Colours in the Steel

CHAPTER NINE

The man knocked, came in, hooked up the chandelier and went away again. Alexius, who had been asleep, yawned and sat up. Couldn’t be that time already, could it? Well, presumably it was. He lit a candle from the small lamp, found his place in the book he’d been reading, and tried to concentrate.

When we consider the essential universality of the Principle, observing it as a whole and not merely the sum of its multifarious perceptible effects (which by definition cannot be taken to be true paradigms of the larger image, diluted as they are by the material and the purely fortuitous), we can at last begin tentatively to approach a state of awareness in which the infinite and the individual gradually cease to be capable of differentiation…

It wasn’t much better the second time he tried to read it; it was still like trying to catch a runaway goose in a thicket of brambles. He didn’t put the book down, but he allowed the page to go out of focus. Not long afterwards, he was asleep again-

– And standing on the city walls, up on the top platform of one of the towers that guarded the Drovers’ Gate, looking out across the place where the river forked out towards the plains. In the distance the clouds met the horizon; there was a keen wind blowing them towards the sea, like a young sheepdog rounding up the flock, but these were clouds of dust.

Standing beside him, for some reason, were Bardas Loredan the advocate, Vetriz and her brother and a man he didn’t know; another Islander by his rather appalling taste in clothes, but a city look to him nevertheless. They were staring out at the clouds of dust like spectators at a horse race or a lawsuit. After a while, Vetriz nudged her brother in the ribs.

‘Two gold quarters on this lot,’ she said.

Her brother pulled a face. ‘No chance,’ he replied.

‘Give you ten to one.’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t take sucker bets,’ he said.

‘But on past form-’ Vetriz started to say. Venart shook his head and grinned. ‘Oh, well,’ Vetriz said, smiling angelically, ‘it was worth a try.’

The curious thing, Alexius couldn’t help noticing, was that the dust clouds were now rising up out of the sea-

(‘Gannadius? Is that you?’

‘In your dream, I know. I would have come here in a dream of my own, but I have to stay awake this evening. Official reception for the archimandrite of Turm, you know. I promise I’ll be as unobtrusive as possible.’)

– And that they were not so much dust clouds as sails; thousands of grey-black sails, fat in the harsh wind that was now blowing directly in Alexius’ face, making the sails crowd in at terrific speed; and the woman Vetriz was saying, ‘Three gold fives at twenty-five to one,’ and was finding no takers.

‘This is most bizarre.’ Bardas Loredan was talking to him, though he was looking straight out to sea. ‘I know you, of course, by sight. I suppose almost everybody in the city does. But why am I having a dream about you? I suppose you must symbolise magic or something.’

‘With respect,’ Alexius replied, ‘I’m the one having a dream about you. And it isn’t magic, it’s philosophy.’

‘Oh.’ Loredan shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, but all that stuff’s way above my head. Gorgas is the mystic in our family, aren’t you?’

The man Alexius didn’t know stared straight ahead, and nodded. ‘And for your information,’ he added, ‘this is my dream and you’re just figments of my-’

Vetriz woke up with a start.

Light was beginning to seep in through the shutters, and the face beside her on the pillow was glowing pale gold, the intensity of the light showing up the marks and flaws on the skin. With his eyes shut and the frown that people tend to wear when they’re deep asleep, he looked older, somehow rather cruel. Vetriz yawned and brushed the hair out of her eyes.

‘Gorgas,’ she said.

‘Go ’way.’

‘Gorgas. It’s time to get up.’

‘Mbz.’

Vetriz slid out of bed and opened the shutters. Below the window, the sea was dark blue, almost black, with a smudge of red and gold where the clouds joined the water. From her window, Vetriz could look directly down on her and her brother’s three ships, moored slightly apart from the other ships in Haya Morone, the best anchorage on the Island. She struggled into her gown, knotted the belt and pulled a comb through her hair.

‘Gorgas,’ she said, ‘you really do have to get up now. Venart’s ship’s in the harbour. He could be here any minute.’

The big, thickset man in the bed opened one eye. ‘You silly cow, why didn’t you tell me?’ he snapped, swinging his legs out and groping for his clothes. ‘Didn’t I tell you-?’

‘Hurry.’ Vetriz turned away from him, wondering what the hell she’d seen in the man the night before. It wasn’t, after all, the sort of thing she usually did. ‘And there’s no need to be rude. He’s got to get through customs and see to the unloading, anyhow. You needn’t panic,’ she added scornfully.

Gorgas Loredan didn’t say anything to that; he was preoccupied with pulling his boots on over his extremely large feet. Vetriz didn’t want to look at him now. Last night’s wine jug was on the windowsill; she tilted it, but it was empty.

Her head hurt. Served her right for behaving like a slut.

Not that she was afraid that Venart actually might get violent if he came back early. In the unlikely event of the door flying open to reveal him standing there with drawn sword and a face like thunder, all she’d have to do was giggle or say, ‘Ven, what do you think you’re doing with that thing?’ and he’d get frightfully embarrassed and back away, growling, like a dog from a red-ants’ nest. And besides, if he came right in and killed Gorgas Loredan in front of her eyes, it wasn’t exactly likely to ruin her life. What she couldn’t face was the prospect of Ven nagging and rebuking and drawing his breath in through his teeth in a pained manner for the next six months, and insisting on taking her with him or leaving her in the charge of their gods-accursed aunt.

‘Are you dressed yet?’ she said. ‘I thought it was women who were meant to be slow in the mornings.’

