Colours in the Steel

CHAPTER THREE

‘To say that the Principle enables one to tell the future,’ said the Patriarch, his mind elsewhere, ‘is tantamount to saying that the main function of the sea is the delivery of driftwood. It would be more accurate, though still basically erroneous, to state that one who closely observes the Principle can make certain assumptions about the effects it is likely to have on the material world. Anything further than that would be misleading.’

The young woman whose name he couldn’t remember wasn’t a member of the class any more. She had got what she came for, or something approximating to it, and left. Alexius had the troublesome feeling that he was in the position of an innkeeper’s daughter who has spent an amusing night with a handsome stranger and is beginning to feel sick in the mornings. The after-effects of the curse were getting to him; he needed to see the girl again if he was to have any hope of putting things right.

‘Consider a road,’ he continued, as the students bent their heads over their writing tablets, diligently committing his wisdom to marks in wax. ‘A man rides along a steep-sided valley, in a region notoriously infested with robbers. From where he is he cannot see them waiting for him around the next bend of the road, although he suspects they may be there. An observer high up on the hillside can see him and the robbers as well. There is no magic in this; simply a high vantage point. It follows also that you cannot see the ambush if you are riding the road; only the impartial observer, watching the affairs of others, can perceive the imminent danger.’

It was, Alexius knew, a hopelessly flawed comparison; but it would do for freshmen. Later, when they knew better, they could have the pleasure of gloating over its obvious faults, which would be good for their confidence.

‘Or consider,’ he went on, ‘a cup of water standing on a table. The cup cannot move or spill the water of its own accord; but if there should chance to be an earthquake, or even a train of heavy wagons passing in the street below, the cup will appear to tremble of its own accord. The man who detects the first signs of the earthquake, before it is perceptible to the untrained eye, or who sees the wagons entering the street, will know that the cup will move. He can predict; he can interfere by picking up the cup, preventing it from being shaken off the table and breaking. If he is unscrupulous, he can claim that by his tremendous powers he can cause the cup to shake and the water to spill, and then appear to make good his boast.’

Putting ideas into their heads? None that weren’t there already an hour after they were born. Alexius detested fortune-tellers even more than those who pretended to heal the sick or lay curses for money. The sad fact was that such prophecies had a tendency to come true, mostly of course because the customer expected them to and acted accordingly.

‘We who study the Principle,’ he resumed, ‘can stand back and see the lurking robbers or the approaching wagons. Sometimes, our observations make it possible for us to intervene; in which case we expose ourselves to all the dangers we warn others about; we run down into the pass to warn the traveller, or hurry to where the earthquake is to be in the hope of saving someone. To assert that we can avert bandits or spill water from a cup without touching it, however, is not only dishonest but terribly dangerous. The bandits will leave the traveller alone and attack us. We, rather than the person we have come to warn, will spill the water. There are those who say that when we see a disaster approaching and do nothing, we are acting reprehensibly; think of it rather as preferring that the robbers will have only one victim instead of two. That concludes the lecture; by tomorrow, read the first twenty chapters of Mycondas’ Syllogisms and be prepared to answer questions.’

He stopped speaking and, as far as the students were concerned, ceased to exist. Some of them, he knew, would quite simply not believe him. They would far rather assume that he and his fellow masters were trying to keep the best tricks back for themselves. Let them; too ignorant as yet to harm anybody but themselves.

As the last few of them trooped out, chattering to each other about everything except what they’d just been told, Alexius let his mind slip back to the question of the young woman and the curse, which was still hurting him like a grain of sand trapped under an eyelid. Where was she? Perhaps one of the other students might know; except that she’d been here such a short time that it was highly unlikely that she’d confided in any of them. Besides, in comparison they were all hopelessly young and immature. Who would entrust secrets to a mere child? If she told them why she was leaving and explained about the curse, doubtless there would be a few fools who attempted to do the curse for themselves. Well; if they were lucky, they might escape with nothing worse than the failure of a trick.

The Patriarch of Perimadeia, hunting high and low after a girl student who had left the course on its second day; a girl who had spent a considerable part of the evening of the first day in the Patriarch’s cell. He could imagine what his junior colleagues would make of that if they got the opportunity. Which, he decided, they would not. He would have to find some other way to cure himself of this malady.

He was aware of someone behind him, walking quickly to catch up. Without looking round, he slowed down.

‘Fascinating.’ He recognised the voice; Gannadius, the Archimandrite of the City Academy. Too late now, however, to quicken his pace. ‘Every year five hundred new faces, and yet within a week or two they look and sound exactly the same as their predecessors. Do we do that to them, I wonder, or are all young people basically interchangeable?’

‘Both, I suspect,’ Alexius replied. ‘Whatever individuality they may still have when they arrive here is soon ground away by the necessity of being indistinguishable from their peers in appearance, tastes and opinions. The best thing anyone can say for youth is that eventually we all grow out of it.’

The customary exchange of epigrams having taken place, Alexius hoped that his colleague would now go away. No such luck; today, Gannadius had something to say. When he would eventually get around to saying it was anybody’s guess.

‘It distresses me to think that I was once that young,’ Gannadius sighed. ‘I assume that I was, although for the life of me I can’t remember it. As far as I’m concerned I’ve always been the same age. My friends, however, have grown old around me.’

Wonder why? Alexius asked himself. ‘I read once,’ he replied, ‘that each man has a certain age that is appropriate to him; once he reaches it, he stays there, although his body continues to wear out.’

‘In my case, it would have to be forty-three.’

In spite of himself, Alexius was interested. ‘Really? Why forty-three?’

‘I was that age when I first read the Analects,’ Gannadius said simply. ‘What about you?’

‘I don’t think I’ve reached it yet,’ Alexius confessed. ‘I can distinctly remember being three, and wondering what being three meant. And I was seventeen for a very long time, but I’m not any more. I think I stopped being seventeen when I realised I was no longer afraid of my immediate superiors.’

‘And that was when?’

‘When I became Patriarch,’ Alexius replied. ‘Now I’m afraid of my immediate inferiors, but that’s scarcely the same thing.’

