by K. J. Parker
'Can I go to sleep now?' he asked.
'I suppose so,' Copis replied. 'If you insist. It's just that it gets very boring, driving this cart for hours at a time with nobody to talk to.'
He smiled. 'Tough,' he said, and closed his eyes, only to find that he couldn't get to sleep after all. He opened them again, and saw a man sitting beside the road about a hundred yards away, apparently doing something to a small wagon.
'We ought to stop and help, really,' Copis said. 'Tradition of the road, and all that.'
'All right,' Poldarn replied. 'Do you know anything about mending broken carts?'
'No.'
When they got close enough to be able to see what he was doing, however, it became apparent that he had the problem well in hand. The offside shaft was broken, so he'd taken out the horse and raised the yoke on a little cairn of stones so as to take the weight off the broken part, and now he was wrapping something round it to hold it together.
'That won't work, surely,' Poldarn said.
'Ah.' Copis nodded toward a bucket of water standing next to the front nearside wheel. 'You see that?' she said. 'What he's done is, he's got some strips of rawhide from somewhere, soaked them for a few hours in the water, and now he's wrapping them round the break. As the rawhide dries out, it shrinks a whole lot and tightens itself round the snapped timbers. When I was a girl, my dad used to mend broken hammer handles and things that way. Works like a charm.'
Poldarn was impressed. 'You know all sorts of things, don't you?'
'Oh yes,' she said. 'No shortage of information. None of it any use, but all good stuff.'
Even though the man didn't seem to need any help, they stopped and asked anyway. The man assured them that he was fine, he'd be on his way by morning; meanwhile, he had something to eat and a nice wagon to sleep under in case it rained. Then he looked hard at Poldarn.
'I know you,' he said.
Poldarn felt as if he'd just been punched in the stomach. 'Do you?'
'Never forget a face,' the man said. 'It was at an inn somewhere-either Josequin or Mael, can't remember which. We spent the evening playing dominoes. I won twelve quarters.'
Poldarn took a deep breath. 'All right,' he said. 'Tell me everything you know about me.'
'That's easy,' the man replied, with a slightly bewildered grin. 'You're a rotten dominoes player. That's about it.'
'What do you mean, that's it?'
'That's it.'
Before he realised what he was doing, Poldarn had vaulted off the cart, grabbed the man's throat with both hands and slammed him back hard against the wheel of his wagon. 'What else do you know about me?' he said, tight-lipped. 'Come on, this is important.'
'Really,' the man said, gasping for breath, 'that's all. We were staying at the same inn, I asked if you wanted to play, you said yes. Look, if it's the money that's bothering you-'
Poldarn shook his head. 'I couldn't give a damn about it,' he said. 'Try and remember. Anything at all.'
'All right. Just stop throttling me, will you?'
Poldarn relaxed, a little. 'Well?'
'I don't know. What sort of thing do you want me to tell you about?'
'Anything,' Poldarn yelled. 'Any bloody thing at all. I've lost my memory; I got bashed on the head, and now I haven't got a clue who I am or where I live or anything. So if we've met before…'
The man shook his head. 'God's honest truth,' he croaked, 'all I can remember is playing the game. I think you were dressed pretty much like you are now.'
Poldarn nodded. 'These were the clothes I was wearing when I came round,' he said, 'after I got bashed. What else?'
'Really, that's all. Well, apart from the fact that you had twelve quarters on you. I guess that says something about you. Now let go, for God's sake, before you choke me.'
Reluctantly, Poldarn relaxed his grip. The man stepped away from him to one side and rubbed his throat. 'All right,' Poldarn said. 'At least try and remember where it was. Who knows, maybe they'd remember me there.'
'I told you, I-' The man took another step away. 'Hold on, though,' he said. 'It was the Patience Rewarded, in Josequin. That's right, I remember now; it was fair week, and we'd both turned up late so they shoved us in the annexe, along with the stable boys and the like. I complained about having to pay full price just to sleep in the tack room. You told me to be grateful for that, since it gets so busy in town when the fair's on. And that was when I suggested the game.' He screwed up his forehead, as if he was trying to lift an anvil with his eyebrows. 'We played four games, I won all four, and then you didn't want to play any more. So I curled up on my blanket and went to sleep, and when I woke up the next morning you'd gone. And that's it, I swear to God. Nothing else.'