‘It’s all right, I’m going,’ the voice behind her replied. ‘Is there a side door to this place?’

‘I’ll show you,’ Vetriz replied. ‘Come on.’

And yet last night, it had all seemed so meant, somehow; at the dinner party, where she’d been boasting about how she’d met the Patriarch of the city – such a strange man, though really quite sweet – and been to a real swordfight in the lawcourts… and her neighbour had nudged her in the ribs and pointed to the top of the men’s table and said, ‘Don’t look now, but see that big, chunky one at the end? His brother’s a swordfighter in Perimadeia.’ And then she’d said the name, and it was the same man she’d seen, and the same man who’d been in that very funny dream she’d had at the Patriarch’s palace, or whatever it was called… And the wine had been passed round three or four times too often, and the man she’d gone with had been dying to give her the slip and go off with that Morozin trollop (good luck to both of them) and then…

Well. It hadn’t been that bad then, but now she wanted it over, done with and put away neatly. She closed the door after Captain Gorgas Loredan – nearly trapped the hem of his cloak in it, now that’d have added a redeeming touch of comedy to an otherwise rather dreary episode – and went through to the courtyard to have a bath.

It was nearly midday when Venart finally came home, looking tired and rather cross.

‘I know we’re descended from pirates,’ he grumbled as he kicked off his boots, ‘and I’m all for keeping alive old traditions. I just think the customs office shouldn’t feel obliged to rob me blind just out of a sense of cultural identity, that’s all. Is there any food?’

‘Of course there is,’ Vetriz replied. ‘What do you think I’ve been doing while you were away, throwing wild orgies?’

‘You might as well,’ he said, massaging his feet. ‘Better to blow the lot in dissipation and decadent frivolity than see it all go down the throats of those sharks down at the pool. I’ll be lucky to break even on that malted barley, what with the tariff they stung me for.’

‘Bread, cheese and an apple do you? Or are you going to insist on hot soup?’

‘Anything that isn’t fish,’ Venart said, with feeling. ‘If any fish comes in this house for the next six weeks, I’m leaving. There is nothing, I repeat nothing, to eat in Psattyra but raw bloody fish, unless you count the raw yellow fungus stuff as food, which I don’t.’

‘You poor lamb,’ Vetriz said absently. ‘Have a lie down for an hour while I get you something.’

The headache wore off quite quickly, helped on its way by willow bark steeped in rosewater and an orange, and the bath more or less removed Captain Loredan’s fingerprints from her person. Even so, she felt tired and listless – not enough sleep, only yourself to blame. No wonder you had nightmares, mixing mead, cider and strong wine.

Not exactly nightmares. A proper nightmare would have been better, somehow.

Bardas Loredan woke up sweating and cursing, saw the light through the shutters and scrambled for his clothes. His head was splitting; filthy, rotten, cheap, industrial-grade red wine on an empty stomach. Now then; if he really hurried, he could get to the Schools in time to be only a quarter of an hour late. Damn that wretched, weird, crazy girl for making him need a drink.

In the event, he was only ten minutes late; rather an achievement, all things considered, and he should have received the congratulations and admiration of his class rather than all those frosty stares.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘settle down, sorry I’m late. Now then, the footwork of the Old fence. Positions, please; not like that, Master Iuven, not unless you intend to confuse your opponent by falling over. Front foot in line with the blade, back foot square, come on, we’ve done this a hundred times…’

Why should I dream about him, after all these years? And that foreign girl and her brother from the tavern? And the Patriarch, of all people? That is definitely the last time I try and economise on a heavy-drinking session.

The girl, the sullen, unnerving pain-in-the-bum who was the cause of all this, was fencing magnificently today. Her movements were beginning to take on that deadly, graceful poise that all the best advocates had, something he’d seen in others but never himself. He’d always tended to associate it with a perverse pleasure in the act of killing and he didn’t really hold with it, but it certainly boded well for the girl’s future in the profession. For his part, he’d always fenced exactly like what he was, a highly skilled and intelligent coward who knew that his only way of staying alive was to kill someone else.

‘Hello.’ Athli had materialised behind him while he was watching the class do semicircles. ‘How did your tete-a-tete with little Miss Hatchet-face go last night? Did you still respect each other in the morning?’

‘Please don’t be arch at me, Athli, I have a slight headache. And for your information, you couldn’t have been further from the mark if you tried. I don’t know what that bloody woman’s after, but I’m delighted to say it’s not me.’

‘You sure about that?’

‘Convinced. As far as she’s concerned, I’m just someone who’s teaching her how to carve people up. Talking of which, you just watch her this morning. I hate to say this, but she’s going to be good.’

‘Teacher’s pet, huh?’

‘Oh, go away and count something, there’s a good girl.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘There’s one thing you could usefully do,’ he added. ‘Go and smile bewitchingly at Governor Modin. He doesn’t love me any more, and I can’t be doing with aggravation from the likes of him. You could do that little girl standing on one foot and twirling a lock of hair between your fingers act, like you used to do for that dirty old man from the palm-oil people.’

‘I never-’ Athli sounded offended, then relaxed. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Quits?’

‘Quits. But if you could try soothing Modin for me, it’d be a help. Apparently I’ve been abusing the governors’ trust by doing individual coaching after hours without permission.’

Athli nodded. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell him a dying-grandmother story and offer to pay money.’

‘Just so long as you don’t pay money.’