Gannadius nodded wisely. ‘To change the subject completely,’ he said, ‘are you feeling well?’

Alexius stopped walking and rubbed his chin to cover his surprise. ‘Is it that obvious?’ he asked.

‘My dear friend, you’ve been walking around like a man with his foot in a trap. Would it be impertinent for me to speculate that you have, so to speak, trodden on a hidden rake among the proceedings of the Principle and been struck a sharp blow on the nose in consequence?’

Alexius smiled. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘Because I knew exactly what I was letting myself in for. I did a curse, and I’m afraid it didn’t agree with me.’

‘Oh. Anyone we know?’

Alexius hesitated. Gannadius was frequently inopportune, often tedious, always pompous; but as far as Alexius knew he had no dark ulterior motives or savage ambitions, and his writings revealed a surprisingly perceptive and practical mind and a sharp intellect. And Alexius needed help if he was ever to get rid of this wretched affliction.

‘A fencer,’ he said, ‘by the name of Bardas Loredan. With whom, I might add, I have no personal quarrel whatsoever. The curse was on behalf of someone else, which is probably why I’ve taken it so badly.’

Gannadius bit his lower lip, suppressing a grin. ‘In which case,’ he said, ‘I really must congratulate you on the quality of your work. I must remember to be extremely polite to you at all times.’

Alexius raised an eyebrow. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked.

‘Ah, you wouldn’t know, would you? It so happens that I have a small sum of money invested with a cartel that produces and sells charcoal. They’re in dispute with a rival concern, and the matter goes to court shortly. Our opponents have briefed one Bardas Loredan to represent them.’

‘I see. And?’

‘And we’ve retained Ziani Alvise,’ Gannadius replied. ‘You’ve heard of him, no doubt?’

Alexius frowned. ‘I think so. I don’t follow the courts at all, but the name rings a bell. Is he good?’

‘You might say that. I understand that among the sporting fraternity, Loredan is being offered at a hundred and twenty to one and finding no takers.’

‘I see.’ Alexius nodded slowly. ‘In which case,’ he said, ‘I’d strongly recommend that you put your last quarter on Loredan. In fact, while you’re at it you could put fifty quarters on him for me.’

Gannadius looked puzzled. ‘My dear friend,’ he said, ‘modesty is an admirable quality, but don’t you think you’re taking it a little too far? I would argue that the mere fact of the fight suggests that your curse is working very well indeed.’

‘You don’t understand. In my curse he’s committed to die at someone else’s hands. One person in particular. Not Ziani Alvise.’

‘Ah.’ Gannadius looked thoughtful. ‘That’s rather tiresome, since I’ve already backed Alvise quite heavily. Still, I suppose I can find a few more quarters to cover the bet. Thank you; you may well have rescued a poor man from abject poverty. In return…’

Alexius acknowledged the offer with a slight tilt of his head. ‘I must admit,’ he said, ‘I could do with some help. This curse is proving confoundedly sticky. I think I must have done a rather better job than I thought.’

‘In cursing, as in cooking with garlic, it is best to resist the temptation to add just a pinch more for luck. Will you come to the Academy or shall I call on you here this evening?’

Alexius considered. On balance, it would be better if the proceedings didn’t take place under the noses of his brothers in the Principle. ‘After dinner,’ he said, ‘at the Academy. All your people ought to be in Chapter by then.’

‘And I with them,’ Gannadius pointed out. ‘Still, a personal request from the Patriarch-’

‘I’d rather you said it was urgent affairs of the Order,’ Alexius replied. ‘Which isn’t that far from the truth. Ever since, I’ve had no end of difficulty in concentrating on anything. The paperwork is starting to get out of hand, to say nothing of my reading.’

‘This evening, then, after dinner. If you call at the side gate, I’ll make sure I open the door personally.’

‘Thank you.’

Gannadius trotted away, the soles of his fashionable slippers clacking on the flagstones. A curious man, Alexius reflected. He had been Archimandrite of the City Academy for seven years, a record tenure for an office that was generally regarded as a tedious preliminary formality on the highly structured road to the Patriarchate; yet in all that time he had never displayed any inclination to accept promotion, let alone scheme and contrive for it. He could have had the Patriarchate of the Canea for the asking three years ago, but preferred to allow his own archdeacon, whom he particularly loathed and despised, to advance on the vacant post like an invading army and virtually take it by direct frontal assault. And yet to all appearances he was the very model of the archetypal career man; younger son of a powerful city family, owning substantial estates and investments inherited from his mother’s family and assiduously courted by the small weevil-like men who spend their lives under the flat stones of district politics. Alexius shook his head; perhaps the cold winds and the sea frets of the Canea hadn’t appealed to him. Or perhaps he was an honest man at heart. Curiously enough, Alexius was inclined to believe the latter.

Accordingly, Alexius slipped out while the evening meal was still raging below his cell, and made his way cautiously through the streets of the middle city to the northern stair. The gate was locked for the night but the porters knew him well enough; since the inhabitants of the upper city were never seen, the Patriarch was the closest thing the city had to a visible civic figurehead. For a man doing his best to cross the middle city incognito, this was a serious drawback; nevertheless, Alexius eventually managed to reach the City Academy without being either recognised or robbed, and rapped on the side gate with the pommel of his walking-sword.

‘Ah, there you are,’ said Gannadius through the sliding panel in the door. ‘I was beginning to wonder if you were coming.’

The Archimandrite’s lodging was about five times the size of Alexius’ own cell. There were valuable tapestries on the walls, five extremely fine carved and gilded chairs, a curtained bed on a low dais, several quite beautiful chests and coffers of well-figured walnut, a high desk inlaid with hunting scenes in mother of pearl, a footstool of highly polished whalebone and a handsome silver-gilt wine service; all quite new and smelling strongly of camphor and beeswax. Alexius had no doubt that his colleague would have been able to give an accurate up-to-date valuation, sale price or replacement cost, for each individual item or the whole as a job lot.

‘You disapprove,’ Gannadius said equably.

