Memory

Chapter Thirteen

'You're getting better,' she said. 'The last two times I've been driving in a cart with a man and met you on the road, you've killed him. And don't call me Copis,' she added. 'My name's Xipho-or had you forgotten?'

'You see,' Gain interrupted, before he could reply, 'she hasn't changed a bit, even after all these years. Next she'll be saying she won't help you with your homework.'

'Shut up, Gain,' Copis said dismissively, like a mother automatically rebuking a difficult child. 'Well,' she went on, 'I'd like to say you're looking good, but that'd be lying. You look ghastly, just like the idiot boy here. Somebody should've told you two not to play with fire.'

It was a moment before Poldarn managed to figure out what she was talking about. She went on: 'It's just as well Gain's with me, I honestly don't think I'd have recognised you; except, of course, I knew I was looking for a man with a horribly burned face. And your voice is the same. I guess I'd know it anywhere. But what the hell are you doing out here? You never did have any consideration. All the trouble we've been to, just so we'd meet you at Dui Chirra, and you weren't even bloody well there.'

So that was it, the question answered. Gain had been telling the truth. Poldarn felt as though he'd walked across a desert, just to find himself back where he'd started from. 'I don't understand,' he said.

For some reason, they both found that highly amusing. 'It's all right,' Gain said, 'you aren't supposed to. And besides, your sensibilities are probably the least important thing in the whole world right now. Isn't that right, Xipho?'

'Yes.' She took one hand off the reins to wipe rainwater out of her eyes. 'A bit like old times, really; except that this time we're the ones who know what's going on, and you aren't. Shall we tell him, Gain, or would it be more fun to let him sweat for a while?'

'Probably,' Gain replied. 'But remember who we've got here-the most slippery boy in the whole school. Got to do something to keep him from running away. Either we bash him over the head and tie him up, or we tell him a story. What do you reckon?'

'Tell him the story,' Copis replied. 'I haven't got the energy to play games.'

While they were talking, Poldarn was figuring out the chances of getting away: a sitting jump off the box into the mud, followed by a frantic sprint for the cover of the trees. If only he could get a few yards into the forest, he felt sure he could lose them, but in order to get that far he'd have to be faster, cleverer for two whole seconds, maybe even three. It'd be like trying to outdraw two sword-monks simultaneously. Might as well try to escape drowning in a river by strangling it with his bare hands.

He turned and looked Gain Aciava in the eye. 'All that stuff you told me,' he said. 'Was it true?'

Gain grinned. 'Would I lie to you? I never have yet. And I've known you since you were seventeen.'

'I've lied to you a lot,' Copis put in. 'But Gain's not like me. Painfully straightforward. Did he tell you what he's been doing for a living lately? Selling false teeth?'

Poldarn looked at both of them. He was quick, he had reflexes that could only be explained by reference to religion, fast and accurate enough to knock a flying crow out of the air with a stone. But not quick enough. 'Who are you?' he asked. 'And why were you looking for me?'

In the end, it was a straightforward race: a quarter-mile dash through the mud, carts on one side, horsemen on the other. The carts won, by a whisker; all but two of them made it in through the gate before Brigadier Muno's outriders could intercept them. The two stragglers were cut off only yards from the stockade, but the defenders had no choice but to slam the gates in their faces, whereupon the riders surged round them like the incoming tide.

Fine, Monach said to himself, as he watched from the picket tower, it'll have to be a siege, then. I've never done a siege before, it'll be a new experience for me.

At least he was off to a good start, thanks to some appallingly bad judgement on the part of the supply-team drivers, who hadn't realised that Muno's people were, like themselves, government troops. The first they'd known of their mistake was when they'd thundered in through the gates and noticed that the armed men cheering them on and grinning were a bit too scruffy for regular soldiers. Then the gates swept shut, and the garrison men were jumping up on the carts, grabbing the drivers, twisting their arms behind their backs, and it was too late to get away. Monach couldn't help feeling just a little bit sorry for them.

