by Paul Hoffman
“Yes, sir.”
With that, Solomon Solomon turned and marched back to his podium. Cale slowly got to his feet, his head ringing. All of the other apprentices were staring ahead in terror, except for Vague Henri and Kleist, who stared ahead because they knew what was required. One person, however, was looking at him: the tallest and most graceful of the Materazzi, the one in front of whose shield Cale was standing. Those around him were laughing, but the blond Materazzi was not. He was almost bright red with anger.
Not even the beating he had handed out to Cale improved Solomon Solomon’s temper; the loss of so much money had been a deep blow to the heart. “Attend to your apprentices. Shortswords.”
The Mond walked toward the line of apprentices and stood opposite. The tall young Materazzi looked at Cale and spoke softly. “Make an exhibition of yourself like that again and I’ll make you wish you’d never been born. Do you hear?”
“Yes, I hear,” replied Cale.
“I am Conn Materazzi. You call me Boss from now on.”
“Yes, Boss, I hear.”
“Give me the shortsword.”
Cale turned around. There were three swords hanging from a wooden bar, with blades of equal length but different shapes, from straight to curved. To Cale, a sword was a sword. He picked one.
“Not that one.” This was followed by a kick in the arse. “The other one.” Cale reached for the sword next to it. He took another kick. There was much laughter from Conn Materazzi’s cronies and some of the apprentices. “The other one,” said Conn. Cale picked it out and handed it to the smiling young man. “Good. Now say thank you for that instructional kick.” There was quiet at this, the quiet of expectation that perhaps the apprentice might be foolish enough to protest or, even better, strike back.
“Thank me,” repeated Conn.
“Thank you, Boss,” said Cale, almost pleasantly, much to the relief of Vague Henri and even Kleist.
“Excellent,” said Conn, looking at his pals. “A lack of backbone, I like to see that in a servant.” The ingratiating laughter was cut short by another barked order from Solomon Solomon. For the next two hours Cale watched, head aching, as the Mond went through their training routines. When it was over, they left the field, laughing, to bathe and eat. Then several older men, the scouts, came out and instructed the apprentices in the use and care of the weapons stacked behind them.
Later, the three sat and talked, Vague Henri and Kleist surprisingly more miserable than Cale.
“God,” said Kleist, “I thought we’d finally had a bit of luck turning up here.” He looked at Cale bitterly. “You have a real talent, Cale, for getting under people’s skin. It took you, what, twenty minutes to pick a fight with the two biggest smells in what looked like being a really cushy number.”
Cale considered this thoughtfully, but said nothing.
“Do you want to leave tonight?” asked Vague Henri.
“No,” replied Cale, still thoughtful. “I’ll need time to steal as much stuff as I can.”
“It isn’t wise to wait. Think what might happen.”
“It’ll be all right. Besides, there’s no need for you two to leave. Kleist is right, you’ve landed on your feet here.”
“Hah!” said Vague Henri. “Once you’re gone, they’ll move on to us anyway.”
“They might, they might not. Perhaps Kleist is right—it’s something about me that makes people angry.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Vague Henri.
“Don’t.”
“I said I’ll come.”
There was a long silence, finally broken by Kleist. “Well, I’m not staying here on my own,” he said, and stormed off in a sulk.
“Perhaps,” said Cale, “we could leave before he gets back.”
“It makes sense for us to stick together.”
“I suppose so, but why does he have to whinge so much?”
“He just does. It’s his way. He’s OK.”
“Really?” asked Cale, as if only mildly curious.
“When do you want to leave?”
“A week—there’s a lot of stuff worth filching here. We need to stock up.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“I don’t agree.”
“Well, it’s my head and my arse, so it’s my decision.”
Vague Henri shrugged. “I suppose so.” He changed the conversation. “What did you think of the Mond—full of themselves, wouldn’t you say?”
“Pretty good, though.”
“Well,” said Vague Henri, smiling, “pretty, anyway.” After a pause he said, “Do you think Riba will be all right?”
