Memory

Chapter Fifteen

It was a reasonably big boat; but since it had to hold the entire hunting party, their weapons, equipment, camping-out gear, leftover beer, trophies (several sacks full of deer skulls, boar skulls, hares' feet, foxtails, wolf pelts, and bits and pieces of various animals that Poldarn couldn't identify and didn't really want to), as well as Ciana himself, it could have been twice the size and still uncomfortable. It sat alarmingly low in the water, and since the jolly huntsmen were also the crew, Poldarn had severe misgivings about the whole enterprise. On the other hand, it was a free ride to Torcea, always assuming that they didn't sink halfway across the bay.

They didn't. The storm that had been threatening to burst ever since they'd embarked managed to wait until they were unloading at Torcea dock before letting rip. Consequently, Poldarn's first impression of the big city was a stinging curtain of rain that cut visibility down to less than fifteen yards, with a backdrop of forked lightning.

'Looks like we brought the weather with us,' Ciana said, yelling to make himself heard over the drumming of the rain. He was soaked to the skin, his grey hair plastered down over his forehead, even his vast moustache limp and soggy, but the cold and the wet didn't seem capable of damping down his infuriating good humour. 'It's not usually like this until mid-autumn, but obviously the wet season's set in early. No bad thing, it washes the stink off the streets.'

Poldarn tried to say goodbye as soon as they'd finished hauling the gear across to Ciana's warehouse, but the hunter wasn't so easily shaken off. 'Don't be silly,' he roared, when Poldarn suggested looking for an inn for the night. 'You won't find anywhere round here at this time of year-you'll end up dossing down under the viaduct arches. You come on home with me, I'll show you my trophy collection.'

The hammering of raindrops on the warehouse roof drowned out Poldarn's response, which was probably just as well. He had no money, no clothes other than those he stood up in, and his left boot had sprung a leak. Also, he had no idea where to go, or how to set about accomplishing what he'd come here to do. 'Thanks,' he replied, 'that's really very kind of you.'

Ciana's house was slightly smaller than Falcata, but not by much. Once they'd passed under the gate in the outer wall (twenty feet high and six feet thick at the base) they crossed a courtyard big enough to corral a couple of hundred head of cattle, passing a small town of outbuildings, sheds and storehouses, until they reached another gate in another vast defensive wall, which Ciana opened with a small silver key.

'I'm home,' he bawled, as he led the way into a lobby that reminded Poldarn of a fairy story he must've heard when he was young, about the prince who climbed up the magic pepper-vine to the giant's castle. A giant would've been perfectly comfortable in Ciana's house, provided that he had plenty of furniture to fill up the open spaces.

Doors flew open, and men and women streamed out and started grabbing luggage, bustling it away out of sight, all with the same horrible cheerfulness that Poldarn had got so tired of over the last two days on the boat. In the time it took them to walk from the front entrance to the next set of doors, Poldarn and Ciana were stripped of their wet clothes, towelled dry, and dressed in long, warm wool gowns that made a soft huffing noise as they dragged over the shiny marble floor; while behind them, three tall, gaunt men with mops wiped away their wet, muddy footprints.

'That you?' screeched a woman's voice as the second set of doors were opened for them. Now they were in a dining hall half as long and high again as the Charity amp; Diligence in Sansory, where Poldarn had first met Cleapho. A high gallery, its turned wooden balustrades painted and gilded in an overwhelming variety of colours, ran round three sides of it. Dead centre of the gallery on the far side stood a woman-at least, Poldarn assumed there was a human being somewhere inside the vast billow of fabrics from which the loud voice appeared to be coming. 'That you?' she repeated. 'Have a good trip?'

'Fine,' Ciana replied, as if he'd just stepped out to buy anchovies. 'This is Poldarn, he'll be staying a few days. Where's the mail?'

'Study,' replied the voice among the draperies. 'Dinner's cooking.' Poldarn's newly acquired instinct helped him judge the distance between the woman on the balcony and himself; too far away for her to see his burned, melted face. 'Tell your friend he can have the Oak Suite.'

She disappeared backwards through a pair of enormous panelled doors. 'My wife,' Ciana explained. 'Come on, I'll show you to your room.'

Up the gallery stairs, down one side, down a long corridor hung with dark tapestries that stank of dust, left down another corridor, carpeted and lined with frescoes of sea battles. Eventually, Ciana stopped outside a door (it looked like it had been planked out of a single tree, except there couldn't possibly ever have been a tree that tall and wide) and pushed it open with his fingertip. 'Hope this'll be all right,' he said. 'We don't entertain much, so we only keep a couple of rooms ready. Still, it keeps the rain off.'

Before Poldarn could say anything, four women pushed past him into the room, carrying a huge laundry basket between them like orderlies bearing the wounded from a battlefield. Once inside, they moved so fast, brandishing sheets and blankets and skinning pillowcases off horse-sized pillows, that it was impossible to see past them and admire the view. 'Someone'll be up with water for a bath,' Ciana was saying, 'and then it'll be time for dinner. Not the same as a simple meal under the trees, but you can't have everything.' Then Poldarn lost sight of him behind the whirling clouds of laundry, though he saw the door close.

The women finished whatever they'd been doing and vanished like elves, leaving Poldarn alone in the Oak Suite. Why it was called that he wasn't quite sure, since as far as the eye could see every surface was either black marble or extravagantly carved and gilded burr walnut. In the far corner was a sort of pavilion affair, inside which he guessed there was a bed. On a broad table (wealthy farmers in Tulice worked smaller acreages) was a tall pile of neatly folded clothes for him to change into. A solid silver bath stood in front of the fireplace like a raider ship dragged home and set up as a trophy of war. He'd just taken off the gown that he'd been manhandled into in the entrance hall and was about to put on the new clothes (thick, soft and surprisingly plain woollen shirt, trousers and socks) when the door opened yet again and a dozen women-different ones, as far as he could tell-burst into the room holding tall copper jugs that filled the air with steam. They took no notice of Poldarn, standing in the middle of the room with a face covered in scar tissue and no clothes on; they filled the bath, laid out a tall pile of white towels, and disappeared.

