Colours in the Steel

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Next morning, his head buzzing and his belt heavy with money, Venart set off for the ropewalks.

It was one of the sights of Perimadeia; a spacious district with wide streets, one of the few places in the city where you could see the buildings without an endless procession of carts and wagons getting in the way. Because there was so little traffic, it had a peaceful, almost park-like atmosphere, spoilt only by the disgusting smell of tar. Although the streets were broad you couldn’t walk down the middle; you had to creep along the sides, trying not to get in the way of the ropemakers as they twisted their skeins of cord, stretched on short wooden pillars from one side of the street to the other, winding ten, twelve, often as many as thirty strands of fine line together to make one strong, pliable rope. At first sight it looked like the web of a huge and slovenly spider.

In the light of his new-found expertise, Venart had decided to place his order with one Vital Ortenan, who he remembered as having boasted of his skill in making long rope from horsehair. He found Ortenan sitting outside his shop, his feet up on one of the wooden pillars and a mug of cider in his hand.

‘Good morning,’ Venart said briskly. ‘I expect you remember me. I’d like to buy some rope.’

Ortenan looked at him. ‘You’ll be lucky,’ he said.

‘Excuse me?’

‘I said, you’ll be lucky,’ Ortenan repeated, scratching his ear. ‘No rope today, sorry.’

Venart frowned. He knew most of the standard bargaining gambits, but this one was new to him. ‘How do you mean, no rope?’ he asked. ‘You had tons of the stuff in there yesterday.’

‘I did,’ Ortenan said. ‘Yesterday. Then, round about an hour before closing up, a bunch of government men came by and took the lot. Every last bloody inch.’ He scowled at the thought. ‘Gave me a bit of paper saying I’d be paid according to the official tariff in due course. In other words, I’ve been requisitioned. Marvellous, isn’t it?’

‘But…’ Venart let his hands fall to his sides. ‘What about everybody else?’ he said. ‘Surely there must be somebody…’

Ortenan shook his head. ‘Went through this district like a cloud of locusts,’ he said darkly. ‘Cleaned the lot of us out. Said it was for catapult ropes,’ he added, as if that was the most idiotic notion he’d ever heard. ‘So I’m afraid you’re out of luck, mate. Should’ve done a deal yesterday, like I told you. Then you’d have your rope and I’d have my money.’

Venart thought for a moment. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you make some more rope, instead of just sitting there? Did they take all the raw materials as well?’

‘No,’ Ortenan replied. ‘But why the hell should I bother? Anything I make’s got to be sold to the government, otherwise they’ll sling me in the coop and fine me to buggery, because of this so-called state of emergency.’ He curled his lips and spat. ‘Well, they know what they can do. When I see some money – real money, not this paper stuff – then I might just consider making some more stock. Till then, they can go play with themselves. My materials won’t go off for sitting in the bins for a week.’

A brief tour of the district confirmed what Ortenan had said. There was nothing to be had, except a few hundred yards of soggy and mildewed mess which the government buyers had rejected, and Venart decided he didn’t really want that. Dejected, he went back to the inn.

‘That’s a nuisance,’ Vetriz said when he told her. ‘And after you spent all that time and energy researching the subject. Whereas if you’d just blundered into it and bought the first stuff that came your way, you’d now have the next best thing to a world monopoly of the rope trade and be able to name your own price.’

Venart scowled at her, which made her giggle. ‘I’m glad you think it’s so amusing,’ he snapped. ‘I hope you’ll still be laughing your silly head off when we sail home with an empty hold.’

‘But we won’t do that, will we?’ Vetriz replied. ‘Because all we’ve got to do is buy something else. Or hadn’t that occurred to you?’

Venart sat down and took off his left boot; he’d got something sharp in it on the way back from the ropewalks. ‘Oh, yes, and what exactly did you have in mind? Or have you been secretly studying the markets while I’ve been out frivolously working my fingers to the bone to keep you in-’

‘There’s plenty of things we can buy,’ Vetriz said, with a truly aggravating air of patience. ‘So long as we get the right price.’

‘Right, then. Suggest something.’

Vetriz nodded. ‘Carpet,’ she said promptly.

‘Carpet?’

‘Carpet.’ She studied her fingernails for a moment, then continued, ‘Where does all the carpet on the Island come from?’

Venart thought about it. ‘Blemmyra,’ he said. ‘Direct,’ he added.

‘Very good. But what you haven’t noticed, because you’ve been too busy mugging up on twelve-ply pure flax this-that-and-the-other is that the Blemmyra carpet they’re selling here is better than the stuff we get at home and about a third of the price.’

‘Oh.’ Venart scratched his head. ‘You sure?’ he added.

‘Sure I’m sure. I was looking for some yesterday to replace that mouldy bit of rag I’ve got on the wall of my bedroom. I happened to notice the price and mentioned it to Athli and she explained it to me. You see, the Blemmyrans buy all their wine in the Mesoge, but they ship it in their own barrels to save money, and barrel staves are so much cheaper than at home because the Hesichians bring them in as ballast on their big bulk freighters. So the barrel staves cost the Perimadeians next to nothing, which means they can sell the carpets they get in exchange from the Blemmyrans much cheaper than we can; and they’re much more fussy than we are, so they insist on the good stuff, and we get all the carpet the Perimadeians don’t want.’ She yawned. ‘It’s called international commerce,’ she added insufferably. ‘You should find out about it when you’ve finished studying rope.’

