by K. J. Parker
He tried to turn his thoughts back to the camp outside Penna. By rights he should be using this valuable and unexpected free time to analyse the situation and plot his next moves in quiet and peace, without the endless distractions of leadership and administration; but for him, it never quite worked like that. He couldn’t play chess, either. An abstract, two-dimensional view of the battlefield, with painted wooden blocks representing the various friendly and enemy units, contour lines for hills, green hatched squares for woods and grey ones for houses, emptied his mind in seconds, making him feel as if he was being asked to play a game whose rules he didn’t know; unlike his sister who, he suspected, saw the whole world as a chequer-board, used both for playing chess and calculating with counters. She would have made a fine general, he’d always assumed, except that he somehow couldn’t see her in the grey mud of a battlefield, stepping over dead men and huddling under the canopy of a burnt-out wagon for a little shelter from the rain to read despatches and scribble orders. No; as far as he was concerned, theirs was a good division of labour, given that in Niessa’s view, military involvement of any sort was evidence that she hadn’t handled things as well as she should have done. She despised fighting, and undoubtedly that coloured her opinion of him. But then, as far as she was concerned, hadn’t he always been a necessary, and now indispensable, evil?
The door opened, and instinctively Gorgas swung his legs off the bench and sat up straight, just as he’d done as a boy when his mother came into the room and caught him sprawling on the furniture. The two men who came out he recognised as Shastel diplomats, not the residents who lived on Scona but an actual delegation from the mainland. They looked as tired as he felt, and their coats and trousers were almost as damp and muddy - new proposals hastily despatched, no wonder she’d kept him waiting.
A clerk led them out, and a moment later Niessa appeared at the door and beckoned to him.
‘What was all that about?’ he asked.
Niessa smiled faintly, and quite suddenly her face changed, from the strong, confident expression he’d immediately recognised as her negotiations mask into a portrait of a middle-aged women with a headache who’s had quite enough for one day. Years ago, Gorgas remembered his grandmother telling them stories about the Nixies, who had the ability to change their shape and become whatever animal, bird or human they wanted to; Niessa had something of that ability, to such an extent that even after knowing her all his life, he’d still be hard put to it to describe her accurately if he was looking for her in a crowd.
‘Don’t ask me,’ she said. ‘It’s something to do with Foundation politics; and I’ve got so many of the faction bigwigs on the payroll that I’m practically running the place, and still I haven’t a clue what goes on there. Come in,’ she added, as if noticing his wet boots and grubby hands for the first time. ‘I think we could both do with cider toddy and pancakes.’
Gorgas suppressed a smile. His sister handled stress by eating and forcing food on others; good starchy peasant food and lots of it, with a hot drink to wash it down. He’d watched her grimly working her way through a stack of death warrants once, pen in one hand and a folded-over pancake in the other, and a little napkin tucked in her sleeve to make sure she didn’t get pan-grease on the parchment. He followed her into her office and slumped in the visitor’s chair while she rang for the clerk and gave him the catering order.
‘What they said,’ she continued, as she settled herself into her chair, ‘was that in return for us releasing Juifrez Bovert and the other lot you’ve got tied up at - what’s the name of the place?’
‘Penna.’
‘That’s it, Penna. If we let them go, they’ll formally recognise the existence of the Bank as a sovereign entity—’
‘That’s big of them,’ Gorgas interrupted. ‘They’re doing that already.’
‘—And officially allow the hectemores to remortgage with us,’ Niessa went on, ‘provided that we pay them commission on the remortgage advances, withdraw all our advisers on the mainland and restrict our activities to a strictly defined area.’ She sighed, and let her weight go forward on her elbows. ‘Well? What do you reckon to that?’
Gorgas thought for a moment. ‘Basically, it’s too good to be true,’ he said. ‘It’d be like surrendering their whole client base to us without a struggle. And the conditions are meaningless, because we both know we won’t honour them. I mean, we can’t.’