A bath, Poldarn thought, staring at it. Not a dip in a river or a splash of water out of a pool or dunking your head in the slack-tub: an actual bath, indoors, in hot water. Have I ever had one of these before? Must have, or else the smell of the steam wouldn't seem so familiar, and I wouldn't be looking forward to it so much. Chances are I used to enjoy baths, at some stage in my career.

The water was hot; considerably hotter than he'd anticipated when he'd vaulted over the towering side and plunged in. For three or four agonising heartbeats he was convinced he was about to die, but then the pain and shock faded, replaced by a feeling of overwhelming comfort. Wonderful bath, he thought, I've missed this-He frowned but decided not to worry about it. Someone had left a tall, slender bronze jug on a pedestal next to the bath, where he could just manage to reach it from where he lay. It was full of some white, milky liquid, and a little voice at the back of his mind said that the right thing to do was pour this stuff over his head, knead it into his hair, hold his breath and duck under the water for a bit. He wasn't quite sure what this performance was designed to achieve, but the instinct was terribly strong. He tried it, and surfaced a few moments later to find that the bathwater had all turned the same milky white colour. Amazing, he thought.

What in the gods' names am I doing here? he asked himself. Superficially, the answer was perfectly straightforward: he'd had the extreme good fortune to scrape acquaintance with a wealthy, generous eccentric, and in consequence was wallowing in a hot bath full of milky white stuff instead of crouching under a cold stone arch in the wet streets, hoping his boots would still be on his feet when he woke up. No problem with that; and he'd forgotten, assuming he'd ever known, just how extremely nice pleasure could be. A man could easily go out of his way for pleasure; he could do far worse than spend his whole life hunting for it, like Ciana stalking the big pig. True, there wasn't really any need for the furniture and tapestries and life-size marble statues and enough servants to colonise a small continent. A bath was probably enough, and clean clothes whose previous owner hadn't died by violence, and something half decent to eat. A man could be fooled into believing this sort of thing was normal if he hung around here long enough.

Normal as a two-headed dog, Poldarn reminded himself, sticking his toes up out of the water and looking at them as if he'd never seen them before. He was, after all, in Torcea, the capital of the Empire, in the house of a giant. (A short giant, maybe; but if he drew back those enormous shutters and looked out of the window, it was a safe bet he'd see outsize leaves and the tree-thick stem of the giant pepper-vine, and below that a soft white mat of clouds.) None of this was why he was here; he hadn't fought and killed his way from Haldersness to Dui Chirra and slaughtered a giant boar with a tree branch just so that he could have a relaxing bath. Two crows sitting in a tall thin tree Two crows sitting in a tall thin tree Two crows sitting in a tall thin tree -Still couldn't think of the last line, damn it. The song spun round in his mind, the jagged edge where the final line was missing grazing all his thoughts, leaving them raw and painful. He decided to think about something else.

He was, he supposed, here to overthrow the Empire, kill the most evil man in history and bring about the end of the world. A brief rest, wash and a brush-up, bite to eat, and then it'd be business as usual. Poldarn remembered washing his face in the fern-fringed pool, on the first day, when Copis had found him; this was better, but otherwise the two experiences were pretty much the same, and he was really no further forward.

Dinner with Ciana and his family (which was huge and excessive, like everything else to do with him) would have been an ordeal, except that the food was very good indeed, and there were no soldiers, sword-monks, bandits, pirates, mysterious women who turned into crows or old school friends anywhere to be seen. Ciana's wife, a large woman with thick red hair down to her waist, had taken one horrified look at Poldarn's face and then made up her mind that he was invisible; her three brothers scowled at him through the forest of silverware; an assortment of thickset, hairy men who were probably cousins tried to make him eat and drink enough to feed a large village, and burst out in raucous laughter whenever he asked someone to pass the mustard. Ciana himself told a succession of improbable hunting stories, which neither Poldarn nor anybody else paid any attention to. There was also a tall, slim woman, with grey eyes and light brown hair that curled where it touched her shoulders, who sat opposite him. He guessed she must be Ciana's baby sister; she didn't talk to anyone, and ate nothing except bread, a carrot and a few thin slices of smoked lamb, and if his appearance bothered her, she gave no sign of it. Miraculously, once the last course had been stripped off the plates and cleared away, Ciana stood up and walked away from the table, promptly followed by the rest of the company. Poldarn, who'd assumed that he'd be stuck there half the night while the household drank itself into a coma, found himself following a severe-faced manservant back through the panelled corridors to his room, where someone had lit the lamps and turned down the coverlet. He pulled off his clothes, dropped on the bed like a shot deer, and fell asleep.

Soft red light light outlined the edges of the window frame when he opened his eyes. Three women were standing over him, holding jugs of water and towels; it took him some time to persuade them to go away and let him wash on his own. They'd left him yet another change of clothes, and a pair of beautifully soft green leather slippers; his boots, however, had vanished without trace. The implication was that he wasn't going anywhere, at least for a while. For a moment he was annoyed; but what the hell, he thought, will it matter so very much if I destroy the world tomorrow rather than today?

No sooner had he dressed than the door opened (nobody ever knocked) and yet more women came in; one of them was the woman he'd reckoned was Ciana's sister. She smiled at him.

'I'm Noja,' she said. 'My brother asked me to fetch you down to breakfast.' More food, Poldarn thought, surely not; she met his gaze and laughed. 'You've missed him and the rest of them, I'm afraid,' she went on. 'He thought you'd probably rather sleep in. But if you're not starving to death, maybe you'd like some bread and cheese and some fruit-'

'Thanks,' Poldarn said quickly, 'that'll be fine.'

She nodded. 'Food is a serious hazard in this house,' she said, as she led him down the stairs. 'It sort of stalks you like a predator. You have to be very careful or it'll overwhelm you. Which is why I never leave my room in the mornings till everyone else is safely out of the house, and nobody's likely to jump out at me and make me eat roast pork and sausages.'

Poldarn shrugged. 'I've got nothing against roast pork,' he said, 'or sausages, even. But I've been, well, travelling for quite a while, and I guess I'm out of practice where competitive eating's concerned.'

