Memory

Chapter Eighteen

'Hello, Earwig,' Cleapho said. 'Long time, no see.'

Monach lifted his head. He could still see-just about-out of his left eye. His right didn't seem to want to open any more.

'Cordo,' he said. His voice sounded dreadful. 'What're you doing here?'

Cleapho laughed. 'I won,' he said. 'The battle. Come on, you must remember the battle. Or have you lost your memory, like Ciartan?'

That didn't strike Monach as particularly funny, but Cleapho laughed noisily. 'What happened?' Monach said. 'Last thing I remember-' He paused; he wasn't sure what the last thing he remembered was.. 'The Flutes,' he said. 'They failed-'

Cleapho was nodding sagely. 'Of course,' he said. 'They were supposed to. It's called sabotage, though that's rather a feeble term for such an intricate exercise.' He narrowed his eyes. 'You must've been quite close to one of them,' he said. 'The doctors tell me it's a miracle you're still alive.'

Monach could remember the heat of the air as it hit him in the face like a hammer.

'Ironic, really,' Cleapho went on. 'No, don't try to move,' he added, as Monach made an effort to sit up. 'You'll only start the bleeding off again.'

Monach hadn't taken any interest in his surroundings, his entire attention having been focused on Cordo, his old friend. 'I'm on a ship,' he said in surprise.

'That's right,' Cleapho said. 'You're being taken to Torcea. We should be there in a couple of hours. You've been asleep for a very long time.'

Other things were claiming Monach's attention now-pain most of all. He hurt all over. 'How bad is it?' he asked, as calmly as he could.

'Pretty bad,' Cleapho replied. 'You're still basically in one piece-Your left leg's a jigsaw puzzle and I think you lost a couple of fingers on your left hand, but that's all. Your right eye's pretty comprehensively wrecked, you lost all the skin off your face and arms, and you've got a lot of internal damage: broken ribs, that sort of thing.'

Monach was surprised at how calm he felt. 'Am I going to make it?' he asked.

'Well, now.' Cleapho almost smiled. 'We're all going to die sooner or later. But as far as the sawbones can make out, none of it's what they call life-threatening. Are you in a lot of pain?' Monach was about to say 'No, I'm fine,' but this was Cordo he was talking to. 'Yes,' he admitted, 'everything hurts like hell.'

'Sorry about that,' Cleapho replied; and Monach remembered. Sabotage.

'The Flutes were supposed to fail?' he asked.

'That's right,' Cleapho told him, holding a tin cup of water so he could drink from it. 'That was Spenno, doing his bit for religion. He was a better man than any of us thought, I guess. It helped that the man the government sent-Galand something-was a buffoon, and knew it too; when Spenno told him he was wrong, he believed it. So Spenno was able to make the Flutes so that they'd fail.' He shook his head sadly. 'Dangerous things,' he said. 'Rather too powerful for my liking. It simply wouldn't do, politically and strategically, for Tazencius to get his hands on weapons that'd make him immune from attacks by the raiders-or anybody else, for that matter. Stealing or destroying the ones they were making at Dui Chirra wasn't enough, you see; they'd only have set up a foundry somewhere else and made some more. But now the whole idea's discredited, at least for my lifetime, which is all that matters. For what it's worth, it's very old knowledge-as you'd know, if you ever read books. They were invented in Morevich five hundred years ago, hence the name, but when Morevich was added to the Empire, we carefully disposed of all records of them; now they only exist in folk tales, as an attribute of the Divine Poldarn.'

Monach stared a him for a moment. 'But that doesn't make any sense,' he said, finding it hard to think past the headache that was tightening round his temples like a snare. 'I thought it was my job to capture them. For us.'

Cleapho smiled gently. 'It was,' he said. 'And you did it very well. I have to confess, I've underestimated you too. I'm afraid I kept thinking of you as you were at school-born follower, not much use without someone telling you what to do. But you coped very well on your own, when it came to it. Almost too well.' He laughed again, though Monach still couldn't see the joke.