‘Carpet,’ Venart said. ‘Fine. And have you thought about how much carpet we can actually get rid of in our quaint little backwater home? It’s not exactly a high-volume seller, is it?’

‘It could be,’ Vetriz replied, ‘if it was nice stuff and the price was right. I don’t blame us for not wanting to be robbed blind for second-rate rubbish. Proper carpet, on the other hand-’

Venart shook his head. ‘I’m not gambling our working capital on some theory you and your new chum cooked up while you were out shopping,’ he growled. ‘What I am going to do is go and see this man Loredan, if I can.’

‘Loredan?’ Vetriz looked up sharply. ‘Why?’

‘He’s the only person we know in the government,’ he replied. ‘Think about it, will you? They’re buying up all the rope in the city; but a lot of that rope’s no good for catapults, so presumably they’ll sell off the stuff they can’t use on the surplus market. Unless,’ he went on with a smug grin, ‘someone makes them an offer for it first. Cheap government surplus rope, best quality, one careful owner? The secret of international commerce is being able to see the opportunity that lurks inside every disaster. Plus,’ he added, ‘knowing something about the commodities you deal in. In my case, rope. See you later, don’t wander off.’

It had seemed a conclusive argument when he’d been explaining it to Vetriz. It was still a good argument by the time he reached the council buildings. After he’d spent an hour waiting outside a clerk’s office only to be given a chit that would allow him to see another clerk at the opposite end of the building, it was nothing more than a hare-brained scheme, and he’d reached the point where he would gladly have traded all his notional future earnings from the rope business in exchange for a floor plan of the building with the exits clearly marked when he nearly walked into someone he thought he recognised.

‘Sorry,’ the man said. ‘Wasn’t looking where I was going.’

‘You’re Bardas Loredan,’ Venart replied. ‘I was just coming to see you.’

‘Well, here I am,’ Loredan replied. ‘I think I know you from somewhere, but I can’t say exactly-’

‘We met in a tavern,’ Venart said. ‘I was with my sister. You’d just fought a case against a man called Alvise.’

Loredan smiled. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘I had an idea it was something to do with a tavern, but most people I meet in taverns I deliberately try and forget. What can I do for you?’

Suddenly, Venart’s tigerish trading urge wilted. What he was going to suggest was probably illegal; certainly bad form and morally repugnant. Terribly short-sighted, too; here he had a contact at the highest level of the city government, and he was proposing to alienate him on the offchance of making a quick quarter on a load of rope. It was too late to back out now, however. He took a deep breath and started into his sales pitch, doing his best to lard it solid with if you think it’d be all rights and so long as it’d be in orders. Eventually he ground to a halt and stood nervously on one leg, waiting for Loredan to summon the guard.

‘Well,’ Loredan said after a moment, ‘it’d certainly help me out of an awkward position. The clowns in the Quartermaster’s Office were only supposed to take an inventory, not bring the stuff back with them by the cartload; so we were facing the prospect of either giving back the stuff we can’t use, which wouldn’t be easy since they didn’t bother to mark on the barrels where each lot came from, or else pay up on the assignats when the ropemakers present them for payment. Either way it’s a bit of a shambles, so selling the stuff on seems a fairly good idea.’ He paused. ‘Did you say you wanted the lot or only part of it? To be frank with you, I’d be rather more inclined to agree if I could get rid of all the unwanted stuff in one go.’

Venart licked his lips, which had become rather dry. ‘Certainly I’d be interested in taking the lot,’ he said, ignoring the frantic protests from the back of his mind. ‘It would of course depend on the, er, price.’

Loredan nodded. ‘That’d have to be strictly by valuation,’ he said. ‘Quartermaster’s valuer puts a price on what we’re going to have to pay. You give us that and we can balance our books and forget it ever happened. I understand that standard practice for government purchasing is to split the difference between cost price and what the seller would have got for the stuff selling to the trade. I hope that’s all right, because I daren’t go any lower.’

All the medium- and coarse-grade rope in Perimadeia, at less than trade… ‘That’s fine,’ Venart muttered. ‘Yes, I’d be quite happy with that.’

Loredan actually looked relieved. ‘That’s one less thing for me to worry about then,’ he said, rubbing his temples as if he had a headache. ‘Good thing I happened to bump into you. Oh, one other point. If you could let us have a quarter, say, up front and the balance in a month’s time, that’d help things along a bit. You know, I’m starting to get the enemy and the auditors muddled up in my mind. I’m terrified of both of them, but the auditors know where I live.’

Venart, who had been wondering how quickly he could raise a hundred per cent mortgage on his ship, swallowed hard and said, ‘That’s no problem at all.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I can probably give you a quarter now, if it’s any help. Subject to valuation,’ he added quickly.

‘Splendid,’ Loredan said. He closed his eyes and opened them again, as if the light was bothering him. ‘Bit of a morning head,’ he explained. ‘Look, if you can spare the time we can go over to the Quartermaster’s Office right now and get the paperwork drawn up. Is that all right, or are you in a hurry to get somewhere?’