Athli grinned. ‘Trust me,’ she said, ‘I’m a lawyer.’

It was quite true, she reflected after she’d sorted out Governor Modin, about the standing on one leg and twirling a lock of hair (and fancy him having noticed). I shouldn’t really do that sort of thing, only it does make things easier sometimes, when there simply isn’t time to win an argument or make a case on its merits. I suppose all’s fair in love and litigation…

‘Excuse me.’

She turned round and managed not to squeak with surprise. She wanted to say, ‘Should you be up?’ or, ‘Oughtn’t you to be in bed?’ but of course she didn’t. What she did say was, ‘Patriarch, what can I do for you?’

‘I’m sorry to trouble you,’ the Patriarch said, ‘but are you Master Loredan’s clerk? The man on the door pointed you out to me.’

‘That’s right,’ she said. So the rumours had been true, she said to herself; he must have been ill, because he looks awful, poor man. ‘Would you like to see him? He’s teaching a class right now, but I’m sure it’d be no problem if-’

The Patriarch smiled. He had a nice smile. She was taken aback; usually he seemed so dignified and grand when he was taking part in some ceremony or civic function. But then he would, wouldn’t he?

‘That’s all right,’ he said, ‘it’s not urgent. Would it be in order for me to wait until the midday break?’

‘If you’re sure you don’t mind…’ Athli felt rather flustered. She now had the responsibility of keeping a frail dignitary amused and comfortable for the next hour. Would she have to stand there making small talk, or would he rather just sit in a quiet corner and read a book? Always assuming she could find him a chair; further assuming he wanted to sit down. Damnation, Athli thought. My mother didn’t raise me to be a diplomat.

‘No, not at all.’ The Patriarch gestured for her to lead the way. (If he opens doors for me I’ll die of embarrassment.) ‘I do hope I’m not being a nuisance. I’m afraid I’m rather ignorant of the workings of this establishment.’

After she’d offered him everything she could think of, he finally agreed to accept a chair next to a pillar and a view of the class. ‘And if I could trouble you for a drink of water,’ he added, ‘that would be very kind. I’m afraid I woke up this morning with rather an unpleasant headache.’

Oh, gods, where am I going to find him something to drink out of? ‘No trouble at all,’ she said firmly. ‘I won’t be a moment, if you’re sure you’re all right there.’

‘Perfectly comfortable, thank you,’ Alexius replied. ‘You really are most kind.’

Once he’d got rid of the clerk – a sweet girl, but inclined to fuss; or maybe she’s afraid I’ll turn her into a frog – Alexius slumped into the chair and caught his breath. He felt dreadful, quite apart from his headache, and he knew he shouldn’t have come; but it would have been equally impossible not to, after the dream he’d had last night.

Loredan’s brother. He felt an irrational surge of resentment towards Gannadius for not being there, although he knew perfectly well that his colleague had a meeting he couldn’t get out of that would last until the middle of the afternoon. But he desperately wanted to know what Gannadius had made of the dream, and whether he’d seen the same things. Still, that couldn’t be helped. More important to speak to Loredan himself, something he should really have done long before now, except that he couldn’t face having to tell Loredan what he’d done. But there really wasn’t any choice in the matter now. Heaven alone knew what he was going to say.

He opened his eyes and found he was looking at Loredan’s back, masking the group of energetic-looking young people who were hopping and prancing round in a semicircle in response to his brisk commands. He’d decided he’d seen enough of that when the semicircle turned and he could see the faces of the students-

Hell and damnation! Her!

With an effort, Alexius made himself stay calm and keep breathing, though the pain in his chest and arm was enough to make him want to cry out. One of Loredan’s students was that girl, the one who was the cause of all the trouble-

The one who wanted Loredan maimed; who’d been practising fencing exercises with him in that vision he’d had from the Islander woman – of course, how stupid of me not to have thought of it.

The one who was pointing a sword at Loredan’s throat right this very minute.

Well, of course; she was learning how to fence. She’d have to learn, if she wanted to be skilled enough to mutilate an experienced and highly talented swordsman. The logic behind it all made him feel cold down to the soles of his feet.

That decided him; he’d have to tell Loredan everything, warn him of the danger. Once he’d done that, it might be possible, with Gannadius helping, to lift the curse and get this dreadful mess cleared up once and for all. If only I’d had the sense and the courage to do it in the first place, instead of rushing off looking for naturals-Best not to think of that. And now this horrible puzzle of Gorgas, the intellectual who dressed like an Islander and turned up in his dream along with the only other two Islanders he’d had dealings with recently. If ever he did manage to get clear of this, it would make a wonderful case study: something that could be included in the foundation course as a dreadful warning of the dangers of misusing the Principle.

‘Here you are.’ It was the fussy girl again, holding out to him an incredibly ornate silver cup. ‘I’m sorry I was so long.’

He smiled, took the cup – heavens, it was some sort of fencing trophy – and drank deeply. ‘Might I ask,’ he said, ‘who that young lady is? The one in Master Loredan’s class.’

‘Oh, that’s-’ Athli froze. It was on the tip of her tongue, but however hard she tried she simply couldn’t remember the horrid girl’s name. ‘That’s our star pupil,’ she went on. ‘Bardas – Master Loredan thinks very highly of her. A natural talent, he reckons.’

‘I see,’ Alexius replied, trying not to react to her unfortunate choice of words. ‘And she’s a regular member of the class?’