'I don't understand,' Monach said.

Cleapho was getting up. 'Maybe that's enough for now,' he said. 'You're still very weak, I ought to let you get some rest.'

'No, please.' Monach tried to move, but his legs, and arms, wouldn't obey. At first he assumed it was his injuries, but then he realised he was tied down to the bed.

'Well,' Cleapho relented, 'since it's all as broad as it's long, I might as well tell you now as later. Yes, you were meant to capture Dui Chirra for us. That was the whole-point, of all of it. You see, I had plenty of notice of this Poldarn's Flute project; it was practically the first thing Tazencius did when he became Emperor. He's terrified of the raiders, you see; what with them being his former allies-really, Earwig, you didn't know? Good heavens. Yes, he was the one who made contact with them in the beginning, through Ciartan; his idea was to get them to step up their attacks, start annihilating whole cities, so that the Empire would become ungovernable and he'd have his chance at grabbing the throne.' He sighed. 'But then Ciartan double-crossed him, all of us in fact, and ever since he's been scared sick of what'd happen when he finally became Emperor and Ciartan, or-' Cleapho smiled '-or Feron Amathy used the same tactic against him in turn. He used the raiders as a weapon, if you like, and then he desperately needed something that'd protect him against that weapon in someone else's hands. Hence the Flute project. Which, of course,' he added, 'I couldn't possibly allow. Which is where you came in,' he continued, 'among others.'

'Me,' Monach said.

'You and Xipho,' Cleapho replied. 'She knew the purpose behind it-part of it, anyhow; I'm afraid we decided against telling you. That was probably wrong, I don't know. Anyway, Xipho raised that funny little army of yours, and you took it to Dui Chirra and did the rest. Thank you,' he added.

'My pleasure,' Monach said. 'But if you didn't actually want to get hold of the Flutes for yourself-'

'Well, of course I didn't,' Cleapho said indulgently. 'Don't get me wrong, they're fine weapons. But how many of them did you finally manage to get made? Half a dozen? We'd have needed hundreds to be any use against any sort of large army. Far better to get shot of them for good-and do useful work at the same time, as an added bonus.'

Monach closed his good eye. 'I don't follow,' he said.

'Don't you? Then maybe I was right after all. Your part in the adventure was a bit like Tazencius and the raiders-I'm not too proud to learn from the enemy, you see. I needed the Flutes to fail. I also needed an enemy to overcome, a terrible threat to save the Empire from. That's why I created you: the Mad Monk. You were a bit out of the loop down there in Tulice, but in the city you're very famous. People have been terrified to death of you, ever since we told them about you. We exaggerated, of course; to hear us talk, you had hundreds of thousands of fanatical supporters, all the malcontents and criminals and crazies in the south. And then when you got hold of Tazencius's secret weapon, the dreaded Poldarn's Flutes… I wish you could've seen the riots in the streets, Earwig. I nearly injured myself laughing, listening to them howling curses on the most evil man in the Empire, and knowing all along it was just you.'

And that, Monach realised, would explain why I'm tied to the bed. 'I see,' he said quietly.

'And now you've been defeated, and the weapons have been proved to be useless; and it was me who defeated you and saved the Empire, while Tazencius's Flutes have been turned against him, far more effectively than if we'd lugged them into the Square and pointed them at the palace gates. First, people were furious at him for letting those hell-burners fall into the hands of our most dangerous enemy-that's you, I'm afraid; and now they're even more angry at him because the things were never going to work after all. His days are numbered, Earwig, and to a certain extent we've got you to thank. Well, you and Xipho. I think you can reassure yourself that you've done your whack for religion. Father Tutor would've been proud, rest his soul.'

Monach didn't say anything for a moment. Then: 'You killed him, didn't you?'

