by K. J. Parker
“Gignomai,” Father said, “you’re late.”
For a moment, Gignomai didn’t understand. Then: Father had ordered him to present himself here to begin his studies, just before he ran away. He hadn’t turned up. Therefore, he was late.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I had an accident.”
“Most unfortunate. Sit down. The books you will be reading are on the small table.”
Gignomai saw them, but he was looking past the table, towards the corner of the room. If the sword had been found, it would be there, leaning against the wall; that was what Father would do. Not there. He kept his face straight, crossed to the table and sat down.
“Your mother was worried about you.” Father’s head was bent over the book.
“I’m sorry. I fell off the—”
“Please be more considerate in future.”
Gignomai took a book off the top of the pile, glanced at the spine (Caecilius on Prosody) and opened it. It began with a beautiful illuminated letter B and went downhill from there.
He ran into his mother on the way from the library to the Great Hall. She gave him a filthy look and walked past him without saying anything. He decided it could have been worse.
At dinner, conversation was even sparser than usual. Luso kept looking at him. Father looked over the top of his head from time to time. Mother huddled over her food and didn’t look up. Stheno looked past him, the way you carefully fail to notice someone with a ghastly disfigurement. Dinner was roast wild duck. Gignomai got the bit where the bullet had passed through, smashing bones and pulping flesh.
After dinner, he announced that he was tired and was going to bed. Nobody looked up, and he walked out of the hall. Stheno, who’d gone out to check on the calves, was hovering by the stairs, evidently waiting for him. Gignomai stopped.
“Why did you come back?” Stheno asked.
Not why did you leave. “I fell off the edge of the world,” Gignomai replied.
“Gig…”
“Seriously,” Gignomai said. “I was in the woods, out on the west side. This boar jumped out at me—”
“I heard all that,” Stheno cut him off (so Luso did talk to his brother sometimes). “But you weren’t in the woods because you felt like a stroll.”
“Well, yes, actually,” Gignomai said. “That’s why I was—”
“Right.” Stheno made a slight movement, a small shift of the shoulders. If Luso had done that, Gignomai would have sidestepped. “And for a stroll in the woods, you took your sword.”
Rather like the moment when you’re stalking a deer, and it suddenly lifts its head and stares straight at you, you freeze, and everything hangs in the balance.
“It wasn’t in your room,” Stheno said. “When we realised you were missing, I went to see if you’d taken anything with you.”
Gignomai nodded slowly. “You told Luso.”
“No. Nor Father.”
It occurred to Gignomai to ask why, but he decided not to. He kept perfectly still, closed, not saying anything. The met’Oc family, he reckoned, were probably better at not saying anything than anyone else in the world.
“So,” Stheno said, “why’d you come back?”
“I live here.”
Once, many years ago, Luso and Stheno went through a phase of playing chess. It lasted about three months, and for the first six weeks, Luso won every game, quickly and often cruelly. Then—it surprised Gignomai even now to think about it—Stheno figured out how to turn a losing game into a stalemate. For the next four weeks, he still didn’t win, but he somehow contrived to draw one game in five. Then, quite suddenly, he won everything, and eventually Luso gave up and went back to playing against Father instead. Over the years, Gignomai had often tried to analyse Stheno’s strategy and had never managed to pin it down. Quite a large part of it was making moves so totally illogical that Luso couldn’t cope with them, but there was also a thread of tactical skill that went so deep Gignomai couldn’t trace it; he only knew that it was there.
“That’s not an answer,” Stheno said.
“Would you rather I hadn’t come back?”
Stheno ignored that. “All right,” he said, “I’ll try guessing. You fell out with your town friends, or they didn’t want you hanging round.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Stheno nodded, as if to indicate that the interview was over. Gignomai turned away, and Stheno’s hand swooped down on his shoulder like a hawk. It was so much bigger than any human hand had any right to be, and so very strong. Gignomai felt his back pressing hard against the wall. He could only breathe in part of the way; not far enough.
“Other people,” Stheno said quietly, “have to live in this house too. Sometimes it’s not easy, but generally I manage to cope. But it’s hard enough as it is without you pulling stunts like that. Do you understand?”