And grateful, too; if they hadn't driven that last couple of miles with breathtaking skill and desperate courage, any further resistance on his part would've been out of the question. Even now, he only had enough supplies to last three weeks, four at the very most; but he had a shrewd suspicion that Muno was probably even worse off in that respect than he was. In Tulice in the wet season, a loaf in the stores was worth a bushel in a supply depot fifty miles away down swamped and flooded roads. Back in sixth grade, they'd been taught a reliable mathematical formula for calculating the probabilities of success in a siege. Assuming he'd remembered it correctly and his data was accurate, the odds were fifty-six to forty-four in his favour; so that was all right The bad thing about sieges, Monach rapidly discovered, was the overwhelming amount of administration they entailed. Guard shifts, rations, working parties to secure the defences; officers of the day, officers in charge of supply, officers reporting to other officers reporting to him. Proper soldiers, of course, were trained for this sort of thing and took it in their stride; but he wasn't a proper soldier, he was a sword-monk, and all he really knew about was pulling a sword out of a scabbard. If he'd wanted to be a clerk, he'd have stayed home and gone into the dried-fish business.

Fortunately, Monach soon discovered, he had an ally. Exactly how Spenno the pattern-maker had come to hate the government so much, he wasn't quite sure, though as far as he could tell it was mostly to do with the titanic clash of personalities between himself and the admittedly insufferable Galand Dev. In any event, Spenno was if anything even more determined than he was that Brigadier Muno shouldn't recapture the Dui Chirra foundry; and whereas Monach was a mere warlord, Spenno was a foreman-the same degree of difference, he soon realised, as between cast iron and tempered steel. From the moment when Monach found the courage to abdicate responsibility for the defence of Dui Chirra and let Spenno get on with it, everything seemed to flow as smoothly as a coil of tangled rope teased patiently apart by an expert. Within the hour, teams of efficient workers (foundrymen, Monach couldn't help noticing, rather than his somewhat temperamental and unreliable fellow warriors) were stacking flour barrels, carrying planks of wood and buckets of nails, and hauling carts and wheelbarrows through the standing pools of rainwater in the yard. He had no idea what they were doing; but they did, which was all that mattered. Shaking his head, he went back up the picket tower, to watch the antlike scurrying and listen to the distant but clearly audible sound of Spenno's fluent, musical swearing.

On the other side of the stockade, Monach observed with great pleasure, things didn't seem to be going nearly as well. Brigadier Muno-he recognised him at once by his fine full-length blue cloak-stood in the centre of a buzzing cloud of staff officers, like an azure cow-pat surrounded by flies; but not much work seemed to be getting done. His soldiers were either leaning on their spears or sitting on their shields in the mud, not even bothering to try and find shelter from the pelting rain. Best of all, he had a clear view of Muno's store-tents. Unless he'd arranged for a substantial supply train to follow on after him, Muno was only a few days away from starvation-and even if a hundred heavy wagons laden with flour and biscuits were already on their way, their chances of getting through were poor and getting worse with every gallon of water that fell out of the sky. Another thing Muno seemed to have forgotten in his haste to get underway was a sufficiency of tents. Monach looked up at the thick banks of iron-grey clouds piling in from the south and, for the first time he could remember, thanked the gods for rain: so much deadlier, he couldn't help thinking, than a monk's sword, or even a backsabre.

It was still slashing down when a small group of riders squelched up to the gates, one of them holding a stick from which drooped a thoroughly sodden white flag. Muno, it transpired, was prepared to negotiate, in the interests of avoiding unnecessary bloodshed. Big of him, Monach thought cheerfully, and gave the order for them to be allowed in. It was Spenno, clearly far crueller and more adept at mental warfare than he was, who had them shown into the warm, dry charcoal store and given hot soup and dry clothes.

That night, once the heralds had reluctantly gone home to their sodden blankets and two slices of wet bread, Spenno banked up the drawing-office fire with charcoal and poured Monach a mug of beer. 'I remember doing sieges in fourth-grade Tactics,' he said, 'but I never thought it'd be like this. Cosy,' he added, with a grin.

Monach frowned. 'Let's hope Brigadier Muno sees the funny side as much as we do,' he replied. 'I hate to say this, but my men aren't soldiers. If they decide to attack, we haven't got a clue how to go about defending a fortified position.'

'We know that,' Spenno replied. 'He doesn't. Don't get me wrong,' he added. 'Muno's a good soldier. Which means cautious. Which means sitting out there in the mud till his food runs out, then going away.'

Monach nodded. 'Sure,' he said, 'this time. But we've got nowhere else to go. What's going to happen when it stops raining, and he comes back? It was amazing luck, the supply train showing up when it did, but there won't be any more carts coming down the road from now on.'

Spenno drank his beer and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. 'He'll come back, all right,' he said. 'It's when he comes back that's important. They way I've got it figured, it'll be three days before he packs up and leaves then a week to get supplies. He'll be doing really well if he's back again inside of a fortnight. We've got food for three weeks.'