'Not me personally,' Cleapho replied. 'I didn't kill Elaos Tanwar either. I liked them both,' he added, 'a lot. And Xipho, and you too. Not Ciartan, though. I was never comfortable around him.'

Monach couldn't look at him. 'I'm going to die, then?' he said.

Cleapho sighed. 'I'm afraid so, Earwig. You and Xipho too-after all, she's the Mad Monk's priestess and what have you, so she's got to go as well. She took it well,' he added, 'as I'd have expected of her. I'm proud of her. I hope I'll be able to be proud of you, too.'

There had been many times when Monach had known he was probably going to die; but this was the first time he'd known it for a certainty. The ropes, and the pain all over his body, confirmed it absolutely. 'This is for religion, then,' he said.

'Of course.'

'Fine. Am I allowed to know how it helps?'

'Sorry,' Cleapho replied. 'Just have faith.'

'Like Xipho?'

Cleapho shook his head sadly. 'I've always envied Xipho her faith,' he said. 'I guess it's because she was the only one of our little gang who never actually managed to achieve a moment of religion, not in the draw, like you're supposed to. Yes, she was as fast as any of us, but it was just good reactions and coordination-she never made the moment go away. I think that's why she believes; the rest of us got there and realised it was no big deal. I've always assumed your faith was rather more intellectual, what with you being the only other one of us to carry on in the Order after graduation. You must've seen past the mysticism and so forth quite early.'

'Must I?' Monach said quietly. 'I don't remember that.'

'Oh.' Cleapho frowned. 'Oh, I see. I'm sorry. I hope I haven't-disillusioned you. That'd be a rotten trick to play on a man who's about to-'

But Monach shook his head. 'You couldn't,' he said. 'You see, I believe because I've seen. Because I once drew against a god. And I know it's real, because of that.'

Cleapho couldn't hide the grin. 'A god? Good heavens, Earwig, how fascinating. You never mentioned it to us.'

'I didn't know at the time.' He paused; something had just struck him. 'You still don't know, do you?'

'What's so funny, Earwig? I mean, I'm delighted that you can laugh at a time like this-'

Monach was grinning now, and Cleapho wasn't. 'Ciartan,' he said. 'Ciartan really is the god in the cart, Poldarn, whatever his name is. You see, I found out all about him-when Father Tutor sent me to investigate, and then afterwards, after Deymeson was destroyed and I was finally able to get at the truth that the Order's been suppressing all these years. Everything that Poldarn's supposed to do, Ciartan's done. It really is him, Cordo; and that means religion really is true. All of it.'

Cleapho shook his head. 'Everything except destroy the world,' he said gently. 'He hasn't done that, has he?'

'Yes,' Monach replied. 'He must have-it just hasn't taken effect yet.'

'That's easy to say,' Cleapho replied, rather less gently. 'I'm glad you have your faith, Earwig, I'm glad I haven't taken that away from you, too.'

'I saw it,' Monach insisted. 'There was a moment-when we fought, in the year-end. We both drew at the same time-'

– Because at that moment in time there's only been enough room in the world for one of them, and yet both of them had still been there, illegally sharing it, like a shadow or a mirror image being soaked up into the body that cast it; two circles superimposed, becoming one -Which wasn't supposed to happen. And if it did-nobody had known the details, at the time, but it was widely supposed to mean that something really bad was on the way: the end of the world, Poldarn's second coming 'It's true,' Monach said, relaxing back onto the hard ropes of the bed. 'Ever since then, Ciartan and me, we've really been one person, or one man and his shadow, something like that. Which means,' he added, as his head began to swim, 'that-Did you say we're going to Torcea?'

'Yes. So what?'

Monach smiled. 'Then it's happening after all,' he said. 'Like in the prophecies and everything. I'm bringing the end of the world to Torcea. I'm bringing you.'

Cleapho sighed. 'Whatever,' he said. 'I'm sorry, Earwig, and I'm grateful, too. And I'm glad if you're-well, resigned, or content, thanks to your faith-'

'Happy,' Monach said. 'Not resigned or content. Happy.'