'I see,' Noja replied. 'In that case, later on I'll show you some good places where you can hide during mealtimes. You can trust me, I've had years of experience.'

She didn't lead him back to the great hall where they'd eaten the previous evening; apparently she had a small breakfast-room of her own, where she could indulge her perverted taste for not guzzling in polite seclusion. It seemed odd to Poldarn that there could be such a small, plain room in Ciana's house; it was scarcely larger than the shed Spenno and Galand Dev had built to house the master furnace, and only about half a dozen servants stood around and watched while they ate their hot rolls and watermelon.

'You probably think my brother's a clown,' Noja said suddenly, as she washed her fingers in a silver bowl. 'Actually, he's not. Our father was a tenant farmer in Tulice; my brother came here with two shirts and a writing set, and worked day and night for five years as a jobbing clerk until he'd saved the deposit for a loan on his first ship. He sent for me when I was fourteen, saved me from having to marry the boy next door, for which I'll always be grateful. The hunting thing comes from when he was about ten, before I was born. The landlord's sons used to come out to Tulice to hunt, and they used to let him carry the nets and work the dogs, and when they'd had a good day they'd give him a generous tip, five or six quarters; that's how he was able to save up the fare and the price of his ink bottles and writing slope. These days he's doing very well, thanks to a good eye for quality and a fair amount of common sense, but he's never forgotten those hunting trips when he was a kid, he's always trying to get back there, even though he knows he can't-he says there's a hole in time that's just big enough for his mind to slip through, but his body's got too fat. I suppose we've all got one or two special memories that we hold on to, like an anchor or climbing up a rope.'

Poldarn looked at her. 'Not me,' he said.

'Really?' Her look suggested that she didn't believe him.

'Really,' he said. 'Which is probably just as well. If memory's a rope, my guess is that the other end would be round my neck.'

She stared at him, then laughed. 'What an extraordinary thing to say,' she said. 'You make it sound like you've got memories, but you've found out how to avoid them, the way I avoid mealtimes.'

'They haven't caught me yet,' Poldarn said, 'but I have a feeling it's more luck than judgement.'

Noja examined him again, like Spenno assessing the strength of a welded seam, then smiled. 'Well, best of luck, anyhow. What would you like to do today? Jetat said that if this is your first time in Torcea, maybe you'd like me to show you the sights.'

'Actually-' Poldarn hesitated. There was definitely a case to be made for it, probably a whole sheaf of precepts of religion about the importance of thorough reconnaissance; it'd be better than having to ask the way in bakers' shops, and he didn't have any money to buy a map, assuming there were such things as maps of cities. 'That would be very kind of you,' he said, 'if you can spare the time.'

Her smile widened, like a flaw in a casting. 'I'm entirely at your disposal,' she said gravely (Copis, assigned to him by the Faculty of Deymeson). 'I'll tell them to get a carriage ready.'

The Ciana family's second-best carriage certainly made a change from carts. The spokes of its wheels were impossibly slim, and there was a dainty little set of folding steps to preserve passengers' dignity as they got in. Two coachmen sat in front, and two large men in livery sat behind (chaperones or bodyguards, or maybe they were just there to produce food in case a passenger had somehow managed to go an hour without eating something). There were four matched horses, and enough non-functional silverwork was riveted and stitched to the harness to pay for a road across the Tulice marshes. Which was, of course, exactly the degree of style appropriate for the entry of the god in the cart into Torcea 'That's the Oratory, over there,' Noja was saying, 'and you can just see the spire of the North Star Tower over there-no, you've missed it, that's the Merchant Venturers' Hall, and down from there on the left is the Ordnance Grounds, with the Processional leading to the North Bridge-'

'I see,' Poldarn lied. 'Is that near where the Emperor lives?'

Noja looked at him. 'How do you mean?' she said. 'When he visits, you mean? Well, usually he stays at the Guild House, or the Prefecture…'

Poldarn frowned. 'The Emperor doesn't live in Torcea?'

'Good heavens, no.' She laughed. 'The palace is at Gondleve, that's a day's drive north; or there's the summer palace at Ondene, or the autumn lodge at Ducuse. And when the Council's in session, of course, he's at Bolway.'

'Oh,' Poldarn said. 'So where would he be now?'

Noja had to think about that. 'Probably,' she said, 'at Beal, for the honey festival. Tazencius likes to be seen at things like that, so people will start thinking he's really the Emperor.' She smiled. 'You know, I haven't been to the honey festival for years. I don't suppose it's the same as it used to be-we used to go every year, but my brother sold off that side of the business. Would you like to go? It's quite fun.'

Poldarn could feel pressure on the edge of his circle. Nobody had asked what his business in Torcea was; one explanation was that they already knew, and of course there were others, more likely. 'How far is it?' he asked. 'I really don't want to put you to any trouble.'

'Not far,' Noja replied. 'We can stay overnight at the Purity of Soul at Orchat, it's not what it used to be, of course, but people still go out there quite often; and the festival proper doesn't actually start until tomorrow evening.'

He studied her for a heartbeat or so, then said, 'It was an accident.'

She looked puzzled. 'Sorry, what was?'

Slowly Poldarn drew the side of his little finger down his face, from his eyelid to the corner of his mouth. He'd never get used to how the skin felt. 'I used to work in a foundry,' he said. 'Getting splashed with molten brass is something of an occupational hazard. Both you and your brother have been amazingly polite about it, but-'

This time, Noja's laugh sounded different; when Spenno rapped a newly cast bell with a small hammer, you could tell by the ring whether the casting was sound or blemished. 'I'm so sorry,' she said, 'I wasn't laughing at you, it's just-you do know why you're here, don't you?'

Here we go again, Poldarn thought. 'I've got a few bits of business I've got to attend to in Torcea, if that's what you mean,' he said. 'And your brother was kind enough-'

'You don't know.' She was looking at him again. 'Well, it's hardly likely he'd tell you, but I thought one of his relatives, or maybe the servants-He brought you home with him for me.' She flushed. 'Other brothers bring back lace shawls or amber brooches for their sisters, Ciana brings me-well, ugly men.' She frowned. 'That didn't come out right,' she said. 'Is it all right if I start at the beginning, or would you prefer to make a scene first?'

