Colours in the Steel

CHAPTER FIVE

Loredan woke up with blood on his shirt. He examined the cut, bound it up with fresh wool and damp moss, and put on another shirt.

No bread in the apartment; so he struggled painfully into his coat (his side was stiff, and putting his arm in the sleeve wasn’t pleasant), trudged down the stairs and through the maze of narrow streets to the south of the ‘island’ and a bakery he knew well. They were used to him there, and were no longer offended when he came in asking for mouldy bread.

‘Saved some for you,’ the baker’s son replied. ‘It’s the blue kind you like, isn’t it?’

He’d given up trying to explain long ago, and smiled instead as he handed over a copper quarter. The boy waved the money away. ‘On the house,’ he said magnificently. ‘We don’t get many famous people in here.’

‘In that case I’ll have a fresh loaf as well. What d’you mean, famous?’

The boy chuckled. ‘The great Bardas Loredan, they’re calling you. Made a lot of friends round here yesterday.’

‘Did I? How did I manage that?’

‘Bet on you, didn’t we?’

Loredan raised an eyebrow. ‘Neighbourly loyalty?’

‘Bloody good odds, more like. Hell, if I’d known you were going to win, I’d have laid more’n a copper half. Still, at two hundred to one-’

Loredan picked up his bread. ‘Sounds like you made more out of the case than I did,’ he said irritably. ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me they were offering two hundred to one? I could have done with some of that.’

Back home, up the interminable stairs. Other fencers kept in shape by running or fooling about in the gymnasium at the Schools; all he had to do was get from the street to his front door. The loaf the baker had kept for him was admirably suited for his purpose; covered in horrible-looking blue and white spots all over one side. Carefully he scraped the best of the blue bits into the palm of his left hand with the point of his dagger, and poured them onto a fresh sheet of parchment. Then he unwound the bandage, patted the mould gingerly onto the raw cut, and tied the harness back up again. He had no idea whether this particular ritual did any good or not; he hadn’t had a badly infected wound since he’d started doing it, but law-swords were usually kept clean and rust-free anyway, so perhaps it was simply coincidence. He cut a slice of the new loaf and tipped out the last half-cupful of yesterday’s wine.

The business with the bread mould was something he’d learnt on the plains, a long time ago. When he’d first heard about it, he’d assumed it was just another leg-pull for the benefit of a raw recruit, a joke in the same category as mules’ eggs and the legendary left-handed arrows every kid soldier gets sent to fetch from the quartermaster. In time he realised it wasn’t a joke, though he shrank from using the treatment himself. The old story was that a group of wounded men who had nothing to stop their wounds with except the stale bread in a saddlebag had all healed up in record time. A likely story, Loredan felt. His own theory was that it had something to do with the similar-looking mould the plainsmen deliberately put into their evil-tasting goats’ milk cheese. After all, they did have a way with unlikely sounding cures and medicines. There was one highly suspect recipe involving willow bark boiled in water that really did work against headaches, to his certain knowledge.

The plainsmen; it was the second time he’d thought about them since the fight. It was the snapping of yet another good sword that brought them to mind, and the explanation he’d given the tiresome girl at the tavern. Because they brazed the edges of their swords to the cores with some sort of solder that melted at a much lower heat, they were far less likely to muck up the temper of their blades and in consequence their swords tended not to snap. True, the plains sword was a curved single-edged affair, totally unsuitable for legal work; but the technique was presumably valid for any design. He wondered if anyone in the city knew how to use the plains method, and if so how he could find out who it was without letting anyone else know what he had in mind.

Then he remembered. Through with all that now; quitting the profession, going to do something else. He scowled, and cut another slice of bread.

He’d considered it many times before; after practically every fight these last six years. Thinking about it and actually doing it were different matters entirely. Always his excuse had been that there was nothing else he could do, no other way of making a living, too late to learn a new skill and so forth. Until yesterday, he’d managed to force himself to believe it, although he’d known for a long time it wasn’t true.

The truth was that for the last ten years or so he’d been walking around with a terrible sense of being left over from the war, needing to be used up like scraps of meat or offcuts of leather. It was a stupid attitude, not to mention a dangerous one, and he despised himself for it. But he had never quite managed to face up to it, with the result that he’d carried on, a fight at a time, collecting scars on his body and cutting a thick swathe through a whole generation of advocates.

It was time to admit that it didn’t work. If it was going to work, it should have done so yesterday.

Even so. Starting a school or running a tavern. All the wonders of the world are at your fingertips; all you have to do is stay alive long enough.

