. In your position . . .

  ‘I don’t think I’m going to like this, Alexius,’ Gannadius interrupted. ‘In fact, if it’s all the same to you I think I’d like to stop now and have another go some other time. I have the feeling that if I try to do it now I’ll make a mess of it, and since it’s something you only ever get to do once . . .’

  Ah. But how do we know that?

  Gannadius scowled. ‘Oh, for gods’ sakes,’ he said. ‘This is hardly the time to discuss bad doctrine.’

  Sorry. I was only trying to be upbeat.

  ‘Well, it’s not helping. Alexius, can’t you do something? ’

  I . . . What did you have in mind?

  ‘I don’t know,’ Gannadius snapped. ‘You’re the bloody wizard, you think of something.’

  It doesn’t work like that. You know that as well as I do.

  ‘Yes, but—’ Somehow, he didn’t have the strength to get angry; he didn’t even have the strength to be properly frightened. Not being able to feel frightened – now that was frightening. ‘I was going to say,’ he went on, ‘that you’re the Patriarch of Perimadeia, there must be something you know that the rest of us don’t, some special secret that only the Patriarchs are allowed in on. But that’s not true, is it?’

  I’m afraid not.

  ‘I knew that, really. It’s just that when you’re – well, like I am now, you’d rather go with the hope than the logic, just in case. No hard feelings, old friend.’

  Thank you. How are you feeling?

  ‘Strange,’ Gannadius admitted. ‘It really isn’t the slightest bit like I thought it’d be.’

  Oh? In what way?

  Gannadius thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I was expecting – well, theatre, I guess. Melodrama, even. Mystical stuff: bright lights, swirling mists, shadowy figures draped in shining white. Either that or pain and fear. But it isn’t like that at—’

  His eyes opened; really opened this time.

  ‘It’s all right.’ A woman was standing over him. ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘Alexius?’ Gannadius tried to move his head to look round, but couldn’t. He didn’t know whether that was bad or good. He’d been able to move quite freely before.

  ‘He’s coming out of it,’ the woman was saying to someone he couldn’t see. ‘Whatever that stuff was, it worked.’

  ‘That’s all right, then,’ said a man’s voice behind the woman’s shoulder. ‘Usually a dose like that’d kill you. I’m glad it works.’

  The woman looked unhappy. ‘You mean you’d never tried it before?’

  ‘Like I said, it’s usually a deadly poison,’ the unseen man said. ‘Been wanting to try it out for years, but this is the first one we’ve had where it really didn’t matter – I mean, properly speaking he was dead already, so what the hell?’

  Gannadius realised what was so odd about the woman. Well, not odd; unexpected. She was a plains-woman – eyes, skin colour, bone structure. He felt an instinctive wave of panic – Help, I’m in the hands of the enemy! The woman saw him shudder and try to move, and smiled.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘You’re going to be all right.’

  So you keep saying. ‘. . .’ he said, then realised he’d forgotten the rest.

  She was a round-faced, stocky woman in her late forties, with short grey hair, bright black eyes and a prominent double chin. ‘You’ve been very sick,’ she went on, ‘but the doctor’s given you something that’ll sort you out, just you wait and see.’

  Gannadius felt annoyed at that; bloody doctor’s been using me to try out his lethal new remedies, he wanted to say. Dangerous clown, he shouldn’t be allowed near a patient. ‘Thank you,’ he croaked. ‘Where . . . ?’

  The woman smiled. ‘This is Blancharber,’ she said. ‘Have you heard of it?’

  Gannadius thought for a moment. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Ah. Well, it’s a little village about half a day’s walk inland from Ap’ Amodi’. She pronounced the name as one word, not two. ‘Roughly the same distance from Ap’ Amodi and the old City.’

  ‘Where . . . ?’

  ‘Perimadeia. You’re in King Temrai’s country,’ she added. ‘You’re safe now.’

  Eseutz Mesatges, free trader of the Island, to her sister in commerce Athli Zeuxis; greetings.

  This is a horrible place, and the people are loathsome. On the other hand, they surely do have a lot of feathers.

  Which is where you come in. I’m now in a position to supply, FOB the Market Forces, sixty-seven standard volume barrels of premium white goose-wing feathers, all graded by wing polarity – to be precise, thirty-five barrels of right-wing, thirty-two of left-wing – suitable for flet
ching all standard-spine military arrows, at the ridiculously low price of twelve quarters (City) per barrel – well, almost. There’s just one trivial shard of detail standing between me and this fantastic opportunity. I’m as broke as a dropped pot.

