by K. J. Parker
'Yes,' Monach replied.
'Really? You sound like a choir novice admitting he's been stealing apples.' He poured a deep pool of wax on to the bottom of the page, then took his seal from a small wooden box on the desk and rested it gently on the meniscus. Monach had seen the print of the abbot's seal on decrees and title deeds-two ravens on either side of a drawn sword, surrounded by a circle-but not the seal itself. It was reckoned to be a thousand years old. 'Now then,' he said, 'any questions? No? That's good. I'll see to recalling the sword-monks. You go and get ready. Four hours, remember, you haven't got much time.'
'No,' Monach said, more to himself than the abbot. 'Thank you,' he added, taking the letter as if he expected it to climb up his arm and bite out his throat. He tried to think of something appropriate to say, but all he could think of was, 'I'll do my best.'
The abbot frowned. 'Your best had bloody well better be good enough,' he said. 'You do realise that you're about to take the life of the cleverest, most skilful tactician the empire's produced in two centuries. This isn't going to be an easy job, and to be brutally honest with you, if anybody else could do it, I wouldn't be sending you.' He sighed. 'I read your report about the Poldarn impersonators,' he went on. 'I'd have rather more confidence in your abilities if you hadn't got that completely the wrong way round.'
Monach's breath caught in his throat and for a moment he couldn't breathe. 'Oh,' he said. 'I mean, I'm very sorry. What did I…?'
'Your research,' the abbot replied. 'Sloppy. Obviously, all you did was look up Poldarn in the Concordance; you didn't go back to the primary sources and see what the Concordance left out. Bad scholarship,' he said. 'I take the view that a man who can't be bothered to look up a reference when he's sitting comfortably on his backside in a nice warm library is hardly likely to pay proper attention to detail when he's out in the field.' He shook his head. 'For your information, if you'd taken the trouble to go back to the Morevish texts, you'd have known that one of the most important things about the second coming of Poldarn is that when he arrives, he won't actually know who he is, or that he's a god at all, until most of his work's been done. It's actually the key to the whole allegory, which is why it appealed so much to the later Mannerists.' The abbot picked up a ruler, flicked it over with his fingertips. 'You were going around looking for someone in a cart calling himself Poldarn. Anybody using the name Poldarn couldn't possibly be Poldarn, because Poldarn doesn't know that's who he is. A valiant effort on your part, but completely worthless.'
Chapter Seventeen
Vague images, changing too quickly to be meaningful, leaving only impressions, like the flashes of colour behind your eyelids when you've looked directly at the sun. Early memories, formed before he'd had the words to shape them with: lying on his back in a basket as the sky and the horizon flickered around him, feeling frightened by the jostling, wondering why his mother was running; lying in a dark place with his mother's hand clamped over his mouth, trying to pull her fingers away; a man's face directly overhead, so big that his nose and mouth and moustache seemed to fill the world, and the instinctive knowledge that something was wrong; some years later-he was standing, looking down-being shown a long rectangle of newly turned earth that looked like a freshly dug flowerbed and wondering why they'd planted his mother in the ground. Then another early one: sitting up in a cot or something of the sort, waving his hands to try and scare off the big, cruel-looking black bird that was perched on the side rail, examining him with round black empty eyes. Vague images, but for once he knew that he was there, that the eyes he was watching through had been his own: a three-legged cat crossing a paved yard, an old man with a white beard pointing at the sky, an endless journey over bumpy roads in a cart He woke up and opened his eyes. It was dark. He was lying on his back, just as he had been in the dream (already very nearly drained away; a few pictures clinging to his mind like limpets on a rock, but meaningless without context), and he could hear somebody breathing in the room with him.
Then he remembered. The woman lying beside him was Copis, of course, and there was nothing sinister or bad about her being there; arguably, quite the opposite, or so it had seemed at the time. Now she was lying on her left side, one arm underneath her (how can anybody sleep like that? It must be really uncomfortable), not snoring exactly, but making a gentle snuffling noise every time she breathed in-not loud at all, but once noticed, impossible to ignore. He lay still for some time, listening for the little noise, counting out the interval between. Her hair smelt like rainwater.