Monach got the feeling he was missing the point. 'Wonderful,' he said. 'So he comes back, we sit here for a week and then surrender. By which time-'

But Spenno was shaking his head. 'Eight days,' he said. 'That's all I need.'

'Oh.' Suddenly, Monach realised what Spenno was talking about.

'Maybe even less,' Spenno went on. 'Drilling out the bore's going quicker than I thought, and we've made a few mods to the rig that ought to save a whole lot of time when we come to do the next batch. Sawing off the sprues, too, I reckon we can halve the time on that. And making the carriages-well, I was reckoning on having to build limbers, for hauling the bloody things cross-country. Fixed carriages, for shooting down from the watchtowers, much easier. By the time old Muno comes back again, we'll have a welcome for him he'll never forget.'

I wouldn't go that far, Monach said to himself: it's amazing what you can forget if you really set your mind to it. 'You're serious, aren't you?' he said. 'You think we can drive off a full battalion of regular Imperial troops with these tubular-bell things.'

Spenno looked hurt. 'And you call yourself a man of the cloth,' he said. 'You've got no bloody faith.' He shook his head. 'Fine visionary leader you turned out to be. I've been asking around,' he added slyly. 'This is all your idea, this Brotherhood of Light or whatever it's called.'

Monach sighed, as a raindrop filtered through a tiny hole in the roof and fell on the back of his hand. 'Hardly,' he said. 'Oh sure, I'm the Mad Monk. After Deymeson got destroyed-well, actually, I was laid up for months after that, I got in a fight-'

Spenno nodded. 'I know,' he said. 'With Feron Amathy. You wanted to kill him or something like that.'

Monach shook his head. 'Not exactly, no,' he said. 'The man I was sent to kill was General Cronan; Father Tutor reckoned it was a good idea, but he died before he could tell me why. Still, that was no reason not to obey orders. I failed, of course.'

'But he died anyway.'

'People die,' Monach replied, 'even without me killing them. He was caught by the raiders. I was there at the time. But that's beside the point. After Deymeson was trashed and once I was back on my feet again-no, I'm skipping ahead.' He paused. 'Are you sure you want to hear this? It's a long story.'

'Nothing better to do,' Spenno replied equably.

'Thank you so much.' Monach looked away; the expression on Spenno's face was vaguely disconcerting. 'Anyhow, after the battle when the raiders got a bloody nose, I was sort of left behind, I was nobody's business but my own; which would've been fine except I had four broken ribs and a whole lot of other injuries, and I really thought I'd had it that time. But then someone found me, someone I was at school with-'

'Xipho Dorunoxy. Like I said, I asked around. She took you in a cart to some village.'

Monach nodded. 'That's right,' he said. 'Cric, it was called-it was where the God in the Cart had predicted the destruction of Josequin. Only it turned out that she was the priestess, and the god had been another old school friend of ours, by the name of Ciartan; but that's a very long story-'

'Never mind,' Spenno said. 'Go on.'

'If you're sure.' Another raindrop landed on Monach's neck, making him wince. 'For some reason I never did find out about, Xipho was under orders from Father Tutor to play some sort of mind game with this Ciartan-he'd had an accident and lost his memory, hadn't got a clue who he was, let alone who she was, if you can believe it.'

'You'd be amazed what I can believe when I want to. Like I said, I got faith.'

Monach wasn't quite sure what to make of that, but he put it out of his mind. 'That's what Xipho was doing, anyhow: she was going round with this Ciartan, pretending that she hadn't known him since we were all kids together, that he was just somebody she'd met on the road a few months before. The Order wanted him for something; but whatever their grand scheme was, it got lost in the wash when Deymeson was taken out. So there was Xipho, at something of a loose end, and she happened to find me. So she took me back to Cric, where the locals reckoned she was the priestess of the Second Coming, and spun them some yarn about me being the Redeemer out of some old legend or prophesy, and how I'd fought off the God in the Cart and stopped him bringing about the end of the world. Only while I'd been about it I'd taken one hell of a pounding, so it was their religious duty to help her look after me till I was on my feet again.'

Spenno nodded. 'Little white lie, then. Where was this Ciartan while all that was going on?'