  But I wouldn’t be, beloved sister in commerce, if you supplied me with a letter of credit drawn on that bank of yours in the paltry sum of 268 quarters (City); then I’d have my feathers, you’d have your usual one-third cut, these people here would have an incentive to set up a regular, ongoing deal and everybody would be happy. Except the geese, of course; but I don’t think they were planning on going anywhere.

  Now then: if the Squirrel gets in as per schedule, you should be reading this on the sixth – plenty of time for you to scribble out the magic words and send the letter round to the master of the King of Beasts, which I happen to know is expected here on the seventeenth (so presumably it’s not leaving the Island till the eighth at the very earliest). Provided you do your stuff with all due diligence, I can close the deal on or before the twentieth and be home on the Market Forces, with feathers, by Remembrance. As simple as that.

  Well, that’s it, really; but there’s still plenty of space left on this sheet of high-quality paper, so I might as well fill it with something.

  Let’s see; what sort of thing do you want to know? Of course, you’ve actually been here, as I recall – didn’t you come here with your friend the fencer, before the coup and all? I don’t suppose it was much better then; worse, probably. Say what you like about the military regime and Butcher Gorgas, they give every impression of being good for business. If they made or grew anything at all worth selling (except, of course, for these utterly magnificent feathers you’re getting a vicarious slice of), there’d be some nice opportunities here in the import/export line, since there’s basically zip local competition; no merchant venturers, no producers’ cartels, no aristocratic or royal monopolies, and even the government tariff is only two and a half per cent. It’s what comes of having a government run by amateurs, I suppose.

  It makes me wonder, though. Why did Gorgas Loredan go to all the trouble of taking the place over if he’s not going to do anything with it now he’s got it? After all, it’s such an extreme thing to do, steal a country from the people who live there. Usually, of course, it’s pretty obvious – someone wants the iron ore, or the warm-water port, or the osier beds, or the growing timber or the saffron plantations, or to stop someone else having it, or just so as to be able to draw a nice straight line down the map, or to have the complete set of islands. And when it isn’t something blindingly obvious like that, you can bet it’s a steady source of revenue – poll taxes and sales taxes and import taxes and road taxes and spice taxes and wedding taxes and taxes on every third heifer and scutage and heriot and tithes in ordinary. There’s always a reason – except in this case, and it’s bothering me to bits trying to figure it out. For one thing, a cool, calculating type like Gorgas Loredan doesn’t do anything without a reason. What’s he up to, Athli? You know about this sort of thing. Won’t you let me in on the secret?

  Anyway; 268 City quarters on the King of Beasts and that’ll be the feather trade sewn up. Best investment you’ll make this year, and that’s a promise.

  Yours in friendship and fair dealing,

  ESEUTZ

  ‘To summarise—’ he was saying.

  Alexius stopped and blinked, as if he’d just emerged into the light after a long time in pitch darkness. Oh, no, not again, he thought.

  Old age, just old age; a tendency to wake up, as it were, to find that he was in the middle of doing or saying something but couldn’t remember how he’d got there or what he’d said. A dreadful handicap for a lecturer, suddenly finding yourself standing in front of a thousand reverently silent young faces, without a clue as to what you were saying or what you’re going to say next.

  (Before that, he’d been in a dream, a daydream about a long, dark tunnel full of strange noises and smells, where people were killing each other by feel and instinct. Why he had to keep going there he didn’t know, and no amount of speculating would make it any easier to stop.)

  ‘To summarise,’ he could hear himself saying, ‘if we truly understand the nature of the Principle, we cannot fail to have our doubts about the existence of death. It becomes a shadowy, almost mythical thing, something we used to believe in when we were very young and impressionable, when we still believed in dragons and the Remembrance Fairy. If we truly understand the Principle, and the way its operation affects both the world about us and our perceptions of the world, we are led to the inescapable conclusion that death as we are taught to understand it is, quite simply, impossible. It can’t happen. It’s against all the rules of nature. If we choose, in spite of all the scientific evidence, to persist in believing in it – well, that must be a matter for faith and conscience, which have no place in scientific argument. But if we confine ourselves to those things which are susceptible to proof – and what is science, what indeed are learning and understanding and knowledge but those things which can be put to proof? – if we restrict ourselves to those things which have passed proof and not been found wanting, we must put aside this notion of death as, at best, not proven and not capable of being proved, with the overwhelming probability that there’s no such thing. The Principle, on the other hand—’

  (‘How is he? Can I talk to him? ’ )

  ‘The Principle,’ Alexius heard himself continue, ‘is proven, beyond any shadow of a doubt. The Principle, in fact, is proof; it’s the very process by which we test those things that we do not already know, when we wish to come to the truth of a matter. And, if anything of what I’ve told you today has made an impression on you, if you even begin to understand—’

  (‘You can try. But I don’t think you’ll get much sense out of him. Later on, maybe; he’s better in the afternoons.’)