Gods bless the government service, Venart said to himself as he followed Loredan through the rat’s nest of corridors and cloisters. The inefficient, bungling, inexhaustibly rich government service. I can have the whole lot sold before I need to pay the balance. I wonder if there’s anything else they’ve got too much of?

‘They’ll do the valuation today,’ he told Vetriz, when he got back to the inn, ‘and release the stuff to us tomorrow. They’re even going to cart it down to the docks and load it for us, would you believe? And they accepted the cash I had with me as the quarter up front, so as soon as the stuff’s on board, we can get home and start selling. It’s unreal,’ he added. ‘The way it’s worked out, it’s enough to make you believe in miracles.’

‘Oh, good,’ Vetriz replied. ‘So you’ve spent all the money, then?’

‘Of course I’ve spent all the money. D’you think I was going to let an opportunity like this slip through my hands for the sake of trying to shave a bit off the deposit?’

Vetriz nodded. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘What it comes down to is, you’ve agreed to buy all the rope in the city, except for all the good-quality stuff they’re keeping for the catapults, and you don’t even know yet what the price is going to be. And now there’s nothing left in the box to try out my idea about the carpets. Fine. You’re the businessman.’

For the sake of a quiet life Venart decided he hadn’t heard that. ‘And if this works,’ he went on, ‘who knows, we might be able to do it again with something else. Apparently the Quartermaster’s Office is virtually out of control; they’re grabbing stuff right, left and centre and handing out paper to all the merchants. Just think of what they might buy up next; timber, nails, pig-iron-’

‘Did you say Loredan had a headache?’ Vetriz interrupted.

‘What? Oh, yes, I think he did. Probably explains why he wanted to get it all over and done with quickly, so he could go and lie down. What the devil’s that got to do with anything?’

Vetriz shrugged. ‘Just interested, that’s all. I seem to remember I had a bad head the day we went and saw the Patriarch.’

‘Huh? Well, hard luck, I’m so sorry. It’s probably something to do with the weather; thunderstorm on its way, something like that. Damn it, Vetriz, I thought you’d be pleased about this deal.’

‘Oh, I am, really’, she replied absently. ‘Jolly well done, and let’s hope it doesn’t go wrong, with all our money at stake. It’s funny, you mentioning miracles. We do seem to be having something of a run of luck.’ She grinned. ‘Maybe that nice Patriarch put a spell on us. Wouldn’t that be fun?’

From the top of the slope overlooking the new camp, Temrai could see the city. In a strange way it was like coming home.

In his hand he jingled a couple of reckoning counters; loot from a caravan of merchants who’d made the mistake of assuming the rumours of the clan’s advance were the usual irresponsible scaremongering. It had been a stroke of luck; a set of counters and a counting board were likely to prove as useful as five hundred archers once the job began. He’d learnt simple accounting while he was in the city; the wages clerk in the arsenal had been only too happy to show off his skills to someone prepared to take an interest. An endearing and very helpful Perimadeian characteristic, this urge to disseminate useful knowledge.

Pretty things they were, too. On one side, the city arms; on the other, more or less exactly the view he was looking at now, the city in all its picturesque strength, smug as a landlord behind its guaranteed-secure walls, with the sea behind and the river as a moat keeping the unruly elements from the interior at a respectful distance. Well, he said to himself, I’ll keep these safe, just in case someone in years to come wants to know what the city looked like, before Temrai pulled it down.

Temrai; Temrai the what? Temrai the Great, Temrai the Magnificent, Temrai the Terrible, Temrai the Cruel – he’d be happy to settle for Temrai the First, or just plain Temrai. But just-plains don’t destroy the greatest city in the world.

Assuming it turned out to be possible, of course. No guarantee of that; the thought that he might fail was almost reassuring, because if he failed he wouldn’t have to be Temrai-Sacker-Of-Cities, Temrai the Butcher.

How about Temrai the Engineer? He could fancy the sound of that, rather more than Temrai the Great, certainly more than Temrai the Slaughterer. As for Temrai-Who-Bit-Off-More-Than-He-Could-Chew, that wasn’t the kind of immortality he was keen on.

Below him, in front of his tent, a group of children were weaving carpet (carpets, soaked in water and slung over the frames of the siege towers, were going to counteract the enemy’s attempt to set them alight with fire-arrows, or, at least, that was the plan). They were working on a large vertical loom, squatting on a plank that rested on the rungs of two ladders, so that it could be raised as the work progressed. The children passed the weft thread between the rows of knots, their small hands moving quickly and neatly where a grown-up’s couldn’t go. At the front the old woman in charge of the job sang out the stitches, and the children repeated them after her as if learning a lesson. Even though it was a purely military artefact, designed to be shot through and scorched, the old woman couldn’t help laying a pattern into it; probably she knew no other way of doing the job – it’d take longer to work out how to make it plain than it did to make the pattern. A strange situation, Temrai couldn’t help feeling, when even old women, children and soft furnishings go to war.

Temrai the Carpet-Weaver… He turned back and gazed at the city, as if he could melt those walls with his fiery glance. Maybe one day they’d say that’s exactly what he did. Quite; and if wishes were siege engines, he’d be a great big log. That was enough daydreaming for one morning; work to be done.