He’d have said anything to get the hand off his shoulder before he choked to death. “Yes, I understand. I’m sorry.”
Stheno held him just a little longer; just a little too long. Then he let go, and all Gignomai could think about was breathing. “I can see why you did it,” Stheno said, not at all unkindly. “In your shoes, probably I’d have done the same. But you don’t have that luxury. Right?”
“Right.”
Stheno nodded. A curt nod that said, quarrel over, let’s not bother with grudges. “Glad you’re back,” he said. “I was worried.”
“Stheno?”
“Yes?”
“The sword,” Gignomai said. “I lost it, in the woods. Really.”
Stheno frowned. “I suggest you find it,” he said, “else, Father’ll kill you.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“All right,” Stheno said. “Tomorrow morning you go and do your studying. Soon as I’ve seen to the pigs I’ll come up and borrow you. Urgent job—I’ll think of something. You can have the rest of the morning. All right?”
“Yes,” Gignomai said. “Thanks.”
“A quiet life,” Stheno replied. “You wouldn’t think it was a lot to ask.”
Luso woke him up quite some time before daybreak. At least, he woke up and saw Luso sitting on the end of his bed. It was too dark to see his face clearly, but nobody else sat motionless quite like that.
“Just wanted to make sure you’re still here,” Luso said. Then he got up and left, leaving the door open. Luso never closed doors behind him.
Not enough night left to make it worth trying to go back to sleep, so Gignomai got up, dressed and lit the candle. He’d intended to read (he’d smuggled Gannasius on Ethical Theory out of the library under his shirt; it had been on the pile of compulsory reading, but he’d found it interesting) but he couldn’t keep still. He opened the window, leaned out and looked up at the sky. Too late, but not early enough.
So he pulled on his boots and went quietly down the stairs—long practice—and out into the back yard. Aurelio the smith was opening up the forge. He always started early, because it took a long time to lay in the fire and get it going properly. Gignomai didn’t feel like being seen, but that wasn’t a problem. He’d long ago worked out a sequence of doorways and edges that would keep him concealed in half light.
He made it easily to the barn, slipped inside and climbed up into the hayloft. It was well known as one of his places, so there was no point staying there too long. What they hadn’t realised, as far as he knew, was that there was a loose stone in the back wall, a hand’s span from the floor, which you could tease out with your fingernails if you were careful and patient.
He took out the stone and felt inside the cavity. The glove was still there. He’d very nearly taken it with him when he made his escape attempt; just as well he hadn’t, or it’d be in the pillowcase, along with the rest of his stuff. The sword was one thing—failing to find it simply wasn’t an option—but he was more or less resigned to the pillowcase being lost and gone for ever. In which case…
He put the stone back, then ran his fingertips all rou
nd it to make sure it was flush to the rest of the wall. For four months of the year, of course, it was completely inaccessible, buried deep under the winter hay, like one of those underwater cities in fairy tales.
The other thing he’d come for was lying on the floor where he’d last seen it, weeks ago. It was the broken-off head of a push-hoe, which at some time had been ground on a wheel to make it narrower (for weeding between rows of turnips, at a guess). He found it by feel, wrapped a scrap of sacking round the splintered handle end and stowed it in his right-hand coat pocket.
He stayed until the sky was light enough for him to make out the shape of the hill behind the house, then went back to his room and read three pages of Gannadius on altruism. He hid the book under a loose floorboard (force of habit; they’d found that one two years ago) and went down to breakfast.
He’d timed it well. Stheno had already been and gone. Luso hadn’t surfaced yet. Father was at the head of the long, broad oak table, sitting with his head bowed over a book like a falcon ripping apart its prey. Mother was at the other end of the table, looking out of the window, her lips moving silently. Two of Luso’s men were huddled in the middle somewhere, uncomfortable, eating quickly. Gignomai chose a wide open space about a third of the way down towards Father’s end, close to the loaf and the wizened knob-end of a side of bacon. He hacked off slightly more than he wanted and chewed hard.