  Alexius opened his eyes. ‘Athli?’ he said.

  Athli smiled at him. ‘Hello, Alexius,’ she said. ‘How are you feeling today?’

  ‘Fine.’ Slowly and painfully, Alexius sat up. ‘I was dreaming,’ he said.

  ‘Nice dream?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not really,’ he replied. ‘More of a nightmare, really. It was the one where I’m standing in front of a crowded lecture hall and I’ve forgotten the lecture.’ He smiled. ‘The good doctor Ereq would like me to believe it’s because I will insist on eating cheese, in spite of his dire warnings. I’m inclined to look for a rather more metaphysical explanation,’ he went on. ‘But only so as to be able to carry on eating cheese.’ He lowered his voice. ‘It’s the only food in this place they don’t boil to a mush.’

  Athli frowned. ‘I don’t think you can boil cheese,’ she said, ‘it’d melt.’

  Doctor Ereq gave his patient a ferocious medical scowl and left, whispering in Athli’s ear as he went. When the door was shut behind him, Alexius asked, ‘What was all that about?’

  ‘I’m to call him if you get upset and start talking nonsense. Oh, and I’m not to overtire you.’

  Alexius shrugged. ‘It’s a bit hard if I’ve got to give up eating cheese and talking nonsense. I’ve been doing both ever since I was a little boy, and I’m far too old now to change.’

  Athli perched on the edge of the bed. Outside, the rain was tapping against the shutters. ‘You’re not too old to fish for compliments, though, are you? We both know that talking nonsense isn’t a fault of yours. Talking, yes; but you generally make sense, at least when I’m around. You don’t like Doctor Ereq, do you?’

  ‘No,’ Alexius admitted. ‘Which is wrong of me, I know; he’s an excellent fellow, wonderfully good at his job, and when I think of how much all this must be costing you—’

  ‘Oh, don’t start,’ Athli said. ‘And besides, I write it all down to expenses in the accounts, so really it isn’t costing me anything.’

  Alexius looked intruiged. ‘Expenses?’

  ‘Oh, yes. You’re employed by the Bank as a technical consult
ant; didn’t I tell you? Well, you are. Valued member of the team.’

  ‘Really?’ Alexius raised an eyebrow. ‘Am I any good at it?’

  Athli waggled her hands in an equivocal gesture. ‘I’ve come across worse,’ she said. ‘Seriously, though,’ she went on, frowning a little, ‘you shouldn’t kid about with the doctors. They haven’t got senses of humour like normal people do, and they’ll assume you’ve gone funny in the head. Doctor Ereq’s convinced already.’

  ‘Oh, him.’ Alexius pulled a face, like a little boy. ‘What it was, I tried to explain to him about the Principle and being able to talk to people who aren’t necessarily there. He wasn’t listening, of course; he’d made his mind up I was off my head as soon as I mentioned the subject. You’d think a Shastel man’d know better.’

  Athli grinned. ‘Between you and me,’ she said, ‘I don’t think he’s from Shastel at all. Oh, he says he studied there, but I asked and nobody remembers him. He’s colonial Shastel all right; I think he’s third or fourth generation Colleon. Actually, that’d make him a much better doctor, even if it does sound a bit hayseed. The Colleon medical schools teach a lot of Imperial stuff.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ Alexius said. He tried to stretch, but a sudden cramp caught him and made him wince. ‘Anyway, enough about him. How are you? How’s business?’

  ‘Could be worse.’

  ‘I see. Is that could be worse meaning awful or could be worse meaning you’re making money hand over fist?’

  ‘A bit of both,’ Athli replied. ‘Things are terribly quiet still, but the ventures that are going out are doing quite nicely.’

  ‘Such as?’

  Athli thought for a moment. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘the Squirrel’s due in any day now from the Mesoge with blueberries and honey; that’ll tie in very nicely with the Molain people having landed a big order from the Bathary—’