He put his coat back on (even more painful this time) and toiled up the hill to the Schools. It was the last place he felt like going the day after a big case. There would be other advocates, clerks, the unsavoury hangers-on, the profession in all its glory, and he’d rather not have to make conversation and put up with a succession of left-handed congratulations. He pulled his collar up round his neck and crept in through the side door.

The number of trainers working in the Schools tended to vary, depending on a large number of factors ranging from the health of the economy to the time of year. There were six long-established and savagely expensive schools which had appropriated sections of the building and installed their own fixtures and fittings; a constantly changing pool of old men and nerve-cases who hung about the colonnades offering to make you invincible in a day, money back if you get killed within a year; and ten or twelve establishments between the two extremes providing some sort of training in arms for a vaguely realistic fee. The latter group, mostly comprising the proprietor, perhaps one assistant and a combination clerk, registrar and bursar, used the main hall and the communal fixtures, and paid a modest rent to the governors for the privilege. To start up a new school, you paid a month’s rent in advance and put up a wooden board on the wall with your name under it, beneath which students could assemble at the start of each day.

On his way to the governors’ office, Loredan saw someone he recognised. There wasn’t time to turn round or duck behind a column.

‘Congratulations.’

‘Thank you,’ he replied.

The man’s name was Garidas. He had been an advocate for six years before losing an eye in a banking dispute; now he worked as an assistant with the second-best of the grand schools, as well as helping out with the book-keeping. His father had been in the cavalry, and Loredan had watched him die of an arrow wound one cold morning in a ruined sentry post on the plains. His last words had been a desperate plea to look after his boy, and Loredan had happened to be the nearest. He was fairly certain the dying man had thought he was talking to someone else.

‘I’m not sure where that puts you in the ratings,’ Garidas said. ‘Alvise was somewhere around sixth, so you must be up in the top twelve.’

‘Not any longer. I’ve retired.’

‘Oh.’ Garidas seemed taken aback. ‘Since yesterday?’

‘Since and because of. I may be stupid, but I can take a hint.’

Garidas nodded. ‘It was certainly that, from what I’ve heard. Oddly enough, we were all set to take a party along to watch, but somehow we didn’t.’

‘Wouldn’t have been a good example to the students,’ Loredan replied. ‘Classic case of the best man not winning; very offputting.’

‘On the contrary. Salutary warning of the dangers of carelessness and underestimating your opponent. So what’ve you got planned? A life of ease and luxury?’

‘As if,’ Loredan said, frowning. ‘No, I’m going to have a go at your racket. On my way to see the governors now, in fact.’

‘Really?’ Garidas grinned. ‘I could put a word in for you at our place if you like.’

‘No thanks. Never did fancy the idea of working for anybody else. Having to have clients was bad enough, but at least I was my own master in theory. I’ll put up a board like everyone else and see what happens.’

‘Best of luck.’ Garidas smiled. ‘I always said we never saw enough of you down here. I’ll bear you in mind for any we turn down.’

Loredan nodded. Garidas probably would, at that; he’d always been very friendly, although there was no way he could have known that his fees at the expensive school he’d attended (the one he now taught at) and his living costs while he was there had all come out of Loredan’s army pay and prize money. Add to that several lucrative clients Loredan had turned down to avoid having to fight him in the court, and one way or another Garidas had cost him a lot of money over the years. It would be agreeable if he could start paying some of it back after all this time by recommending a few students.

Later that morning he set off to the signwriters’ district to have a board painted. Traditionally the board carried a portrait of the trainer, seated wearing his court clothes and armed with the classes of weapon he professed to teach, with his name and a tariff of charges at the bottom; lately, however, there had been a tendency to depict ex-fencers in the act of winning their most famous case, with the man himself shown rather larger than his cringing and mortally wounded opponent. Some trainers even commissioned laudatory verses, to be inscribed in gold letters all round the edge. Loredan decided he’d have to be firm about that sort of thing.

‘Bardas Loredan,’ he said accordingly, ‘three eighths a day, standard and two-handed sword and dagger, no fancy dress.’

‘Just the portrait and the fight scene?’

‘No fight scene.’

‘You sure?’ The painter was disappointed. ‘No extra for the fight scene.’

‘No fight scene.’

‘I do good fight scenes. They’re good advertising.’

‘No.’

The painter thought for a moment. ‘I can do you in a radiate crown representing the protective influence of the Principle,’ he said.

‘Not if you expect to get paid.’

‘Sit in the chair,’ the painter said huffily. ‘Be with you in a minute.’