Poldarn shook his head. 'Perfectly true,' he said. 'Actually, my friends tell me it's an improvement. Go on.'

'Well.' They were driving past a huge and singularly impressive building, but Noja seemed to have abandoned her tour-guide role for the time being. 'I told you my brother brought me out here when I was fourteen, and I was glad because it meant I didn't have to marry some farmer. Truth is, I didn't want to marry anybody; still don't. Which Ciana understands, bless him, he's amazingly good about it. He's also very well aware that I get bored very easily when I'm on my own, and too much female company makes me want to scream.' She looked sideways at him. 'Actually, when I'm in a bad mood, I'm not nice to have about the house; so he's always on the lookout for company for me. Interesting people; or, failing that, people who don't get out of the way fast enough. But he can't quite bring himself to keep me supplied with good-looking men, or even ordinary-looking ones-he's still a brother, after all-so wherever he goes, he's perpetually on the lookout for men he can trust me to be alone with-'

Poldarn grinned. 'I see,' he said.

'Well, quite.' Noja grinned back. 'Actually, compared with some of the specimens he's fetched home-There was one poor old devil who'd had his jaw smashed by a windlass handle, and the bones set all funny; and three or four with the most spectacular harelips; not forgetting the one-legged hunchback-delightful man, he knew all about flower remedies. So, I knew as soon as I saw you. I hope you don't mind terribly much.'

'Doesn't bother me at all,' Poldarn replied. 'I mean, I think your brother is a very strange man, but I'm not in the least offended or anything like that. Is he right, by the way? That is, does it work?'

'What do you-oh, I see what you mean.' She frowned slightly. 'Yes,' she said. 'At least, he needn't bother, I really do only want someone to keep me company. It's just the way I am, really.'

(Copis again, Poldarn thought.) 'Whatever,' he said. 'But-well, I really do have things I have to see to while I'm here, if that's all right.'

'Of course.' She looked at the back of the coachman's neck. 'But not straight away, I hope.'

Poldarn hesitated; then he said, 'There's nothing that can't wait a day or so. I'm sorry if I embarrassed you.'

Noja shook her head. 'Can't be done,' she replied. 'And believe me, better men than you have tried. But when it comes to being embarrassing, I'm the heavyweight champion. Now, do you want to head out to Beal right away, or would you rather see a bit more of the city first, or what? Like I told you, I don't mind. Anything's better than sitting in a room with a lot of women doing embroidery.'

'Let's go to Beal,' Poldarn said, after pretending to think it over for a while. 'And what exactly is a honey festival, anyway? I don't think I've ever heard-'

'It's a festival,' Noja said, 'with honey. People-beekeepers, presumably-bring in thousands of jars of honey from the country, and you can buy it to take home or just stand there eating it with a spoon until you throw up, and there's a prize for the best honey in the show. We used to go because my brother got landed with a bee farm when one of his customers went bust and his assets were divided up; being Jetat, he made a study of the honey trade, hired a good bailiff, turned the business round in four years and sold it at a thumping great profit. And like I said, the festival was good fun, in a nauseating sort of way.'

Poldarn shrugged. 'Fine,' he said. 'Let's go.' He didn't ask again whether the Emperor would be there; he'd heard her the first time, after all, and he didn't want to be too obvious.

Noja sent one of the footmen back to the house to tell Ciana Jetat where they'd gone; that left one footman and two coachmen (three to one, in Deymeson terms, assuming Noja classed as a non-combatant). The ride out of town towards the northern hills-Beal lay in the valley on the other side-was slow and dull: Noja embarked on a series of tales of mercantile adventure involving daring purchasing coups and bluffs called and uncalled in jute options and charcoal futures, most of which went over Poldarn's head like teal rising out of a reed-bed. He filtered out the words and half-listened to the patterns and inflections of her voice, which was by no means unpleasant, reminding him of a cheerful but repetitive tune played on a cane-stalk flute. By the time her flow of commercial epics dried up, they were outside the city walls and trundling along a wide, dusty road flanked by tall beech hedges. There were carts and carriages and traps in front and behind, more going the other way. He thought about Falx Roisin, and his short time as a courier in the Bohec valley-terrible, fatal things had tended to happen to people who'd shared wheeled transport with him back then. In fact, a large proportion of what memories he had seemed to involve a combination of carts and unexpected violence.

Night fell faster in the hinterland of Torcea than in Tulice or the Bohec valley. The sunset was spectacular but short, and as soon as the sun had disappeared (like a big chunk of bronze scrap sinking down into the crucible as it melted) Poldarn began to feel uncomfortably cold in the thin shirt and coat he'd been issued with back at Ciana's house. Noja looked like she was cold too; she'd stopped talking and was trying to snuggle down under a thin, coarse travelling rug, which she didn't offer to share. All in all, Poldarn was delighted when they passed under a gallows sign and he read the words The Purity of Soul, with Orchat underneath in smaller letters.

'Food,' Noja said, as the coachmen unfolded the steps for her. 'Don't know about you, but this chill in the air's given me an appetite. The leek and artichoke soup here was always fairly good, though I think the old cook quit about eighteen months ago. Still, it's risk it or go hungry.'

'We risk it,' Poldarn said assertively. 'And you said we'd be stopping here for the night.'

She nodded. The gesture reminded Poldarn very strongly of someone he couldn't immediately call to mind.

The leek and artichoke soup was fairly ordinary, but the bacon and wild mushroom casserole was much better, or so Noja reckoned. As far as Poldarn was concerned, it was stew, and as such a profound improvement on nothing at all. In scale and volume it wasn't anything like the catering at the Ciana house-you could see over your plate without a ladder-but Noja didn't seem to mind, and memories of what passed for food at Dui Chirra were still fresh enough in Poldarn's mind to make him grateful for anything he could get that didn't have cinders floating on top of it. They ate in a small private dining room wedged in between the kitchens and the common room. It was warm and quiet, and Noja, for some reason, had started telling stories about her childhood in the country; something about stealing a cake from their well-off neighbours and hiding it under her sister's bed, getting her into all sorts of trouble… Once again, Poldarn stepped back from what she was saying and treated her voice as music; just because he had so few memories of his own, he didn't necessarily need to fill up the empty space with other people's. Instead, he tried to reconstruct the geography of the forest where he'd first run into Ciana Jetat; which direction had the light been coming from, how far had he walked since dawn when he ran into the hunting party, and (probably most important of all) how had Cleapho, the most important man in the Empire, arrived at the rendezvous with Copis and Gain Aciava, alone and without getting covered in mud?

