The Proof House

by K. J. Parker

  ‘The who?’

  ‘The Bathary. They make uniforms for the Shastel army, who (as I’m sure you know) wear dark-blue great-coats. ’

  Alexius nodded. ‘Which are dyed with blueberry juice. I see. Very clever.’

  ‘Fortuitous,’ Athli replied. ‘And honey’s fetching a good price, now that none of it’s coming in from the Empire. For once, I think Venart Auzeil may have stumbled across a good solid proposition.’ She frowned. ‘With a little help from Gorgas Loredan,’ she added. ‘Nobody’d heard of the Mesoge three years ago, and now here we are looking at sourcing two staple commodities there. I just wish I could believe it’s a solid place to do business.’

  Alexius was silent for a while. ‘The Loredan boys again,’ he said. ‘They do tend to crop up all over the place, don’t they?’

  Athli looked at him. ‘You want to know if there’s any more news about Bardas, don’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well.’ She put her hands on her knees and looked at the shuttered window. ‘I did happen to run into Lien Mogre this morning, and her brother’s on the staff of the Shastel trade delegation that’s just got back from the latest round of talks with the provincial office—’

  ‘You mean he’s a spy? That sounds promising.’

  Athli nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but not a very good one. That’s the trouble; the Shastel people are such very bad spies, they make it so painfully obvious what they’re about. But I know for a fact that they do get fed lots of unimportant stuff just to keep them happy, so there’s a good chance it might be reliable information. Anyway, he told me Bardas has been posted to a nice, quiet administrative job somewhere inland; production manager at a factory, he seemed to think.’ She smiled. ‘Well, you can’t get more prosaic than that, can you?’

  ‘Depends,’ Alexius replied. ‘There’s factories and factories.’

  ‘Yes, but even so.’ Athli stood up and crossed to the window. ‘I know you have this theory all about the Loredans and the Principle and how everything’s tied up together in knots; but I don’t really see how he’s going to divert the tide of history sitting behind a desk cutting tallies and balancing ledgers.’ She sighed. ‘And if it keeps him out of harm’s way, I think it’s just fine, for all of us.’

  A heavy gust of rain shook the shutters, rattling the catch. ‘You’re angry with him, aren’t you?’ Alexius said. ‘Are you ever going to tell me why?’

  ‘I’m not angry at all,’ Athli answered, with her back to him. ‘These days I don’t give him a moment’s thought from one day’s end to the next. I’m pleased to say I’ve moved on since I was a fencer’s clerk; I’ve made something of my life, thank you very much, and I’ve done it without hurting anybody or causing any fuss. I reckon that’s something I can be proud of, don’t you?’

  Alexius lay back and closed his eyes. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘When I think of all the people you’ve helped and looked after since you first came here – me, Gannadius, his nephew; Venart and Vetriz—’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ Athli said quietly.

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ Alexius went on, ‘but you didn’t have to, and you did. But it’s almost as if you’ve taken it on yourself to go around – well, tidying up after him, I suppose you could say. Here are all these people who’ve been left behind in his wake, and here you are, trying to give them back some semblance of a normal life. I find that interesting.’

  ‘Really?’ Athli carried on looking at the shutter. ‘Well, it’s a funny way of looking at things.’

  ‘That’s my job,’ Alexius replied, with a hint of amusement.

  The night after the fight in the bar, as he bounced and bumped about between the packing-cases and barrels in the back of another post coach, Bardas remembered the mines for the first time.

  It began as a dream; but he got out of it as quickly as possible, wrenching his eyes open and hoping to see light. There wasn’t any; there was a heap of roped-down luggage between him and the courier’s lanterns, and it was a dark night. He could hear the crash-bump of the coach blundering down the rutted road. He could smell rosemary—

  Rosemary? That’s not right. He reached out to feel open space, but he’d slipped down into a crack between two large boxes, and all he could feel on either side was a rough wooden wall (been here before, then) and an obstruction against his feet. He kicked, heard and felt something splinter and crack. Of course, he knew he wasn’t in the mines any more, but that didn’t help a great deal; he’d known all sorts of things while he was down there, and very few of them had been true. He kicked again, and the world was flooded with the smell of roses.