Tell us again, Grandmama; tell us how, when you were a little girl, you helped weave the carpets so Temrai could sack the city…

On the river side of the camp, there was something he felt he could really be proud of; a row of trebuchets, still glistening with the pitch that would keep the wet out and stop the joints from springing. They stood like a herd of thoroughbreds in a pen, waiting to be broken in, the pitching arms standing high in the air with the sling that held the stone furled round like a banner at rest before the charge is signalled. Each of them could hurl two and a half hundredweight the best part of two hundred and fifty yards, although the rate of fire was slow compared with a torsion engine, and it took an awful lot of men pulling on ropes to haul up the two-hundred-hundredweight of rock that formed the counterweight. The torsion engines would be ready soon (just as soon as we can make the ropes; oh, hell, how are we going to make the damned ropes? So much horsehair, so little time) and the component parts of the rams and towers were stacked neatly, ready for assembly. The rest of the gear, the things the enemy mustn’t see until later, was on its way down the river, trussed up in bundles to disguise the shape. Pretty soon, they’d have almost enough arrows (green wood and fletched with duck; we’ll be a laughing stock), enough bows, enough armour, enough horses, enough food, shirts, boots, belts, helmets, swords, crockery, helmet-liner laces, enough of every damn thing that went to make up a war. Now he even had something to count them all with; there would be a full census of the clan, for the first time ever. Soon, this great engine he’d built and wound up would slip its catch and go off, and nothing would ever be the same again.

It could be worse, he reflected soberly. I could still be living in the city when it got attacked.

Someone coughed politely behind him; it was the young lad, can’t remember his name, who was drawing maps. He seemed very proud of his handiwork, as well he might – neat, clear, accurate information carefully set out on parchment, everything you need to know about the lie of the land at a glance. He smiled encouragingly; the boy thanked him and carried the maps down the hill to the command tent, where the council of war was waiting. Time he was joining them himself; yet another meeting, the third today…

Boy? Lad? Gods above, that kid is older than I am; and yet he was so deferential, so full of respect. Exactly what am I turning into, in all this historic activity?

Uncle Anakai stood up when Temrai pushed through the tent flap. That seemed very strange and not quite right, but Uncle An had done it instinctively. Maybe he knows something I don’t, Temrai reflected, and made up his mind not to let it worry him. He sat down on the floor, yawned and asked if there was anything to eat.

‘Anything except salt duck,’ he added, as Mivren leant forward to unfasten the lid of her basket. ‘Too much of a good thing’s bad enough; too much salt duck is… Come on, there must be some cheese or something.’

Someone handed him a wedge of cheese and an apple. He attacked them while the heads of department reported progress. By and large, the news was good; problems that had seemed insurmountable yesterday were looking rather more manageable today, the various work parties were managing to co-operate and nobody had yet asked, Why are we doing this? The fletchers had somehow managed to turn the green wood into arrows that flew straight. Just when it looked like they were about to run out of hides for roofing over the battering rams and the siege towers, a hunting party everybody had forgotten about weeks ago had suddenly turned up at the downriver camp with forty mules laden with raw buckskins – by pure chance they’d happened upon a herd of some kind of large deer that only showed up on this side of the badlands once every forty years or so; the deer were completely unused to humans and stood still to be shot, gazing with blank incomprehension as their fellows dropped all around them.

Another party had found a substantial bed of osiers in a small combe that the clan had been passing for years without ever realising it was there; the perfect raw material for weaving shields and baskets, more than they could possibly use in a generation. A flash flood some way upstream had led to a blockage in the river; where the dry bed had been exposed for the first time ever, a scouting party had stumbled across a seam of best-quality clay, just right for making the close-grained, thin-walled jars Temrai had been demanding for this secret weapon of his that nobody was allowed to know about yet. Just when they’d been on the point of giving up on their search for a source of bulk naphtha, a raiding party had ambushed a merchant caravan carrying ten cartloads of the stuff. When the merchants realised that not only were they not going to be horribly killed, they were being asked to name their own price for a reliable supply, they’d been delighted to co-operate; the result was a thoroughly satisfactory deal, unpolished amber for naphtha, and the merchants had made the first delivery at the lower depot the day before yesterday. It was enough, someone remarked, to make you believe in miracles.

Temrai listened to all this good news, thought about it for a while, and then announced that at this rate, they’d be ready to move on to the assault camp in a week or two. Someone else said two weeks was pushing it, could he make it twenty days? Someone else said they ought to be able to meet the two-week deadline if everybody really knuckled down. There was a brief discussion; compromise, sixteen days from today, which would also be the full moon, ideal for the night march they were going to have to make if they wanted that extra advantage of surprise. At the full moon, then; agreed? Agreed. And that was that; Temrai the Great had spoken.

And that, Temrai told himself as the meeting broke up, is how things happen. Odd; I suppose I made the decision, though as I recall I was sitting with a mouth full of cheese at the time, when someone else said, ‘At the full moon, then.’ And now it’s decided, and one way or another, what’s going to happen will happen. And it’ll still all be my doing. Or fault. Whichever.

He pushed through the tent flap and blinked in the bright daylight; and a moment or so later a man came running up to tell him he was needed urgently to sort out a technical problem with the mangonel winding ratchets. Ah. More tinkering. That’s more like it. He nodded, threw away his apple core and asked the messenger to lead the way.