Alexius shook his head. ‘Not in the least,’ he replied. ‘You live in the style appropriate to a great temporal lord, which of course you are. Myself, I’d find it all too distracting, but only a savage disapproves of beauty per se. And I’m sure you appreciate it all far more than the dried-fruit merchants and anchovy barons who need to fill their houses with such things simply to prove to themselves that they’re now men of stature.’

‘You disapprove, nonetheless. Personally, I’d gladly trade all of this clutter for the mosaics on your ceiling. But I doubt whether they’re for sale.’

Alexius smiled. ‘One day you may well be sleeping under them as a matter of course,’ he replied. ‘Or do you still maintain that you have no ambitions in that direction?’

Gannadius shrugged. ‘It’s more a question of whether I’m fitted to do the job,’ he replied. ‘And the fact is that I’m not. Not yet, at any rate.’

‘That’s a very honest reply to a rather snide remark. Mind you, I’m not saying for a moment that I believe you.’

‘Just because a remark is honest doesn’t necessarily mean it’s sincere,’ Gannadius replied with a grin. ‘Shall we stop fencing round each other and get to business?’

‘That would be best,’ Alexius said, and he told Gannadius what had happened, leaving nothing out. When he’d finished, the Archimandrite sat for a while in his rather magnificent chair, rubbing the bridge of his small, blunt nose with the forefinger of his left hand.

‘I think I see what’s happened,’ he said. ‘In the event, the curse you laid was not the right one.’

‘It wasn’t the curse the girl intended. Since it was her curse, and I was just the instrument by which she laid it, it could well be significant that I got it wrong. The result will have been an error in the Principle.’

‘Quite.’ Gannadius nodded. ‘In essence, you’ve taken a gap in nature and put into it something that doesn’t fit. You are now having to contend with the effects of the disruption.’

Alexius nodded slowly. ‘It makes sense, I agree. What I’m not sure about is how to put it right.’

‘Oh, but that’s simple,’ his colleague interrupted. ‘You must return to the moment and put it right. If you take off the wrong curse and replace it with the right one-’

Alexius held up his hand. ‘Naturally, I’ve tried that,’ he said. ‘The only problem is that I can’t. After all, it’s not my curse, so I can’t lift it. All I can do is put a shield around the confounded man to prevent the curse working; and even that’s proving difficult. Every time I’ve tried, I’ve found it gone again by the next day. I really don’t relish the prospect of having to raise new shields around this fellow every day for the rest of my life.’

‘It’s a difficult problem,’ Gannadius said. ‘All I can suggest is that we try it together. And before you say anything, I quite agree that there’s no evidence for assuming that our joint efforts will be any more successful than your solitary attempts. What we really need, of course, is the girl.’

Alexius sighed. ‘I’m inclined to agree with you there,’ he said. ‘Still, if you’re willing to join me, I think it must be worth trying – provided you’re prepared to take the risk. I can’t recommend the state you’re likely to be left in if it backfires.’

‘Ah, well.’ Gannadius shrugged. ‘There’s no gain without risk. You forget, I haven’t named my price yet.’

‘A permanent view of my mosaics, presumably,’ Alexius replied. ‘I’m not sure I can make that promise; and besides, you’re about the same age as I am. There’s no guarantee whatsoever that you’ll live to collect your fee.’ He smiled. ‘I’m assuming you’re not planning on taking steps to collect it early.’

Gannadius looked genuinely offended. ‘Actually, no,’ he said. ‘If I’d wanted the Patriarchate, be sure I’d have taken it by now; or at the very least I’d be coughing and blowing my nose in the Canea. My price is far more esoteric than that. I want you to tell me the seventh aspect of the Principle.’

In spite of himself, Alexius was shocked. Knowledge of the seventh aspect was a secret shared only by the Patriarch of Perimadeia, the Primate of the Holy Pirates and the Abbot of the Academy of the Silver Spear; in effect, it was what defined high office in the Order. It was also the one secret that had always been kept, no matter how grave the circumstances or how venial the office-holder. ‘Why?’ he said quietly.

Gannadius frowned. ‘Because I want to know,’ he replied. ‘Is that so remarkable? Whether you believe it or not, I joined the Order to learn how to understand the Principle, or what little of it there is that can be understood. Logically, I need to know all seven aspects if I’m even to begin my studies.’

‘I think I believe you,’ Alexius said. ‘That doesn’t make your request any less offensive.’

‘I’ve named my price. It goes without saying that the secret would be safe with me. After all, a man doesn’t steal a fortune in gold only to throw it out of his window in handfuls to the crowds below.’

Alexius thought for a moment. ‘All I can suggest,’ he said, ‘is that in due course – it won’t be long now anyway, the poor man’s over eighty – you will succeed Teofrasto as Primate. Then you’ll at least be authorised to have the knowledge, and the practical effect will be the same.’

‘Must I? I really have no desire to leave this comfortable place and go and live on a rocky island in the middle of the sea with nothing but thieves and murderers for company.’

‘It’s a job men have killed and stolen for,’ Alexius replied, slightly nonplussed. ‘I’d have thought you’d be pleased.’

‘Certainly not. True, they have a good library there, but nothing to compare with what I have available to me in the city. Still,’ he went on, ‘once I know the seventh aspect, there won’t be very much left that books can teach me. Oh, very well then. You have my word, if that’s good enough for you.’

Alexius allowed himself the luxury of a wry smile. ‘I suppose it’ll teach me to do favours for young girls,’ he said. ‘Payment in arrears, naturally; and nothing unless it actually works.’

‘Naturally. Shall we begin?’

A thin, cruel blade of light forced its way between the shutters.

‘Wake up, it’s a lovely morning.’

His hand already closed on the hilt of the Boscemar, Loredan countermanded his instinctive reaction and opened his eyes.

‘What the hell,’ he croaked, ‘do you think you’re doing?’

‘Making you get up,’ Athli replied, throwing the shutters open. ‘Come on, rise and shine.’

Loredan drew the blanket up under his chin. ‘What possible reason could I have for getting out of bed at this loathsome hour of the morning? Go away.’

Athli half-filled a cup from the wine jug and topped it up with water. ‘You should have been up two hours ago,’ she said briskly, ‘instead of lounging there like a pig.’