‘Very much so,’ Athli replied, nodding vehemently. ‘We hope she’ll be a credit to us in years to come.’

A sharp crash of colliding metal made them both look up. Loredan was teaching a back-foot parry in the Old fence. To demonstrate it, he’d got the girl to lunge at him, while he flicked her blade away, took a neat back-foot step to the right and counterattacked in the same movement. But it hadn’t quite worked like that; the girl’s thrust had almost beaten his defence, and he was off balance, holding her blade off by brute strength.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘my fault. We’d better do that again.’

The girl disengaged her sword; Loredan resumed his position. Alexius could feel the pain of his fingernails digging into the palm of his hand.

‘And, now,’ Loredan said. This time he caught the blade perfectly, turned it, made his sideways move and brought the tip of his sword precisely up under the girl’s chin, all in a fraction of a second. It was quite beautiful to watch. He lowered his sword and turned to the class to explain.

The girl lunged again.

The speed of Loredan’s reaction was astounding. There was very little to see; a blur of reflected light, a clank and a bump and a crack as the girl’s sword was knocked out of her hand and landed on the flagstones. The tip of Loredan’s blade – it was the Spe Bref; Athli knew he kept it so sharp that it could pass through your skin into your flesh before you felt anything – was touching the soft, smooth skin just under the girl’s chin, applying enough pressure to prick without drawing blood. He gave her a long, puzzled look down the length of the blade, withdrew it with a short, economical movement, and turned back to the class.

‘As I was saying,’ he began, ‘it’s vitally important to keep the wrist and elbow level throughout the manoeuvre…’

The girl was white as a sheet and trembling, both hands around her neck. The rest of the class were staring at the two of them in fascinated horror, hardly daring to breathe. Athli, who’d have screamed if there had been time, had dropped her satchel, and the lid of her portable inkwell had come off, letting dark-brown ink seep through the cloth onto the floor. As for Alexius, it was only several seconds after the affair was over that he realised how bad the pain in his chest and arm had become. He tried to get up out of his chair, but that quickly proved to be impossible. He was about to panic when he felt the pain ebb rapidly away, like water out of a punctured skin. As if to redress the balance, his head was even more blindingly painful.

In a roughly similar way, though rather more slowly, the tension ebbed away too, as the brains of all present set about the task of revising what they’d just seen to make it more credible, fit to be stored in the memory. Even Alexius wondered for a moment whether he’d made it all up, seen what his melodramatic imagination secretly expected or hoped to see, rather than what had actually taken place. It might even have been a momentary relapse into the dream, a fragment of his vision interpolated like a scholar’s note scribbled in tiny handwriting between the lines of a book. He had heard of such phenomena, particularly among the mentally disturbed and those who tried to enhance their meditations by chewing peculiar herbs; while you’re speaking to him, a man’s head can suddenly turn into that of a lizard or a bird, and then become human again in a fraction of a second. There were fortune tellers who reckoned that they saw into the future that way, and other charlatans and mystics who claimed they could tell if a man was guilty of murder, because there would be a split second when they could see the dead man’s blood on his slayer’s hands. Maybe it was something like that, Alexius told himself comfortingly. And maybe, he replied, it wasn’t.

At midday the class rested as usual. The girl walked quickly away towards the drinking fountain; the rest of the students immediately formed a close, whispering huddle. Loredan, looking painfully weary, sat down on a kitbox and stared at the floor, rubbing his forehead with his fingertips.

‘Bardas-’ Athli began.

‘Don’t tell me I imagined it,’ he interrupted savagely, not looking up. ‘She tried to kill me. I just don’t understand it. Why should…?’

‘Bardas,’ Athli repeated. ‘The Patriarch is here to see you.’

Loredan looked up, frowning. ‘Don’t be silly, Athli,’ he said. ‘What on earth would the Patriarch want to see me for?’

‘Come over here and ask him for yourself.’

Before Loredan could argue further, he caught sight of the man sitting in the chair in the shadows of the colonnade. ‘That’s him?’ he asked. ‘This is turning out to be quite a day.’

Athli nodded. ‘Shall I tell that girl to get lost?’ she said. ‘I’ll get her bill ready and-’

She broke off; Loredan was grinning. ‘You’re going to protect me from a crazed assassin with an invoice, are you? Don’t you dare. Fairly soon, that strange creature’s going to be a first-class advertisement for this school. Right fool I’d look slinging her out now.’

‘But she tried-’

‘Unsuccessfully. Now then, shall we go and find out what the wizard wants?’

He knelt beside the Patriarch’s chair while Athli (rather reluctantly) made herself scarce. Loredan was just about to launch into a general to-what-do-we-owe-the-honour babble when Alexius leant forward, close to his ear.

‘Excuse the question, but have you got a headache?’

Loredan looked puzzled. ‘Why, does it show?’ he said. ‘Actually it’s better than it was. Earlier on I felt like a road gang was splitting rocks just behind my eyes.’

Alexius took a deep breath. ‘Also,’ he said, ‘may I ask, do you have a brother called Gorgas?’

This time Loredan recoiled, like a man who’s just put his foot down on a snake. ‘As a matter of fact I do,’ he replied. ‘Or I did; he may be dead by now, for all I know. Or care, come to that.’ He shifted his weight, to stop his leg going to sleep. ‘In return,’ he said, ‘could you do something for me?’

‘If I can.’

‘All right. Could you tell me as much as you possibly can about the dream you had last night? I have a feeling about that, actually.’