Poldarn stared at him. 'That's it?'
'I just said so, didn't I?'
'All right, all right. Come on then, who do you think I am? What do I do for a living, where do I come from, what sort of accent do I have? Anything at all is better than nothing.'
The man thought for a moment. 'Can't place the accent at all,' he said. 'But around Josequin you hear all kinds of accents; it's not something you worry about. If I had to guess, I'd say you were a southerner, probably from across the bay, like your-hell, I was about to say your wife here, but presumably she isn't.'
'Just someone I met on the road,' Poldarn said. Copis, who was getting more and more impatient, looked daggers at him for saying that, but didn't interrupt. 'So what line of work am I in? Come on, you should be able to make a good guess at that.'
He shrugged. 'Probably something involving travel, because you seemed to be an old hand at staying at inns, like I am, and I'm a courier by trade, though I don't think you are.' He closed his eyes. 'I'm trying to see if I can remember whether you had a horse or whether you were walking,' he said. 'No joy, though. If I've really got a hazard a guess, I'd say you're either something to do with the military or a government type of some sort. But that's reaching, it really is; more to do with your manner than anything else, if you get my meaning.'
Poldarn thought about that, then laughed bitterly. 'You mean I push people around when I want something? Maybe; but I think the circumstances-'
'Oh, sure. In your shoes, maybe I'd react the same way, I really couldn't tell you. It's the next best thing to impossible to imagine something like that.'
Poldarn breathed out slowly. 'The Patience Rewarded, you said.'
'That's right. It's near the Westgate, just before you get to the-'
'I know where it is,' Copis interrupted. 'Talking of which, we've got to get going if we want to be there before dark.' She was starting to get very twitchy, and Poldarn could see why, but the damage was done now. 'Thank you,' he mumbled. 'And I'm sorry-'
The man shook his head. 'That's all right,' he said. 'I guess you're entitled, at that. Best of luck finding out. Try the Patience; could be that you stay there all the time, and they know all about you. They're a good enough crowd there, at any rate.'
Leaving him and going on their way was almost painful, as if he'd lost his child at the fair and was going home without him. At least Copis had the sense not to give him a hard time about the security breach, more tact than he'd given her credit for.
'So how far away is Josequin?' he asked, trying not to sound desperate.
'From here? Oh, we should be there before dark.' She plied the switch to get the horses moving a little faster. He was grateful to her for that.
'Josequin Fair?' he asked, more to distract himself than because he wanted to know. 'Sounds big and important.'
'It is,' she replied, and she managed to keep talking about it for a long time, telling him far more about it than anybody could ever want to know. She was still explaining a couple of hours later, when they saw the smoke.
At first he thought it was just low cloud (or mist, though not heat-haze this time), but it was the wrong shape and colour; it moved differently in the wind. After a while they could smell it. Neither of them said a word. There wasn't really anything to say.
They came over the crest of a small hill, more or less the only bit of high ground they'd encountered all day. From the top they had a fine view down over a dead level plain. Josequin lay in the middle of it.
From where the city should have been there rose the smoke of countless fires; long past the stage where the flames swell up into the sky and the smoke is thick and black, more likely it was the smoke from the really hot embers, still glowing two or even three days later.
'You said I had business there,' Poldarn murmured.
'Yes,' Copis replied. 'I did say that.' She was gazing at the mess, her eyes very round. 'It was just something to say, that was all. I didn't mean anything by it.'
'No,' he said. 'I don't suppose you did.'
Chapter Five
The bonecarver's stall had some new lines: bone and stagshorn spoons as well as the usual horn offerings, bone-handled penknives, tiny bottles with no obvious uses whatsoever, a few shoe buckles, a beautiful chess set, exactly the sort of thing every visitor to Weal Bohec was expected to take home with him as a souvenir. The offcomer nudged his way good-humouredly to the front and asked to see a pair of calipers.