He turned around and started fiddling with bottles and jars at the back of the booth. Loredan sat back and tried to relax. It was an unseasonably hot day, and the shade offered by the booth’s canvas awning was pleasant. From where he was sitting he had a good view of the square that formed the main trading area of the signwriters’ district. Like so many of the small specialists’ enclaves of Perimadeia, it consisted of a square with a fountain in the middle, loomed over by an old and neglected statue. Round the fountain was a clutter of tents and booths, obscuring the grander frontages of the ground-floor shops. At regular intervals there were stairs up to the galleries onto which the first-floor shops opened, and thence up to the houses and workshops on the second floor. At the four corners of the square arched gateways led off to the neighbouring districts; needless to say there were shops built over the arches, so that the sides of the square presented a solid wall of commerce. In every shop on the sunlit side, a signwriter sat in the doorway, making the most of the light; because the buildings were so high, the occupants of each side could only work by daylight for a quarter of the day.

A constant procession of carts, wagons and trolleys rumbled through what clear space there was between the booths and the central fountain; except when the traffic came to a standstill and backed up, with an accompanying chorus of bad temper and traditional carters’ oaths. Unlike most of the city, the signwriters’ district had no one distinctive smell peculiar to its own particular trade; only the residual background smell that nobody noticed. So many people, Loredan mused, so many trades, so many different ways of making a good living or scraping a poor one, and for every useful and profitable trade a separate and suitable district, where everything necessary for production of the particular commodity could conveniently be obtained. So much order and settled existence, with every man in his proper place fulfilling his part in the whole.

In the next square lay the shops and stalls of the colourmen, who soaked seashells and walnuts, ground rust, lapis and lead to get the colours that, mixed with egg white or limewater, made the paint used in the next square over. The most skilful and aristocratic of the colourmen made the universally famous Perimadeian gold paint, grinding up oxides, mercury and tin on a marble slab, adding triple-strength vinegar and dusted lead, crushing the mess together and drawing off the result into tiny stone bottles.

In a corner of the colourmen’s square were the brush-makers, a speciality within a speciality, who spent their day guillotining bristles to size and serving them to the handles, boiling up pots of glue and hammering down the ferrules. They had to walk twelve squares to get to the gluemakers’ district, a part of the city people walked through as quickly as possible, their collars up around their noses against the stench of rawhide macerating in limewater. The gluemakers, on the other hand, had only to walk round the corner and over a bridge to reach the lime kilns in one direction and the tanners’ and knackers’ yards in the other. On their way they passed through the sawyers’ quarter, where they would probably pass signwriters collecting newly sawn and planed boards from the sawmills that huddled beside what had once been a waterfall before the city people harnessed it to turn a hundred clever wheels.

All these people, all these things; and everything a part of the whole, all useless and unable to function without a score of other trades and tradesmen, all of them similarly dependent on the union and fusion of many parts. As he sat and watched, Loredan had an uncomfortable feeling of being the only thing in this city that wasn’t a component, a dedicated part of something else. Yesterday, of course, it had been different; then, he had been very much a part of the business of Perimadeia, albeit the most specialised of specialists perched at the extreme edge of the process, where agreements sometimes slipped their gears and the smooth running of the machine occasionally needed to be lubricated with a little blood. Foolish speculation, he knew; because as soon as he had his board and his piece of parchment from the governors allocating him a pitch, he’d have a place once again, a part to play, a function to perform in the process. It would make more sense to relish this brief interval rather than agonise over it; few men in Perimadeia ever had the chance to stand aside and spend an hour or so not participating.

‘All done,’ said the painter. ‘You want to look before I put the varnish on?’

Loredan nodded and stood up. It turned out to be a perfectly adequate piece of commercial art, with no fight scene and no radiate crown whatsoever. He was relieved.

‘Do my ears really stick out like that?’

‘Yes.’ The painter dipped his brush in solvent and wiped it on a scrap of rag. ‘Tell you what,’ he said, ‘just so happens I’ve got this really nice set of laudatory verses, five stanzas of elegaics, cancelled order, dirt cheap. Just go nicely round the edges, look. Two quarters.’

‘No.’

‘Trouble with some people is, they fail to recognise the vital importance of positive marketing.’

‘Tragic.’

The painter sighed and cut the beeswax round the neck of a jar of varnish. ‘How about a set of five identical miniatures to hang up in places where the rich and fashionable love to congregate? Gesture of goodwill, call it three quarters?’

‘You can call it what you like so long as you don’t expect me to pay for it.’

‘The miniatures and the laudatory verses for seven eighths, and I’ll throw in half a yard of picture cord.’

(-From the ropewalks, three squares over to the west, where they stretch the skeins right across the square on sliding wooden pins; another trade, another hundred or so men whose lives extend just so far and no further.)