He closed his eyes, made a conscious effort not to listen for the noise, which was naturally self-defeating. Did this feel natural, he wondered, sharing a bed with someone? It must be something you learned how to do, the knack of keeping to your own space, like the knack of not rolling off the edge and landing on the floor. If he'd learned the knack, did he have a wife somewhere, or had he had one once? He concentrated, fishing in the dark for a face. There wasn't anything there, needless to say; the dream was long gone, and even Copis, the only woman he knew now, was hard to call deliberately to mind, so that he had to build up her face out of composite memories, eyes and nose, contours of cheeks, the radius of her forehead, the faint lines at the sides of her mouth. It occurred to him that when they'd both slept in the cart she hadn't made the snuffling noise (but they'd never slept together in a bed, so perhaps she only did it when she had a mattress and pillows, or when she was making space for someone else in a bed). He let his thoughts stray, and after a while he found himself looking for something that wasn't there, a curved line that should have been visible in the air, a circle.
If he had to lie awake thinking, he told himself, it'd be a better use of the time to consider the implications of all this, the effect it must inevitably have on the way he approached the future. He was fairly certain that he wasn't in love with Copis, and that she wasn't in love with him. Love wasn't an issue here, nor was passion or pleasure or even affection. He considered the term companionship, but rejected that, too. Association (what language was he thinking in? He had no idea) was closer to the mark; there was a distinctly businesslike feel to this relationship, something to do with a contract or agreement sealed with some formal sign of utmost good faith, required precisely because neither of them trusted the other. Then there was obligation, as if they were the last two of their kind left in the world, making a mating necessary. Still no affection, unless perhaps it was the instinctive bond between two soldiers who meet for the first time on the battlefield, as they stand next to each other in a hastily formed line or square after a desperate retreat has been halted and turned into a last attempt to hold back the enemy; arguably nothing more than a common purpose, a shared and expedient need for help and support in the face of a danger that can't be dealt with alone. Comrade-in-arms, joint venturer, ally in adversity, fellow creature, joined by a shared need but still just outside the circle, or touching it without breaking through; such delicate geometry, and all done instinctively, in their sleep.
He was beginning to get cramp in his left leg, and needed to shift. He couldn't think of how to move without disturbing her, not consciously and deliberately, executing a move like a fencer or a wrestler. That thought hung in his mind for a moment, and somehow turned into the shadow of a memory, of something learned so hard, so grimly that it was no longer his to lose. Only the finest master can match the skill of the novice; whatever that was supposed to mean. He gave it some thought; was it something to do with the notion that before you learn how to do something in the correct, approved manner you do it instinctively, without thinking, and that the essence of skill is to recapture that instinctiveness through endless practice and perfection of technique? Quite possibly, though what that had to do with turning over in bed he wasn't really sure.
He opened his eyes again, and this time they were used to the darkness, and he could make out the shapes of the room, the graduations of depth of shadow. This was the upstairs room in Copis' house (Copis' house, paid for with his
lump of gold; who the lump of gold really belonged to was neither here nor there). They'd come here because it was raining; they'd gone to look at a cart, of all things, which Copis was interested in buying, she protesting that she didn't really know about carts and needed an expert opinion. It had turned out to be a wreck, the ghost of a cart, some scraps of plank and corroded steel strip held together by the memory of once having been a cart… Copis reckoned it could be fixed, and it'd be cheaper to buy an old dog and do it up as and when she had some money. It had taken him a long time over a quart jug of nasty red wine in a tavern to show her the error of her ways, and by then it was pitch dark and the rain was coming down sideways, hard enough to forge iron, and the Falx house was on the other side of town, whereas Copis' place was just round the corner. Then, properly speaking, she'd seduced him… but with a gravity and seriousness of manner and purpose that made him think of a craftsman undertaking an important job just inside the threshold of his competence. It would have been churlish to refuse, he told himself. And now here he was, and presumably something had changed; one set of options had been closed off, another set had opened to replace them.