“Why shouldn’t she be?”
It was clear that Vague Henri was truly worried. “The thing is,” he said, “she’s not like you and me. She couldn’t take a beating or anything. She wasn’t brought up to that.”
“She’ll be fine. Vipond has seen us all right, hasn’t he? What Kleist said is true—if it wasn’t for me, you’d be in clover here.” He didn’t in fact know what clover was, but he’d heard the saying a couple of times and liked the sound of it. “Riba knows how to get on with people. She’ll be all right.”
“Why can’t you get on with people, then?”
“I don’t know.”
“Just try and stay out the way, and if you can’t, stop looking like you want to slit their throats and feed them to the dogs.”
But the next day Vague Henri’s hope that things might blow over with Solomon Solomon and Conn Materazzi was disappointed. Solomon Solomon found another excuse to continue the hefty beating of the day before, but this time in the middle of the field so that everyone could have a good look and be encouraged to find an excuse to do likewise. Conn Materazzi, however, more subtle than his fighting master and unwilling to be seen merely to be copying him, continued kicking Cale on the slightest pretense but putting hardly any force into it. The young man had a talent for humiliation, treating Cale as if he were an amusing burden that was his lot to deal with as kindly as possible. With his long and flexible legs and after a lifetime of practice, he could hit Cale on the back of the leg, his arse or give him a gentle clip around the ear, as if using his hands on someone like Cale was to take him too seriously. After four days of this, it was Conn’s effect on Cale that began to worry Vague Henri more than the rough treatment handed out by Solomon Solomon. Cale was used to a brutality more extreme than anything Solomon Solomon could come up with. But mockery, being made to look ridiculous, was outside their experience. Henri began to worry that Cale might be provoked into striking back.
“He seems calmer than ever to me,” said Kleist as Vague Henri sat beside him worrying.
“As quiet as a haunted house until its demon be up.” They both laughed at this often-repeated line from the Redeemers.
“Just two more days.”
“Let’s get him to leave tomorrow.”
“All right.”
Conn Materazzi continued to develop his role as the tolerant master of a ridiculous fool with ever greater malice—and was much admired by his friends for doing so. In between the hefty beatings handed out by Solomon Solomon, he would ruffle Cale’s hair over some pretended mistake, as if he were an old family pet, incontinent yet much pitied. There were endless provoking gentle slaps to the back of his head, light taps on the buttocks with the flat of his sword blade. And all the time Cale became quieter and quieter. And Conn would see this—see that the hefty beatings seemed to leave no impression, but that, however carefully disguised, his mockery was slowly penetrating through this very hard soul. Conn Materazzi was a monster, but no fool.
The Materazzi were famous for two things: the first, their supreme skill in the martial arts and a reckless courage to go with it; the second, the extraordinary beauty of the Materazzi women, matched by their extraordinary coldness. Indeed, it was said that it was impossible to understand the Materazzi’s willingness to die in battle until you had met one of their wives. Th
e Materazzi individually and collectively were a terrifying war machine. But if you really did encounter one of their wives, you would certainly be met with a condescension, pride and dismissal such as you would never have experienced before. But you would also have been thunderstruck by their beauty—and, like the Materazzi men, been willing to endure almost anything for a smile or a patronizing kiss. Although the Materazzi held nearly a third of the known world in the solid grip of their military, economic and political power, the conquered could always console themselves with the thought that, however great their ascendancy, the Materazzi were slaves to their women.