‘And what’s that supposed to be?’ Loredan asked.

The engineer gave him a wounded look. ‘It’s the derrick for the drawbridge windlass,’ he replied. ‘It’s in perfect working order. I checked it myself only the other day.’

‘I see,’ Loredan replied, and gave it a gentle kick. The wooden frame shuddered and a bit fell off. ‘Get it fixed,’ he said wearily. ‘Properly, this time. And don’t explain why that’ll be difficult, because I don’t want to know.’

From up here, on the top of the western-side gatetower, he could see a flash of light from the high ground five miles or so away downriver; a spearhead or a helmet, or maybe just a brightly scoured cooking pot, happening to catch the sun at a moment he happened to be looking in that direction. His mouth twitched, and he mimed raising a hat in polite salutation.

Aside from odds and ends, like the heap of junk he’d just noticed and a few other bits and pieces, they were as ready as they’d ever be. From where he stood, he could see the masons dismantling their scaffolding around the new bastions, daringly sunk into the hard rock of that part of the river bed; it had been a bold, confident design, and it seemed to have worked (at least, it hadn’t fallen down yet). Two engines on each side of those clean, new wedges of stone could command a much broader field of fire, taking care of two notorious blind spots and effectively pushing the safety zone back by another fifty yards. That meant that anything within three hundred yards of the wall was within range; and not many bowmen could shoot over two hundred and fifty yards in a tournament, let alone in the middle of a battle, with half-hundredweight engine shot falling all around them.

He allowed himself a moment to admire the new masonry; unweathered, all the edges still sharp and uneroded, the mortar between the stones still slightly dark where it hadn’t quite dried out. His bastions were the first major addition to the walls in – what, a hundred years, a hundred and fifty? It’d be nice to think that in another hundred years’ time, they’d point them out as Loredan’s defences, maybe tell the awed and fascinated visitors a bit about Loredan’s war and how the enemy hadn’t stood a chance from the very beginning-

Listen to yourself, will you? You’re even starting to think like them. He knelt down and gripped the wooden batten that was part of the mounting for a new engine, to be installed this afternoon. He couldn’t shift it; it’d do. He stood up again, looked out, visualised the arc of fire from this point, tried to imagine what it’d be like on the wall when the engine and the hoist for lifting up ammunition were in place, whether there’d be enough room to pass comfortably on the rampart walkway; traffic jams on the wall in the middle of an assault were a complication he didn’t want to have to face later. As Maxen used to say, the worst thing a general can ever say is, I didn’t anticipate that.

And then he remembered Maxen; so clearly that he could almost see him, as if he was standing there on the wall beside him. He remembered his broad, somewhat round face and his beard that never grew more than three-quarters of an inch, with an almost bald patch in the middle of his chin where it scarcely grew at all. He remembered his way of staying silent for a second or a second and a half after he’d been told something; then the invariable slight nod of the head, down and a bit to the side, always the same whether you’d just told him the camp was being overrun or the soup was ready. He wondered what Maxen would be doing now if he were commanding these walls, and hoped it would be pretty much the same as he’d done himself, though he doubted that.

And then he thought, all this is Maxen’s fault, when you come right down to it. Maxen’s fault, for doing his job, doing it as well as it could be done and with the resources available to him, doing it heroically well; but suppose that job didn’t need doing, shouldn’t have been done at all? If it’s safe to hide behind the walls now, it’d have been safe then, there was no need to take the war out onto the plains, there was no need to do what we did. And once we’d stopped doing it, nothing suddenly got worse; we weren’t suddenly up to our knees in shrieking savages, bashing down the gates to get at our wives and our table linen.

But Maxen did his job, never suggested to anybody that his job might not need doing; because that’s what Maxen was, the city’s one and only general. Did he stay out there in the plains, pouring away his life and the lives of others, simply because there wasn’t anything else he could do? Because he couldn’t face having to quit the army in his mid-fifties and try and find a proper job? What kind of man does a thing like that, entrench himself in the business of ending lives just because it’s the only way he knows of making a living?

Loredan considered the implications of that. Yes, but I retired. Or I tried to. I made an effort to get out of that line of business, and here I am with the lives of all the city and all the clans in the palm of my hand. Gods, if I still had a sense of humour I’d find that amusing.

He heard someone behind him; big, clumping boots. He recognised the sound.

‘Nearly done,’ said the engineer, Garantzes, puffing from the climb up the stairs from ground level. Too much cider and sitting at a drawing board. Loredan reflected smugly that he’d run up the steps two at a time and not even broken into a sweat.

‘Good,’ he replied. ‘I don’t think it’s a moment too soon, either.’ He pointed to the horizon, where a light was flashing. ‘How long before all the new engines are in place?’

Garantzes shrugged. ‘The day after tomorrow, at the latest. They’re all put together and ready to go – we’re turning them out at a rate of two a day in the arsenal; the big problem’s going to be finding enough wall to fit them all onto. The other problem is that we’ve only got two cranes big enough to lift them into position.’ He grinned sheepishly. ‘Forgot about that, in all the excitement. We’re building another two cranes, they’ll be ready tomorrow, with any luck.’