Niessa nodded thoughtfully. ‘It’s a faction thing,’ she said. ‘Faction B gets Chapter to agree to a military adventure that goes wrong. Faction A makes Faction B look bad by blowing the military situation up out of all proportion and then saying that only desperate measures will save them from the consequence of Faction B’s blunder. Then, as soon as Faction A’s got the upper hand, they tear up the accords and launch their own adventure, hoping that they’ll pull it off. That’s the really annoying thing about these people,’ she added, a harsh and asymmetric scowl suddenly creasing her face, ‘they make us fight a war, but winning or losing it isn’t what they’re interested in, the war’s just another arena where the factions can beat up on each other. How in the gods’ names am I meant to plan a war when I don’t know what the other side wants out of it?’
Gorgas grinned. ‘It’s just as well that they always lose,’ he said.
‘That’s beside the point,’ Niessa answered angrily. ‘They can afford to keep fighting and lose. We can’t afford to keep fighting and win. Every time we smash up one of their expeditions, it costs me money and people I can’t afford. How can I run a business that way? It’s not as if I can gather up all the dead halberdiers and sell them. And I can’t settle it, because the only way it’ll ever settle is if we go away and never come back.’
‘Or if we take Shastel,’ Gorgas interrupted quietly. ‘Ever thought of that?’
Niessa gave him a contemptuous look. ‘Don’t be stupid, Gorgas. Who do you think we are, the City? We’ve got hundreds of men, they’ve got thousands. The only reason we’re still here is because they don’t like getting in boats. And,’ she added bitterly, ‘because the war’s so useful to them. We’re a godsend to the factions. Besides,’ she said, in a colder, harder voice, ‘I can’t afford the war as it is now, let alone going on the offensive. A victory like that would ruin us.’
Gorgas smiled pleasantly. ‘It doesn’t have to be expensive,’ he murmured. ‘Perimadeia didn’t cost us a quarter.’
‘That was different,’ Niessa replied. ‘That was a wonderful stroke of luck. As far as I know, there’s no horde of savages planning to sweep down out of the mountains and besiege Shastel. Which is one thing we can be thankful for,’ she added.
‘All right,’ Gorgas said. ‘But let’s look at what we have got. We’ve got a fat, lazy standing army run by a bunch of idiots who spend their lives reading books and playing politics. We’ve got thousands of peasants who pay for all this fun, and who’re never going to do anything about it because they simply haven’t got the imagination. And right now, we’ve got at least one faction, probably two, in pretty desperate trouble because of sixty or so halberdiers cooped up in a village surrounded by our troops. Does that suggest anything to you?’
Niessa shrugged. ‘You’re saying we should deal directly with the factions who sent the raiding party, agree to let them go on favourable terms in exchange for some real concessions. That puts them in the ascendant, the infighting steps up a gear or two and we’re controlling the winning party.’ She shook her head. ‘Won’t work. As soon as they’ve got what they want, they won’t owe us anything. It’ll be business as usual within a month.’
Gorgas shook his head. ‘You’re missing the point,’ he said. ‘What if we executed all the prisoners, publicly and with maximum prejudice, so as to do as much damage as possible to the factions that sent them? You know, bodies on gibbets and the heads of two Poor-family members on spikes on the Strangers’ Quay, where everybody can see them. Those factions’ll be so desperate they won’t know what to do, they’l
l be finished. That’s when we start negotiations: you open the gates to us one dark and stormy night, we’ll sort out your enemies and hand you back your precious Foundation to play with however you want to, just so long as we can post a discreet and well-behaved garrison where it’ll be on hand to look after you - your benefit as much as ours, we’ll say. And of course, they can pay for it, too; quietly and via the second set of books. And that way everybody wins, or thinks they do.’ He paused and tried to read his sister’s face. ‘What do you reckon?’
The door opened and a clerk brought in a tray with the cider and pancakes. ‘About time,’ Niessa said. ‘All right, put them down on the table.’ She stood up and started spooning honey over the pancakes and folding them neatly. The clerk left quickly.
‘Well?’ Gorgas said.
‘Supposing we try it,’ his sister replied, ‘and it doesn’t work. They kill or capture our soldiers, our factions are condemned as traitors and they immediately mount a proper invasion. They could hire ships from the Island or the pirates - they could have done it years ago, but they don’t want to, like I just told you. That’d be the end of everything, finish.’