‘Thanks, but no. Finished yet?’

‘Give me a chance, will you?’ the painter groaned. ‘If you’re not careful it smears for a pastime.’

And of course, Loredan reflected as the painter daubed on the varnish, there’s far more to it than that. On each of these busy tradesmen depends another complex system; wives and families to feed and clothe, children needing to be taught their proper skills, have husbands or apprenticeships found for them; rent to be paid, guild fees and licences and taxes to be met, parents and parents-in-law to be supported in their declining years, burial clubs and friendly societies to be given their dues. By these subsystems each component is locked into the whole so fast that he dare not stir out of his place, so that every part of the machine needs to run smoothly for fear of destroying everything. Curious to think that in other parts of the world, people somehow managed to live without all of this. They were, of course, savages, little better than beasts, creatures who never in all their lives had their portrait painted or took a case to the courts of law; which was why they had to be kept back where they belonged, out of sight of the walls and gates of the Triple City, just in case a busy man on his way to work in the morning might chance to see them and wonder just why in hell he bothered.

‘Finished,’ the painter announced. ‘Still be wet for an hour or so, mind. You can take it now if you like, but you’ll get dust in the varnish, sure as eggs.’

‘I see,’ Loredan replied, nodding. ‘How’d it be if I left it here for a couple of hours and then came back?’

‘Fine,’ said the painter, wiping his hands on a hank of flax. ‘That’ll be five quarters, please.’

Two hours with nothing to do. Ordinarily, he’d find a tavern (when you have time to kill, it makes sense to take it to a purpose-built abattoir), but he remembered that he didn’t do that sort of thing any more. No money to waste on wine, no drinking in the middle of the day and sleeping it off in the afternoon. Well, then; he could walk back to the Schools, ask if his piece of parchment had been drawn up, be told to come back in an hour or so and still have time to get back to the signwriters’ district before the varnish was dry. Instead, he strolled lazily out in the direction of the Drovers’ Bridge, a part of the city he didn’t often visit. Hectically successful trainers don’t have time to go sightseeing during working hours, so he might as well make the most of it while he could.

‘’Scuse me.’

He looked round, then down. A small child, female, slightly grubby, was pulling his trouser leg. He sighed and felt in his belt pouch for a coin.

‘’Scuse me,’ the child said, ‘but you’re Bardas Loredan.’

Don’t blame yourself, kid, it isn’t your fault. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘How do you know who I am?’

‘You’re an advocate, aren’t you?’ The child said the long word like a chicken laying a hexagonal egg: slowly, carefully and with a triumphant flourish at the end. ‘You’re the best in the world, my dad says.’

‘Was,’ Loredan replied, frowning. ‘What’s your dad do, then? Is he an advocate?’

The girl shook her head. ‘He makes barrels,’ she said. ‘But he likes watching law. He takes me to see law, sometimes.’

‘Does he? How… That’s nice.’

The girl nodded. ‘He took me to see you yesterday when you killed that man.’ She beamed. ‘I like going to see law, because my dad always buys me a cake to eat when I’m watching.’

‘You like cakes, then?’

‘Cakes are my favourite.’

He fished a copper half out of his pouch. ‘Then why don’t you go and buy yourself a nice cake right now? You’d like that.’

The girl shook her head vigorously. ‘My dad says I shouldn’t take cakes from strange men.’

Loredan sighed. ‘Your dad is quite right,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think it applies to being given money and sent to buy your own. Go on, shoo.’

The girl thought for a moment. ‘I could go to my dad’s shop and ask him if it’s all right,’ she said. ‘You wait here.’

‘Tell you what,’ Loredan suggested. ‘You go and find your dad, and take the money with you to show him. How’d that be?’

The girl hesitated, then nodded. ‘All right,’ she said.

As soon as she was safely out of sight, Loredan hurried across the street and dived into the nearest large building, which happened to be the city arsenal. With any luck, she wouldn’t follow him in there.

Over ten years since he’d last been in the arsenal. He winced – first meeting Garidas, now this; the damned army was following him around today like a hungry dog. It didn’t appear to have changed much since he’d come here with his uncle to collect twenty barrels of arrows, frequently promised and never delivered and finally having to be fetched personally. (Why was it they’d had to tussle with the Ordnance Department for every last hobnail, bow cover and biscuit?) Still a hot, dark, noisy place, with sweaty backs gleaming in the forgelight, sparks flying unexpectedly and sizzling on bare skin, huge billets of metal in transit to be sidestepped, incomprehensible shouts from men high up on scaffolding towers, the clanging of dropped tools, the thump of mechanical hammers seeping up through the paved floor. Boiling glue, burning fat, smoke, sawdust and the distinctive smell of freshly cut metal, the squeal of badly lubricated drills and lathe tools, the scudding rhythm of treadles and the scouring sound of hard-driven grindstones, the clatter of ball-peen hammers beating out sheet metal over wooden forms, the fizz of tempering. In another mood, he’d find it an exciting place; there was no lack of vitality in the midst of all this creation.

