by K. J. Parker
“I don’t know.”
“Well, it varies.” Axeo fished in his other boot for his spare pick. “Now pay attention. I’m going to teach you how to pick locks.”
To Axeo’s delight, Musen was a quick learner. It helped that the padlocks were deplorably old-fashioned and simple, but the fact remained, the boy had a natural aptitude, a gift. “Fine,” Axeo said. “Now, you take that stack and I’ll do this one. Don’t hang about and don’t steal anything.”
Musen, of course, was the one who knew what they were looking for. Luckily, it was him who found it, in the sixth box he opened. Axeo only realised when he noticed how still and quiet the boy had suddenly become.
“You’ve got it?” he whispered. “Is that it?”
Musen didn’t answer. On the stone floor beside where he was kneeling lay a silver box, its lid hinged open. Musen was staring at something cupped protectively in his hands, the way you might hold an injured bird. “I said, is that it?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“Thank God for that. Here, let me see.”
Musen hesitated, then opened his hands. Axeo saw a pile of thin silver wafers – longer and wider than any playing cards he’d ever seen, embossed with figures he couldn’t make out in the poor light. “You’re sure?” he said. “Come on, it’s important. Every human life in Rasch depends on this.”
“I think so,” Musen said. “They’re like the ones back in the village. Yes,” he said, his voice suddenly confident, “it’s them.”
“Give them here.”
For a moment, Axeo was sure Musen would refuse, and that would have been extremely awkward. But then he looked away and held out his hand. Axeo snatched the cards, and scrabbled on the floor for the box. The cards wouldn’t go back in; he tried to straighten them up so they’d fit, and dropped two. Musen took the cards back from him, dropped them neatly in the box, added the two strays and handed the box back.
“You’re absolutely positive,” Axeo said. “We can’t come back again, you know that. It’s got to be right.”
“It’s them.”
Well, Musen was the expert; which was to say, he was the only specialist thief available who knew what the wretched things were supposed to look like. Damn all rush jobs and emergencies. “If they’re not, I’ll kill you.”
“I told you, it’s them.”
“Good enough for me.” Axeo reached to put the box in his coat pocket, then remembered that his coat was serving as a blackout. “Kill the lantern,” he said. “Come on, quickly.”
The two guards were still dead to the world in the laundry room. “We need a new story,” Axeo muttered, dragging dirty washing out of a big wicker basket. “All this making stuff up is incredibly stressful for me. I’m basically a very truthful person.” He held up a long black priest’s robe, then saw the vomit stains on the lower skirt. “This is no good, it’s mostly women’s clothes. What we want is a couple of those beige sack things the clerks wear.”
“Like these?”
Axeo swung round, then sighed. “They’re the wrong colour, and they’re frocks. God preserve me from provincials. Just a moment, though.” He shoved Musen out of the way and rummaged. “In the gold,” he said, “score ten”, and held up a pale blue scholar’s robe. There were wine stains on the bottom hem. “How would you like to be drunk?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t drink.”
Axeo thought for a moment. “It’s a very hard thing to pretend to be,” he said. “All right, I’m the drunk and you’re a servant taking me to sleep it off.” He reached inside his shirt and pulled out a gold star on a fine silver chain. “This is actually mine,” he said. “I’m entitled to it. Order of Academic Merit, second class. They don’t give these things away at weddings.” He stripped off his coat, retrieved the silver box and put it down on the laundry basket, then slipped and wriggled into the gown. It was slightly too long for him, but not to worry. He hung the gold star round his neck, then tucked the silver box safely in the deep sleeve of the gown. “Watch and learn,” he said. “I’m good at this.”
A noisy, aggressive drunk who also happens to be a high-ranking scholar is the sort of bad news a sentry can do without. “Would you mind keeping it down, sir?” he asked, ever so politely; in response, the drunk took a swing at him, and only prompt action by the drunk’s enormous servant stopped him from making contact, which would have obliged the sentry to report the incident and made trouble for everyone. The servant rolled his eyes apologetically; the sentry nodded. “Get him out of here,” the sentry said imploringly. “And for God’s sake stop him singing.”