‘Why?’

‘Training. Drink this and get some clothes on. I think we’ll start you off with ten laps of the city cloister before we head off for the Schools. Oh, come on, for pity’s sake. I’ve seen livelier-looking faces with apples in their mouths.’

‘Oh, for…’ Loredan closed his eyes, but all the sleep had gone. ‘Go away while I get dressed,’ he commanded.

‘All right. Don’t dawdle.’

It had been a long time since he’d deliberately run any distance, and ten laps of the cloister left him with weak knees and a sharp pain in his chest, which he offered as reasonable grounds for going home. Athli was not impressed.

‘You sound like my grandfather dozing in front of the fire,’ she said. ‘A morning in the Schools will do you a world of good.’

By the time they’d climbed the long stair to the middle city, Loredan was feeling quite ill. He diagnosed the trouble as either a heart attack or a minor stroke.

‘Don’t be silly. And don’t dawdle.’

The Schools were housed in a long, narrow single-storey building between the old circus and the rainwater tanks. Inside, the main floor was crowded with the usual clutter of fashionable young men and women in expensively impractical fencing suits, leaning on their sword-cases and watching the handful of professionals going through their practice routines. Attendants scurried to and fro with straw targets and buckets of wet clay, trainers shouted, the inevitable vendors wandered about on the edge of the crowd with their trays of wine and sausages, the sword dealers did quiet business between the pillars of the rear colonnade. ‘Did we have to come here?’ Loredan asked miserably. ‘I can’t stand this place.’

‘Practise,’ Athli replied.

First, Loredan set up a mark. He decided to be realistic; show-offs and the truly skilful liked to use a silver halfpenny, but he’d never been that good, even in his prime. Instead he marked up a knot-hole on a target frame, which would do just as well for all practical purposes.

‘Seven out of ten?’ he suggested.

‘Make it nine.’

‘I don’t have to do what you say,’ he replied, ‘because I’m an advocate and you’re only a damn clerk.’ He measured off three paces back and drew the Boscemar out of its case.

‘Nine out of ten,’ Athli repeated. ‘Ready?’

Loredan nodded. The object of the exercise was to lunge full stretch off two paces, transfixing the mark each time. The trick was to straighten the thrust as late as possible by turning the wrist. He made the mark seven times out of ten.

‘Now do it again,’ Athli said. ‘Only better.’

Out of the next ten he registered six hits; six again from the next ten. On his fourth try, he connected with all ten thrusts.

‘You see?’ Athli said smugly. ‘Practice makes perfect.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ he replied, leaning against the target frame to catch his breath. ‘Now I suppose I’ve got to do the numbers.’

The target itself was a woven straw boss about an arm’s length across. Dotted about it at random were numbers from one to twelve, the figures being about a thumb’s length high. The drill was for the trainer to shout out a number, which the fencer would then impale with his sword-point off one pace. Fifteen out of twenty was a good score.

‘Ready?’

‘Sixteen, all right?’

‘Eighteen.’

In the event he made eighteen at his first attempt. The second stage of the drill was the same but twice as fast. At this speed, ten out of twenty was tantamount to showing off. Loredan made all twenty.

‘All right, clever,’ Athli said. ‘Now we’ll do it with the plumb line.’

The plumb line was a lead weight on a string, arranged to hang where the point of an opponent’s sword would be if he was standing with his back to the target face. The fencer had to knock the weight out of the way, make his lunge, withdraw and parry the weight again on the way back. A missed parry meant instant disqualification. Fourteen out of twenty at normal speed or half that at double speed was good enough going for anyone. Cutting the string didn’t count.

‘Not bad,’ Athli observed, when Loredan had scored nineteen hits at standard speed. ‘Now let’s do it the hard way.’

A clear round at double speed; so Athli insisted that he do it again, and then one more time at triple speed. They’d got as far as fourteen out of fourteen when Loredan cut the lead bob in half with a sharp flick of his wrist, and refused to push his luck any further.

‘So you can do lunges,’ Athli said. ‘Now let’s try something you’re not so good at.’

The quintain was designed to practise recovery from a parried cut. It consisted of four wooden spokes set at right angles to each other in a hub which rotated around an upright axle at about chin height. The fencer had to hit one spoke, then parry the next one as the hub turned. The faster and harder he hit, the quicker he had to be to parry the next spoke. The refinement on the standard course of play was to use only the second and fourth spokes, which meant having to lift the sword blade out of the way between strokes, as opposed to simply rolling the wrist back and forth.

‘My arm hurts,’ Loredan complained after four clear rounds of both courses. ‘It isn’t going to help matters if I go into court with a whole bunch of pulled muscles.’

‘You’re just lazy,’ Athli replied. ‘Right, let’s do some footwork.’

This time Loredan’s complaints were eloquent and sustained, albeit fruitless in the long run. The footwork course consisted of a series of silhouette footprints painted on the floor, each one designated with a number. In the orthodox course, the fencer had to move his feet to cover the numbered footprints as the trainer called them out, starting slowly and working up to a high-speed frenzied dance. The advanced course was the same, but blindfold.

‘Now can I have a rest?’ Loredan panted. ‘I keep telling you I hate practice, but you never listen.’

‘Do that last set again. You missed number twenty-six.’

He had to have three tries at the blindfold course before he managed to do it perfectly. Thirty-one out of forty was held to be a top-class performance.

‘Satisfied?’

‘That wasn’t too bad,’ Athli conceded. ‘Now you’d better have a go with the ring.’

‘Athli…’

‘The ring.’

From a crossbeam in the roof hung a steel ring about the width of an apple. Underneath it was a circle five paces in diameter. For this exercise, the fencer had to work his way round the circle, first forwards and then backwards, half-lunging so as to pass his blade through the ring each time. As a refinement, he had to parry a plumb line suspended from a hoop, which rotated as it was struck so as to follow the fencer round the circle. Of all the exercises in the Schools, this was probably the one Loredan hated most.

‘I’m quite pleased with that,’ he said, raising his voice slightly for the benefit of the crowd of onlookers that had gathered while he made his second perfect circuit against the plumb line. It wasn’t every day that a man scored a clear round on the ring. To manage it twice in a row was rather an exceptional feat.