  The movement was all wrong, though. The mines didn’t bump up and down and jar your spine (wonderful; I’ve managed to find somewhere that’s worse than the mines) and the smell was wrong and there was way too much air. He was on a cart, or a ship. Alexius? No, then; not in the mines, at any rate.

  He was on a coach, on the road from Sammyra to Ap’ Calick; he was going to the proof house at Ap’ Calick, where he was going to learn how to kill armour, suits of armour with nobody in them. It was all right; he wasn’t in the mines any more (except that once you’ve been in the mines, you’ll always be in the mines). He was going to be all right. He was deep inside the territory of the Sons of Heaven. He was safe.

  It’s customary to die first, but in your case we’ve made an exception.

  Feeling a little foolish about the panic attack, he braced his hands against the sides of the coach and shoved himself up into a sitting position, his back to a tall barrel. The smell of roses was horribly strong; he’d put his foot through something fragile, broken something containing essence of roses. That might prove embarrassing in the morning, when the coach made its first stop. He leaned forward and sniffed; his legs reeked of the stuff, as if he’d died and been embalmed –

  (That was what they used the stuff for; he remembered now. Strong essence of roses – it was so overpowering that it could even mask the smell of a body that’s a week late for its funeral. He remembered the stink at Sammyra, when they’d taken the body of the dead corporal to the camp mortuary. They used a lot of rose essence there; burial detail was once a week, if you missed the detail you had to wait for the next one.)

  - and rosemary; they used that for flavouring and preserving meat. They were clever that way, the Children of Heaven; give them something dead and they could keep it sweet for ages, with herbs and spices and perfumes and essences. They could make rotten meat taste better than fresh; they’d hang up perfectly good carcasses and wait till maggots formed in them, just so they could get that perfect flavour. There was life after death in the Empire; of a sort.

  Thinking about such things, he fell asleep. The courier woke him with a gentle nudge from the toe of his boot. It was broad daylight.

  ‘Melbec,’ he said, as if that meant anything. ‘You can stretch your legs if you want to.’

  Bardas stood up; pins and needles in both legs. He sat down again.

  Change of horses at Melbec; another at Ap’ Reac, where they parted company with the outriders. Ap’ Reac was too small to be Ap’ now; once, according to what the courier told him when they stopped there, it had been a city ‘twice the size of Perimadeia’, but that was before the Empire extended this far. When the frontier reached Ap’ Reac there was a great war, a long and terrible siege. No more Ap’ Reac.

  That prompted Bardas to ask a question that hadn’t occurred to him before: how old was the Empire, and where did it start?

  The courier looked at him as if he was simple. ‘The Empire is one hundred thousand years old,’ he said, ‘and it started in the Kingdom of Heaven.’

  ‘Ah,’ Bardas said. ‘Thank you.’

  From Ap’ Reac to Seshan (wherever Seshan was), the road went up a steep mountain and down into a deep canyon, with cliffs on either side. It looked for all the world as if the earth had been pulled apart; the road followed the bed of a long-dead river, which had cut the canyon and
then dried up. Still thinking about the mines as they rumbled along under the shadow of the cliffs, Bardas couldn’t help being reminded of the galleries, the main thoroughfares of the underground city under Ap’ Escatoy. That city, with its complex grid of painfully cut roads and alleys, was all gone now; ruined and lost, like Ap’ Reac or Perimadeia, except in his memory, where it was still vivid, more real than this improbable and unconvincing place he was in now, which smelt of rosemary and roses and was soaked right through with light.

  Absolutely ideal place for an ambush, Bardas reflected. Just as well we’re deep inside the Empire; you’d get twitchy in here otherwise.

  Up above somewhere, the sun was high and hot. Under the eaves of the cliffs, it was dark and cool. The road seemed to stretch on for ever. There was next to no wind to take away the smell of roses. In a way, it was like being in the mines. In a way, everything would always be like being there.

  The coach had stopped. Bardas hauled himself up and peered over the luggage.

  ‘Is this Melrun?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ the courier replied.

  They were in the ravine. The road ahead was empty. ‘So why’ve we stopped?’ Bardas asked.