'So that was that,' Noja was saying. 'My sister was sent to bed without any supper, while I was allowed to stay up until Daddy came home from the fair. Monstrously unjust, of course, and she never did get any of the cake-'

'Your sister,' Poldarn asked quietly. 'What did you say her name was?'

Noja stopped and stared at him, her eyes suddenly wide. He'd seen that expression before, usually when his opponent had been expecting to be parried with the flat, and got a cut across the forearm instead. 'Well,' she said, 'we always called her Weasel, because-'

'Because of the shape of her nose,' Poldarn said. 'But what was her regular name?'

Noja didn't answer for a while. Then she stood up and carefully slipped the catch of the brooch that held her cloak together. 'I'm tired,' she said flatly, without expression. 'I think I'll go to bed now. You coming?'

Poldarn looked at her. She was allowing the cloak to slip down over her shoulders, revealing the sharp profile of her collarbone. 'You go on,' he said. 'I think I'll just sit up for awhile.'

'Fine.' Her eyes were ice cold, like the touch of dead meat. 'Don't stay up too late,' she said. 'We ought to make an early start in the morning.'

Noja waited for a reply, then turned and walked out. The angle of her cheekbone as she moved away was entirely familiar. Mostly, Poldarn realised, he felt disappointed.

After she'd gone he counted up to two hundred, then opened the door cautiously and listened; the coachmen and the footman hadn't struck him as the sort of men who had the knack of breathing quietly. A small, detached part of him regretted missing the honey festival, which had sounded rather pleasant, if you liked that sort of thing. But they hadn't been going there in any case.

Nobody in the corridor, which was pitch dark; but it was easy enough to locate the kitchens by smell alone. He considered his options. There would be people in the common room, but that was no guarantee of safety, and the shortest route to the stables was out that way, so that was where they'd be expecting him to go. Through the kitchens and round the back was three times as far. Simple mathematics: if she followed the relevant precept of religion (sharpen an arrowhead but make a shield as broad as possible), she'd have assigned two guards-the coachmen, presumably, they seemed to be a matched pair-to the common room, and stuck the footman outside the kitchen door. He was fairly sure he could handle the footman, quietly and without making a disturbance. But there was, of course, a third alternative: the stairs.

The bedrooms at the Purity of Soul were on all four sides of a gallery above the common room; one flight of stairs only, leading up from the end of the corridor he was standing in. It'd be a rather bone-jarring drop from a window down into the courtyard, but that couldn't be helped. The Weasel, he thought (assuming she'd been telling the truth), and the Earwig: a regular pest menagerie. Had they given him a nickname too, he wondered? Not that it mattered; but quite soon, one way or another, he'd be in a position where he'd never be able to ask about that sort of thing again. Whether he liked it or not, between them they had possession of most of his life (his memories their hostages, as it were). Even if everything went as well as it possibly could, he'd lose everything they knew about him for ever; and the loss of memories is the destruction of the past, and what is a human being except the sum of his experiences? Dead either way.

On balance, Poldarn decided, he'd rather be dead and still moving; so he turned his back to the wall and slid along it until the side of his foot bumped against the first stair. If they had to creak, he begged providence, let them creak softly. Up to a point, a creaking stair is your friend, because all stairs creak a little during the night, as the compressed fibres of the wood relax. The sound, being usual, is ignored and therefore inaudible. ('Something seen a hundred times becomes invisible': yet another precept of religion. There was probably a complete list of them, in alphabetical order, at the back of Concerning Various Matters, but he hadn't managed to get that far.) It's the sudden loud, complaining creak that gives you away and sets the dogs barking.

At the top of the stairs he paused. The plan had been simple enough-find an empty room, climb out of the window, drop down into the courtyard, steal a horse and escape. It was also, of course, the wrong thing to do.

He faced the door nearest to him, lifted the latch and walked in. There were two people in the bed, a man and a woman. The woman shrieked and tried to hide under the sheets; the man sat up sharply and stretched out his arm towards the sword propped up against the bedside chair. It was probably just as well for him that Poldarn got there first. He didn't draw the sword (an elegant if rather fussy object: moulded silver grip in the form of a leaping dolphin, which'd cut into your hand quite horribly if you ever had occasion to hit something); instead he closed his left hand around the scabbard chape and held it against his waist, ready for a theoretical draw.

'Sorry to burst in,' he said, 'but I need your window, just for a moment. You don't mind, do you?'

The man stared at him but didn't move or make a sound. Close enough for country music. 'Thanks,' Poldarn said; he slipped the shutter catch, pushed the shutters apart and swung his leg over the sill. Then he noticed that he was still holding the silver-hilted sword. 'You weren't using this for anything, were you?' he asked politely. No reply. Fine; he swung the other leg across the sill, relaxed his knees and dropped, hoping he wasn't directly above a pile of bricks or a bucket.

Landing hurt; but nothing seemed to be broken or bent, and he felt it would probably be sensible to get away from the open window. Making sure that the sword was still in its scabbard and hadn't been jarred out when he touched down, he hobbled as quickly as he could move across the yard, in what he hoped was the direction of the stables.

No mistake there; clearly his sense of direction was fit to be relied on, even in unknown territory in the dark. His self-satisfaction was ruined, however, when someone grabbed at his arm as he approached the stable door. As always, he felt the intrusion into his circle before the actual touch of the man's fingers, giving him ample time to sidestep, reach out, grab the arm by the wrist and wrench it round a half-turn. Not surprisingly, the voice that yelped with pain belonged to the one remaining footman.

'It's all right,' Poldarn said reassuringly, maintaining his grip. 'Keep your face shut and I won't damage you.'