No such luck. For an intellectual, the drunk had fairly basic taste in music; mostly romantic and scurrilous ballads by Oida, with a few old army favourites thrown in. People came out of their rooms to look, saw the blue gown and the servant’s split lip and closed their doors quickly. A captain of the guard came bustling up as the dreadful pair weaved their way across the inner cloister, caught sight of the gold star and ducked behind a column. The drunk started to sing “Soldier’s Joy” in a loud, clear voice that would have been quite attractive if not for the tendency to roar.
Their luck stuttered at one point when they found themselves face to face with another blue gown, draped over a short, stocky man with a long white beard. “Name and college,” he roared; the drunk lunged at him, but the servant tripped him neatly and he went sprawling. The short man took a step back. “I don’t recognise him,” he said to the servant. “Who is he?”
The servant gave him a weak grin. “Just arrived, sir. With the dogs. Doctor of Natural Philosophy.”
The short man grunted disgustedly. “Get him to bed before anyone sees him,” he said, and stalked back the way he’d just come.
The riot petered out just before dawn, when it started raining heavily and the Prefect and the mayor of Prosc worked out a compromise, the details of which have not been recorded. By noon, wheeled traffic was crossing the causeway once again, and Axeo (who’d slept in a coal bunker, with Musen curled up at his feet like a dog) decided it would be safe to leave the city. He dumped the blue gown, which by then was filthy with coal dust, and sent Musen to steal him a coat. Musen protested that he was covered in coal dust, too, but Axeo pointed out that the rain would wash most of it off, so that was fine.
Carts and coaches were streaming into the city, not much was going the other way. They tried to hitch a lift on a farm cart, but the driver told them to go to hell, so they walked. Axeo’s ankle was playing up; he couldn’t remember damaging it, but it’s easy to tweak something and not notice when your life gets exciting for a while. Musen’s lip had scabbed over. “Don’t pick at it,” Axeo advised him.
“I must confess I didn’t give a lot of thought to how we get home,” Axeo said, as they sheltered from the rain under a chestnut tree on the edge of the northern marshes. “Never thought we’d get this far, to be honest. Still, fool’s luck.”
Musen had taken off his left boot and was wringing out a wet sock. “Can’t we just walk?”
Axeo gave him a sour look. “Theoretically, I suppose we could. I hate walking. It’s boring and I get blisters.”
Musen shrugged. “Where I come from, we walk everywhere.”
“Oh, well, then, in that case.” Axeo craned his neck to look up at the sky. “Bloody rain,” he said. “Come on, we’ve done the difficult bit, surely. The rest should be easy.”
Musen dragged his boot back on. “Did you really think we wouldn’t make it?”
“I was convinced of it. Our continued existence is a complete but agreeable surprise to me.”
“You seemed so sure of yourself. Like it was all a prank or something.”
Axeo shrugged. “I appease the Great Smith by playing the clown. One of these days he won’t find me funny any more.”
Musen turned his head away.
“You don’t like me saying things like that,” Axeo said, “making jokes, taking His name in vain.”
“Not much, no.”<
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“Provincial.” Axeo wriggled back up against the trunk of the tree. “Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that the greatest blasphemy of all is implying that He can’t take a joke?”
Musen frowned, then suddenly grinned. “I never thought of it like that.”
“Course you didn’t, you’re a provincial. I imagine you think of Him as an old man with a white beard and a leather apron. Well?”
“I suppose so, yes.”
“Fair enough.” Axeo pulled two apples from his coat pocket, offered one to Musen, who took it. “It’s a valid interpretation. Me, I see Him as a vast, extraordinarily complex concatenation of circumstances.” He bit into the apple. “Which, taken together, admit of no other possible explanation other than intelligent design and conscious purpose. All as broad as it’s long, of course. I from the evidence, you from intuitive revelation, we both arrive at the same point. Which is all that matters, really.”
Musen looked at him. “I’ve always believed,” he said. “Ever since I was a kid. Nobody else in our village did, so I had to keep it to myself.”