'We had no idea-he'd just sort of vanished. Anyway, while I was healing up in Cric, the story Xipho'd told them-all complete bullshit, incidentally, there never was any such prophecy-it got around, and loads of people started showing up to give thanks to the Redeemer, the sort of mass hysteria you get when there's wars and disasters. But in with all the peasants and knuckle-draggers there were a lot of sword-monks, pretty well all of us who'd escaped from Deymeson. It was Xipho's idea to round up all these misfits and turn them into a sort of army. To begin with, I think it was just that she was bored with waiting around to see if I'd die or not, and it was something to do. Anyway, by the time I was out of bed and on my feet again, she'd got them believing I really was some sort of great hero, and basically they refused to go away again. So there we were with an army, not knowing what the hell we wanted it for or what we might find to do with it… Like a huge, violent lost puppy that hangs round your door whimpering till you throw a stick for it. I don't know.' Monach cupped his hands over his face. 'I was too stunned by what'd happened, I guess, I didn't really care. And I didn't do anything, it was all Xipho, making speeches and leading prayer meetings and all sorts of stuff. And then when the baby was born-'

'Yours?' Spenno interrupted.

Monach grinned. 'Not likely. No, Ciartan was the father, which only goes to show how dedicated Xipho is to the Order, because she can't stand him. But she spun the troops some ridiculous yarn about an immaculate conception or something of the sort, and the poor fools believed her. She's really good at manipulating the weak-minded.'

'Sounds like it.'

Monach nodded. 'I asked for that, didn't I? Anyway, that's about it. Ever since, we've been wandering about the countryside, living hand to mouth out of what we can scare people into giving us. We've had a few skirmishes with government troops, a couple of minor collisions with the Amathy house, and for some reason nobody ever saw fit to explain to me, we sort of ended up here, in Tulice. Probably Xipho had some reason for wanting to be here, because I have an idea she's always got a reason for everything. But she's gone-not dead or anything, she just disappeared a short while back. Took the baby, but left me to mind the army. The baby would've been less trouble-I've been landed with a thousand helpless infants to keep fed and changed.'

'I see.' Spenno was sitting with his elbows on his knees, looking at Monach like a painter studying a spider's web before making his preliminary sketches. 'And the troops: they still think you're the true Redeemer?'

Monach laughed. 'I doubt it very much,' he said. 'About three-quarters of the original mob have quietly deserted since Cric. I think the ones who're still here just don't have anywhere else to go, or they don't like the idea of working for a living. Xipho didn't seem too bothered about the desertions, so long as the sword-monks stayed with us; and most of them have, though don't ask me why. I'm pretty much convinced none of them think I'm the Son of God or whatever; most of them've known me since I was fourteen.' He smiled bleakly. 'I was the little fat kid who hung around with the big tall ones so as not to get bullied. The Earwig, my nickname was. Hardly your ideal solar-hero material.'

'That's interesting,' Spenno said neutrally. 'And now here you are, and you've got hold of the first working prototype of the Poldarn's Flute project, which is the biggest military secret in the whole Empire. And you reckon it just sort of happened that way, more by luck than judgement.'

Monach yawned. 'It's possible,' he said, 'but so are three-headed chickens. No, I think Xipho planned all this, like she plans everything. I think that she's got a little bit of paper tucked down her front where she's written down every time I'm going to take a shit for the next five years, assuming I'll be allowed to live that long. But I'm used to that-I was brought up to run errands for Father Tutor. It was what I could do for religion.'

Spenno was silent for a while; then he said; 'Do you think she's got another bit of paper headed "Ciartan"?'

'Probably got bits of paper for everybody in the whole world. A bit like a god, really.' He looked up, smiling crookedly. 'You know, maybe I got it wrong, back when I was sent to find the god in the cart. Maybe she was the one I was meant to be tracking.'

'Sorry?' Spenno said. 'You lost me.'

'Doesn't matter. Anyway, I don't believe in gods, only in religion. You know what I'd really like to do? I'd like to wait till it's pitch dark tonight, and then crawl out under the gate and get as far away from here as I possibly can.'

'Wouldn't we all?' Spenno said. 'But where'd you go?'

Monach pursed his lips. 'Oddly enough, I've thought about that. There's other countries, you know, a long way away across the sea. There's the one Ciartan came from, for one. Or the place where the raiders live, though I don't suppose they'd want me. Still, I'm not exactly welcome here, either.'

Spenno looked at him for a while; then he said: 'You know what? For an educated man, you don't think much.'

'Wasn't brought up to think,' Monach replied. 'Thinking blurs the moment, remember? Don't think, just draw, that's the whole point of religion.'

It was Spenno's turn to yawn. 'If you say so. I think I missed that bit, or else I'd left before we got on to it. So what's you going to do?'