Loredan nodded. ‘The day after tomorrow will do fine,’ he replied. ‘The same goes for the fences.’

The fences had been his idea; or, rather, something he’d read about in a book, many years ago. According to the book, just before a sea battle a century and a half ago, the pirates of the Island had prevented the Perimadeian marines from boarding their ships by rigging up an arrangement of posts, projecting some way from the sides of each vessel, along which heavy-duty cables were strung like the bars of a post-and-rail fence. The result was that the marines’ boarding ladders had come to rest on the cables, not the sides of the ships, and all attempts at boarding had failed. Loredan figured the same technique might serve to protect the walls against scaling ladders. There was now a line of six-inch-diameter posts, each post seven feet long, projecting out of the wall all along the vulnerable zone where ladders might be set up. Over the next few days an iron chain would be strung along the line, and the workmen from the Office of Works were arguing fiercely among themselves as to who should, and shouldn’t, have the dubious privilege of shinning along a seven-foot pole like a monkey to hang upside down over a sheer drop into the river to attach the chain to the staples.

‘We’ll do our best,’ Garantzes sighed. ‘Oh, and while I think of it, I’ve got a message for you from Filepas Nilot, from the Quartermaster’s Office.’ He frowned. ‘I don’t know if I’ve got this right, but what I think he said was, he’s managed to get hold of the two million bees you wanted and he’s seeing the joiners about making the chutes tomorrow.’

Loredan smiled. ‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘Well, then, I think we’re more or less there. Now all we need is an enemy.’ He turned back towards the point where the light had been. ‘And I might just know where I can lay my hands on one of those.’

After the Chief Engineer had gone away, Loredan made a circuit of the top of the tower, trying one more time to see the city as his enemy would see it. It was an exercise he’d put himself through every day since this wretched business had begun; a productive one, but he still couldn’t help feeling he must have missed something. As far as he could see, there wasn’t a weak spot; all he’d done was strengthen the existing strengths. And yet there must be something he’d missed but the other man hadn’t, or else why was the other man coming at him with such exuberant confidence? Deep down he wanted the attack to begin, to have the enemy under his eye (because the enemy you can see is the least of your problems); but until that happened he knew he had to keep nagging away, searching and speculating until he saw that one missing factor that would make him curse himself and say, Of course! How could I have been so stupid! He wanted so much to say that before the enemy were under his walls…

But he couldn’t see it. What he could see, from the highest point of the defences, was the sweep of the land walls, forming the two arms of a V whose point was the gatehouse tower he was standing on, and which faced the mouth of the river, the point at which it forked to flow round the island on which the city stood. Directly below the tower was the drawbridge of the Drovers’ Bridge, which spanned the eastern branch of the river a hundred yards or so from the point of divergence, where the river was narrowest and deepest. The causeway on the other side extended into the water to within fifteen yards of the tower (the length of the drawbridge itself), but long before the enemy were in position that causeway would be a tangle of broken planks; the big trebuchet whose frame he was leaning on was sighted in on it, and it was reckoned to be the most accurate engine on the wall. Given the strength of the gatehouse tower and the depth of the river at that point, he could rule that out as a likely pressure point.

On either side of the river-fork, the river gradually widened; a hundred yards at the fork, a hundred and thirty at the apexes of the two bastions, over two hundred where the two branches met the sea. The bastions were so placed that their three-hundred-yard arc of fire covered the whole of the area where the river was less than a hundred and seventy yards wide, and before any attack began he planned to cram as many engines as he could, long-range trebuchets if he could get them, onto the bastion ramparts. Thanks to his one major innovation, the secret that he hadn’t shared with the council or even most of the engineers (and the engineers were people he trusted), he felt he had control of that three-hundred-yard semicircle on either side, and that was the only logical place from which to launch an attack. As for the rest of the wall, he had towers every hundred and fifty yards, each one soon to have two torsion engines and a trebuchet backed by a fifty-man garrison plus engineers; and below the towers, a minor engine every twenty-five yards, on a tilting carriage that would enable it to throw its stone as much as two hundred yards or as little as fifty. He could see no weak point along the whole length of the land wall; either the river was too wide, or else he could lay down a barrage for at least fifty yards inland that nothing could survive.

He’d even considered the ludicrous options. Suppose the enemy were capable of digging a tunnel right under the bed of the river, to come up beneath a tower and undermine the wall; it was impossible, but he’d provided for it nonetheless. Suppose they could bring enough long-range firepower to bear on the walls that they knocked out all his engines in one sector; with the arsenal turning out engines at the rate of two a day and long cranes almost as fast, he could replace a smashed engine within the hour, just about giving the engineers time to shore up the wall using the convenient stockpiles of materials assembled at the foot of each tower. If they managed to lob in fireballs, he’d have his firefighters standing by. He’d even entertained the notion of enemy soldiers catapulted alive out of trebuchets and floating down into the city with artificial wings strapped to their arms, and made plans accordingly. Now that would be a sight to see…

Or suppose they simply intended to wear him down; massed engines battering the walls day and night, until there was no firm place left to shore onto, nothing left to shore with; well, they could try it, but they’d be disappointed. Before the dust had settled, his masons would have thrown up dry-stone pocket walls on the inside of the breach, backed by scaffoldings on which engines could be deployed; and as for materials, the whole world lay on the other side of the sea, waiting to rush in timber and mortar and ready-dressed ashlar blocks in return for universally respected Perimadeian ready cash.