As the beatings and the harassment of Cale continued, all three of the former acolytes were spending as much time thieving as possible. This was not particularly difficult or dangerous—the Materazzi had what, to the boys, was a bizarre attitude toward their possessions. They seemed ready to throw things away almost as soon as they had bought them. As acolytes forbidden possessions of any sort, this baffled them. At first they would steal objects they thought would be useful—a clasp knife, a sharpener, then money left casually lying about in their bosses’ bedrooms, often in astonishingly large amounts. Then it became easier to ask the boss if he wanted something tidied up or put elsewhere, because often they were told just to get rid of it. Inside four days they had stolen and been “given” more stuff than they could use, or even knew how to use: knives, swords, a light hunting bow with a nick easily repaired by Kleist, a small field kettle, bowls, spoons, rope, twine, preserved foods from the kitchens and a fair amount of money, of which there would be more when they sucked their bosses’ rooms dry just before they left. This was all hidden carefully in an assortment of nooks and crannies, but there was little chance of discovery because no one missed any of it. The realization that you could live the life of Riley in this place just off the things that other people didn’t want made Kleist and Vague Henri deeply sad that they had to leave. But Vague Henri saw with every mocking taunt by Conn Materazzi, and every humiliating poke and prod, that Cale became more and more quiet. Conn would flick Cale’s ears and pull his nose as if he were a mischievous small boy.
On the afternoon of the fifth day, Cale was on the search to steal something useful in a part of the keep where, as an apprentice, he was forbidden to go. “Forbidden” in Memphis meant something different from “forbidden” in the Sanctuary—there an infraction might mean, say, forty strokes with a metal-studded leather belt from which you might easily bleed to death. Here it meant something you shouldn’t do that might mean a vaguely unpleasant punishment or something you could easily talk your way out of. In this instance, if caught, Cale would apologetically explain that he was lost.
He was moving now through the oldest part of the great keep, indeed the oldest part of Memphis. Much of this wall, with its interior rooms now used for storage, had been demolished and replaced by the elegant houses with their huge windows so beloved by the Materazzi. But this old part of Memphis was dark, the only light from the passageways entering and exiting at the walls’ limits, often sixty feet apart. It was designed for siege, not casual passage. As Cale went carefully up one set of dark stone steps without any guard or banister to stop him falling forty feet or more onto the flagstones below, he heard someone hurrying down the stairs toward him. He could not see because of a curve in the stairwell, but whoever it was was carrying a lantern. He stepped back into a recess on the stairs and hoped to be missed as they passed by. The hurried steps and the faint light moved on and then someone appeared. He pressed himself back into the wall and the girl did not see him as she rushed past. But the light was poor in this great dim place and the stones uneven. She had come around the curve too fast and, already unbalanced, clipped her heel on an uneven flagstone. For a moment she started to twist and was held in balance as she hovered over a forty-foot drop onto hard stone. There was a brief cry from the girl as she threw the lantern over the edge and was about to go with it, when Cale snatched her by the arm and pulled her back.
She cried out in terror at this astonishing appearance from nowhere.
“My God!”
“It’s all right,” said Cale. “You were going to fall.”
“Oh!” she said, and looked down at the lantern, broken but still burning the oil that had spilled. “Oh,” she said again. “You frightened me.”
Cale laughed. “Lucky you’re still alive to be frightened.”
“I would have been fine.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
She looked down at the steep drop and then back at Cale in the dim light. He was not like any boy or man she had ever seen—of only medium height and with deep black hair—but it was the expression in his eyes, old and dark and something else she could not place.
Suddenly she was afraid.
“I have to go,” she said. “Thank you.” And then she started to run swiftly down the stairs.
“Careful,” said Cale, so softly that he could not possibly be heard.
And then she was gone.
Cale felt as though he had been struck by lightning. Even the oldest and wisest head was liable to have been turned by the girl Cale had chanced upon, and, when it came to women, Cale was very far from either. She was Arbell Materazzi, daughter of Marshal Materazzi, Doge of Memphis. But no one, except her father, thought of Arbell by her given surname. To everyone else she was always Arbell Swan-Neck, and she was recognized by all as the most beautiful woman in Memphis, and probably all of its vast territories. Describe her beauty? Think of a woman like a swan.
How different history would have been had Cale not encountered her inside the great wall that afternoon, or had lacked the deftness in that dark and slippery place to pull her back and, as certainly would have been the case, she had broken her oh-so-beautifully long and elegant neck on the flagstones below.