  ‘This isn’t right,’ the courier replied, standing up on the box.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Bardas said. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  The courier frowned. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said; at which point an arrow hit him just below the ear. He fell sideways off the box and hit the ground with a thump.

  Oh, for pity’s sake. Bardas dropped down, landing awkwardly among the packing-cases. The heart of the Empire; slap-bang in the middle of the shadow of the Children of Heaven, where (as everybody knew) you could leave a cartload of diamonds unattended all night in the market square and be sure nobody would steal them.

  Whoever the unseen archer was, he was a cautious, methodical type, content to wait until he was sure the coast was clear before giving away his position. Bardas found this degree of professionalism highly aggravating; he was crouched down in a murderously uncomfortable position, from which he dared not move for fear of giving himself away and getting an arrow in his own neck. This is ludicrous, he thought. It’s not as if I’m likely to lift a finger to stop the Imperial post being looted; they can have the lot, and welcome, if only I could move my feet. The thought of dying, from an arrow or thirst, or being fried by the savage heat of the sun, for the sake of twelve crates of rose essence and the Imperial mail was little short of insulting.

  Nothing happened. He tried thinking it through. When was the next coach due? He ought to know how often they ran along this road. Someone had told him, but he couldn’t remember. Presumably the cautious man up in the rocks knew the timetable, he didn’t seem the sort to be slapdash about important stuff like that. He’d have to allow enough time to get the coach unloaded and haul off the stuff he wanted, that’d take time (unless he was planning to drive the coach to the end of the ravine, he was going to have to haul it up the sides with ropes). How many friends and relations did he have with him? Most important (and unfathomable) of all, did he/they know he was here, or was a long wait-and-see standard operating procedure when robbing the post?

  Just as he was sure he couldn’t stand the cramp in his legs any more, he heard the sound of someone scrambling about on loose rocks. Daren’t look up, of course, so he couldn’t see what was going on, but at least something was happening. No weapons, of course, except a short knife stuck down the side of his boot, as in the mines. Been in worse scrapes than this. Really? Name three.

  ‘All right.’ A man’s voice, badly out of breath. ‘You two, start unloading. Gylus, hold the horses. Azes, where’s your damn brother with those hooks?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I?’ replied a child’s voice, with the eternal put-upon whine of the younger brother.

  ‘Don’t be cheeky. Gylus, lend me your knife. Bassa, for crying out loud be careful with that, it’s fragile.’

  The family business, obviously. Families that loot together take root together. ‘It’s not fair,’ said another childish voice. ‘You said it was my turn to have the boots.’

  ‘You’ve already got a pair of boots. Why can’t you do as you’re told, just for once?’

  - And there he was, standing on top of the luggage, his back to Bardas, directing his obstreperous workforce. All Bardas could see was the back of a bald head, wreathed with a few wisps of greying hair, and a shabby military-issue coat with a suspicious-looking hole, scrupulously darned, between the shoulders. Go away, Bardas thought, but the man didn’t seem to be in any sort of a hurry. ‘Bassa! Bassa! Put it down, you’ll cut yourself and then I’ll have your mother on at me. Oh, for—’

  He’s seen me.

  The man stood and stared for a full heartbeat, then groped for the hilt of the cavalry scimitar that dangled incongruously from his shoulder on an excessively long belt. Damn, Bardas thought; his legs were too cramped for sudden, energetic movement, else he’d have run away; but that option wasn’t available. The man had found his sword-hilt (round, jowly, harassed face; used to know a man who looked quite like him, had a stall selling candles in the Chandlers’ quarter) and was struggling to draw it, hampered by the long belt and his own extreme terror. The knife was in Bardas’ hand (here we go again), its pommel finding its own place in the hollow of his palm, his thumb pressing down on the middle of the handle, feeling for the slight groove that marked the right spot, the fingertips resting lightly on the quillons; arm back behind the ear, cock the wrist back and flick as the arm comes forward, to keep the knife upright as it leaves the hand, so that the shifting weight of the hilt guides it and powers it – you have to do this instinctively, if you think about it you’ll miss, or the knife’ll hit side-on. It’s second nature or it’s impossible (it had always come naturally to him in the mines, throwing his knife at a noise in the dark, knowing where to find it again).