It was still raining, and for some reason he found that the sound of the rain on the roof both soothed and upset him, as though it was tugging him towards a memory it knew was there but couldn't get into any more. He yawned and wiggled his toes. Absolutely no chance of going back to sleep now, but here he was in someone else's house. Probably there was some sort of etiquette or protocol governing this sort of situation, which every man of his age in the world knew, except him-under what circumstances is it permissible to leave the woman's bed before she wakes up, is it mortally insulting to get up, go downstairs, light a lamp and read a book or darn a hole in your coat sleeve-subtle points that could easily do permanent damage, at a critical point in his life where everything was suddenly in a state of flux. One moment, here and now, could change everything that followed (and for better or for worse, let's not forget that). It'd be so much simpler if he could go back to sleep, and allow his instincts and reflexes to guide him through these reefs to the safety of morning…
He was just trying to convince himself that she'd never know if he got up and went downstairs for a while when he opened his eyes and found them full of daylight, which was swamping the room and flushing away the shadows; he'd fallen asleep after all, and in such a way as to do serious damage to his neck and shoulders.
'Ah,' Copis said. She was up, dressed, sitting in front of a small, cheap-looking dressing-table. 'You've finally woken up, then. I was going to give it another hour and then send for the undertaker.'
He groaned and sat up. 'What time is it?' he asked.
'Four hours after sunrise,' she replied. She had her back to him, but he could see her face reflected in the mirror. 'Does Falx Roisin let you all sleep in like this? He must've got soft in his old age.'
She made it sound like she knew him; better not ask how. 'Damn,' he said. 'I was supposed to be starting out an hour after dawn. We're taking a cart out to Deymeson-'
'Left without you by now, I expect,' Copis replied. 'Was it important?'
He shrugged. 'No idea,' he said. 'Nobody tells me, and that suits me. I mean, yes, it must've been fairly important or it wouldn't need to go by special courier-'
'Special courier,' Copis mimicked, not particularly accurately. 'You do realise that's just street Weal for "someone dumb enough to take the job"-all right, all right, no need to scowl at me like that. I was just saying, that's all.'
'I wasn't scowling,' Poldarn replied, pulling a face.
She adjusted the position of her mirror so that she could see him. 'I stand corrected,' she said gravely. 'Anyway, I expect Falx Roisin's found another special courier, so you might as well take the day off. In fact-'
He braced himself. The previous night, over the wine, she'd been dropping hints heavy enough to use as anvils 'No,' he said. 'Absolutely not.'
'Oh, go on. You'd be helping me out-'
'No.' He shook his head, sharp movements to either side. 'My career as a god is definitely over.'
'You only did it once,' she pointed out. 'And you weren't exactly wonderful at it then.'
'Fine,' he said, finding himself unexpectedly put out by the criticism. 'In that case you won't want me to do it again. Which is just as well, because I won't.'
'You bloody well should.' He recognised the key change, from wounded to angry; synthetic, both of them. She was much better at angry. 'If you hadn't gone and killed my perfectly good god-'
'Perfectly good.' Poldarn laughed unkindly. 'He was a jerk. You were only too glad to be rid of him, before he cut your throat and sold your body to a tannery.'
She was about to step into his circle and fight, but she stopped and smiled. 'True,' she said. 'Which is why I need somebody who won't let me down or rob me or do anything horrible, and the only person like that I can think of is you. Please?' she added.
Somehow he found it extremely difficult to refuse.
'No,' he said. 'But,' he added quickly, before she had a chance to dodge and counterattack, 'if you're looking for a partner in an enterprise that doesn't involve gods in carts, I'd be interested in that. Like,' he went on, knowing he had her attention, 'that idea you told me about the other day.'
She didn't seem as pleased as he'd expected. 'Oh,' she said. 'That.'
Poldarn nodded. 'You wanted me to put money into it,' he said.