‘I will indeed,’ Alexius replied. ‘Finally, would you kill an old man who can barely walk, but who’s desperately sorry and is trying his best to clear up the mess?’

‘I suppose not. Why d’you ask?’

Alexius explained. When he’d finished, Loredan, who had been frowning as if trying to follow a conversation in a foreign language he could just about speak, nodded his head and said, ‘I see.’

‘I thought I’d better tell you,’ Alexius continued. ‘I should have done it long before this, of course, but…’

Loredan shrugged. ‘Well, you’ve told me now.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I’m badly out of my depth here. I’ve never had much to do with magic and that sort of thing, you see.’

For once, Alexius didn’t even try and explain that it wasn’t actually magic. ‘It seemed – well, quite innocent at the time,’ he went on, knowing that he was making things worse with every word, but unable to stop. The truly galling thing about it was that he had the feeling that Loredan simply didn’t believe in any of this; the Principle, curses, naturals. A moment later Loredan, rather apologetically, confirmed this impression.

‘I’m sorry if that sounds rude or disrespectful,’ he added diffidently. ‘It’s just that I’ve always reckoned there was enough aggravation in the real world without making up a whole lot of spooky supernatural stuff as well. And so as far as I’m concerned, you’ve got nothing to apologise for.’ He smiled. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve offended you,’ he added. ‘If my neighbours heard me talking like this to the Patriarch, they’d dip me in a tar barrel for blasphemy. But thank you for telling me about her. I knew there was something seriously wrong there, but it hadn’t occurred to me it might be personal. It’s odd,’ he went on, ‘but in all my years in the business I never came across anything like that; I mean, advocates’ families all know the score, you just don’t get blood feuds and nonsense like that. If you did, the whole system’d be unworkable.’ He sighed. ‘Just my luck, really. The only half-decent student I’ve got, and she’s only learning the trade because she wants to kill me. Well, she’s wasted her money, because I’ve retired. If she kills me it’ll have to be good, honest murder, and you said you reckoned her principles wouldn’t let her do that.’

Alexius nodded. ‘So she said. But when she tried to kill you just now…’

Loredan shrugged. ‘Actually, I don’t think that was anything premeditated, just a student losing her rag. It happens. Only the other week we had a student go berserk in a tutorial, got himself killed. It’s a damn nuisance when it happens, it makes terrible trouble for the Schools for a month or so until it all blows over. I’m getting my clerk to draw up a disclaimer for the students to sign before they start the course, just as a precaution.’ He stood up. ‘Anyway, many thanks for telling me all this, and, like I said, please forgive me if I’ve insulted you. It’s nothing personal; I really admire what you people do, it’s just I don’t happen to believe in it.’

‘I…’ Alexius stopped, and nodded. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘don’t worry about that. I do believe in it, and I’m still extremely concerned, but,’ he added, as a flicker of alarm crossed Loredan’s face, ‘I’m certainly not going to preach at you or try and convert you to the true faith.’ He smiled, and shrugged his shoulders. ‘It occurs to me that if you really have retired from legal practice then the curse is comprehensively defeated, since the duel I saw can’t ever happen. So it must have sorted itself out,’ he added, ‘somehow or other. Certainly with no help from me, which puts me in my place. What are you going to do about her, if I might ask?’

‘Hm.’ Loredan rubbed his nose against the palm of his hand. ‘That’s a tricky one. The obvious thing would be to throw her out on her ear, but I’m not sure I can do that. I mean, she’s paid for her tuition.’ A thought occurred to him, making him grin. ‘If I was to tell her to sling her hook now,’ he said, ‘that’d be a breach of contract, for which she’d be fully entitled to take me to law. If she did that I’d have to conduct my own defence – think how it’d look for me professionally if I hired a lawyer, me being a trainer and all – and then I would be giving her a chance to kill me in the courtroom; counterproductive, yes? At the moment, of course, I could beat her with one hand tied behind my back, but at the rate she’s going, if she joined another class she’d be a real threat inside a year, which is well within the statute of limitations on a contract dispute.’

He took a deep breath and sighed. ‘More to the point,’ he went on, ‘slinging out good students for no readily apparent reason isn’t exactly the best way to build up a good reputation in this business, and I’m doing this for a living. I’d be better off accidentally killing the wretched girl, as far as that side of things is concerned. Not that I’d do that,’ he added, as the Patriarch’s eyes widened. ‘I may be a lawyer, but I’m not that bad. No, I think the safest way would be to let her finish the course and just keep an extra-special eye on her at all times. When I was in the army we used to have a saying: the enemy you can see is the least of your problems.’

‘Well,’ Alexius pushed against the arms of the chair. Loredan helped him up and handed him his stick. ‘You know your own business, and I’d better leave you to it. My attempts to interfere in your affairs so far haven’t exactly done any good to anybody. The best thing I can do, as far as I can see, is go home and read a book.’ He smiled. ‘Do you sometimes wonder what on earth possessed you to take up your particular career? I know I do.’

‘All the time,’ Loredan replied. ‘Well, sometimes. But then, what the hell else would I have done with my life? It’s not as if I was ever exactly spoilt for choice.’

Alexius wondered if he should offer him his hand, or pat him on the shoulder by way of informal benediction. He decided against it. ‘One last thing,’ he said. ‘Your brother – he lives on the Island?’

‘I don’t think so. It’s been a long time since I last had anything to do with him.’

‘Is he – involved in my line of work in any way?’