'Lovely work, though I say so myself,' yawned the stallholder. 'Solid brass hinge and legs and look, there's a calibrated scale engraved just here.'
'My word,' said the offcomer, impressed. 'Calibrated in what?'
The stallholder looked puzzled. 'How d'you mean?' he said.
'What's it calibrated in? We use different weights and measures where I come from, you see. As do most of the places I go. What's the scale on this?'
The stallholder shrugged his round shoulders. 'Nothing in particular,' he said. 'I just put in some marks, to be helpful.
'They're all exactly the same distance apart,' he added reassuringly.
The offcomer nodded. 'I'm sure they are,' he said. 'But what distance would that be? Local standard? Guild standard? Or just something you made up out of your head?'
'Look,' the stallholder said, 'do you want to buy them or not? Because I've got customers waiting.'
The offcomer looked round, then turned back. 'I'll think about it,' he said. 'Thank you so much.'
The stallholder grunted, put the calipers back in their proper place on the velvet roll, and turned his attention elsewhere. When he next looked in that direction, the offcomer was gone. He didn't notice.
Four stalls down, the shoemaker was doing good business with a range of cheap wooden patens. It wasn't a local timber, the offcomer noticed; most likely they'd come as ballast on one of the big grain freighters from the other side of the bay. Stuff like that always went down well in Weal Bohec, where people were so careful with their money that they'd rather buy a rough, splintery piece of wood with a leather strap round it that didn't fit for one and a half bits than pay two and a half for a pair of tailored leather shoes. As a result, quality goods were always cheap here because of the lack of demand. The offcomer particularly liked the look of a pair of tooled pigskin riding boots, Guild manufacture, with double-stitched seams and silver hobnails. Five silvers across the bay, three and a half here. He wondered why the Guild tolerated this place.
'I'll think about it,' he said automatically, as the shoemaker urged him to try them on.
'Won't take you a minute,' the shoemaker urged him. 'Go on, best quality. Imported. They may not be here when you come back.'
The offcomer smiled. 'I'll risk it, thanks,' he said. 'I'll only be gone a moment.'
'A lot can happen in a moment.'
'Very true.' He smiled and raised his hand, in the universal gesture of polite refusal. The shoemaker's face fell.
'You want me to put them under the counter for you?' he said. 'So I won't go selling them to someone else by mistake?'
The offcomer shook his head. 'That'd be restraint of trade,' he replied. 'They cut your ears off for that where I come from.'
That was a lie, of course. The offcomer had been born in a little village, miles away from the nearest Guild town. But it was enough to shut up the shoemaker, who went back to selling patens. Just in time.
Across the way from the row of stalls were the main steps leading up to the exchange, the most grandiose and impressive building in Weal Bohec. A few people were coming down the steps already, traders and traders' scouts, hurrying ahead with the hot news from the morning session. The offcomer took a step back and watched them. There were a few boys, glad to be out in the fresh air after a morning crouched on the peg stools of the exchange; a couple of middle-aged characters wearing house livery with the unmistakable air of generic henchmen; a few elderly runners who'd been doing the same work for forty years. There was always plenty of bustle around the exchange, promoting the idea, almost unique to Weal Bohec, that business is something that can only be done in a state of mild hysteria.
After the first hurtling outriders came the Serious Men. The idea was that the more Serious you were, the longer it took you to leave the hall, since all the real transactions were carried out in the corridors and courtyards after the meeting itself had ended. The slow walk of a Serious trader making his way from the chapter house to the front gate was one of the great sights of Weal Bohec, a magnificent exhibition of the art of walking as slowly as humanly possible without actually stopping. Conventionally, a Serious Man wouldn't dream of covering the distance in less time than it takes to chop down a fifteen-year-old ash tree with a small hand-axe. Truly Serious men, such as the legendary Gransenier Astel Voche, or Huon Tage, six times president of the chapter, had been known to leave the chapterhouse at noon and not get outside until dusk without ever coming to an actual full stop.