'Not sure. I think that when Brigadier Muno shows up, I'm going to point your Poldarn's Flutes at him and hope they don't blow me up when I give the order to set them off. How does that sound? Reasonable?'

'Don't ask me,' Spenno replied. 'I'm just the engineer.'

Monach looked up at him, and something dropped into place in his mind. 'Are you, though?' he said. 'I'm not so sure about that.'

'What do you mean?'

Monach straightened up a little in his chair. 'For one thing,' he said, 'you're sounding different. The folksy turns of phrase, and the Tulice accent you could cut with a knife. They were out of place anyway,' he added, 'for someone who spent-how long were you at Deymeson? Three years?'

'Four.'

'Four years. They'd have kicked that accent out of you inside a month. All sword-monks talk like they've just burned the roofs of their mouths drinking hot soup-it's the rule. And how did you come to be here, anyway? You never did tell me.'

Spenno grinned. 'Same way as you,' he said. 'There's some bugger somewhere with a little bit of paper with my name at the top.'

Monach thought about that for a moment. 'You were sent here. Posted, like a soldier.'

'Sort of. More like a merchant company or a bank; in places that aren't important enough to have a regular office, they have an agent, someone who looks after their interests there when the need arises. Same with me. What I do for a living is cast bells, because that's what I'm good at, it's what I'm for; but one day a year every five years or so I have to do a little job for the Order. It's no big deal.'

For some reason, Monach felt his skin crawl, and at the back of his mind he thought of how a flock of crows sends out its scouts to see where it's safe for the main body to feed: one tiny part of the great group mind, but containing the whole. 'But that doesn't matter any more,' he said. 'The Order's over and done with, isn't it? Ever since Deymeson-'

Spenno nodded slowly. 'Of course,' he said. 'I'd forgotten, you're right. Good riddance, too. I never did figure out what good it was supposed to be to anybody.'

'First,' Copis said, 'I need to know how much you remember. Just so we don't waste time telling you things you already know.'

The fire was struggling to stay alight on a diet of wet twigs and sodden leaves. The rain was still falling, and the best they could do by way of shelter was the canopy of the cart, rigged as a rather inadequate tent on four ash poles. Poldarn felt cold through to his bones, even though he was so close to the fire that his hands were stinging. It occurred to him to ask where the baby was, but he decided against it.

'All right,' he said. 'And the answer is, not very much. I'm pretty sure that my name is Ciartan and that my father was Tursten; he was killed before I was born. When I was about sixteen, I joined the order at Deymeson. You two were in the same class as me; we learned swordfighting, mostly. Also, I think Prince Tazencius had something to do with it. I may have married his daughter, even. Apart from that-'

Gain and Copis looked at each other; then Gain said: 'That's all true. Actually, you know a lot more than that, because I told you myself.'

'You didn't ask what you told me, you asked what I can remember. There's a difference.'

Copis smiled. 'Meaning, Gain might not have been telling the truth. Fair point. After all, I lied to you from the moment I found you, back in the Bohec country. But what you just said: that's what you can actually remember?'

Poldarn shrugged. 'I'm not sure,' he said. 'It's getting hard to know what's memories and what's stuff I've been told. The things that I know are memories aren't particularly helpful-like, I can remember sitting in a hide in a field of peas, killing crows with a bucketful of stones, and I can remember going with my grandfather to see the hot springs on the mountain above our house. They're proper memories, sharp and clear. But a lot of it's just remembering dreams that I've been having lately, and for all I know they're just my mind chewing over stuff that people have told me-like you,' he added, looking at Gain, 'and other people I've run into who reckon they know me. It's hard to believe that everybody's been lying to me-there'd have to be a very good reason. But what if there is a reason that good? I just don't know, is the straight answer.'

Copis poked the fire with a stick, stirring up a little swarm of sparks. 'You still think like a member of the Order,' she said, 'which is what I'd expect. And you're very suspicious, which is all part and parcel of the scientific method. What I don't understand, and it bothered me when we were going round in the cart together, is how it's like you don't really want to know; like you're aware you've done some terrible thing you're scared to remember so you're tiptoeing round it so you won't wake it up. That's not how we were taught.'

Poldarn looked at her. 'Isn't it?'

'Of course not,' she said briskly. 'The whole purpose of religion is to annihilate doubt; and fear's just a kind of doubt, after all. The reason we learn how to fight with the sword is so that, once we've been trained, there's nothing on this earth that we need to be afraid of, nothing we can't kill. Once we know that-really know it, believe it-that's fear disposed of, and once we've got rid of fear we're free of the biggest restraint on us, we're at liberty to act purely in accordance with religion. That's absolutely basic, essential. Fear and doubt are what stand between the impulse for the draw and the cut itself. Once the draw's so perfect that it no longer exists, there's no longer any room for fear or doubt. It's what religion is for.'