‘Come on,’ Athli said, ‘while we can still get your head out through the door.’

‘Does that mean I can go home now?’

‘After you’ve done the sack and the sheaves.’

The sack was a leather bag full of wet clay, which made a fair approximation of the consistency of a human body for practising running through. The sack had an understandable but nevertheless alarming tendency to split open after a while, and in winter the School used condemned pigs’ carcasses from the butchers’ market instead. In the heat of summer, however, the fencers had to make do with wet clay. The sheaves were coils of plaited straw wound tightly into a rope about the thickness of a man’s neck. A good fencer with a sharp sword could usually cut through them in two strokes.

‘I’m going to get all muddy,’ Loredan protested as an attendant filled a sack and hung it up from a frame.

‘So?’

‘I’m just saying, that’s all. Mud all over me, head to foot. How many shirts do you think I own?’

He had made about a dozen good thrusts at the sack when the blade of the Boscemar hit something hard – a stone in the clay, or some particularly resilient stitching in the sack – whereupon it bent like a drawn bow and snapped about a foot down from the point. Loredan scowled at the hilt in his hand and swore fluently. For her part, Athli had the common sense not to say anything.

‘That’s that, then,’ Loredan said, dropping the hilt on the floor. ‘Ten days before the fight, and I break my best sword. As messages go, that one’s not too hard to understand.’

He left the hilt where it was and headed for the front door. There was a dense crowd gathered around the popinjay cage. He recognised the man in the cage and stopped to watch.

Inside a high, narrow birdcage stood the celebrated advocate Ziani Alvise, his opponent in the forthcoming suit. All around him on the ground were the bodies of dead hummingbirds, and the attendant was about to put in another boxful. Usually the targets in the popinjay cage were ordinary sparrows; hummingbirds are far harder to hit than sparrows.

As the attendant closed the cage, a fly drifted in through the bars past Alvise’s right shoulder. Without turning his head, he flicked his sword sharply upwards, cut the fly precisely in two and brought the sword back to guard in time to decapitate the first of the new batch of hummingbirds.

Loredan spent the afternoon getting very drunk.

Perimadeia, the Triple City, the bride of the sea and the mistress of the civilised world, was in decline. True, she had been sick before, but never as badly as this. Barely seventy-five years ago, her land empire had stretched from Zimisca in the high plains to Tendria, whose twin mountains bracketed the mouth of the middle sea. Now, the site of Zimisca was discernible only by patterns in the high couch-grass and a few outcrops of fallen masonry, while the two great castles of Tendria were garrisoned by rival warlords, each styling himself the True Emperor and ruling a few rocky islands and a swollen fleet of pirate warships. Canea, the last of the empire’s island possessions, was in practice an autonomous state, and the ships that brought the nominal annual tribute plundered a hundred times as much from Perimadeian merchantmen in what had once been sacrosanct imperial waters. For all her splendour, the bride of the sea owned nothing except what she stood up in, and the Emperor’s empire was bounded by the sea and the freshwater estuaries that lapped the feet of the land and sea walls.

Not that anybody cared. Every citizen knew that the walls were completely impregnable. Five hundred men could hold the city against all the nations of the world, as the Emperor Teogeno had done two and a half centuries ago. That was how it had always been. The external power of Perimadeia ebbed and flowed like the tides; one century saw the empire’s boundaries stretching right across the known world, the next saw the city penned inside its walls like a caged bird, while three generations later there would be Perimadeian governors back in the islands and the great mainland cities. It never seemed to matter. Trade, not land or castles, was all that mattered in Perimadeia, and the city had never been busier, more crowded or more prosperous. That seemed to be the pattern, and there was a sort of logic to it. Conquest and occupation cost money and manpower. With no empire to protect, there were no war levies to pay and no draft commissions to interrupt the business of the markets and factories. Likewise, there was no promise of loot and adventure to lure men away from the glassworks, the foundries, the potteries, tanneries, shipyards, mills, kilns, studios and workshops from which poured an unquantifiably vast stream of goods of every quality and kind. For a thousand years the city had boasted that one in three of all manufactured articles in the world was made in the noise and bad air of the lower city. Now, for the first time, it was quite possibly true.

Having no gods to distort their values and distract their attention, the Perimadeians understood and valued material objects like no other nation. The citizens of the Triple City saw their lives as a brief but enticing opportunity to make and do as much as possible in the short interval between birth and death. And if, from time to time, they saw the need to own land and build castles, the way rich traders have always done, it was probably because there was precious little else to spend their money on, since everything a man could really want they already had.

Provided, of course, that the walls stood; but that was a safe enough assumption. As for pirates; well, they were a nuisance, but nothing more. All it meant was that instead of taking their goods out to the customers on Perimadeian ships, they stayed at home and let the customers take the risk of coming to them. Sooner or later some strong foreign prince would get tired of losing good money on his mercantile interests and sweep the vermin from the sea. No need for the city to waste one gold quarter or one Perimadeian life doing what someone else would be glad to do for them. The same would undoubtedly hold true of enemies to the landward side, if any managed to get close enough to confront the frustrating barrier of the land walls. All it would take would be a few fast galleys dispatched to the islands and the coastal cities, and the sea would be jammed solid with troopships hurrying to protect the one true source of universal prosperity. There was even talk of mothballing the fleet and disbanding what remained of the city guard; why waste money on something that would never be needed, even in the worst conceivable emergency?

In consequence, there was no hysterical panic or rioting in the streets when news reached the city that the Anax valley, the spacious and fertile region that separated the city from the plains and supplied two-thirds of the city’s food, had been overrun by an alliance of the White Bear and Fire Dragon clans under a chief whose unpronouncable name sounded something like Sasurai. So what? the citizens said; their prices were getting too high anyway. Plenty more where that came from. And if the plainsmen living in the city had expected lynch mobs and tar barrels, they had sadly misjudged their cosmopolitan hosts, who were above that sort of thing and always had been. For example, the day after the news broke, young Temrai was greeted with the same friendly nods as he sat down to work at his bench, and the subject was never mentioned. Whether this would have been the case if his colleagues had known he was Sasurai’s son, it is of course impossible to judge.