A child of ten could direct this defence; and women and children could hold these walls for ever, provided there were enough of them to work the windlasses. The whole thing’s so tight, not even smoke could get through.

Which is probably why I’m so worried; there’s nothing obvious to worry about. Something obvious would be the least of my problems.

Yes. Well. Very good.

So why is the bastard still coming?

Ironically, it was while Loredan was making his inspection that a man presented himself to the sentries at Temrai’s camp, bringing with him the final confirmation Temrai needed; not that he’d been worried, but it was nice to be absolutely sure.

It’ll be there, the man assured him. On time. As specified. Just the way we discussed it, that day we first met in the city.

Never doubted it for a minute, Temrai replied truthfully. And you can leave the rest to us.

The man looked doubtful. Temrai didn’t bother explaining. He didn’t much like these people, for all that the whole venture depended on them. But he trusted them. Doubt the gods, or the love of wife, mother and daughter, or the loyalty of friends; but always trust the profit motive. A lever based on that one firm place was about to move the world.

‘Admit it,’ Gannadius said, his voice only just audible over the hum of conversation in the main room of the tavern, ‘you’re regressing. This is the sort of prank I’d expect from a second-year student rather than the Patriarch of the Order.’

The Patriarch of the Order who’s also seriously ill and horrendously overworked, he could have added but didn’t. No need to say what they both knew.

‘That’s why,’ Alexius replied, addressing the unspoken part of the rebuke, ‘I needed a change. This is a change.’ He grinned under the floppy overhang of his broad-brimmed hat. ‘I’m enjoying myself. It’s a distraction.’

‘I thought you always said you were too easily distracted,’ Gannadius replied, sipping the rough, unpalatable wine. ‘Why go to all this trouble to invite it?’

Alexius shrugged. ‘Indulge me,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been in a place like this for over twenty years. Besides,’ he added, in what he hoped was a rather more grown-up voice, ‘it enables me to monitor at first hand the mood of the city.’

Gannadius didn’t dignify that obvious piece of nonsense with a reply. ‘If anybody recognises you-’

‘They’ll point and say, “There’s a tramp in that corner who looks just like the Patriarch.” And their friend’ll say, “Don’t be ridiculous, the Patriarch’s ears don’t stick out like that.” People only see what they can cope with.’ He finished off his wine and put down the cup. ‘One more,’ he said, ‘and that’ll have to do. The days when I could put down five of these and still recite the thirty-two cardinal suppositions are long gone, I fear.’

‘Stay there,’ Gannadius sighed, getting up from the table. ‘If anybody tries to talk to you, pretend you’re a leper.’

Perhaps Gannadius is right, Alexius said to himself; perhaps this is second-childishness brought on by stress and an excess of responsibility. For the Patriarch suddenly to yield to an urge to dress up in scruffy clothes and go drinking in the lower city, even in a reasonably salubrious tavern such as this, is more or less unthinkable. I should be in my cell, lying on my back calculating extrapolations of pure theory and staring at those confounded mosaics. But this is a much better place to come and clear my head.

It needed clearing. The wine or the noise or something of the sort was making the sides of his head throb; but he had grown used to headaches recently, since he’d been hustled onto the Security Council and made to spend his days keeping the Prefect and the Deputy Lord Lieutenant from each other’s throats. Correction; keeping the Prefect occupied while the Deputy Lord Lieutenant did his job. That was, he knew, the best thing he could do for his city, and he’d worked more diligently at it than anything he’d done before in his life. Thank goodness he had Gannadius to run the Order for him in the meantime. Or thank enlightened self-interest. Now he’d been officially declared Vice-Patriarch, his succession was assured. Somehow, though, he doubted whether Gannadius cared too much about that. It was a curious thing, but he genuinely believed that Gannadius, whose company he’d actively avoided not all that long ago, was now the nearest thing he’d had to a friend since he’d been appointed Patriarch.

Another correction; Bardas Loredan, the man he’d cursed, was a friend too, someone he could talk to freely, admit his fears and aggravations to. Remarkable, that so near the end of his life he should suddenly and quite unexpectedly discover friendship. It was like being able to see for the first time at an age when everyone else is starting to go blind.

‘Here you are, and I hope it chokes you,’ Gannadius muttered, plonking down a cup and sliding awkwardly back onto the bench. ‘I might point out that if you wanted to drink excessive quantities of cheap wine, we could have gone to the Academy buttery and done so for free.’

‘Yes, and where’d be the fun in that?’ Alexius objected mildly. ‘And, as I told you just now, we’re here on business. Note the apparent air of normality, the lack of brittleness and panic. Clearly the morale of the city remains encouragingly high.’

Gannadius sniffed. ‘The fools haven’t yet realised what a desperate mess we’re in. Or they’ve forgotten, or assumed it’s gone away. It’s not that long since they were rioting in the streets.’