‘True,’ Gorgas conceded. ‘But I wasn’t planning on losing.’
‘All right,’ Niessa replied with her mouth full. ‘Suppose it works. And, for a while, we have a garrison in Shastel and tell them how to run their country. What for? How’s that supposed to help us? It’s bad enough having to govern this island without taking over the running of a full-sized country.’
‘And their revenues,’ Gorgas pointed out.
Niessa shook her head. ‘Hopeless,’ she said. ‘You may not know this, but taxes aren’t for the government to spend as they please, they’ve got to pay for running the country; which is what you have to put up with if you’re a government. We aren’t a government, we’re a business, and you’d do well to remember that. Oh, sure enough, we could skim off ten, even fifteen per cent of the gross, but I doubt if we’d break even. No, what you’re suggesting would have us bankrupt inside a year.’ She swallowed her mouthful and drank some cider, which burnt her tongue. ‘If you want to be a king, Gorgas, you go and find yourself somewhere you can amuse yourself at your own expense. You’re letting the Perimadeia business go to your head, that’s your trouble. Sacking cities is a rich man’s hobby. I suggest you remember your station in life and act accordingly.’
Gorgas nodded slowly. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said. ‘So, you didn’t drag me back here to ask my advice. What do you want?’
‘It’s Bardas,’ she replied, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. ‘You obviously haven’t thought of this, but if I was in their position, I know exactly what I’d do. I’d send twenty men - good men, professionals - to bundle him onto a boat and take him to Shastel, trade him for the hostages. So; I want him brought back here where we can look after him, like we should have done in the first place. I didn’t send you to the City to indulge your taste for damaging things so he could go mooning about in the hills playing bows and arrows. He’s our brother and he’s a security risk, and it’s high time we sorted things out. I’ve got that priest friend of his here, so that ought to be all right. All I need is for you to do as you’re told for once and get him here. Do you think you can manage that, or would you rather I sent someone else?’
Gorgas looked at her for a long time, then chuckled insultingly. ‘Mother Hen,’ he said. ‘You can’t resist being mother, can you?’
For a moment he thought he might have gone too far; not that he’d have cared particularly much if he had, at that precise moment. But Niessa just looked at him. ‘That reminds me,’ she said. ‘You told me you’d deal with that stupid daughter of mine, and you haven’t. Gorgas, it’s embarrassing, having my only child locked up in the city jail. I know she’s difficult, but you’ll just have to make an effort. You can go and see her before you go back to your war.’
The boy put down the drawknife and watched.
Bardas Loredan was working a bow on the tiller. He’d made quite a sophisticated tillering bench: a three-foot section of oak gatepost bolted to a heavy sawhorse, with a winch on one end and a slot cut in the other for the bow-handle, with clamps to hold it firm. The body of the oak post was polished smooth and precisely calibrated in half-inches.
‘You’d do well to watch,’ Loredan said without looking up. ‘This is the only skilful part in the whole process; the rest is just basic carpentry, with some black magic thrown in to impress the customers.’
The boy sat down on a log and folded his arms. ‘I’m watching,’ he said.
‘Right.’ Loredan unwound the winch. ‘You start off with the roughed-out stave, which is just a slice of tree cut down to look like a bow, but it goes without saying, that doesn’t mean a thing. I mean, sitting there in an apron with the drawknife by your side and sawdust in your hair, you look like you know what you’re doing.’
The boy didn’t bother to rise to that one. Loredan brushed a few shavings off the tiller-post and went on. ‘Tillering,’ he said, ‘is the art of teaching a bow to bend. The difference between a stick and a bow is, if you bend a stick it either breaks or distorts and stays bent. You bend a bow, it flexes and then reverts to its own proper shape, and with enough power to drive an arrow through sixteen-gauge steel two hundred yards away. Big difference?’
‘Big difference.’