Then someone hit him across the shoulder with a stick. The pain distracted him, when it should have concentrated his mind (take away five points for that); he let the footman go, and got a fist in his stomach as a reward for carelessness. Bad, he thought; don't want to draw the sword and start hurting people, don't want to get beaten up either. But the punch wasn't followed up, and neither was the attack with the stick. He waited to see what would happen next.

'Did you get him?' Noja's voice.

'Got him,' said one of the coachmen, behind his shoulder. 'He's got something in his hand-stay back.'

'It's all right,' Poldarn sighed, and he let the sword slip through his fingers. It clattered shrilly on the cobbles; probably some slight damage to that fancy silverwork. 'You can let go, I won't run away.'

'Inside the stable, quick,' Noja said. Someone opened the door and pushed Poldarn through, closing it after him. Inside, it was dark and smelled of horses. He heard the sword being drawn behind him, and hoped nobody would be stupid enough to wave it about in the dark; he could feel where it was, by some sort of deep-rooted instinct, but he doubted whether anybody else shared that abstruse talent.

'I should've noticed earlier,' he said into the darkness. 'But really, you don't look much like her; only when you move, not when you're sitting still.'

'My own silly fault,' Noja replied. 'If I hadn't started telling stories about her, you'd never have made the connection. Still, it doesn't really matter. It just makes things a bit more complicated, that's all.'

Poldarn thought about that but didn't say anything. 'So what've you got lined up for me tomorrow?' he said. 'Are we going back to the city?'

'No, of course not,' she replied. 'We're going on to Beal, like I said.'

'Because Tazencius is there.'

'That's right.' She sighed. 'It'd all have been so much less trouble if I hadn't been so careless. You know, I was worrying myself frantic about how to get you there, after everything I'd been told about you-the most dangerous man in the Empire, you know, all that stuff. When you said that was where you wanted to go anyway, I nearly burst out laughing.' She hesitated. 'Are you sure you only just figured it out?' she said. 'Or have you been playing us all along ever since you met up with Ciana in the forest?'

'Is that really what they say about me?' Poldarn asked. 'Most dangerous man in the Empire?'

'Well, yes,' Noja said, sounding confused; then, 'It's true, isn't it? You really have lost your memory. You don't know-' She broke off. Maybe one of the coachmen sniggered, or maybe not. 'Well, anyway,' she said, 'that's beside the point. As you've probably guessed, these three aren't just your average coachmen. They're Tazencius's own household guards, on loan. We insisted. The three of them together, even you won't be able to-'

'I told you,' Poldarn interrupted, 'I don't want a fight. I came here to meet Tazencius, and all you're doing is giving me a lift. I'm grateful, even if you have been playing me for a sucker.'

Even though he couldn't see Noja's face, he knew she didn't believe a word of that-a pity, since it was true. 'If you think you can make your peace with Tazencius after everything that's happened, you're more stupid than you look.' She was trying to sound harsh but she didn't have the gift for it-unlike her sister, who had difficulty being anything else. 'She won't be able to protect you any more, not now. Don't suppose she'll want to, either.'

Poldarn had to think for a moment before he figured out who she was. 'I wasn't expecting her to,' he replied. 'Truth is, I don't remember Lysalis at all. I've been told she was fond of me-'

'Fond's putting it mildly.' Noja sounded amused. 'I think, honestly, that's what really made Tazencius hate you the most. He felt really bad about using his darling daughter as bait, to get you, the most evil man in the world; and then she goes and falls in love with you-you, of all people-and of course it's all his own fault.' Noja laughed hoarsely. 'Well, it wasn't so bad when you went missing, and he had the boy, of course; sometimes he could almost kid himself he didn't remember who the boy's father was every time he looked at him. But then you turned up again, not dead after all. Where did you vanish off to, by the way?'

Poldarn smiled in the dark. 'I went home,' he said.

'Home? Oh, I see, back there-' He could imagine a look of disgust crossing her face. 'But you didn't stay?'

'Got thrown out,' Poldarn said. 'For making trouble.'

'Well, of course. It's a pity you had to come back, things had sort of found their own level again: Cronan dead, Tazencius getting his chance, the new man turning out to be helpful after all.' Poldarn didn't know who 'the new man' was supposed to be, but he didn't want to show his ignorance. 'And then Gain found you, and of course you had to be right there on the spot, where the new weapons were being made. You know what? Xipho seems to believe it was just a coincidence; at least, that's what she said in her letters. Is that really true?'

'Yes,' Poldarn said.

Short pause. 'No, I don't believe it,' Noja said. 'I mean, the irony'd be too much, you helping to make the weapons that're going to blast your disgusting relatives out of the water before they can get within a hundred yards of landfall'

'Maybe I'd like that,' Poldarn suggested pleasantly.

'Maybe you would,' Noja replied. 'Wouldn't put anything past you. Honestly, I can see why Tazencius took to you, in the beginning. You really do think alike. Which is why,' she added, trying hard to sound threatening (but she didn't have the touch), 'you don't stand a chance of getting round him this time. He's got you figured out, you can rely on that.'

Poldarn shifted slightly; he was starting to get cramp in his knee. 'Never mind,' he said. 'I think I've reached the point where I'm not really bothered any more.'

'Nobody ever goes that far,' she said flatly. 'I should know.'

'Really? I expect you've had an interesting life, if you're anything like your sister.'

He'd intended to provoke her; not this much, though. 'You think I'm like her? Oh, please!' Noja's anger was so fierce that he could almost see it, glowing in the dark like hot embers. 'I'm nothing like her, never have been, even when we were kids.'

'You're going to a lot of trouble on her behalf, if you don't even like her.'

'She's my sister.' No, she was concealing something. Whatever she was up to, she wasn't doing it just to help Xipho. Bombarded with so many obscure fragments of data, Poldarn was too confused to know what to do with this one; he tucked it away in his mind, hoping he'd remember it as and when it became relevant.

'And Ciana's your brother.' He let that one hang, but she didn't seem to be reacting. Shot in the dark, anyhow. 'Was this all his idea, or does he just do what his big sisters tell him to?'