‘You.’

‘Me?’ He glanced round but couldn’t see where the voice was coming from.

‘Yes, you. What d’you want?’

Loredan grinned sheepishly. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘just looking around. I didn’t mean to-’

‘Then bloody well go and look around somewhere else. This isn’t a park.’

Still he couldn’t see who was talking to him; not that he particularly wanted to carry on the conversation. ‘Sorry,’ he repeated and headed for the door, to find his way blocked by a cart full of charcoal. He walked round it and found himself eye to eye with a short, slight young man who was holding a billet of red-hot iron in a pair of tongs about six inches from his face.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

The young man quickly moved the iron out of the way. ‘My fault,’ he said in a familiar accent. ‘I didn’t see you with the cart in the way.’

Plainsman; all he needed. Haven’t seen a plainsman in a very long time. Never particularly wanted to see one again. The flaming sword waggling about a few inches from his nose didn’t improve matters, either. He smiled bleakly and edged his way past, not stopping until he was out in the fresh air again.

He wandered for a while until he came to the city gate; if he was going to spend the day rubbing his own nose in his inglorious past, he might as well make a complete job of it. He climbed up onto the wall and stood for a long while, thinking in general terms about a great many things, all of them now past mending. Then he found a tavern.

Strange man, Temrai thought. Quite a few of them in this city, mind; certainly more than at home. Chances are, they have better odds of surviving here. At home there wasn’t much use for the weird, the feckless and the inadequate, and they tended not to live very long.

He stood beside the forge watching the colours change in a once-heated steel blade as the warmth soaked into it; from grey to yellow, yellow to dull red, to purple and finally blue, the right colour for the second quenching. Having checked that the brine bath was just nicely tepid (too cold a quench would crack the steel), he pulled the blade out of the heat and plunged it under the surface of the water. A round ball of steam lifted off the brine, the hissing reached its peak and died away, like the squeaking of a drowning puppy. Curious, the way a hot flame and lukewarm water can turn a soft, malleable piece of steel into a hard cutting edge. Not for the first time, he wondered why it worked.

They had known the answer back home. Steel is like the human heart, they said. To make a man hard enough to be useful, first you must heat him up with the fires of anger and cool him immediately in the quenching bath of fear and the awareness of his own weakness; for metal quench in brine, for men, in tears. This is only the first stage; this makes a man hard but also brittle, and as such no use as a tool, or a weapon. Now he must be heated again in the slow, careful fire of deliberate hatred, and quenched a second time in salt water; it’s the second process that makes him useful, able to cut and inflict wounds but unlikely to shatter. Only men of a good temper are useful to the gods of the clan.

Having cleaned off the colour with a file, he tapped the blade sharply a couple of times against the beak of the anvil, just to make sure that the tempering hadn’t upset the brazed join between blade and core, then took a pot of pumice paste and went over to the buffing wheel to start the long, tedious job of polishing. By rights this was a cutler’s work, the sort of chore a bladesmith shouldn’t be bothered with; but the cutler assigned to him was at home with his sick wife, and Temrai had willingly offered to cover for him. Another curiosity of the city, this. At home if a man’s wife or child fell ill, it went without saying that others would do his work and bring him his share of the milk and cheese. Here, a man was lucky to lose only his day’s wages if he stayed at home to look after his own. Presumably it was that way for a reason, although nobody seemed to know what it was.

Yesterday he had watched them erecting the great torsion engine that had been a month in the making; a fine machine, reckoned to be able to hurl a two hundredweight stone over three hundred and fifty yards. Most of the workers in the building had been called in to help, pulling on ropes or leaning on levers while the wooden frames were positioned and locked in place with dowels, pegs and nails. Once the frame was together and had been pronounced sound, they had wound in the rope skeins that, when twisted, gave the engine its power. Another parable? It was an easy game to play; to say that the ropes stood for the men of his clan, who having lain slack and peaceful for so long were now twisted and racked and ready to strike… Portents and omens are all very well, but it’s too easy a game to be worthwhile. Observing an eagle with a fawn in its claws flying over your enemy’s army is really only nature study; now, if you saw a fawn with an eagle in its velvet-covered hooves soaring and wheeling above their standards in the early dawn, that would be a portent.