'You've got to excuse Xipho,' Gain interrupted. 'She learned all that by heart for sixth-grade tests, and it sort of got stuck in her mouth, like a fishbone. She pukes it all up once a week, and then she's fine.'

Poldarn ignored him. 'Well,' he said, 'that's not the way I think. Yes, I'm afraid there's something I did that I don't want to know about. In fact, I'm absolutely terrified of it, and when Gain showed up and-well, threatened to tell me, that's what it comes down to: yes, I really didn't want to know. In fact, I only let him say what he did because by then I'd seen enough of him to form the impression that he wasn't to be trusted.'

Gain burst out laughing. 'Screw you, Ciartan,' he said. 'You were always saying things like that. No wonder nobody liked you.'

'Shut up, Gain,' Copis said, like a mother to a fractious child. 'Well, at least I can set your mind at rest on that score-assuming you'll believe me, of course, but that's up to you. Look, I can't tell you about anything you may've got up to before Deymeson, but I do know everything that's happened to you since then. And yes, you've done some pretty severe things, including killing people, and not just soldiers or enemies in a fair fight. But there's nothing you've done that you need to be afraid of. Nothing you can't live with, I mean.'

Poldarn looked at her for a long time. 'You reckon,' he said.

'I know for a fact,' she answered briskly. 'You did things in self-defence, or to protect other people, or to help the cause, religion. You did things that would've been unforgivable without the right motive. But the justification was always there. Nothing you did was-well, evil, for want of a better word. And each time, it's hard to think of what else you could've done, in the circumstances. Now it's true,' she went on, 'what I said to you that time, at Deymeson, when you were with the raiders, attacking us.'

'I remember,' Poldarn said quietly. 'You told me I was the most evil man in the world. You wanted to kill me.'

Copis nodded. 'I know,' she said. 'I was wrong.'

Next to her, Gain whistled. 'Did you hear that?' he said. I never thought I'd live to-'

'Be quiet. I was wrong,' Copis repeated. 'At the time, there were things I didn't know, hadn't been told. They were things I couldn't be allowed to know if I was to do my job as your keeper. Once that job was over, it was necessary that I should be told, so I could do the next job that was lined up for me. So now I understand a whole lot more about you, why you did those things.'

'Those things,' Poldarn repeated. 'What sort of things?'

Copis shivered a little, probably because of the cold. 'Well, for one, taking part in the attack on Deymeson, not warning us or helping us fight back. At the time, I didn't understand; I thought you could've got away from the savages before they launched the attack, come and warned us what they were going to do. I thought you'd betrayed us out of selfishness, because they'd turned out to be your people, where you came from.'

'Copis,' Poldarn broke in angrily, 'I'd just escaped from your fucking Order, they'd been setting me up to believe I was General Cronan himself, or someone else I wasn't; they were playing some horrible trick on me, as part of some grand strategy. I wanted to help my people kill every last one of the bastards.'

'I know,' Copis replied calmly. 'At the time I thought that was wrong. But now I know it was right. Deymeson had to be taken out, obliterated. It was in the interests of religion for it to be destroyed. And before you say that wasn't why you helped the savages,' she went on, before he could interrupt, 'actually, it was. The Deymeson Order had to be taken out because it was following the wrong path, and the error it was making was what prompted it to try and use you, the way it did. So yes, you were right and I was wrong. I hope,' she added stiffly, as though proposing a toast at a formal dinner, 'that you can forgive me for that.'

Poldarn decided not to reply to that. 'What else?' he said. 'What other things?'

This time Copis smiled. 'Are you sure you want to know?'

'I think so, yes.'

'Excellent-we're making progress. Well,' she went on, 'first, you betrayed someone who trusted you; someone who'd always shown you nothing but favour, kindness even. Including giving you his own daughter.'

'Tazencius,' Poldarn said.

'Tazencius. He was your sponsor at Deymeson. He got you a place there, because you were brought up by the savages and he wanted someone to be a go-between for him with them. So he got you the best possible education, and then he bound you to him with a marriage alliance, to make sure of your loyalty. But you betrayed him: you took all the advantages he'd given you, the training and the skills and the contacts, and you sided with his enemies. Not just a spur-of-the-moment thing, you knew right from the start, from before you married Lysalis, that that's what you were going to do. But you did it for the right reason. For religion.'