Tazencius had changed little since the day Poldarn had first met him, on the road in the Bohec valley: an injured stranger he'd stopped to help, back when he'd been a courier for the Falx house. Tazencius still looked young for his age, distinguished without being intimidating, a pleasant man who turned out to be a prince, and was now the Emperor.

'Hello, Daddy,' she'd said, trotting up to him and giving him a peck on the cheek, as though she'd just come in from riding her new pony in the park. He smiled at her, then turned to look at Poldarn.

'Hello,' Tazencius said. 'I must say, I never expected to see you again. I heard you went away.'

Poldarn shrugged. 'I did,' he said. 'But I came back.'

'Evidently.' Tazencius sighed and sat down on a straight-backed wooden chair next to the fire. He'd been limping-the first time Poldarn had come across him, he'd broken his leg. 'Here you are again, and I suppose we've got to make the best of it.'

'Daddy,' she warned him. He nodded.

'I know,' he said, 'be nice.' He frowned, then looked up. 'You got your memory back yet?' he said, as though asking after an errant falcon or a mislaid book.

'No,' Poldarn said. 'People have been telling me things, but I'm not sure I believe all of them.'

Tazencius looked at his daughter, then folded his hands. 'Doesn't matter,' he said. 'I guess it's time we stopped fighting. Faults on both sides, that sort of thing. Besides,' he went on, 'as your wife's been at great pains to tell me, essentially I was nursing a murderous grudge against someone who doesn't really exist any more.'

'I'm glad you can see it that way,' Poldarn replied slowly. 'I know I did a lot of bad things. I get the impression that a lot of the bad things involved you. What I haven't got straight is how much of them I did with you, and how much to you.'

Tazencius was silent for what felt like a very long time. Then he said, 'Like it matters. The fact is, you're my son-in-law, whether I like it or not, and if anything happens to you, she'll never speak to me again. Silly, isn't it? All my life I've been trying to get-well, this; and in the end, all I care about is whether my daughter likes me. I guess you're the punishment I deserve.'

She scowled at him, but didn't say anything. He seemed not to have noticed.

'Anyway,' he went on, 'we don't have to like each other, just be civil. Will you be wanting your old job back? I hope not. I'd far rather you just hung about the place eating and drinking and sleeping; I don't need you for anything any more.'

'Suits me,' Poldarn replied. 'For what it's worth, I have a vague idea what my old job was, but I'd really rather you didn't tell me.'

'As you like,' Tazencius said. 'It's a pity about the new man-he did me a good turn. But he's got to go. It's time to kick away the ladder.'

Whatever that meant; asking for explanations was the last thing on Poldarn's mind. Right now, everything was painfully awkward and embarrassing, but it was better than sleeping in a turf shack and being forced to kill strangers all the time. Besides, he kept telling himself, an opportunity will crop up, and I will be able to run away and get clear of all these people, sooner or later.

'Anyway,' Tazencius was saying, 'tonight it's dinner with the Amathy house. Horrible chore, but we need to be out in the open about that sort of thing.'

Amathy house? Weren't they the enemy? Poldarn decided not to worry about it. People have dinner with their enemies all the time. 'Thank you,' he decided to say.

'What for?'

Poldarn grinned. 'I don't know,' he said. 'You're clearly making a big effort to put a lot of things out of your mind so we can all put the past behind us and get on with our lives. Since I don't know what the things are, I can't gauge exactly how magnanimous you're being. But thank you, anyhow.'

Tazencius looked puzzled; then he laughed. 'I'll take that in the spirit in which I think it was meant,' he said. 'But I still don't see us ever being friends.'

'Unnecessary,' Poldarn replied. 'I just want to keep out of everybody's way.'

As they walked back down a long, high-roofed cloister, she frowned at him. 'You were rude,' she said, 'talking to him like that.'