Alexius the Patriarch and Gannadius the city Archimandrite stood on the floor of the courthouse, watching a man and a girl taking guard.

They had been a day and two nights getting here, and they were exhausted. Ironically, it was their exhaustion that had finally made it possible, for both men lay fast asleep in their chairs in the Archimandrite’s lodgings, and the courthouse was nothing more than the backdrop of their mutual dream.

‘Can you hear me?’ Alexius whispered.

‘Yes, but it seems they can’t,’ Gannadius replied. ‘I arrived a couple of minutes before you did, and I’ve been making a few preliminary experiments. As far as I can see, we aren’t really here.’

Alexius shuddered. ‘Good,’ he replied. ‘I’d hate to think I was standing in front of the whole city in my shirt.’

‘It would appear to be a remarkably good house,’ Gannadius said, glancing round at the packed benches. ‘I wish there was some way of telling how far we are into the future.’

‘The girl is older than when I saw her last,’ Alexius said. ‘Unfortunately, with our rather limited experience of women, I don’t suppose we can accurately judge how much older. She’s definitely improved with age, but that’s all I can safely say on the matter.’

‘What happens now?’

Before Alexius could answer, the judge gave the sign, the courthouse was immediately silent and the two advocates began their performance. Once again, Loredan had his back to the Patriarch; this time, however, Alexius noticed that he was holding a broken sword. He mentioned this to his colleague, who nodded.

‘That’s sure to be significant,’ Gannadius said. ‘I only wish I knew what it meant.’

‘Pay attention. It happens quite early in the fight.’

This time, however, it didn’t. Although he was on the defensive right from the start, Loredan fought with the desperate energy of a man who truly appreciates precisely how much trouble he’s in. Lunges and cuts that should have been the death of him were somehow nudged away at the very last moment, and although his counterattacks met a defence as invincible as the land and sea walls, they bought him the time and space he needed to carry on defending. All in all, it was a breathtaking display of virtuosity by both parties, almost worth waiting up forty-eight hours for.

‘This is all seriously wrong,’ Alexius muttered. ‘When I think that for weeks now I’ve been on the receiving end of this level of mess, it makes my blood run cold.’

‘Serves you right,’ Gannadius replied, his eyes fixed on the contest. He was something of a connoisseur of the art of litigation, and this was very much a collector’s item.

The girl lunged left, and Loredan swerved out of the way; but the lunge had been a feint, and the blade was directly on line for his throat. A last frantic reflex allowed him to get his hand in the way. He deflected the blow, but the girl’s blade hit him squarely in the palm. From where he stood, Alexius could see an inch of the blade sticking out through the back of Loredan’s hand.

Now’s his chance, he told himself, and as Loredan lunged forward at the girl’s unprotected body, Alexius stepped between them and tried to catch the moment.

He felt nothing as Loredan’s sword ran him through – how could he, he wasn’t actually there? – but as he looked down and saw the blade vanishing into his own chest, he knew at once that he had made the worst mistake of his life. A moment later, the girl stepped round him and cut Loredan down where he stood; he collapsed, face down, leaving his sword stuck in the Patriarch’s body. Alexius was just wondering how this was possible when Loredan had been using a broken sword with no point when he woke up.

It was the pain in his chest and arms that had woken him; a heart attack, no question at all about that. Gannadius was still fast asleep, and Alexius couldn’t move or speak to rouse him. It was quite possible, he realised, that he was about to die. More than anything else, he found the idea thoroughly unfair.

Gannadius lifted his head. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘don’t worry. You’ll live.’

The pain stopped.

‘Keep still,’ Gannadius went on. ‘And calm down. Try and breathe normally.’ He stood up, stiff and awkward after his cramped sleep, and poured half a cupful of strong black wine. ‘This’ll help,’ he said. ‘Go on, drink it. If you were going to die, you’d be dead by now.’

Alexius made a face as the wine burnt his insides. ‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘Was that a heart attack or was I stabbed?’

‘Both. My fault, I’m afraid. Give me the cup, I’ll get you another.’

‘Your fault?’

Gannadius nodded. ‘I had to do something to stop him killing the girl. Shoving you in the way was all I could think of. It’s just as well you weren’t really there, or it could have been very dangerous.’

‘Of all-’ Alexius waved the cup aside feebly. ‘You do realise what you’ve done,’ he said. ‘Now I’m under a curse of my very own. And the girl still killed him, so it was all for nothing.’

Gannadius shook his head. ‘Think,’ he said sternly. ‘You were under that curse already; that’s what’s been wrong with you these past weeks. All I’ve done is bring matters to a head, so to speak. No,’ he continued, ‘if it hadn’t been for me things would have been much worse. Loredan would have killed the girl, and then where would we all be?’

‘You’re not the one who’s going to get run through,’ Alexius pointed out. ‘At the very best, we’re back exactly where we started.’

‘Oh, no,’ Gannadius objected, ‘not at all. For one thing, we’ve done some extremely valuable practical research into an area of the Principle about which deplorably little was hitherto known. I shall write a paper about this.’

The Patriarch closed his eyes and took a deep breath. ‘That aside,’ he said.

‘That aside, I do believe we’ve made some worthwhile progress. Instead of having a vague idea that you were suffering from an adverse reaction but not knowing what form it’s taken, we now know exactly what you can expect. Likewise, we were in time to prevent the potentially disastrous consequences of this second intervention, no small achievement in itself. Add to that the fact that none of the reaction appears to have attached itself to me, and I believe we can congratulate ourselves on a job well done.’ Gannadius smiled. ‘And now I suggest that you try and sleep for a while. I’ll have a guest room made up for you. Heart trouble isn’t something to be taken lightly, you know.’

Alexius groaned. ‘What really depresses me,’ he said, ‘is that you and I are the world’s leading exponents of this particular skill. If this is the best we can do, perhaps we ought to leave well alone. For pity’s sake, we’re supposed to be able to do this sort of thing for a living.’

Gannadius looked at him for a long time. ‘A living,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you may care to rephrase that.’