‘We had a riot when I was in my third year,’ Alexius said dreamily. ‘A group of freshmen had stolen a pig from the cattlemarket, painted it blue with raddle from the auctioneers’ yard and dressed it up in the robes of the Commissioner of Fair Trading. Then they chased the poor creature down the city promenade until they came up against a detachment of the watch. That should have been the end of the matter, only we – I mean, a contingent of reprobate students who’d been drinking heavily to celebrate the end of their third-year examinations – happened to pass by, saw their comrades in the hands of a hostile agency and immediately hurried to the rescue. Nobody was seriously hurt,’ he added defensively, ‘and the Order paid for the damages. And it taught the watch a lesson in the tactful exercise of their powers when dealing with over-privileged young drunks.’

‘I see,’ Gannadius said drily. ‘And what’d you do if a gang of our first years did the same thing? Declare a day’s holiday and treat them to a dinner in Hall?’

‘Certainly not,’ Alexius replied. ‘I’d throw them out of the Order and hand them over to the civil authorities. We can’t be doing with that sort of thoughtless behaviour.’

‘I’m delighted to hear it.’ Gannadius took a sip of wine and made a face. ‘You can have mine, too, if you like. I’ve got a bad enough head already without drinking myself another one.’

Alexius looked at him. ‘You too?’

‘Why? Have you…?’

‘Ever since we came in here. I put it down to rough wine and the ambience, but if you’ve got one as well-’

‘Our Island friends? Oh, not again, please. Haven’t we got enough to contend with already?’

‘Apparently not.’

Surreptitiously, Gannadius peered round the room. ‘I can’t see them,’ he said. ‘It must be the wine. Headaches can occur from natural causes, you know,’ he added, ‘and I’m flattering this sheep-dip by calling it natural. I think honest grapes and yeast had very little to do with its manufacture.’

He saw Alexius relax. ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ he said. ‘Bad wine, too much of it and an over-active imagination. Perhaps we should go home now.’

They got up, as unobtrusively as they could; in their anxiety to be thoroughly disguised, they’d turned themselves into the class of person not usually welcome in this class of establishment. Getting slung out into the street was scarcely the best way of staying inconspicuous.

It would probably have been all right if Alexius hadn’t tripped over a small leather bag that someone had left lying between two tables, sending him lurching into the back of a customer just returning with a full jug of hot mulled cider. As the contents of the jug slopped down his leg, the customer yowled with pain and swirled round.

‘You idiot,’ he snapped. ‘Look what you’ve done.’

Alexius stammered an apology, but not quite loud enough to be audible. The customer attached a broad hand to his collar. ‘You realise these breeches are ruined,’ he went on. ‘And someone’s going to pay for them.’

‘Of course,’ Gannadius said, in his most conciliatory tone, battle-tested in a hundred faculty meetings. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten that his best diplomatic voice didn’t quite accord with his disguise. The customer could hardly fail to notice the discrepancy, which Gannadius made worse by oozing more soothing assurances and reaching for the purse in his sleeve. Before his hand was halfway there, the customer had grabbed it and twisted it painfully aside.

‘Who the hell are you?’ he demanded. Heads began to turn.

‘Does it matter?’

Alexius looked round to see who’d said that, and saw a burly figure directly behind the customer; big, tall and bald, with a foreign but familiar accent. Very familiar, somehow.

‘The gentleman’s said he’ll pay,’ the stranger continued. ‘Now mind your manners.’

The customer released Gannadius’ arm and pressed the side of his own head, as if in pain. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘there’s no need for anybody else to stick their nose in. So long as I get my money-’

Gannadius produced a sum that would have clothed the man in ermine from head to foot, grabbed Alexius by the elbow and hustled him out into the cool night air. ‘Damn it, Alexius, I knew this nonsense would land us in serious trouble. We could so easily have been recognised-’

‘We were,’ Alexius replied wearily. ‘Oh, don’t worry, we won’t be the laughing stock of the city by this time tomorrow, if that’s what you’re thinking. But we were definitely recognised, be sure of that.’ He realised he was standing in a puddle of something that wasn’t just water, and stepped out of it. ‘Come on, let’s go home before we find something even more stupid to do.’

He set off down the street, his pace quicker and steadier than Gannadius would have thought possible, as if he were too preoccupied to remember his own infirmity. Gannadius scuttled after him.

‘It’s all very well saying we were recognised,’ he hissed, ‘but you can’t just leave it at that. Who the hell by?’

‘Our rescuer,’ Alexius replied over his shoulder. ‘That big bald man.’ He sighed. ‘Just think,’ he added, ‘I honestly thought matters were sorting themselves out. We’ve hardly seen the beginning of it yet.’

‘Alexius, if you’re going to turn oracular on me I shall give you up as a lost cause. Explain, for pity’s sake.’

The Patriarch smiled bleakly. ‘Gannadius, you surprise me, I always thought you were an observant man. I was sure you’d have recognised him.’

‘Recognised who? The bald man, you mean? I thought you said he’d recognised us.’

‘He did.’ Alexius halted for a moment to catch his breath. ‘He recognised us, and I recognised him. And, since I don’t believe in coincidences to the point of blind idolatry, I can only conclude that somehow or other he caused us to be there.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘I suppose it explains my sudden urge to go drinking in taverns after twenty years. I wonder how he managed it?’

‘Alexius…’

‘He was in that dream we all shared. You really don’t remember?’ Alexius took a deep breath and let it go, slowly, through his nose. ‘That was Gorgas Loredan.’