Poldarn frowned. 'You mean for the Order,' he said.

'Same thing,' Copis replied, almost casually. 'Father Abbot and Father Tutor knew what Tazencius had in mind for you; you told Father Tutor yourself, as soon as you realised. And he asked you to go along with it until the time was right, and then you betrayed Tazencius-to the Order. To us.' She paused, probably for emphasis. 'And when you did that, you betrayed your wife as well; she loved you, and I think you probably loved her, in a way; and your son, too, as a father should. You had to betray both of them, and you did, because it was the right thing to do.'

'Was it?' Poldarn asked.

'Of course. Tazencius was going to throw the whole Empire into chaos, because of his ambitions, his lethal feud with General Cronan, who was the only hope against the savages. Thanks to you, we stopped him dead in his tracks. It saved the Empire. It was the right thing.'

Poldarn breathed in slowly, decided not to comment. 'What else?' he said.

Copis nodded. 'You joined the Amathy house,' she said. 'It was Tazencius's idea, and ours as well. We knew that Feron Amathy was an even bigger danger than Tazencius; he had the same idea, about using the savages to attack the Empire, so that whoever got rid of them would automatically gain power. He and Tazencius were in it together, at least to begin with, though both of them were planning to get rid of the other at the earliest opportunity. It was Tazencius who introduced you to him, you can guess what for. So, while you were with the Amathy house, you helped us with Tazencius. Then, when that was all sorted out, you did the same with Feron Amathy: betrayed him, to us. And the result was that Feron Amathy ceased to be a threat to the Empire, at that time.'

'Just a moment,' Poldarn interrupted. 'Feron Amathy's still very much alive, and Tazencius is the Emperor. Did something go wrong?'

Copis shook her head. 'Not at all,' she said. 'The beauty of Father Tutor's strategic planning was its economy. He had a genius for reusing the same pieces, instead of having to get rid of them and bring on new ones. Both Tazencius and Feron Amathy were-how shall I put it, they were adapted, or put on the right track; we altered them, so they'd be useful rather than harmful. Like taking a broken piece of scrap iron and making a useful tool out of it. Oh, I'm not saying we made them into good people,' she added, with a wry grin. 'Far from it. Feron Amathy really is the most evil man in the world, there's no possible doubt about that; and Tazencius is just plain stupid. But it's like taking a weapon away from an enemy and using it to defend yourself. The weapon remains the same, but the use it's put to changes. They're now weapons for us, rather than against us. Like,' she added, 'the Deymeson Order, which I helped destroy. It'd become a liability rather than an asset.'

Poldarn couldn't help noticing the look of disquiet on Gain's face while she was saying all this; and he's used to her, he thought. And me,' he said. 'What am I, right now?'

'Oh, an asset, like you've always been. Isn't that what I've been trying to tell you?'

He decided to ignore that, too. 'I get the impression,' he said, 'from what you've said, and Gain too, that this Father Tutor's dead now. Is that right?'

She nodded. 'He died before Deymeson fell, if that's what you were thinking.'

Poldarn shook his head. 'Couldn't care less,' he said. 'But if he's gone, who's making all the decisions now? Who's in charge-?'

At that, Copis smiled; warmly, for her. 'You'll be meeting him shortly,' she said. 'Of course, you've met him before. You'll know him when you see him.'

'But you can't tell me his name?'

'I could,' Copis replied. 'But then it wouldn't be a surprise.'

'This is it, then,' Monach said doubtfully.

It lay across two sturdy oak trestles in the small shed behind the charcoal store: a seven-foot shiny yellow log with a hole down one end, as though the pith of the tree had rotted out. The other end was rounded, and halfway along its length two pegs stuck out, like the stubs of trimmed branches. Somewhere, Monach decided, between a very long, thin bell and a giant parsnip.

'That's it,' Spenno replied gloomily. 'Course, the bloody thing might blow itself to bits as soon as we touch it off. No way of knowing till we try it.'

Monach knelt down and peered into the mouth of the hole; as he did so, an uncomfortable thought occurred to him. 'It hasn't got anything in it, has it?' he asked, standing up quickly and stepping to one side. 'The volcano dust, or whatever you call it.'

'Not likely.' Spenno grinned. 'We're storing that right over the other side of the compound, well away from the main buildings. Tricky stuff, see: one hot ember from the fire and it'd go up like the Second Coming. They'd have to get the surveyors in from Torcea to redraw the maps.'