Still; the great engine, officially named by the Department of Ordnance mangonel, large, stationary, number thirty-six and known to its creators as the Hardened Drinker (it takes a long time to get it to chuck up, but when it chucks it chucks hard…), was now in place on the third mile-tower of the land wall, wet with pitch against the damp east wind and covering the last undefended blind spot; or, at least, the last blind spot apparent to the unimaginative officials from the Department. The city, in its own estimation, was now ready for anything. Anything would need to be fairly obtuse not to recognise so obvious a cue.

Two hours beside the buffing wheel and the blade was polished; not to the clear mirror surface he’d have liked, but good enough for government work, as his colleagues put it. It joined the rest of the week’s output in a rack on the wall, ready to be hilted, assayed and placed in store; which meant being smeared with grease and packed in oily straw in a barrel along with twenty identical swords, humped into a cellar in a guard tower, and left. Temrai washed his hands, returned to his place and started again.

He made three complete blades that day and started on a fourth. ‘What’s the hurry?’ his colleagues demanded, annoyed that he turned out half as much work again as they did. ‘You know something we don’t?’ He didn’t answer that.

After work he swept up, oiled his tools with camellia oil and tidied them away, put on his coat and walked back to the hostel. It was the cool part of the evening, the little respite between the fresh heat of the sun and the stored heat of the night, radiating out of the stone like warmth from a firebrick. An attractive time in the city; friendly light leaking out through the doors of shops and taverns, cheerful voices and the sound of music played well or badly. Wherever you went, you could see men and women walking together, in no particular direction and no apparent hurry, husbands familiarly with wives, boys tentatively with sweethearts, drunks erratically with tavern girls. At home, generally speaking, you rode or you sat down; more sensible but not so picturesque.

At the door of the hostel he saw a man in a long leather coat leaning in the shadow of the doorway. So, he thought. It was an omen, after all.

‘Jurrai,’ he said softly. ‘Has he…?’

The man nodded. ‘Peacefully,’ he replied – so strange, to hear his own language again. He felt longing, regret and mild distaste, all at the same time. ‘The fever, a week ago.’ It occurred to the man that he’d forgotten something. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘He was a great chieftain.’

Temrai shrugged, knowing the praise to be false. Not a great chieftain; a good one, perhaps, just as he’d been a reasonably good father, an adequate teacher. He hadn’t been the sort of man the gods could make use of; put into the fire too late, cooked up too hot, likely to prove too brittle. His son, now, there was a different case.

‘I suppose I’d better come home,’ he said. ‘Where did you leave them?’

‘At the Korcul ford,’ Jurrai replied. ‘The flood was heavy this year – it won’t be fit to cross for another week, they reckon. If we hurry, we can catch them there.’

‘They won’t be hard to find, even if we don’t,’ Temrai replied absently. He couldn’t help thinking that he had work to finish here; but he hadn’t. He had learnt everything he’d come to learn, more in fact. And he had worked hard, earned his wages, done some good while he was a guest in the city. A man should always try and do good wherever he goes, leave any place better than it was when he found it.

‘They’ll probably wait,’ Jurrai said. ‘There’s plenty of timber there, and you’d said you’d be needing…’

‘True.’ He frowned. ‘I suppose I’d better get ready. Did you bring a horse for me? I sold mine.’

‘One each and a change,’ Jurrai replied. ‘We don’t want to hang about.’

‘Good. Right. I won’t be long.’

He left Jurrai there and walked into the hostel. Strange; it felt very much like home, this huge stone wagon without wheels that never went anywhere, where you had to pay money just for the privilege of being in it. He could smell the evening bread in the oven, and the women were laying the table. A group of men, his friends, looked up from a game of dice and nodded. Under the circumstances, he hoped he’d never see them again.

The hostel keeper was stirring a large pot of soup, occasionally sipping a sample off the end of a long wooden spoon, adding a pinch or so of some herb or other with a faintly ridiculous air of precision. She smiled when she saw him, and promised it wouldn’t be long.

‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I’m not stopping. I’d like to settle up, please.’

‘You’re leaving?’ She seemed disappointed. ‘Oh. Nothing wrong, is there?’

‘My father’s died.’

‘I’m sorry. Had he been ill?’

Temrai nodded. ‘I’d better be going as soon as I can.’

The hostel keeper laid down the spoon. ‘I expect your mother will be glad to see you,’ she said.

‘She died,’ Temrai replied. ‘When I was young.’

‘That’s sad. So you’ll be the head of the family now, I suppose.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Large family?’

‘Quite large. Sorry, but I really must be going. How much do I owe you?’