  A good solid hit; not the ten, but cutting the edge of the nine, slicing into the adam’s apple and severing the windpipe, so that there wasn’t any air available for the curse or the famous last words or whatever it was the man was about to say; but his mouth opened and closed and nothing came out, and then his feet slipped from under him and he went crashing down on to a crate (marked fragile, inevitably) which burst dramatically open, drenching Bardas in the scent of dawn-plucked roses. A moment later, the dead man’s boot skidded past his ear.

  ‘Dad?’ No time for anything now; Bardas reached awkwardly over the body with his left hand and fished out the cavalry sword (horrible, evilly balanced things, the pommel nips your wrist and you’d have to be a triple-jointed contortionist to thrust effectively), then used his left hand to push himself up on to his feet – left foot still numb, pins and needles in the right, what a stupid reason for getting killed . . .

  ‘Dad!’ There was an edge of panic in the young voice. ‘Bassa, what’s happened to Dad?’

  ‘Hang on.’ A head popped up over the rampart of luggage – a girl, about nine years old, squat pudding face (obvious family resemblance). ‘Dad?’ Now she was staring at him, and at the dead body lying face down in the ruins of the crate. ‘Gylus! He’s killed—’

  The knife was in his hand again, but he was a bit too late; the head bobbed down again before he could throw. I wish I wasn’t here, he thought, as he tried to shuffle along the ledge of exposed crate he was standing on; but his knees still weren’t working properly, he lost his footing and stumbled, bashing the side of his head against a sharp wooden corner. Ouch, that hurt, he noted, trying to get the knee working so he could get up. Someone was swearing at him; he looked up and saw a boy, twelve or thirteen, resting a clumsy and crude-looking crossbow on the edge of the crate rampart. He could only see the eyes, the forehead, the clump of scruffy ginger hair, over the arched steel bow and the sun glinting on the honed edge of the arrow-blade. Instinct, he thought, as his wrist flipped over; and then, since instinct was running the show, he said, ‘Thank you,’ aloud, as the head sn
apped back and disappeared, taking his knife with it.

  He heard the girl scream as he shifted the scimitar across to his right hand. If she picks up the bow I’m still not out of this, he thought, wincing at the pain as he put his weight on his left foot. Come on, leg, this is no time for hissy fits. Maybe that’s all there were, father, son and daughter; or maybe there’s the rest of the gods-damned extended family crouched up there in the rocks – brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, fifteen different degrees of cousin, grandpa and grandma and a picnic lunch in a hamper. What I’d really like is to be somewhere else; but I’d settle for my knife back.

  Azes. There’d been another kid, called Azes; a boy’s name, presumably. Now what would a good boy do, in the circumstances? Would he scoop up his kid sister and get the hell out? That’s what I’d do (only it’s not what I did) or would he come after the monster, the destroyer of his family and his home and his life – Oh I hope not. I really, really—

  In the mines, you knew when someone was behind you. As the boy jumped down, Bardas was already twisting around, trying to get some sort of balance so he could use his feet. It would have been nice to side-step, hop lightly out of the way while bringing the sword up in a universal backhand parry – that’s what he’d have done if he wasn’t stumbling about in a narrow space between crates of perfume and biscuits in the back of a coach, with two clumsy, painful feet and the sun in his eyes as he looked up. As it was, he saw a blur and he hit it as hard as he could, relying on instinct (again) and basic timing. The boy’s blood hit him in the face, suggesting he’d slashed through the jugular vein. A ten, and wrong-footed.

  A good ten; he’d nearly cut the boy’s head off. I hope you were Azes, he thought, turning round again. I’d really hate it if there were more of you. There was still the crossbow, spanned and cocked and with an arrow in the nut, somewhere up above his head on top of the luggage. Just as well Azes was as thick as a brick, trying to jump him from behind with a little wood-cutter’s hatchet when there was a perfectly good crossbow lying about; not that intelligence seemed to run in this family, or they wouldn’t have chosen this particular method of earning a living.