‘I have no idea. To be honest with you, I don’t get on with him, never did. He left home some time before I did, and I don’t think any of us were heartbroken to see him go.’ Loredan grinned bleakly. ‘He isn’t a terribly nice man, my brother.’

‘Ah.’

‘So I don’t think I can help you much there. Sorry about that. And now I’d better be getting back to my class, before they start grumbling about refunds. I was late in this morning, which doesn’t help.’

Alexius changed his mind and put out his hand. ‘Thank you, Bardas Loredan. For what it’s worth, I really am very sorry.’

Loredan laughed, and took his hand. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’ve been forgiving people who’ve tried to kill me since before I started shaving. It’s nice to be able to do it to someone who’s still alive.’

‘Now then,’ Temrai said, taking a deep breath and fixing a smile on his face. ‘I think we do it this way.’

Uncomfortably aware that he was being watched by several thousand people, he picked up a twig and started sketching lightly on the surface of the mud.

‘First,’ he said, ‘we make the frame, which is really nothing more than four big bits of wood joined together into a square. These bits-’ he skimmed the mud carefully, marking out the shape ‘-are the sides, and these bits join the sides together. Then we’ve got the uprights, with a beam across the top; oh, yes, and two struts like so, to keep it from getting knocked out of shape when the arm bashes into it.’ He paused for a moment, trying to picture it in his mind’s eye. ‘And there’s a roller back here, axles for the wheels, the arm itself, of course. Now, is there anything I’ve forgotten? Can’t remember. Winding gear, of course, and the slip; but that’s metalwork so we’ll leave that for now. I think that’s about it. All right, gather round and I’ll tell you how it works.’

The clansmen drifted up and formed a circle, almost reluctantly, around the crude sketch of a middleweight torsion engine. Temrai had based it on the one he’d passed every day as he walked to work; catapult, fixed, medium heavy duty, class four, to give it its proper nomenclature. It had looked elegantly simple back in the city, where far more complex and sophisticated engines were an everyday sight. Here, on a riverbank beside a mountain of newly sawn unseasoned timber, it all seemed rather different. His people, the clan, the men and women he’d grown up with, were staring at him as if he was proposing to build a bridge to the moon, or catch the winds in a bag. On reflection, he could see their point.

‘The idea is,’ he went on, ‘that when you twist a piece of rope – horsehair’s supposed to be the best material, but we’re going to use ordinary rope to start with and see if that’ll do instead – it makes a sort of spring-’

‘Temrai, what’s a spring?’

Oh, gods, this isn’t going to work. ‘A spring is – well, you know how the lathes work? When you bend over a sapling and then let it go it flies back? Or a bow, come to that. That’s a spring. Something that bends and then snaps back the way it was.’ He paused. ‘Am I making any kind of sense, or should I start again?’

‘No, that’s all right,’ someone said. ‘Go on, please.’

‘All right. Look, take it from me, if you twist a whole lot of rope together and put a pole in the middle like so, and then you pull it down like this-’ he did his best to demonstrate with his hands ‘-and then let go, it’ll shoot forwards; and if you put a stone on the end of the pole-’

‘Wouldn’t it fall off?’

‘Not if you hollow out the end of the pole, like a spoon. Right,’ he said, as inspiration struck, ‘let’s think of it like this. You know when you get a spoon and dip it in yoghurt or whatever, and then you pull it back and flick it, and the yoghurt flies out? We’ve all done that when we were kids, right? It’s exactly the same principle, only what does the flicking is the rope.’

Silence. They must think I’m out of my mind, Temrai reflected wretchedly. They’re thinking I’ve made them cut down all those trees and build all those rafts, just so that we can sit under the walls of the city flicking yoghurt.

‘Believe me,’ he said, with all the authority he could muster, ‘it works. You see that rock over there? One of these things can throw a rock that size – oh, easily as far as that tree there, probably even further. I’ve seen it myself.’

Nobody spoke; probably just as well, because if they had, they’d have said, If you say so, Lord Temrai, in that tone of voice exclusively reserved for humouring idiots. The only way I’ll convince them, he realised, is to build the bloody thing and show them. So that’s what I’m going to have to do.

‘Right,’ he said, ‘now you all know the basic principle, let’s get on with it. Now then, we’ll start with the sides. I want two beams of heartwood, ten feet by two by one. You lot, saws and adzes.’

The group he’d pointed to got to their feet and trudged towards the timber pile, with the air of men who’ve been sent to gather moonbeams in a jar. He turned back to the diagram.

‘You lot, I want you to rough out these struts here. Heartwood again, six foot by one by one. I’ll want tenons cut out on the ends; I’ll explain what a tenon is later,’ he added quickly before anyone could ask, ‘after you’ve made the beam. Now, you lot can cut me out the beam that’s going to be a fiddly bit, but we’ll start with a beam seven and a half by a foot by six inches, leave the sapwood on because it’ll want to have some bounce in it. Now, the uprights I’m going to have to think about, because they’re a funny shape.’

For the time being, he reassured himself, it’s still just a big game, they’re all entering into the spirit of the thing and enjoying themselves. With any luck I’ll have a machine finished and working before that wears off; and once they see one actually hurling a big rock, that ought to do the trick.

I hope so, because otherwise I’m going to be in trouble.

Things didn’t go quite as well as Temrai had hoped. In the event, several parts turned out wrong and had to be done again, and it took a week rather than a day to make the components of the prototype. On the positive side, morale in the joinery squad stayed high and proved to be contagious; a large excited crowd, full of good humour and very anxious to help, comment and generally get under the joiners’ feet, gathered to watch the parts being put together and the finished machine tested.

