The Belly of the Bow

by K. J. Parker

  The debate started with a bang and carried on getting hotter and hotter. There was a three-way shouting match (‘Who’s that?’ Gannadius asked, pointing at a tall man who was shaking his fist at the rostrum and yelling at the top of his voice. ‘Hain Deporf,’ Mogre replied) which went on for several minutes before one of the very old men on the rostrum staggered to his feet and joined in in one of the loudest voices Gannadius had ever heard. That shut up the three previous speakers, but then another very old man on the rostrum joined in, talking in a whispery croak that the remarkable acoustics made audible right back where Gannadius was sitting. Since he was making a savage personal attack on another council member (not the man he’d interrupted), being able to hear every word didn’t help Gannadius terribly much; it struck him as ironic that, thanks to the truly exceptional design of this magnificent building, he should be able to hear so much and understand so little.

  Just as he was on the point of drifting off into sleep, he heard his name mentioned and discovered that everybody in the place seemed to be looking at him. It was a terrifying moment, and at first he wasn’t able to get his legs working and stand up.

  ‘All I wanted to say,’ he announced, and his voice curled and echoed round the huge chamber like thunder reverberating in a canyon, ‘is that Alexius, former Patriarch of Perimadeia, is on Scona.’

  He blinked and looked round again. Everybody was still staring, and he couldn’t think of anything else to say. He forced himself, and went on.

  ‘The reason why I think this may be important,’ he said, ‘is this. I’ve known Alexius for many years, and I can’t imagine anything that’d make him go to Scona of his own free will. So my guess is that he was somehow induced to go there by someone in their government. Now then,’ he went on, gradually getting into his stride, ‘you’re wondering what the Bank of Scona wants with a seventy-five-year-old philosopher. That puzzled me too, until I remembered something I’d heard about the Loredan family.’

  He paused for effect; sure enough, the name Loredan had caught their attention. He took a deep breath and went on. ‘As you may know, the brother of Niessa and Gorgas Loredan lived in Perimadeia; in fact, it was Bardas Loredan who conducted the defence of the City against the plainspeople. I should mention in passing that, contrary to what you may have heard, he made a splendid job of it in the face of quite dreadful odds, not only the overwhelming numbers and determination of the enemy but the run-down state of the City defences and a criminal lack of co-operation from the City authorities. Before that, he learnt his trade as a soldier under the City’s most illustrious general, his uncle Maxen. Make no mistake: Bardas Loredan is a thoroughly accomplished and talented soldier, and I’d hate to be on the opposing side to him in a war.’

  Gannadius paused again, then continued, ‘Unfortunately, that might be about to happen. It’s common knowledge, on Scona and here, that Bardas Loredan fell out with his brother and sister many years ago and wants nothing more to do with them, even though he’s been living on Scona ever since the fall of the City. What you may not know is that one of Bardas’ few close friends in the old days was the Patriarch Alexius; and if anybody could reconcile Bardas Loredan to his sister, it’d be Alexius. I’m talking, of course, about ordinary persuasion, because I know that not all of you really believe in the rather abstruse metaphysical side effects of the workings of the Principle by which it’s supposedly possible to change the future and influence people’s actions. For what it’s worth, however, if you do believe in all that, then you’ll be interested to know that Alexius - and I, come to that - were involved in a strange and rather baffling sequence of events which we believe concerned Bardas Loredan and some sort of manipulation of the Principle, and Alexius was, let’s say, the main conduit of the Principle in all this. In any event, I put it to you that the prospect of Scona acquiring the services of a soldier of Bardas Loredan’s calibre ought to make you think long and hard before getting into any kind of military confrontation with them. I’m no student of warfare, the gods know, but even I can see that even without him, war with Scona could do us a lot of harm if we lose and not gain us anything much if we win. Bardas Loredan could make a bad situation much worse; so, as we used to say in the City, think on.’