The woman shook her head. ‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’s only two days since last rent, have that on me. Would you like me to put you up something to eat for the journey?’

Temrai refused politely; she insisted; eventually, just to be able to get away, Temrai accepted half a loaf, a sausage and two apples. ‘It’s been nice having you here,’ she said, handing him a basket covered with a piece of clean sacking. ‘Make sure you come and see me if you’re ever in town again.’

‘I might be coming back,’ Temrai said. ‘Fairly soon.’

‘I’ll look forward to that. Have a safe trip.’

‘I will. Thanks for everything.’

‘You’re very welcome.’

Feeling like a murderer, Temrai gathered up his few bits and pieces in a bundle and managed to get out without talking to anybody else. Please, he prayed silently, be among the first to leave, when the dust clouds appear in the east and everyone starts to panic. I mean you no harm, really. It’s just-

‘Ready?’ Jurrai asked, handing him the reins of a tall, neat horse.

‘Ready,’ he replied.

‘I nearly forgot. You get what you came for?’

‘Yes.’

Jurrai chuckled. ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘Next time you see this lot, it’ll all be rather different.’

Temrai gritted his teeth. ‘Let’s hope so,’ he said.

They mounted up (strange, the sensation of sitting on a horse again, after all this time) and rode slowly through the streets, fearful for their horses’ legs among the ruts and cobbles. It was a rare sight to see mounted men in the city, and the evening promenaders were in no hurry to get out of the way and let them through. Temrai felt foolish and conspicuous, towering over his fellow citizens (no, no more of that) like some great nobleman taking part in a procession, his tall, fire-breathing plains stallion pawing and shaking his head with impatience behind a little, fat, bald baker and his circular wife, out for a leisurely stroll. They could have taken all night to reach the gate, except that the baker and his wife stopped to buy pancakes and let them through.

They were in sight of the gate when a man came out of a tavern, not looking where he was going, and walked directly in front of Temrai’s horse. He yanked the reins hard back and to the right, slewing the horse round; it was enough to save the fool drunkard from serious injury, but the toecap of Temrai’s boot (iron-capped, necessary precaution for workers in a place where there were all manner of heavy things waiting to fall and crush unshielded toes) slammed into the side of the man’s head, knocking him to the ground. Temrai cried out in alarm and slipped off the horse, throwing the reins to Jurrai.

‘Are you all right?’

The man rubbed his head. ‘No thanks to you,’ he grunted. ‘Why don’t you look where you’re damned well going?’

His voice was slurred, the edges rounded by a few too many drinks; just the condition, Temrai knew, that led to most of the fights in this city. He apologised, therefore, and helped the man to his feet, brushing mud and street muck off his coat and picking up the flat bundle the man had been holding. Unfortunately, the horse had trodden on it.

‘You clown,’ the man exclaimed, ‘look what you’ve done to my sign! Go on, just look at it!’

The light streaming from the tavern doorway revealed a smart new portrait, very impressive except for the horseshoe-sized hole where the man’s face should have been. Temrai noticed the man’s hand drop to his belt, where a sword would hang. Fortunately, there wasn’t one.

‘That’s terrible,’ Tamrai muttered. ‘I’m so sorry. Please, you must let me pay for the damage.’

‘Too bloody right I will,’ the man snarled back. ‘Not to mention loss of earnings, pain and suffering and careless handling of a horse on a public thoroughfare.’

That, Temrai felt, was a little excessive coming from a drunk who’d tried to walk under his horse; but the significance of the sign, the legal terminology, the instinctive hand to the belt, weren’t lost on him. Drunk or sober, right or wrong, he didn’t particularly want to find himself trading knife thrusts with a professional advocate. ‘Of course,’ he said hurriedly. ‘How much does that come to?’

The drunk was looking at him curiously, his sodden brain doing its best to interpret the promptings of some half-forgotten memory.

‘You,’ he said. ‘You’re the plains boy from the arsenal.’

‘That’s right,’ Temrai replied; and then his own memory found the right place. ‘I saw you there this afternoon. You came in and went out again.’

The man nodded, and with relief Temrai sensed that the moment of danger was over. A drunk might stab an offensive stranger in an outburst of drunken fury, but not an acquaintance. The man’s face relaxed into a sort of grin.

‘You’ve ruined my sign,’ he said. ‘Took me all day to get that bloody thing done. If you only knew how boring it is having yourself painted…’

‘I can imagine.’

The man shrugged. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Look, I’ll tell you what. I’ll forget about the sign and all that stuff, if you’ll do me a favour. Agreed?’