As he got up, Father took official notice of him, though without looking up from his book. “Don’t be late,” he said. Gignomai made a sort of respectful, non-verbal grunting noise, and went straight up to the library.
He knew he didn’t have long. Fortunately, he knew where to look for what he wanted: Lycoris on Metallurgy, Callicrates on Mechanisms, Onesander on the Practical Arts. The dust was reassuringly thick; nobody had disturbed them since he’d last been there. No reason why they should. He slipped Lycoris in his left-hand jacket pocket, and wedged Callicrates and Onesander in the waistband of his trousers, drawing his shirt tail out to cover them. Then he sat down in front of his pile of approved reading, opened Caecilius on Prosody, and tried to look like someone who gave a damn about the position of the caesura in dactylic hexameters.
Father duly appeared, took his seat without looking in Gignomai’s direction, put down the book he’d been reading at breakfast, picked up another, lying open and face down on the desk. Gignomai couldn’t help glancing at him from time to time. All those words, he thought, all that information; it was like pouring water into sand. It all went in, through the eyes into the brain, and none of it ever came out again. Father’s head was a slurry-pit into which the sum of human knowledge and experience drained away, and all that richness, too much of it, poisoned the ground so that nothing would grow there ever again. He shuddered slightly.
Stheno was as good as his word. He appeared in the doorway, looking ridiculously large, like a man in a doll’s house. Father frowned, then looked up.
“Sorry,” Stheno said (he always started any conversation with Father with an apology), “but could I borrow Gig for an hour or so? The weaners have got out in the kale.”
Father sighed, nodded, his head dipped back to its usual incline (you could almost hear a click as it locked back into place). Gignomai jumped up, pressing his left elbow hard against his waist to trap the two books, and scuttled out of the room. As soon as the doors had closed behind him, he mouthed, “Thanks.”
Stheno shrugged, and led the way down the stairs. As soon as they were outside, he said, “You’re with me. The pigs really are out.”
“Are they?”
Stheno nodded. “Turned them out myself. You don’t imagine Father wouldn’t check.”
It hadn’t occurred to Gignomai, but when Stheno said it, he realised it was true. How Father came to know everything, when he was never to be seen talking to servants, was a mystery that didn’t bear too much thinking about. When Gignomai was a boy, he’d had a theory that Father had a magical raven who spied on the family and reported to him in the middle of the night.
Getting the pigs back in wasn’t a problem, since Stheno had trained them to come running as soon as he appeared with the slop bucket. Gignomai winced when he saw how much damage they’d done in the kale patch, but Stheno didn’t say anything. They put back the hurdle Stheno had taken down, and lashed it fast with twine.
“Right,” Stheno said. “It’ll all be my fault, so be quick.”
For a moment Gignomai was tempted to feel guilty, but that was a luxury he couldn’t afford. “Thanks,” he said, and darted off across the yard.
There was no point getting Stheno in more trouble than necessary, so he applied the usual breaking-out protocols: close to the hedge all the way down the long meadow, through the gap at the bottom, then follow the dead ground at the foot of the wood until he got to the hunting gate and could assume he was invisible. The big danger was that he didn’t know what Luso’s movements were likely to be. As far as he knew it wasn’t a hunting day, but Luso was perfectly capable of declaring an unscheduled day, or simply strolling out to the woods on his own with a gun and a couple of dogs. Gignomai therefore had no alternative but to consider the woods as hostile territory and proceed accordingly.
He headed generally west, keeping parallel to the main ride, which he was fairly sure Luso would follow if he was headed this way. As soon as he reached the first stream he cut away due south until he came to the deep, wet hollow where Luso had a high seat. From there he followed a stream which he knew came out on the western edge, about five hundred yards below the place where he’d met the boar. About a third of the way down the stream he heard a shot. It reassured him. It was a long way north and east, which suggested that Luso was out still-hunting for deer in the clearing by the old charcoal camp. That meant he’d be alone, so his men would be on guard at the Gate or back at the farm but not prowling about at random.