  The silence that followed this speech was somewhat unnerving, enough to make Gannadius wish he’d expressed himself a little less flippantly (but they’d annoyed him; they’d been annoying him ever since he’d arrived, and he’d wanted to annoy them back). For a moment, Gannadius believed he’d made an utter fool of himself and that nobody was going to pay the slightest attention to what he’d said. But then someone stood up in the middle of the third row, and said that surely that settled it, on no condition should they send more men to Scona now that they had this new commander - obviously he was working for them, it explained how they’d managed to score two consecutive victories over the superior forces of the Foundation. Before he’d finished, someone else jumped up and said, on the contrary, that was precisely why Shastel should act now and with overwhelming force, to nip the threat in the bud before this new Loredan had time to retrain their whole army and make it invincible. Fairly soon, the magnificent acoustics of the chapter house were pounding Gannadius with monstrous waves of raised and querulous voices, each one crystal clear and marvellously audible. He closed his eyes, slouched back in his hard seat, and groaned.

  He was standing over her looking down, a puzzled expression on his face, as if he was trying to remember who she was. A slight twitch of the eyebrows; he’d remembered, and now he was trying to work out what she was doing here. Wherever here was.

  ‘It’s me,’ she tried to say, ‘Vetriz. You remember, we met in the City; first after that time you fought someone in the lawcourts and you weren’t expected to win, and we were sitting behind you in a tavern discussing the fight and saying all sorts of tactless things; and then we sort of kept bumping into each other, and when you were in charge of defending the City you and Venart had that deal with the rope . . .’ She could hear herself saying all that, and she knew perfectly well that the words weren’t getting out, for some reason.

  Because she was dead.

  I don’t like this dream. I think it’s horrid.

  ‘What makes you think it’s a dream?’ Without moving - she didn’t seem able to move - she looked the other way and saw the other Loredan brother, Gorgas; another familiar face, but not one that was welcome in her dreams. There had been the time when, quite uncharacteristically, she’d allowed herself to be picked up by this attractive but repulsive man, while her brother was away . . . And now here he was telling her she was dead. Go away.

  ‘I can’t,’ he replied with a grin. ‘I’m not here. And, strictly speaking, neither are you. This is just your dead body. You drowned.’

  Did I?

  Gorgas Loredan nodded. ‘Shipwreck,’ he said; and she realised that his brother Bardas didn’t seem to be aware of his presence. ‘You were sailing home after you completed your business here, and your brother misjudged the currents and got hit by a strong north-easterly squall. You were blown onto Ustel Point. You never had a chance, among those rocks at night. Hell of a way to go,’ he added sadly.

  But Venart’s a good navigator. Whatever else he may not be quite so good at, he can handle the ship. He’d never make a mistake like that.

  ‘Not left to himself, perhaps.’ Gorgas Loredan smiled sweetly. ‘But you’re not the only one who has strange dreams. And people are very vulnerable to suggestions when they’re asleep. Well-known fact, that.’

  Angrily, Vetriz tried to move. What she really wanted to do was give Gorgas Loredan a smack across the face he wouldn’t forget in a hurry, but she’d have settled for any kind of violent reproach. Unfortunately, nothing seemed to work; it was like being on the wrong side of a locked door.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Gorgas said, with a rather hateful grin, ‘I couldn’t do that sort of thing even if I wanted to. And I really have no idea why your brother’s usually flawless
navigation had such dire consequences on this occasion. I’ve only the vaguest idea how this stuff works.’

  Inside whatever part of her mind that was still functional, Vetriz felt something slide into place, like the tongue of a rusty lock. You’re a - what was that word Alexius used? - a natural. You can do that stuff that isn’t really magic but looks just like it.

  Gorgas nodded gravely. ‘In very general terms,’ he replied. ‘Truth to tell, I’m not convinced it’s really me at all; no, that’s putting it very badly. Let’s say the part of me that can do this is very much a minority, and a rather unpleasant and disruptive one at that. Whenever there’s a big issue and the whole of Me in convocation gathers together to decide on something, it’s the part that always gets voted down. If I were inclined to melodrama, which quite emphatically I’m not, I’d call it the devil in me, though that would also be hopelessly misleading - makes it sound like some external influence that somehow possesses me, and it’s nothing like that at all. But yes, there is a part of me that’s unnaturally attuned to the Principle to such an extent that it has this bizarre ability to exist for just a few seconds in the future as well as the present and the past. The only way I can explain it is that it’s some sort of compensation for all the time I have to spend in my own past, which isn’t a very nice place to be. Does that make any kind of sense to you?’