Temrai hesitated. He was in no position to promise favours now that he was leaving the city; on the other hand, to refuse would undoubtedly infuriate the drunk and land Temrai in a worse mess than he’d been in before. ‘Um,’ he said.

‘Swordsmith, aren’t you?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Thought so.’ The man nodded slowly. ‘Swordsmith from the plains. You’ll know all about brazing edges to cores so they won’t snap, then.’

‘Yes,’ Temrai said. ‘How do-?’

‘Friend,’ the drunk said solemnly, ‘you could just be the man to save my life. See, I’m an advocate. Fencer-at-law. Or was, till today; giving it all up, going to be a trainer. Good life, training, ’cept for the getting up in the mornings. Anyway, still going to need a good sword that won’t bust on me in the middle of a fight. Two perfectly good swords I’ve had bust on me lately,’ he added bitterly, ‘and seen another go the same way, close to my face as you are.’ It was true that he was leaning up close; even with his limited experience, Temrai could identify two of the cheaper popular vintages on his breath. ‘And then I thought, those buggers out on the plains, they know how to make swords that don’t bust, or they did a dozen years back. So that’s what I want you to do for me, and we’ll say no more ’bout the busted sign. Deal?’

Temrai’s face was completely void of any expression, as was his voice when he replied, ‘Deal.’ The drunk didn’t seem to have noticed.

‘Good stuff,’ the drunk said, smiling, and he slapped Temrai mightily on the back. ‘Loredan’s my name, Bardas Loredan. Find me at the Schools any time. You ever want to learn fencing, do you a special deal.’

‘Thank you,’ said Temrai quietly. ‘Crossing swords with you would be a pleasure.’

The drunk was now full of good humour; he held Temrai’s stirrup for him as he mounted, and waved him cheerfully on his way before dumping the ruined sign in the gutter, turning round a couple of times as if uncertain of where he was going, and finally heading back into the tavern. Temrai rode on in stony silence until they were past the gatekeeper and on the bridge.

‘What was all that about?’ Jurrai asked.

‘That man,’ Temrai answered, ‘wanted me to make him a sword.’

Jurrai shrugged. ‘More fool him.’

Temrai turned round in his saddle, and Jurrai saw by the torchlight reflected on the water that there were tears running down Temrai’s face. ‘Jurrai, do you realise who he was?’

‘A drunk. Oh, yes, an advocate, whatever that means. I got the impression he’s some sort of hired fighter.’

‘That’s what he is now. Think, Jurrai; a man who knows about silver soldering, says he learnt about it twelve years ago. Work it out, Jurrai.’

A moment’s thought; then Jurrai swore under his breath. ‘Maxen’s raiders,’ he muttered. ‘You think he was one of them?’

‘Twelve years, Jurrai. Someone who learnt about silver soldering on the plains. And he was no merchant, believe me.’

‘Dear gods. If I’d been you I’d have killed him where he stood.’

Temrai shook his head and smiled. ‘He’ll keep. Actually, he did me a good turn. Do you know, I’ve been here so long I’d nearly forgotten what I came for.’

Jurrai clicked his tongue. ‘I doubt that’s possible,’ he said.

‘I did say nearly,’ Temrai replied. (Forget Maxen? No, he was a stain that couldn’t be shifted, no matter how often you washed or how hard you rubbed with the pumice. Twelve years and he was still there, sunk into the fibres, along with the smell of burning bone and hair, like the lingering scent of cedar in a clothes-press.) ‘Everyone else in the arsenal takes their shirt off to work, because of the heat. Not me.’ He half-wriggled out of his coat and pulled his shirt down over one shoulder, to reveal the edge of a shiny white scar. ‘I didn’t fancy explaining where that came from, not when we were all getting along so well.’ He slipped his shirt and coat back on – Jurrai noticed his slight clumsiness; been out of the saddle too long – and pulled his collar tight around his neck, then turned round to look at the lamps burning on either side of the gateway. ‘I’m going to bar those gates from the outside when I burn the city, Jurrai, it’s the least I can do. It’s a pity,’ he added, in the tone of voice of someone throwing out a still-wearable pair of trousers, ‘I quite like them, really. But it’s got to be done, and on balance I’d rather it was me that did it than some stranger.’

Jurrai looked at him, a little apprehensively. ‘It’s what your father would have wanted,’ he said awkwardly.

‘I dare say,’ Temrai replied wearily. ‘He was bloodthirsty when he was young, weak when he first became the chief, and pretty well bunged up with frustration and hate the rest of his life. He could never have burnt Perimadeia. But I will.’

His companion regarded him steadily. ‘You reckon?’ he said.

‘Oh, yes. Now they’ve been kind enough to show me how.’