Her voice cooled down a little. 'What I told you was the truth. It was Ciana who brought me out here when our parents wanted me to marry some farmer.' She made it sound like some sort of nasty, crawling insect. 'I guess you could say he's the white sheep of the family. He genuinely went to Tulice for the hunting.'

'Really.'.

'Really.' Now Noja didn't sound quite so tense; maybe because this part of her story was entirely true? Hard to tell, especially in the dark. 'And when his good friend the Chaplain in Ordinary asked if he could give him a lift as far as Falcata, he was only too pleased, naturally: doing favours for Cleapho is good business. So when Cleapho asked him for one other little favour-very much in his line, hunting something down in a forest-'

'Me. That's interesting. How did he know where to look?'

Noja laughed prettily. Nice voice; wasted on her. 'Really, you're too entertaining for words. You don't see it, do you?'

'Enlighten me.'

He heard her take a deep breath. 'Chaplain Cleapho wants to get you to Torcea. But he knows you ever so well, from the old days; and he remembers how you fought your way past-well, past the Amathy house men at the inn in Sansory. He knows that you're as slippery as a buttered eel. The only way to get you here is to make you want to come here; and the only way to do that is to get you to think that what you're actually doing is running away-running here, for safety. Hence the pantomime. That loathsome Gain Aciava finds you and keeps you at that foundry place-'

'Dui Chirra.'

'Like it matters. He finds you, keeps you in play there like an angler with a fish that's too big to pull in straight away. Of course, you would have to be there, of all places, where they're making the weapons. That imbecile Muno Silsny hears about you-the brave hero who saved his life.' Noja sighed. 'Fat lot of good it did him, because as soon as he'd figured out who you were, he had to go. Terrible waste of time and effort: Cleapho brought him on, trained him up, from nonentity to commander-in-chief virtually overnight, because he needed someone in that position who'd do as he was told and never think twice. Anyway, that's all done with; Cleapho got rid of him, and just as well as it turned out. But all his plans got screwed up because of it, and by the time General Muno was out of the way, the weapon thing was far too well advanced. Simply bursting in there and flushing you out like a rabbit was out of the question with all those soldiers there. So he had to be clever about it-and wasn't he ever that. Of course he had good help-Aciava, and that strange man, Spen-something-'

'Spenno.'

'Whatever. He flushed you out of Dui Chirra, just in the nick of time-'

'Really?' Poldarn interrupted. 'Why?'.

'You don't need to know why, but what the hell. Because he didn't want you trapped in there when his other man-another old school chum of yours, incidentally-captured it, by force, with some bunch of religious zealots he'd somehow turned into an army. See what I mean about clever? No fool, Cleapho. He wanted you in Torcea, and having the weapons safely kept out of harm's way would be nice too; lo and behold, he's got both. Once you were out of Dui What's-its-name and on the loose, it was child's play to shoo you along to where you had to go. It meant bringing forward the business with Falcata a month or two, but that was no big deal.'

'Falcata?' Poldarn didn't need the explanation, but for some reason he wanted a confession from somebody. 'You mean destroying it.'

'Well, yes. That was part of the plan from way back: make it look like your disgusting compatriots are on the loose again, hence a state of national emergency, and Cleapho can start moving troops to where they need to be, recruiting his strange bedfellows, all the stuff that needs to be done but which is such a bother to justify during peacetime. And thanks to the new man, who's a real treasure by all accounts, it was easy, and you went scampering straight into Cleapho's arms, thinking you were escaping.'

Poldarn scowled, grateful that Noja couldn't see his face. 'But that doesn't make any sense,' he said. 'Because I escaped from him, too.'

'Silly.' She was finding him amusing again. 'That's like saying the ball escapes from the stick when you smash it into the goal. He told you just enough to get you all worked up and determined-to do what he wanted, of course, without knowing that was what you were doing-and then let you slip away, to where Ciana was waiting with his professional huntsmen and tracker dogs and God only knows what, to bring you in and fetch you across the Bay. And here you are. By rights, right now you should be like an arrow on the string, fully drawn and aimed at Tazencius, and tomorrow we let you fly and, well, job done. But I have to go and screw it up, by telling you stories about Xipho as a little girl.'

Poldarn allowed for a moment's silence before speaking. 'I see,' he said. 'You've made rather a mess of things.'

'Yes.' Naturally Noja sounded bitter. 'And now, God only knows what I'm going to do. First thing tomorrow we're supposed to go to Beal, where you're meant to give me the slip, sneak through the guards using all the cunning tricks they taught you at school, and kill the Emperor. Then Cleapho takes the throne, everybody else in the picture gets wiped out, and as soon as the wonderful new weapons have smashed the raider ships into kindling, nobody's going to give a toss about legitimacy of succession, all they'll care about is that the new Emperor just got rid of the raiders once and for all. Years and years of careful planning, and I would appear to have fucked it all up. That's very bad, you know.'

'Yes,' Poldarn said. 'So, what are you going to do now?'

A long sigh. 'I think that's probably up to you,' she said. 'Let's put it this way. If this was a perfect world, and you could do anything you wanted, what would you do tomorrow?'

'Easy,' Poldarn replied. 'I'd go to Beal and murder the Emperor.'

Was it the reply she'd been expecting? Or was she trying to figure out whether he was lying? 'Why would you want to do that?'

'Because he's Tazencius,' Poldarn replied smoothly. 'Because he grabbed hold of me when I was still just a kid, and he turned me into something evil; because he sold me his daughter-who loved me, so I'm led to believe, though I can't say as I remember. It's all his fault; and it seems to me that, since I'm probably not going to live long enough to pick any of this season's apples no matter what happens, I might as well go out doing something useful as sit back at Dui Chirra forging brackets and drinking bean-pod soup until someone turns up to kill me. True,' he went on, 'from what you've been saying it's something of a toss-up who's worse, Tazencius or Cleapho-not forgetting Feron Amathy, mind, he's another evil bastard. But I don't know where Cleapho or Feron Amathy are, whereas Tazencius is just down the road; I might be able to get to him, but probably I haven't got time to tackle either of the other two. When you prune it all down, it becomes nice and simple.'