‘I’m glad you’re following.’ He started to wind up the winch handle. ‘Now, to tiller a bow you loop a string nice and loose round both ends of your whittled stick, and you draw it up on the winch, bending the bow just half an inch or an inch at a time, and gently let it go, then again and again - fifty times per inch, minimum. Seventy-five’s better. That way it learns to bend; the outside, what we call the back, learns to stretch, and the inside, the belly, learns to be compressed; and it’s the combination of that stretching and compression that creates the power. Try and bend a stave into a semicircle, and you’ll get two bits of broken stick; the stretch will tear the fibres in the back apart, and the compression will crush and rupture the wood of the belly. Bend a bow, a thousand-times-flexed stick, and you get a weapon that can kill any living thing in the world.’ He grinned, and wiped his forehead. ‘Little bits of torture, over and over again, and just when the wood thinks it can’t take any more you draw it back an extra half-inch, increasing the tension and the compression; and the bow finds it can take it after all, and now it’s that little bit stronger and more powerful, until suddenly you realise you’re there and you can draw the bow the length of the arrow. That’s tillering.’
‘Little bits of torture,’ the boy repeated. ‘That’s a funny way of putting it.’
Loredan shrugged. ‘That’s what you’re doing,’ he said. ‘You’re teaching the bow to be unnatural, after all. Its nature is to break, or give up and take a set; but you’ve got to teach it, by stretching and crushing, to do something it would never have been able to do if it’d just been left to stand around in one place and grow leaves.’ He grinned. ‘Someone once told me to think of it as driving the bow mad; torturing it, he said - I guess that’s where I got the word from - so as to make it violent; not passive, not weak, not natural, but full of violence.’ He carried on turning the winch, slowly drawing up the bow, unwinding, letting it relax, like a patient executioner with a man on the rack. ‘Sounded pretty melodramatic to me when I was your age, but there’s a sort of point there, I think.’
‘So you keep winding it up and winding it out again,’ the boy said. ‘Is that it?’
Loredan shook his head. ‘Rather more to it than that,’ he said. ‘When you’re making a bow, you want it to bend evenly in both limbs, not just at the tips but all the way down, in proportion, so when you draw it the bow comes compass.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Depends,’ Loredan said. ‘Some bows should be a perfect semicircle when you draw them; others want to be more square, so that the wood a foot up from the handle on both limbs scarcely bends at all. So, when
you’re tillering you keep an eye on the curve, and if one limb bends less than the other you scrape a little wood away in the right place until it matches the other limb. That’s the difficult part.’
‘Ah,’ the boy said, and for about an hour he sat and watched as Loredan worked, turning and relaxing the winch over and over again, occasionally stopping, locking the winch and leaning over the bow to scrape off a few shavings with a sharp knife held at a right angle to the wood. As he watched, he could see what Loredan had been talking about; at some point the stick had stopped being a stick and had become something quite different.
‘Of course,’ Loredan went on, his eyes fixed on his work, ‘there comes a point when it won’t bend any further, it’ll just snap; and just before that point, it’s finished and ready to shoot. Ironic, I guess; when it’s at its most fragile, where just that bit more tension and compression will break it in half, that’s when it’s at its most powerful, when it can reach furthest and hardest. That’s the time when the fibres in the belly are crushed up so tight they simply won’t go any further; we call that stacking. Generally the back will stretch further than the belly will compress, because we glue hide or sinew to the back to keep it together. In the very finest bows, we glue horn on the belly, because that’ll take more compression before it collapses.’ He rested for a moment and straightened his back. ‘That’s why the best bows are made out of bits of dead animal,’ he said. ‘Animals bend and squash much better than trees. When they’re dead, of course.’
Well, quite, he thought suddenly. And we’re the back and the belly of the bow. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘you come and take a turn on the winch. I want to study the profile.’
The bow was just reaching that stage he’d mentioned, the point where it stopped being an abused piece of lumber and became a weapon. Loredan watched as the two limbs, upper and lower, bent together to the same profile under the same stress, creeping nearer and nearer to the moment where mechanical advantage became breaking strain. Vital that the two limbs be as like each other as possible, as similar as two brothers, both experiencing the same force applied equally to each of them, both withstanding the same stretching and crushing in the same way, storing the torture and turning it into violence, as the bee turns pollen into honey.