  I don’t know enough about it, to be honest.

  Gorgas sighed. ‘Nobody does, not even the experts. Not even your friend Alexius, who knows more about the Principle than anyone else living - I asked him. And, more to the point, I asked him again when he wasn’t looking.’

  You mean you invaded—

  ‘Invaded his thoughts?’ Gorgas shrugged his shoulders; meanwhile Bardas had walked away; he was a few yards further down the beach, examining what looked like another body, but she couldn’t see it very clearly - Gorgas’ leg was in the way. ‘You make me sound like some kind of metaphysical burglar. His view is that the Principle - hell, I couldn’t make head nor tail of what he was telling me, it was all far too technical, but he did say that the most useful comparison he knew was a cup of water standing on a table when a heavy ox-cart or a procession of soldiers goes by outside. You can’t see what’s making the table move ever so slightly, but the surface of the water in the cup ripples over and you can’t see your face in it any more. Alexius reckons that the Principle is the cart or the soldiers, and the cup is our minds, vaguely able to sense the existence of the Principle but unable to perceive it. I’d beg to differ; I think that the visions or whatever you call them that I get from time to time are moments when the traffic stops. I’d go further and say that the traffic only stops when it’s waiting for something - I get to see what I see when the Principle reaches moments where a thing could go one way or the other, but at that precise moment the course that the future will take hasn’t been decided, it’s a balance see-sawing backwards and forwards, and if I seize my chance and put my foot on one of the scales . . . But this is all pseudo-metaphysical trash. All I know is that one time, I saw Alexius seeing my brother fight in the lawcourts, and he tried to tip the scale against him, so I had to jump in and tip it the other way; and I have the feeling that, because I didn’t really have a clue what I was doing, I tipped the scale for a whole lot of other things as well, things I didn’t know about then, some of them I still don’t know about. Now am I making any sense?’

  About as much as you were before. But go on. If I’m dead I’m not in any hurry.

  ‘No, you aren’t, are you? Another strange thing,’ Gorgas went on, ‘is that in these strange and obscure visions I keep bumping into you. Remember?’

  Vividly.

  ‘Ah, well, it’s not deliberate, I assure you. So I tried to find out a bit more about you - with great success,’ he added with a smirk, ‘and the curious thing is, you’re such a commonplace, unremarkable little person, with absolutely nothing out of the ordinary about you at all.’

  Thank you.

  ‘You’re welcome. Now, all the other people I’ve met on these peculiar excursions of mine are what you might term remarkable people. There’s Alexius, of course, and my wretched and loathsome niece, and my sister - it was a shock meeting her, I can tell you, and she wasn’t best pleased. Bardas as well, though he doesn’t really belong, he just seems to get dragged in there, probably because of Niessa and me. And there’s clever Doctor Gannadius, who’s got far more insight and raw ability than Alexius, but not nearly as much intelligence, and just lately there’s a new one, a girl student in the Shastel Foundation; she’s a remarkable person all right, I’ve had a look at what she gets up to in the future and no doubt about it, she’s really mustard. But you - well, I’m puzzled. And now here you are, dead, and never achieved a thing in all your short and shallow life. It beats me.’

  I’m so sorry. Please may I wake up now?

  ‘Oh, why not?’ Gorgas said—

  —and she sat up, the blanket a confused tangle around her shoulders, and shouted, ‘Ven!’

  In the other bed across the room, her brother grunted and stirred. ‘Go ’sleep,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Ven, have you been dreaming?’ she asked anxiously. ‘Just now?’

  Venart propped himself up on one elbow. ‘What you talking about?’ he asked woozily.

  ‘Did you just have a dream with a bald man in it? Come on, it’s important.’

  ‘Dunno.’ Venart scrubbed at his face with his balled fists. ‘Can’t remember, never remember my dreams. Look, pack it in, will you, Triz? It’s the middle of the night.’