Monach didn't like the thought of that. 'So,' he said warily, 'when are you going to try it out?'

'Tomorrow,' Spenno replied gravely, 'first thing. Assuming it's not raining. That's a problem with the bugger, it won't go off in the wet. We're working on that,' he added hopefully.

'Oh,' Monach said. It occurred to him that a mighty superweapon that wouldn't work in the rain was going to be a fat lot of use to anybody in Tulice, where it never seemed to stop.

'The volcano dust's got to be dry, see,' Spenno explained. 'If it gets wet it just turns into a filthy black mess, like mud, and when you stick the match in it, it just sits there.'

Oh well, Monach thought; let's hope Brigadier Muno chooses the one dry day in the whole year to attack. Otherwise we're screwed. 'If it all goes all right tomorrow,' he said, 'how soon will the next batch be ready?'

'Couldn't say,' Spenno replied. 'We've only got the one lathe working at the moment, but we should have three more up and running in a day or so. Slight technical problems with the drill heads,' he explained. 'Clown of a blacksmith made 'em too brittle-they're cracking up like glass. But we'll get there.'

Monach went back to his quarters in the drawing office, splashing through the deep muddy pools in the yard on the way. Why hadn't the stupid bastard mentioned before that the idiot bloody things didn't work in the wet? Did they know about this minor drawback in Torcea, where they were counting on the Flutes to save the Empire from the raiders? Maybe if he sneaked out quietly and went and told Brigadier Muno that the Flutes were effectively useless everywhere except in the heart of the Morevich Desert, he'd realise that they weren't worth having and go away; in which case, Monach thought with a grin, I could stay here and learn how to make bells. Nice cheerful things, bells, and they chime even when it's pissing down.

He hadn't realised how tired he was until he lay down, boots still on, wet shirt still clinging to his back and shoulders. He couldn't find the strength to stand up again and take them off-chances were that Brigadier Muno would get him before pneumonia did, so it was all as broad as it was long. He closed his eyes Someone was standing over him, just grazing the edge of his circle. He sat up and said, 'Who's there?'

It was only Runting, the quartermaster. 'Guess what,' he was saying, in a bemused voice. 'You've got a letter.'

'A what?' Monach said, as if Runting had told him there was a dragon waiting for him in the grain store.

'A letter. Addressed to you. Here.' He was holding out a brass tube the size of a medium leek. 'Sentry on the north gate found it a minute or so ago, as he was doing his rounds. Swears blind it wasn't there when he went round earlier.'

'Oh.' Monach was fumbling with the tinderbox; bloody damp, getting into everything. 'Here,' he said, 'you do this. I never could start a fire to save my life.'

Runting gave him the tube and fiddled with the tinder-box, until at last he contrived to get a lamp going. 'Well,' he said, 'aren't you going to open it?'

Monach thought for a moment. 'I can't see why not,' he said cautiously. Strange, he thought, very strange; time was, I used to spend an hour every morning just opening and reading letters. Now I'm handling this thing like I'm expecting it to jump out and bite me. 'All right, thanks.' He hesitated. Runting wasn't showing any signs of going away. 'I'll give you a shout if I need you.'

'Oh. Right.' Runting shrugged and went out. With his thumbnail, Monach cracked the small blob of hard red wax and fished out a little scrap of paper. He recognised the shape: the flyleaf, torn out of a flat-bound book. The handwriting was thin, spindly. Familiar. EarwigYou must be wondering what's going on, but don't worry, I'll explain everything when I see you. In case you've been worrying, Xipho's just fine, and so's the kid; he's with me now, in fact, trying to eat one of my shoes. The woman I've got looking after him reckons he's teething, whatever that means.

I hope I didn't startle you too much the other night. Anyway, as you've probably already figured out for yourself, I'm not nearly as dead as they'd have you believe. Now, to business. If that clown Spenno's finally pulled his finger out, the volcano-bell things should be about ready by now. Whatever happens, I don't want Muno or anyone else from the government side getting their sticky paws on them. If the worst comes to the worst, get rid of the bloody things, destroy them. This is important. Right?

Can't say any more now; I'll explain everything when I see you.

Take care,

Cordo

PS Don't you dare let Spenno see this letter, or he'll sulk. Hell of an engineer, but a bloody prima donna, just like Fabricius (remember him from sixth grade? Must be something about working with metal, probably the fumes or whatever). Anyhow, you can keep him sweet, I'm sure. You always were a bloody crawler, Wig.