They’ve come to watch it fail, Temrai told himself gloomily, as he listened to the bee-hum of conversation and watched the women spreading rugs and cushions and setting out food, as if this was Temrai’s funeral games. Or maybe not, he reflected. I think they’ll enjoy themselves either way. He took a moment or two to survey the scene; colour and noise and movement; families and friends sitting together, children running about and shrieking as they jumped in and out of the river, mothers chasing them with towels and hauling them out of their wet clothes. A strange way to greet the birth of a terrible new weapon.

He walked to the top of the rise and stood there; that was enough to get the crowd’s attention. Children were shushed, plates passed round, mead and milk poured. He wondered if he should make a little speech, decided not to. Time to make a start. He cleared his throat and started giving orders.

The largest and heaviest components were the two sides of the frame, cumbersome slabs of timber ten feet long into which most of the other components were going to have to fit. His mother’s uncle Kossanai, whom he’d appointed as head joiner on the project, organised a team to line the sides up and hold them steady while the crossbars were slotted into place. First snag: the tenon on the front crossbar was too big for the mortice in the left-hand frame panel. At once a heated argument broke out between the crossbar makers and the team who’d made the sides, one party insisting that the tenon was the right size but the mortice was too small, the other side maintaining that the mortice was perfect to within the thickness of a hair, but the tenon was a sloppy piece of work and the whole crossbeam was only fit for firewood. After a brief interlude for despair, Temrai quietly got up, found a drawknife, a chisel and a cupful of soot for marking, beckoned to a couple of spectators from another team, and set to work paring down the tenon. When the crowd saw what was going on they started laughing and clapping, and the argument quickly broke up.

‘Right,’ Temrai said quietly, straightening his back and dusting off his hands. ‘Now listen up, because I won’t say this again. One more performance like that, and I’ll have the whole lot of you dunked in the river. Understood? Now then, let’s have the other crossbar.’

Mercifully, the back crossbar was a good fit, and the joiners started grinning and slapping each other on the back, as if the job was finished. Temrai ordered them to take it apart again.

‘Lord? But it fits, you can see for…’

Patiently, Temrai explained that they still had all the other bits to slot in, and they couldn’t do that without dismantling it. ‘First we’re going to check all the joints, piece by piece,’ he said. ‘Then we’re going to put the whole thing together and drive in the pegs. All clear?’

The windlass roller came next. It had been too large to make on an ordinary pole lathe, and Temrai had had to design a whole new type of lathe to turn it on. He was rather proud of it, for it was the first part of this project that he’d thought up for himself, rather than just copying something he’d seen in the city. The roller slotted neatly into place, but it was three inches too long; it had to go back onto the lathe to be trimmed, twice, before it was right. Next came the cross-bracer for the uprights; that was a reasonable fit, only needing a little skilful whittling. With a sigh of relief, Temrai ordered the pegs that locked the tenons into the mortices to be driven home. The joiners did so, and stood back. When they let go, it didn’t fall apart.

Well, that’s all right, Temrai muttered to himself. Now for the uprights.

It was only when the two massive lumps of carefully worked timber were hauled out and held up by Kossanai’s men that he realised he’d forgotten something. He swore under his breath.

The uprights, which supported the beam that the catapult arm slammed into, were supposed to slot into mortices cut on the top face of the two side pieces, where they were held in place by three-quarter-inch iron bolts. The mortices looked as if they’d been cut neatly enough; likewise the tenons cut on the bottom end of each upright. The problem he’d overlooked until now was how to lift the two solid, heavy uprights up over the side pieces so that they could then be lowered into position (assuming they were going to fit; let’s assume that for now, shall we?) and bolted into place. He put his hands to his face, rubbing both sides of his nose with his fingers. Some sort of crane, it’d have to be; or a scaffolding, and lift the pieces into position by brute force. If they got clumsy and dropped one of those things onto somebody, there’d be one hell of a mess. He shut out the buzz of impatient excitement from the happy picnickers and tried to visualise the best way of doing it.

Cranes… Yes, that’d do it.

‘Kossanai, I want the new lathe taken to bits and the A-frames brought up here,’ he said. ‘Lasakai, Morotai, get me a couple of poles ten feet long by eighteen inches across, or as near as you can find; something with a bit of spring in it, but not too bendy. Panzen, I’ll need forty foot of rope, not the good stuff we’re keeping for the engine.’

By leaning the two A-frames together and tying them top and bottom, they made a firm base for the crane. One of the poles was then hauled up and tied in to act as the lever, and there was no shortage of willing helpers when Temrai called for volunteers to work the thing. He himself stood on the engine frame and guided the tenon carefully into the mortice; it went nearly halfway in before it stuck.

‘Damn,’ he said. ‘All right, lift. That’ll do. Hold it steady, for pity’s sake.’ He knelt down, his head directly under the dangling upright, and brushed soot inside the mortice, so that when the tenon went in again the soot would mark the places where it was sticking. ‘All right, let’s try that again. Down – hold it. Right, out again, and hold it there.’ He turned and faced the leader of the crane gang. ‘Just keep it steady like that while we trim this tenon back a bit. We’ll be as quick as we can.’