'That was before…' He got the impression she hadn't meant to say that, or at least not in that way. 'I've been thinking about that,' she went on. 'Maybe it's not such a good idea after all.'
'I think it's a great idea,' Poldarn said, making an effort to sound upbeat and enthusiastic. 'Buttons. Everybody in the world needs buttons, and the biggest button factory in these parts is right here in Sansory. We buy buttons, load them on a cart, go round the villages and sell them. On the way back, we buy bones to sell to the factory. Brilliant.'
She shook her head. 'I don't know anything about bones,' she said. 'I don't even like them.'
Poldarn laughed. 'I don't think it's absolutely necessary,' he said. 'Look, I don't know anything about bones either. Or buttons. But we can learn.'
'I don't know' She looked away, and Poldarn found himself wondering whether he wasn't being double-bluffed, and if this wasn't a clever way of manoeuvring him into the button trade. If so, he decided, he didn't mind, because it was a good idea, even if it was one of hers. 'I just don't know,' she said. 'I don't think I'm cut out to be a trader. I haven't got the patience.'
Poldarn moved so he was facing her. 'If you can pretend to be a priestess,' he said, 'you can sell buttons. Being a priestess was hard work, and the pay was lousy.'
'Yes, I know.' She frowned and bit her lip-the latter struck Poldarn as just a little too self-conscious, inclining him towards the manoeuvring theory. 'I can't decide,' she said. 'What if we accidentally go to one of the villages where I did the god-in-the-cart routine?'
'We'll make a special effort not to.'
By now he was convinced. 'All right,' she said, 'what do you think? After all, it's your money.'
He couldn't help smiling at that. 'I think I've had enough of the bodyguard business, and we've both had enough of the god business. And buttons are as good a thing to sell as any.'
'Quitting to go into a nice, safe, good business with a rich woman who's crazy about you,' Eolla said, examining the blanket. 'You must be off your head.'
Poldarn frowned. 'I didn't say she was crazy about me,' he replied.
'Stands to reason, doesn't it?' Eolla replied. 'Otherwise, why'd she take you in? I mean, you got no money, you don't know spit about buttons or bones-'
'Neither does she.'
'Proves my point,' Eolla said, smirking. 'If she wasn't crazy about you, she'd be looking to find someone who did know the business. Bloody good luck to you, my son.' He peered closely at the blanket. 'This tear wasn't here before,' he said. 'That'll be a quarter, dilapidations.'
/> If it had been anybody else, Poldarn would have had his doubts. But he could well imagine that Eolla did know every square inch of every blanket in his stores, in the same way that a god knows the names of every man and woman in his world. He paid.
'That's the lot, then.' Everything he'd been issued by the Falx house, all the possessions considered necessary, in a neat, folded pile; except for two.
'There's the sword,' Poldarn pointed out. 'And the other book.'
To his surprise, Eolla shook his head. 'Keep 'em,' he said. 'The book's no good; there's a page missing-two hundred and forty-eight-and a big brown stain all down the outside. More trouble than it's worth to put it back into inventory.'
Poldarn had noticed the stain all right; given where everything in Sansory came from, no prizes for guessing what it was. 'Fair enough,' he said. 'Thanks. What about the sword?'
Eolla frowned. 'Don't want it,' he said. 'Just superstition, really. Bad luck.'
'Bad luck? Why?'
'Just a feeling. You get that sometimes, with things, in this job. I wouldn't want it in the rack, in case it's catching.'
Poldarn didn't like the sound of that, but he wasn't going to argue. He'd seen one just like it on a stall in the Irongate marked at two hundred quarters, and even if the buying price was only half that, it'd still be a useful sum for the business. 'Thanks,' he said. 'Right, that's everything, then.'
Eolla nodded. 'That's everything.' He turned away and started putting things back in their proper piles, chests and racks. 'Probably a good thing, really,' he said. 'For a start, you lasted longer in the job than some, and you're the only one who's left it who didn't leave in a box. And the lads-' He scratched his head. 'Nothing personal to you, of course.'