Within hours a lovestruck Cale had told one bemused and one resentful companion that he had changed his mind about leaving Memphis. He did not, of course, explain the real reason, telling them that he had taken worse beatings than those handed out by Solomon Solomon all his life and that he had decided just to ignore Conn Materazzi’s nonsense. Why should he let the stupid jokes of a spoiled brat worry him when they had so many good reasons to stay? Puzzled though they were, Vague Henri and Kleist had no reason to doubt him. Nevertheless, Vague Henri did so.
“Do you believe him?” he said later when he was alone with Kleist.
“Why should I care in any case? It suits me if he wants to stay. I just don’t like him acting like God Almighty all the time.”
Over the next few days Vague Henri watched as the beatings and mockery continued. As always it was the ridicule of Cale that concerned him most. Conn Materazzi might have been a spoiled brat, but he was also a martial artist of formidable skill. Only the oldest and most experienced of the Materazzi men-at-arms ever beat him in the painfully realistic fights that took place every Friday and lasted the whole day. And these defeats against soldiers of deadly skill and ruthlessness became fewer and fewer as the weeks passed. He was renowned, it was as simple as that, and for good reason. It was no surprise at all that in the last week of his formal training he was awarded a prize given only rarely to anyone passing out into the Materazzi army: the Forza or Danzig Shank, known popularly as The Edge. Made by Martin Bacon, the great armorer, a hundred years before, it was a weapon forged from a steel of unique strength and flexibility, a secret sadly lost when Bacon killed himself over a young Materazzi aristocrat who did not care for him. Peter Materazzi, the then doge for whom he had made the sword, was inconsolable at his death and refused for the rest of his life to believe that a man of Bacon’s genius could have killed himself for such a reason. “A girl!” he exclaimed in disbelief. “I’d have given him my wife if he’d only asked.” Given the reputation of Materazzi women for coldness, the effectiveness of such an offer remains doubtful.
At any rate, the superintendence of The Edge was a signal honor for Conn and had not been awarded for more than twen
ty years.
The award ceremony and passing-out parade was as splendid as might be imagined: vast crowds, hats waved, cheers, music, pomp and splendor, speeches and all the rest. The Mond arrayed in front of their forebears were nearly five thousand strong. These should not be confused with mere soldiers—these were an armored elite, the best trained and equipped in the world, each one of high rank and aristocratic birth.
And at the center of it all, Conn Materazzi: sixteen years old, six feet tall, blond, muscular, slender and beautiful—the observed of all the observers, the very center of attention, the darling of the crowds, the pride of the Materazzi. How full of himself he was as he acknowledged the cheers and applause as The Edge was presented to him. As he raised it high about his head, there was a roar like the end of the world.
Vague Henri clapped in order not to call attention to himself. Kleist enthusiastically expressed his dislike by exaggerating his applause and cheering as loudly as if Conn were his twin brother. But despite a nudge from Kleist and a whispered plea from Vague Henri, Cale looked on impassively, a reaction not missed by his master, for all Conn’s feelings that he had been struck by a heavenly lightning.
Given his already high opinion of himself—one reinforced by his set of sycophantic admirers—Conn’s sense of his own wonderfulness had expanded to dizzying new heights. Even two hours later, after the crowds had dispersed and he had returned to the seclusion of the great keep, his brain still buzzed like a hive of excited bees. Nevertheless, after the compliments and adoration of his friends and the cream of Materazzi society began to die away, he had returned sufficiently to the real world to remember the calculated insult offered him by Cale’s refusal even to applaud his triumph. This spectacular act of insubordination was not to be endured, and he sent off one of the servants to call his arms apprentice to come at once.
It took the servant some time to find Cale, not least because when he arrived at the apprentices’ dormitory he had the misfortune to ask Vague Henri where Cale could be found. His talent for evasion had not been needed for some time, but under direct questioning his natural slipperiness reasserted itself.