At the fourth attempt the tenon went down all the way. Kossanai jumped forward with an augur and brace to bore the holes for the bolts, while the crane gang continued to hold the weight of the upright on their ropes. Temrai had chosen the right man for the job; Kossanai worked quickly but carefully, apparently not too bothered by all the fuss and excitement. It took him half an hour to drill the two holes, by which time the joyous enthusiasm of the crane gang had evaporated rather.

‘Let’s get the bolts in,’ Temrai said, grabbing the hammer and tapping them home himself. ‘Thank the gods for that, the damn things fit. Pasadai, get the cotter pins in those bolts so we can slacken off the crane.’

And so on; after the uprights, they fitted the two bracing struts that supported them, and then the thickly padded crossbar at the top which joined them together and took the impact of the catapult arm itself. By this stage the holiday atmosphere had ebbed away and been replaced by a tense, impatient excitement, as the machine slowly and incredibly began to look like the sketch Temrai had traced in the mud a week before. Now at last the clanspeople were beginning to understand; there in front of them was something that looked real, something that would actually work and which they’d built themselves. Temrai fancied he could hear the mood of the clan changing; it was like a child growing up, terribly fast. He wasn’t quite sure he liked it.

‘Good work,’ he said as the joiners stood back from the completed frame. ‘Now let’s get the metal fixings and the ropes in.’

This stage he supervised personally, since even now he was the only man in the clan who really understood how it all worked. He’d made the two ratchet assemblies himself; one for tensioning the rope, the other for locking the windlass roller so that it could be wound back in stages. There were no problems with the fit; he made them all go together more by sheer effort of will than anything else, but go together they did. While he was busy with the tensioning ratchet, Kossanai’s men brought up the catapult arm – it still looks just like a bloody great big spoon, Temrai admitted to himself – and held it in place until Temrai had threaded in the ropes. As soon as he gave the word, another team fitted levers into the slots in the tensioners and began the slow job of winding up the rope.

Those ropes are going to break, I know it. But they didn’t; nor did the ratchet mechanism or the tensioner axles, or any of the parts Temrai had shaken his head dubiously over as he dunked them in the water to quench. At last, the tensioner crews gave up their attempt to coax the winders round one more click; the levers were taken out, and someone roped up the arm to the windlass.

It was finished. All that was left was to wind it back, put a stone in the bowl of the spoon and loose the slip.

Temrai stood up. He was exhausted, filthy with mud and sawdust, bleeding from several small cuts and two sets of skinned knuckles. More than anything, he wanted not to have to give the order to loose the slip. Everybody was looking at him.

It can’t work first time. Nothing ever works first time. Gods, we can’t use up all our luck this early, we need it for later. What if the arm snaps, or the uprights are too weak and the whole thing just smashes itself to pieces? I ought to make everybody get back, people could be hurt by bits of flying timber if this thing breaks up.

If I do this, nothing’ll ever be the same again.

‘All right,’ he called out. ‘Let her go.’

The slip operator, someone Temrai knew by sight but not by name, tugged sharply on the rope in his hand, drawing a loop off the end of the carefully shaped hook that connected the windlass rope to the arm. The enormous wooden spoon shot forward, smacking against the felt padding wrapped round the top crossbar with a noise like a giant mother slapping a giant child. The whole engine hopped six inches in the air and landed again like a cat.

And the stone flew.

Temrai watched it rise, slow down, stop and fall, gathering pace as it came down. It didn’t fall where he’d expected; it was well over to the right and a good ten yards further out, and when it landed, he could feel the impact through the soles of his feet. It pitched on a small rocky outcrop, made a cracking noise that echoed off the hills, bounced and landed in the river with a splash and a dramatic curtain of spray.

There was dead silence. After a moment or so, Kossanai’s people began swarming all over the machine, peering and checking, telling each other with joyous disbelief that this, that and the other was still in one piece, that this bolt hadn’t bent and that dowel hadn’t snapped; that it worked, gods damn it, the bloody thing actually worked!

They were the only ones moving or speaking; the rest of the gathering were staring in silence, estimating in their minds the weight of the stone and the distance it had travelled, imagining the force of the impact, what it could do. Temrai could hear what they were thinking: you want to be careful with that thing, it could do someone an injury.

Well, yes. That was the point, wasn’t it? Or hadn’t you realised?

With an effort, Temrai snapped himself out of the communal trance and went over to the machine. The clan watched him step by step; it was as if standing near it was a political act, a statement of a new and rather dreadful policy. All at once he wanted to say he was sorry and shout at them for being wet and woolly-minded; he wanted to order them to break the machine up as quickly as possible, but he’d have attacked anybody who laid a hostile finger on it. He didn’t know what to think. Above all, he was afraid.

Of what, Temrai? You can’t very well sack Perimadeia by pelting them with flowers. Do you really want to sack Perimadeia? Kill all those people?

We don’t do that sort of thing. They do.

What harm have they ever done you?

Slowly, he looked round until he found Kossanai, who was tapping a wedge carefully into place with a beech mallet. ‘Any damage?’ he asked.

‘No,’ the older man replied. ‘Apart from a few wedges and pins that moved a bit, she’s as sound as a bell. We did it, Temrai. Isn’t that something?’

Temrai smiled, reached out a hand and patted the catapult arm as if it was a favourite horse. ‘That’s all right, then,’ he said. ‘Now all we’ve got to do is make up another three hundred of these beauties and we might just be in business. Come on,’ he added, raising his voice so that everyone could hear, ‘don’t just stand there hugging yourselves, we’ve got work to do.’