The chief trainer was vexed.

‘True,’ he conceded, ‘there have been female advocates before. Some of them lived to be nearly twenty-five. But that was mostly because nobody wanted to hire them, so they scarcely ever got any work. You don’t want to join this profession. Go away.’

The girl said nothing; instead she held out a squat leather purse on the flat of her hand. The trainer couldn’t help noticing how full it looked.

‘We aren’t really equipped to take female students,’ he said. ‘We’d need separate changing rooms, and we simply haven’t got the space. Not to mention chaperones,’ he added, suddenly inspired. ‘And before you say you don’t need chaperoning, you try telling that to the Public Morals Office. That’s just the sort of thing that could get me closed down, just like that. And what about the costume?’ he went on, wondering why none of this seemed to be having any effect at all. ‘You couldn’t be expected to fight in trousers, and there just isn’t an accepted form of solemn-procedure dress for women in the courts. You’d be a laughing stock.’

The girl said nothing. The purse sat there on her palm. A sense of bewildering frustration swept over the trainer; why couldn’t he get through to this pig-headed girl? Over the years he’d talked literally hundreds of stupid young kids out of joining a profession in which they stood no chance of survival. He was a conscientious man and besides, he had his trainer’s licence to think of. He could just imagine himself trying to explain to a frantic mother and father and a stony faced Public Safety Office official why he allowed a slip of a girl to join up and get herself killed in her first fight. It was a fat purse, but not fat enough to compensate him for the loss of a business he’d been nurturing for nine hard years.

‘Please?’ he said. ‘If you won’t listen to sense, then at least go away and make life miserable for one of my competitors. I can give you a list of places to try.’

‘You’re the best,’ the girl said. ‘I want to learn here.’

Behind them, the long exercise hall echoed to the clatter of blades and the shouts of short-tempered instructors. The floor shook as thirty feet came down hard in unison in the first, second, third steps of the Orthodox guard, the back foot riposte, the fleche, the defensive lunge, the Southern parry, the fencer’s turn, the mandritta. Every day brought a fresh crop of bright, keen, idiotic young faces, of distraught fathers whose only sons had run away from home and family businesses to follow the wild dream of becoming a lawyer. Every week there were funerals to attend, new names to inscribe on the roll of ex-pupils who had given their lives for the profession. One way or another, the chief trainer saw an awful lot of young people with an urge to die, but never one as persistent as this. Mostly, he reckoned, it was the way she wasn’t pleading or cajoling or begging that was getting to him. It was as if she was demanding an inalienable right which he was trying to cheat her of on the flimsiest of pretexts. It’d serve her right, he told himself, if he did let her join.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘here’s the deal. You tell me why it’s so all-fire important to you to be an advocate, and then maybe I might be persuaded.’

Silence. For the first time, the trainer could sense a slight trace of reluctance; a questionable motive, perhaps, something on which he could quite reasonably base a refusal. He decided to press the advantage.

‘The point being,’ he said, ‘that there’s only one valid reason for wanting to join this profession. Anything else, and you’re disqualified instantly. And I’ve got an idea it’s not the reason that’s motivating you.’

The girl said nothing, but her cheeks were beginning to glow red. Professional that he was, the trainer could sense a fault in her guard that would repay pressure. He moved onto the offensive.

‘The only reason for fighting people for a living,’ he said, ‘is money. Not love of justice, or honour, or adventure, or prowess, or the desire to be the best. Certainly not the pleasure of killing; most definitely not because secretly you want to find a way you can die before your time without it being your fault. It has to be the money, or nothing. And if you’re about to tell me that it’s all right, you don’t actually intend to practise once you finish the course, you’re just here for the education, then I suggest you get out of my establishment before I have you thrown out into the street. Of all the dirty, disgusting words I know, the very worst of all is amateur. And that’s what you are, isn’t it?’

He was winning; because when the girl replied her voice was unsettled, worried. ‘How would you know?’ she said sullenly.

‘Because,’ he said, ‘you turn up with payment in full in advance, all ready, not even a pretence of haggling or offering to pay in instalments or asking me to wait till you’ve started earning. That’s what professionals do. Obviously, therefore, you’re not a professional.’

Victory. The girl’s hand closed around the purse and dropped to her side. ‘The hell with you, then,’ she said. ‘I’ll just have to go elsewhere.’

‘Best of luck,’ the trainer replied, relieved that the fight was over. Even so, now that he’d won, he couldn’t help feeling a burning curiosity. After all, she hadn’t answered his question. He asked it again.

‘None of your business.’

‘If you tell me,’ he said, ‘I might be able to point you in the right direction.’

The girl shrugged; the matter was no longer important. The mere gesture seemed to devalue his victory. ‘Revenge,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’

‘Ah,’ the trainer replied, ‘I might have guessed. If there’s one thing I despise almost as much as amateurs, it’s melodrama.’

The girl gave him an unpleasant stare. ‘My uncle was killed by an advocate called Bardas Loredan. The only way I can legally punish him is to become an advocate myself. So that’s what I’m going to do.’

In spite of himself, the trainer couldn’t help being intrigued. ‘What’s so significant about being legal?’ he asked. ‘If it’s so terribly important to you, why not just hire a couple of bright lads to cut his throat in an alley somewhere? I could definitely give you a few recommendations there; quite a few of our ex-students diversify into that area of the profession after a couple of years.’

The girl shook her head. ‘That would be murder,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe in murder, it’s wrong. This has to be done right.’

Several replies occurred to the trainer, but he voiced none of them. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Start a lawsuit against one of his regular clients, and hire a better fencer. He’ll be killed and it’ll be completely legal.’

‘That would still be murder,’ the girl replied. ‘It’s not as if Loredan’s done anything wrong, after all. He was just doing his job, so he hasn’t committed any crime that would put him outside the law. But he killed my uncle and so he’s got to be punished.’

Before the trainer could say anything, she had turned and walked away; out of the hall and out of his life. Most of him was only too glad to be rid of her; but there was one small dangerous part of him that regretted losing so unusual a subject for observation. The trainer had seen all kinds of strange people – the sad, the sick, the disturbed, the crazy and the plain old-fashioned stupid – but never one like this. Probably, he reminded himself, just as well. Bad trouble on two legs is always best avoided.