Axeo nodded. “Like the thieving.”
“I guess so, yes.”
“Your special gifts.” Axeo yawned. “I used to wonder about that,” he said. “Why would He do that? I guess it’s easy to see why He would call someone to be a saint, a healer of the sick, a champion of the poor and oppressed, or even a great artist or musician. But why did He call you to be a thief and me to be an enormously talented leader of irregular troops? It seems unlikely.”
“He needs thieves sometimes.”
Axeo clapped his hands and pointed. “Exactly. As we’ve just demonstrated, in fact. He made us as we are, therefore by implication we must be good for something; our duty is to find out what it is. It’s a bit crazy, though. I mean, take me and my brother. You ever come across him?”
“Once.”
“Once is enough. He was always so jealous of me when we were kids. And quite right, too, because I was always smarter, stronger, better looking, better singing voice. It was quite pathetic sometimes. He was always trying to find something he could be good at, and as soon as he did, I took it up, too, and got better at it than him, just to put him in his place. Drove him crazy. I never let him keep a girl for more than five minutes, either. I guess I’m partly responsible for the mess he’s turned himself into, but what the hell. I never liked him very much. I think the day I joined the army was the happiest day of his life.”
Musen grinned. “I can see why.”
“Well, quite. But the point is, here you have me, a man with all the talents, all the graces, I could’ve been a great musician or a poet, I could’ve been a wise statesman, definitely an outstanding general. And what does He decide to use me for? Robbing people and leading bandits.” He shrugged. “His will be done, I guess, but I can’t help thinking it’s a waste.”
Musen looked at him sideways. “You sure that was Him and not you?”
“Oh, yes.” Axeo scowled. “That was Him all right. He put me in a position where I had no choice but to throw it all away and become the sorry object you see before you. I don’t actually care if you believe this or not, but you’ll never ever meet anyone who’s given up more for his faith than I have.” He smiled. “Just as well He and I both have such a strong sense of humour,” he said. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be nearly such good friends.”
He waited for Musen to ask, but he didn’t. So he said, “You don’t approve of me, do you?”
Musen pulled off his other boot. “Have we got any money left?” he said.
“Not much,” Axeo replied, “apart from what you filched out of the strongboxes, in spite of what I told you.” He held out his hand. Musen tapped the heel of the boot he’d just taken off, and coins tumbled out. “Just as well you don’t obey orders,” Axeo said, and picked them up. Twelve angels; old coins, pre-schism, but still current, the few that were left. Most of them had been melted down long ago, because the gold content was higher. “Not bad,” he went on. “We can buy a coach and horses to take us home and still have enough left for a small farm.”
Musen gave him a look that wasn’t a scowl but did just as well.
But the sad reality is that it doesn’t matter how much money you’ve got if there’s nobody around to sell you things. That morning they passed four substantial farms, all boarded up, the stables empty. Musen climbed a roof, dug down through the thatch and came out again with half a cheese and a slab of dusty bacon, or they’d have gone hungry.
Mail coaches passed them once or twice; but all going to the city, none coming back the other way. Axeo didn’t like that at all.
“For all we know,” he complained, “Rasch has already fallen, Senza’s on his way up here and this has all been a complete waste of time.” He covered his pocket with his hand, just to make sure it was still there. “You’re definite that was the right pack?” he added.
“Yes. You keep asking me that. I’m sure.”
“It’s ironic, the fate of a great city depending on the antiquarian knowledge of the likes of you. Don’t they have horses in Rhus? Is that why you walk everywhere?”
“Horses cost money.”
“That was never a problem when I was growing up,” Axeo said gravely. “Everything else, but not money, we were fine for that. All gone now, of course. I was the eldest, so when I had my bit of difficulty it was all forfeited to the Exchequer. Oida’s never forgiven me for that. Actually, he’s never forgiven me for anything. Do you have brothers?”
“No.”