The offcomer knew all of this, of course, so he leaned up against a pillar of the Portico of Probity and Diligence, made sure that he had a clear view of the gateway, took an apple from his sleeve and started to crunch. He ate slowly, savouring the rare and expensive flavour of a genuine Bohec Sweet Pippin, a variety carefully nurtured and interfered with over centuries to make it taste more like a peach than an apple; in other cities, when they wanted peaches they ate peaches, but that was never the Weal Bohec way. From time to time he had to dab the rather overabundant juice off his chin with his sleeve.
He was just worrying the last few fibres of edible flesh off the core when the first Serious Men sauntered out from between the worn, anthropomorphic pillars of the gateway (traditionally, they were supposed to represent Prosperity and prudence, but since their faces had been worn away centuries ago by itinerant shoe repairers sharpening their knives on them it wasn't possible to be certain any more). The offcomer spared them a glance, but as he'd expected his man wasn't one of them. He took a last nibble at the remains of his apple, folded it in a handkerchief (the Bohec city statutes prescribed savage fines for a man of quality who wilfully littered the streets, though of course these rules didn't apply to the lower orders, who couldn't be expected to obey them) and tucked it in his pocket. It was pleasant in the shade after a morning in the sun, and the justly famous aftertaste of the apple was well worth savouring.
In the event, he was looking the other way when his man finally came out, an uncharacteristic piece of carelessness that he could only attribute to the extreme comfort of his surroundings. It was the flash of the silver lining of the man's gown as he pushed back his sleeve that caught the offcomer's eye-a brief, subliminal moment of information that he absorbed unconsciously, the way a circling hawk notices the first, tiniest movement of his prey on the ground below. He pushed himself away from the pillar with his elbows and sauntered across the street on an interception course, delicately plotted so that he'd carelessly blunder into his man just before he turned the corner.
The man was deep in some complicated discussion with another, almost equally Serious trader; they were walking arm in arm like an old married couple (it was a tradition that tended to disconcert offcomers until they found out it was quite normal and simply indicated trust), and both men's bodyguards were holding back a respectful three paces or so. Bodyg
uards were only for show in Weal Bohec, of course; one wore them in the same way that one wore a jewelled and enamelled sword or a lovely but useless wafer-thin gold breastplate. Cheapskates' bodyguards were often just their clerks dressed up in fancy padded gambesons, but Serious Men hired serious thugs simply as an exercise in the art of wasting money gracefully.
The offcomer knew exactly what he was doing. The moment of collision gave him just enough time to grab his man's sleeve with his right hand, as if stopping himself from going off balance and falling over, while the fingers of his left hand drew back the hem of his robe and the thumb located the hilt of his sword, twisted round in the sash so as to be unobtrusively hidden under his armpit without showing through the line of his coat. While he was graciously apologising to his man for his clumsiness, he was letting go of the mark's lapel with his right hand, while his left thumb had found the guard of the sword and was easing it half an inch out of the tight mouth of the scabbard. At the precise moment that his man opened his mouth to say that it was an accident, perfectly all right, his left fingers tightened round the scabbard throat and gave the little sideways twist that brought the hilt to exactly the right angle for the best draw, and his right hand swooped, a perfect, totally economical gesture. He drew his knuckles down the hilt like a man stroking his lover's cheek until his little finger encountered the guard. Then he flipped his hand over, wrapped his fingers round the hilt, and drew.
Moments make up everything, the way potsherds and bits of broken glass make up a mosaic, but the draw is the supreme moment, the one piece of the mosaic that incorporates the whole pattern, the ultimate fraction. In religion, the perfect draw doesn't even happen. There is no interval between the sword's quiet slumber in the scabbard and the start of the cutting process. In practice, of course, there has to be a moment, and a moment is a thing susceptible of quantification, capable of being measured with a pair of calipers. There has to be a moment between peace and violence, between one version of history and another, a piece of time in which the thing could go either way. The knack is to make it as small as possible.