It wasn’t until quite late in the afternoon that Loredan woke up. He was hung over, depressed and angry with himself for not coping better. He decided to go out for a drink.

If a man wants to get thoroughly drunk in the lower city of Perimadeia, there are any number of places he can go, between them covering all the nuances of the mood, from boisterous jollity to utter self-loathing and all the fine gradations in between. From the fashionable inns where respectable people talked business over good wine to the unlicenced drinking-clubs behind a curtain in the back room of someone’s house, there was an abundance of choice that was sometimes offputting. There were taverns that advertised their presence with enormous mosaic signs, and others which did their best to be invisible. There were taverns that were government offices, taverns that were theatres, taverns that were academies of music or pure mathematics; there were temples to forbidden gods, corn exchanges and futures markets, dancing floors and mechanics’ institutes, places that allowed women and places that provided them, places to go if you wanted to watch a fight, places to go if you wanted to start one. There were even taverns where you went to argue over which tavern you were going to go to. And there were places you could go and sit on your own until you were too drunk to move. In fact, there were a lot of those.

The one Loredan chose didn’t have a name or even many customers; it was basically the back room of a wheelright’s shop, with four plain tables, eight oil lamps and a hatch you banged on when you wanted more to drink. Nobody spoke much, though occasionally someone sang for half a minute or so. There was a channel under the back wall to piss in if you were feeling refined. If you happened to die where you sat, nobody would hold it against you. The wine was no worse for you than a dose of malaria.

Loredan was halfway through a small jug of the stuff when someone walked up and sat down opposite him.

‘Bardas,’ he said.

Loredan raised his head. ‘Teoclito,’ he replied. ‘Aren’t you dead?’

‘Not yet.’ Teoclito put down his jug and filled both cups. ‘Mind you, I’m not trying as hard as you. How’s life in the legal profession?’

‘Depressing.’

‘Good money, so I hear.’

Loredan shrugged. ‘Better than the army, and you get to wear your own clothes. What about you?’

Teoclito looked about seventy; in fact, he was only five or so years older than Loredan. The last time the two of them had sat together over a jug of wine had been in a tent pitched among the ruins of a town they had reached three days too late. The next day, there had been a bit of a scrimmage with the clans; Teoclito was one of the wounded who was past helping. They’d gone back to put him out of harm’s way, but he hadn’t been where they’d left him. It followed that the clans had him. It helped not to think too hard about such things.

‘Been back three years now,’ Teoclito said. ‘I work in the dancing school, sweeping up after the young ladies. It’s a living.’

Loredan refilled the other man’s cup. ‘And before that?’ he asked.

‘Not much fun. You don’t really want to know.’ Teoclito smiled; he had five teeth. ‘They have surprisingly good doctors, but a wicked sense of humour. Eventually they turned me loose.’

‘Just like that?’

‘No room for passengers in the caravan, and they’re a superstitious bunch. Terrible bad luck to kill a cripple.’

‘And after that?’

Teoclito sighed wearily. ‘Oh, I walked to the coast, got there, found I’d been going in the wrong direction. After that I didn’t feel much like walking any more, so I stayed put.’

‘Where was that?’

‘Solamen.’ Loredan raised an eyebrow; Solamen was up on the north coast, two months’ walk from the place where they’d parted. Among other things, it was a flourishing slave market. ‘I got a job, of sorts. Unpaid. Sort of like voluntary work.’

‘Ah.’

‘Finally I ended up helping row a big boat,’ Teoclito continued. ‘And when this boat got sunk off Canea, I swam ashore, and now here I am. I’d like to say how nice it is to be back, but I have a basic respect for the truth that prevents me.’

‘You’ve been busy, then.’

Teoclito shrugged, awkwardly. ‘Like you said, it beats being in the army. Anyway, enough about that. You see any of the old crowd nowadays?’

Loredan shook his head. ‘Not many of us made it back,’ he said, ‘and we don’t have reunions. You didn’t miss much, at the end.’ He yawned. ‘Saying that, I did run into Cherson the other day, down by the city wharf. He’s running a brass foundry, doing quite well. Employs a lot of people.’

‘Never could stand the man myself.’

‘Nor me. Funny, isn’t it, the way bastards live for ever.’

Before his presumed death, Teoclito had been Loredan’s Company Commander. Every inch the hero, in a society that discouraged the type; first man into the engagement and last out. He seemed much shorter than Loredan remembered. He was almost completely bald, and there were scars across his crown. Loredan had taken over his command; to the best of his knowledge, they were the only two men alive out of that company.

Teoclito was looking at him intensely. Mostly, Loredan recognised, it was contempt.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They do, don’t they?’

They filled their cups again and sat quietly for a while. Loredan couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘Anyway,’ Teoclito said at last, finishing his drink and standing up. ‘Can’t be too late, got to work tomorrow. Be seeing you.’

‘Clito.’ Loredan wished he hadn’t spoken; he was afraid that what he was about to say would be the wrong thing.

‘Yes?’

‘You… Are you all right for money? I mean-’

That look again. ‘I told you,’ he said, ‘I got a job. Go carefully, Bardas.’

‘You too.’

‘Oh, one more thing.’ Teoclito leant against the table, favouring his right leg.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m sure you had a good reason,’ he said, ‘for leaving me and not coming back. Just don’t ever try and tell me what it was.’

‘Take care, Clito.’

‘I always do.’ He walked away, his right foot dragging. His whole body had been twisted like a length of wire. It must have seemed a very long way from the high plains to Solamen, walking like that.

The lengths some people’ll go to just to stay alive.

Loredan left the rest of his wine and went back to his ‘island’. He was virtually sober, but that was all right. No more drinking, he told himself, as he lay down to sleep. Regular meals, exercise, practice in the Schools, perhaps even a new sword, and maybe he’d be in shape to beat Ziani Alvise. After all, it was just another fight, something he was supposed to be good at. It wasn’t as if he was being asked to do anything difficult, like walking home.