'Oh.' Noja sounded worried. 'And what I just told you about Cleapho, manipulating you just as much as Tazencius ever did-'

'Not as much,' Poldarn interrupted, raising his voice. 'Nowhere near as much. He used me for, what, a few months; and anyhow, the damage had all been done by then. It wasn't Cleapho who shaped my character or chose my path in life for me, he's just a very unpleasant man who'll probably be the next Emperor. Probably a very good Emperor, because he's intelligent and organised and patient and all the other things emperors never are. Bloody good luck to him, in that case.'

(Yes, said the little voice in his head, but how did Cleapho arrange for Falcata to be destroyed? And who's the other man she mentioned?)

Noja stayed still and quiet for a very long time. 'Why should I believe you?' she said at last. 'What you said, it sounds like the sort of motive someone'd have in a book or a story, not the way a real person actually thinks.'

'Ah.' Poldarn tried to put the wry grin into his voice. 'Shows what you know. Maybe I really do believe I'm the god in the cart, like your sister wanted me to. Because if I did, wouldn't this be just about perfect? After bringing about the destruction of Falcata, I kill the Emperor and throw the Empire into bloody civil war; meanwhile the wonderful new weapon doesn't actually work, the raiders land unharmed and kill everybody who's left. Pretty good definition of the end of the world, don't you think?'

She sounded offended. 'Now you're treating me like I'm stupid,' she said. 'You don't believe that. You know-'

'What do I know? Only what I've seen. I've seen how everywhere I go, cities burn and people die, and all because of me-I don't do the burning and killing, but I'm always the cause. I'm the dog with a burning brush tied to its tail-my intentions don't matter, only the effect I have. So it was inevitable I'd come here, to Torcea, and wreck the place. And here I am. That's so perfect it's-well, religion.'

'You'd know more about that than me,' Noja replied. 'But you're just making all that up to be annoying-everybody knows there's no such thing as the god in the cart.'

'Do they?'

'Well, of course. It's just an old Morevich story that Cleapho dug out of some book and started putting around so that superstitious people'd panic. It's not even a genuine old story; some bunch of monks made it up to boost offertory revenue. Any intelligent person knows that.'

Poldarn laughed. 'It may not have been true when Cleapho made it up,' he replied. 'But doesn't it seem to you that it's true now? You know, religion, that sort of thing. After all, nobody knows how gods come to be born. Maybe what Cleapho did is how you make a god.' He sighed. 'We probably learned all about making gods in fourth year, but of course I don't remember.'

'No.' Noja sounded bored and annoyed. 'No gods, sorry. And the world isn't going to end. And the weapons will work.' Hesitation in her voice. 'Won't they? I mean, you were there, you aren't stupid. Will they work or won't they?'

Poldarn thought for a moment. 'I don't see why not,' he replied. 'Basically, it was Spenno who did it all, and I think if anybody could make a Poldarn's Flute, it'd be him. But that part of it's all a bit sloppy, isn't it? What if the Flutes work just fine, but they only manage to sink two ships out of two hundred? And besides, I don't believe the raiders will turn up at precisely the right moment to get blown out of the water, and I should know, I was there only a year or so ago-' He frowned. 'It's not the raiders he's thinking about, is it? He wants the Flutes to use against someone else.'

Noja didn't reply, and Poldarn saw no advantage in pressing the point: he wasn't interested, he'd just pointed out the discrepancy to keep her in play, like that angler with the heavy fish. 'Anyhow,' he said, when the silence was starting to get awkward, 'you can believe me or not, it's up to you. But how about this: if we go to Beal, if I'm not going there to kill Tazencius, what else would I have in mind? Go on, you tell me. I'm not going there to make my peace with him, we both know that; and the honey festival sounds like fun, but not enough to risk my life for.'

She was a long time in answering. 'You could try and run away.'

'I could've run away tonight,' Poldarn said. 'I could've killed your pathetic excuses for guards out there in the yard, easy as anything. But then I'd have had to steal a horse and ask the way to Beal. Too much like hard work.'

'Assuming Beal was where you wanted to go.' Assuming Gain Aciava was telling the truth; and Copis, and Cleapho, and Copis's sister who's just admitted she's a liar.

All right,' he said, 'I could've killed them and gone anywhere. But here I am.'

A long silence, unbroken until Noja sighed. 'Yes,' she said slowly, 'here you are.' She was looking at him as though she'd expected more. 'Did you really love her?' she asked.

'Sorry?' he said. 'Who are we talking about?'

Her face remained the same, but her eyes had taken the cold, like molten bronze setting in the mould, flawless and strong. 'My sister, of course. Did you really love her?'

Poldarn considered his answer. 'I honestly don't know,' he said.

'I see. So the child-'

'I loved her then,' he said. 'I suppose; I'm not entirely sure. It was more-well, I guess it was something like signing a formal contract between business partners, or a peace treaty. I know that when I thought she might've come to harm, at Deymeson, when the monks captured me, I was worried sick; it wasn't my main priority, but it was always at the back of my mind. But that was probably mostly because she was, at that point in time, my oldest friend; I mean, I'd met her only a few hours after I woke up in the river, and we'd been together ever since, on and off. That's something, but not love-' He frowned. 'Sorry,' he said, 'that probably sounds really bad. But I'm too tired to lie.'

'That's all right,' Noja said, sounding almost relieved. 'And before that, at school and so on. You can't remember?'

He shook his head. 'I've been told all sorts of things,' he said, 'and if it doesn't sound too crazy, I've had dreams about those days, which might be memories of some kind, or maybe not. But if I was in love with her, I don't remember.'

'So,' she went on, as if she hadn't heard him, 'when you married Tazencius's daughter, and she loved you, you don't remember if you were really in love with Xipho all the time? Or did you ever feel anything genuine for her-Lysalis, I mean.'

'I have no idea,' Poldarn said. 'The part of me that I'm still on speaking terms with reckons that if the worst thing I've ever done is either marry one girl while still being in love with another, or else ditch one girl because I've met someone I prefer, then it could be a lot worse.'

Noja stared at him for a moment, then shrugged. 'That's fair enough, I suppose,' she said. 'I mean, it wouldn't make you the most evil man in the world, or anything.'