He found what he’d been looking for, a briar tangle between two fallen trees. He found the slots of the boar, very faint and eroded but still visible in a slick of dried mud. The dog’s body was nowhere to be seen (or smelt, for that matter), so Luso’s men had been here. It occurred to him, for the first time, that one of them might have found the sword and decided to keep it for himself. He considered the possibility and dismissed it. There might be someone somewhere brave and stupid enough to steal from the met’Oc family right under Luso’s nose. By the same token somewhere there might just possibly be dragons, unicorns and similar mythical beasts, but he was pretty sure he’d never encounter one, and most certainly not here.
He found the boar’s nest, and the entrance to the hole, eventually. Thinking about it, he reckoned that the boar must’ve been pushed back here by Luso’s dogs and had stood at bay in the hole mouth, wedging its backside into the hole as far as it could go. That would account for the briars being broken down and tangled, filling the hole up and making it invisible unless you knew exactly what you were looking for. After a long, frantic search, in the course of which he lacerated his hands and arms on the briars, he found the sword, jammed down in the roots of the tangle and masked by a swathe of broken tendrils. By the look of it, the boar had rolled there. He fished it out, drew it and examined the blade. It was still straight, and the furniture was no more bent and buckled than it had been.
Gignomai sat down in the briars, not caring about his clothes or his skin, with the sword on his knees, and closed his eyes. He was exhausted, far more so than his exertions warranted. One thing, one artefact, but everything depended on it; it had been lost, and now he’d found it again. He guessed that was how it must feel when you’re condemned to death, and the reprieve arrives a few minutes before dawn. He didn’t bother even trying to move for quite some time. He watched blood from a scratch on his forehead trickle, out of focus, down the inside curve of his nose and drop out of his field of vision.
When at last he was strong enough to move, he got up (everything ached) and poked around for a while looking for the pillowcase. There were many good
reasons for finding it: left lying about it was a serious breach of security and, besides, he didn’t want to lose the scarf. In spite of all that, he couldn’t summon up the energy. He told himself that if he couldn’t find it, neither could anybody else. As for the scarf, well, there was precious little chance of him forgetting, so he didn’t need a bit of cloth to remind him. Another shot in the distance made him look up sharply. Then he grinned. A second shot implied that the first one had been a miss. Luso did miss sometimes.
Enough dawdling for one day. He sheathed the sword, then teased the hoe-head out of his pocket, unwrapped it and used the scrap of cloth to bind up the sword-hilt. He lay down on his stomach and peered into the hole. He really didn’t fancy going in there, not in cold blood, but it had to be done. He clamped the sword to his side with his left hand, reached out with his right holding the hoe, and crawled into the hole.
His eyes were open but there was, of course, no light. He felt the gentlest of touches right across his face—a spider’s web he rationalised—and closed his mouth as he felt the spider running across his cheek. He wasn’t good with spiders at the best of times, but he didn’t have a hand free. It made his skin itch and crawl, and he couldn’t be sure whether it had gone or was still there.
He moved himself by digging in with the hoe-head and pulling, keeping himself from sliding forward when the gradient was steep, drawing himself along when it was more or less level. When he reached the point where the tunnel suddenly fell away, his whole weight was thrown on the steel head of the tool. It wouldn’t dig in, but it slowed him down a little, enough to stop him slithering out of control. Grit and small stones stripped the skin off the heel of his right hand, and his wrist burned with the strain of supporting his entire weight. It occurred to him that maybe he hadn’t thought this operation through with sufficient attention to detail.
Then he was at the blockage. He’d thought about it many times, remembered what it had felt like when he’d squeezed himself against it. It was either a tree root (though unlikely this far down) or just a big stone. Now, here he was again. He tried exploring it with his fingertips, but in order to do it properly he’d have to let go of the hoe-head, which he didn’t dare risk. When he was sure he’d come to a full stop he began twisting himself round, like a screw driven into oak without a pilot hole, until he was on his back. With the hoe he probed the darkness ahead of him, until he found a place that wasn’t the blockage—stiff hard clay or chalk or something—but he could just about force the blade into it. He forced it in as far as it would go, twisted it, felt something give, levered out a chunk of something—a small wedge, presumably, but a start.