“Figures. That sullen introversion is typical of an only child. Did you know only children are three times more likely to take to thieving than kids with brothers and sisters? Whereas siblings are twice as likely to be murderers or arsonists. I don’t know where they get the numbers from, but it’s interesting, don’t you think?”
They slept in a semi-derelict linhay. Axeo woke up at first light and immediately checked his pocket. The box was gone, and so was Musen.
So, come to that, were the twelve gold angels, which was where Musen had made his mistake. Even so, it took Axeo four days to find him.
He got lucky at an inn, miles off the main road, where there were still people. At the time he was the aggrieved master of a runaway servant. Ungrateful bastard cleaned me out, he explained to a sympathetic innkeeper, money, my horse, even took my best boots, left me tied up in my own root cellar, if he wasn’t so useless at tying knots I’d have starved to death. And all because I caught him fooling with the dairymaid and gave him a fat lip.
The innkeeper looked up. “Man came in here with a split lip the day before yesterday,” he said.
“Tall man?”
“Like a tree. Had a meal and a night’s sleep, tried to pay me with a bloody great gold coin, size of a cartwheel. I said to him, where’s an honest man like me supposed to get change for that? He was on about hacksawing a bit off it, but I told him to forget it and get lost. Bloody joker. I knew he was no good.”
Naturally the innkeeper had no map, but he gave a clear enough account of the local geography that Axeo was reasonably sure in his own mind where Musen would go next. Sure enough, late the next afternoon he met a farmer who’d sold a tall man a donkey for a gold angel.
“That was my money,” Axeo said. “Didn’t you think there was something wrong?”
The farmer shrugged. “I didn’t ask to sell it him. He kept on and on about it, and I just wanted shot of him.”
A very tall man riding a donkey gets himself noticed. “Kids dragged me out of the house and made me look,” a farmer’s wife said the next day. “Daftest thing I’ve seen all year. Tried to buy a loaf off me but all he had was some big brass buttons.”
“You might want to count your chickens,” Axeo said. The woman turned white as a sheet and ran off across the yard.
Having established a likely speed and direction, Axeo considered what the innkeeper had told him about the layout of the countryside and decided on a suitable point f
or interception. The donkey proved to be a stroke of luck; a heavy man on a donkey would take the slow, easy road up the hills on to the moor, whereas a man on foot in a hurry could scramble up the shale outcrops and get there ahead of him. On the moor, of course, neither of them could hide from the other; but that’s why the Great Smith made the night dark.
The donkey nearly ruined everything, braying and kicking up a fuss; but by then he was close enough, and he’d come prepared. As Musen sat up, he threw the heavy stone he’d picked out earlier and caught him on the side of the head. He went straight down, and a moment later Axeo was sitting on Musen’s chest, with his thumbs digging into his windpipe.
“The point is,” he said (he was panting slightly, which spoilt the effect), “I don’t need you any more. You’ve done your part of the job, and it only takes one of us to fetch the stuff home. Do you see what I’m getting at?”
Musen opened his mouth but of course he couldn’t speak. Axeo maintained the pressure but didn’t increase it.
“Put yourself in my place,” Axeo said. “If I think there’s the slightest chance of you doing anything like that again, I’ve got to kill you now, it’s my duty. I can’t jeopardise ninety thousand lives just for sentiment.” Musen’s face was dark red and he’d stopped struggling. “God knows I’ve done enough stupid things in my life, I can’t afford any more.” He let go with both hands. Musen started choking and spluttering. Axeo got to his feet, kicked him hard in the ribs once, then reached down and hauled him to his feet; Musen staggered and dropped back on to his knees, wheezing helplessly. Axeo dragged him back up again, just long enough to find the box in the pocket of his coat, then let him drop. “Just because I crack jokes sometimes doesn’t mean I’m a clown,” Axeo said. “I’m sticking my neck out for you, letting you live. I don’t think a tiny bit of gratitude is too much to ask.”
He tied Musen up with the donkey’s bridle, then sat down and took out the box. He stared at it for several minutes before tucking it down the front of his trousers – not an ideal arrangement by any means, but he defied Musen to get it out of there without him knowing.