  Vetriz sighed. Her head was splitting. She got up and poured some water into a cup, drank it and got back into bed. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I had a nightmare or something.’

  ‘Too much blood sausage,’ Venart said wearily. ‘Doesn’t agree with you late at night, you should know that by now. Go back to sleep.’

  Vetriz lay back but she didn’t want to close her eyes. It was like those horrible sleepless times when she was a little girl, convinced that there was something under the bed or crouched behind the curtains. She was also angry, a little bit ashamed, worried. And she could no more go back to sleep than deliberately not think of a monkey.

  ‘Ven,’ she said.

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘Ven, when we sail back home, you will be careful, won’t you?’

  ‘No, I’ll deliberately run us aground on the first rock I come to, just for the hell of it. Definitely no more blood sausage for you, ever.’

  ‘All right,’ Vetriz said. ‘But you will be careful? Promise?’

  ‘Promise. Anything, just so long as you shut up and let me go to sleep.’

  She heard the straps of the mattress creak as he turned over, and soon he was making his distinctive soft-snoring noise. She closed her eyes and conjured up a mental image of doves pitching in a tall tree, which usually worked as a soporific. Dead, she thought. And I was there too, inside the dead body; what a repulsive notion. Except, I suppose, that’s what we all are, a living thing in a body. But commonplace and unremarkable - oh, why not? So much less trouble than being a remarkable person, surely. Much better to live a boringly contented life and then die.

  She tried to watch the doves gliding down with their wings back, then spreading them like sails to slow down as they turned into the wind and stepped out of the air onto the tree-branch; but the vision seemed to ripple, like the surface of a pond when you’ve just dropped a stone in it. Maybe if they set sail a day earlier, or later; but the vision hadn’t specified a particular day, had it? It was all very well trying to be cunning and circumventing the future she’d seen, but that was a storyteller’s cliché; if they left a day later, then that’s when the storm would be, not on the day they’d originally intended. So what if they stayed on Scona indefinitely? For the sake of argument, suppose they stayed here for the rest of their lives? For all she knew, that’d only trigger some other, nastier chain of circumstances that led to a far more unpleasant fate than drowning. Such as?
Well, spending her entire life on Scona, to name but one.

  Maybe (she thought drowsily) the whole thing was a fake, an image he’d put into her mind so as to stop her leaving. Why should he want to do that? Obvious reason? Not very probable. Some peculiar magical thing he was cooking up? No such thing as magic. No reason why he’d want anything from a commonplace and unremarkable person like herself. She began to doze, and gradually the doves began to drift cautiously back to the tree, put their wings back and pitch; and if she had any other dreams that night, she didn’t remember anything about them in the morning.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Family, muttered Gorgas Loredan to himself. Family’s what life’s all about, but at times it can be bloody aggravating. He wriggled his shoulder blades against the back of the hard stone bench and sighed.

  The door opened and a clerk came out, the tip of his nose just visible over the pile of brass document tubes cradled in his arms. ‘Hey, you,’ Gorgas called out. ‘What exactly is she doing in there?’

  The clerk stopped and turned towards him. ‘The Director’s in a meeting,’ said a thin, harassed voice from behind the stack of tubes. ‘She’ll let you know when she’s finished.’

  ‘Marvellous,’ Gorgas replied. ‘I come charging back from Penna because she’s got to see me urgently, life or death, and here I am taking root in the outer office as if I was some punter overdue on his payments. I’m supposed to be running a war—’

  The clerk didn’t say anything, just left, and after a minute or so Gorgas calmed down. He might be angry with his sister, but that was no reason to go bawling out clerks, something he wouldn’t have done if his back didn’t ache and his boots weren’t still sodden wet from fording a river in spate. He shook his head sadly at his own loss of control, then stretched out with his feet propped up on the far arm of the bench, stuffed his rolled-up coat under his head, and tried to relax. Apart from anything else, it didn’t pay to take an attitude in with you when you had a meeting with Niessa Loredan, no matter who you were.