'I'm sorry,' Poldarn said. 'It's the only way I know how to talk to people.'

'No, it isn't,' she replied. 'But it doesn't matter. I think the best thing would be if you stay out of his way as much as possible.'

'That'd suit me.'

She walked on a little further, then stopped and looked at him. 'Tell me the truth,' she said. 'Did you really come to Torcea in order to murder him?'

Poldarn laughed and shook his head. 'Of course not,' he said. 'Why on earth would I want to do a thing like that?'

She shrugged. 'Because he's a very bad man who's done some appalling things.'

'None of my business,' Poldarn replied promptly. 'Anything he's done to me I've forgotten. And things he's done to other people are nothing to do with me. I may be a lot of bad things myself, but at least I'm not an idealist.'

She laughed, for some reason. 'Nobody could ever accuse you of that,' she said. 'So why did you come?'

He shrugged. 'I got sick to death of blundering about in the dark,' he said. 'People would insist on telling me things, but only because they hoped I'd be useful if I was nudged along, one way or the other. That man Cleapho, who apparently is someone I went to school with: he's the one who wants me to kill your father. All I wanted was to find out the truth-not because I want my past back, I'd have to be crazy to want that; but I figured that if I came here and gave myself up, then either your father would kill me or not, but the chances were that at least he'd tell me the truth.'

'Daddy telling the truth,' she mused. 'No, I don't see that.'

'I do,' Poldarn said. 'Because he knows it'd hurt me more than anything else he could do. The clever trick I'd have played on him is that not knowing, now that I've been told all these things that may be lies or may be true, hurts even more.' He breathed out slowly. 'Perhaps I wanted him to kill me,' he added. 'Put me out of my misery, as they say. There comes a time when holding still and being caught begins to have a definite appeal.'

'I never figured you for a quitter,' she said.

'Really?' He smiled bleakly. 'Maybe it was just that I couldn't remember ever having been to Torcea, and everybody ought to see the capital once in their lives.'

She thought for a moment. 'Do you want me to tell you?' she said.

'No,' he said firmly. 'I've changed my mind since I've been here.'

Cold look. 'Because of me.'

He nodded. 'And the things that come with you, of course, such as clean clothes and regular meals. The plain fact is, when it comes to whether I live or die, I really don't have particularly strong views one way or the other. I'm-empty,' he said. 'Describes it pretty well. I might as well go on living as not, and that's about it.'

She looked at him, then looked away. 'Well, do that, then,' she said. 'I feel a bit like that right now; but it matters to me that I don't lose. I need to get what I want and then hang on to it, or else I feel I've been beaten by somebody. Pretty poor justification for the things I've had to do, but then, I'm not accountable to anybody.' She looked past him, over his shoulder. 'It feels like it's been a very long day and I'm very tired and just want to fall into bed and go to sleep; so, as long as I can make my unilateral declaration of victory without anybody contradicting me, I'll settle for what I've got and not worry about anything else. Does that make any sense to you?'

'Perfect sense,' he said. 'What did he mean, "the new man"?'

She was still looking away, so he couldn't see her expression. 'The man who took over the job you were doing.'

'You mean, when I lost my memory?'

'Shortly before that.'

Inside the cloister was the usual small garden: a square of green lawn, four formal flower beds, diamond-shaped, with a stone fountain in the middle. A single crow dropped out of the air, its approach masked by the cloister columns, so that it looked as if it had come out of nowhere. It settled on the lip of the fountain and pecked lightly at the surface of the water, as if looking at its reflection. Poldarn, who knew about crows and their behaviour, guessed it was a scout, sent on ahead of the main party, to see if it was safe and if there was anything there worth eating.

The guests are starting to arrive, he thought; the Amathy house, and whoever else is coming to dinner. Possibly, Feron Amathy himself would be there-Feron Amathy, who Cleapho had tried to persuade him was the most evil man in the world. That'll make three of us, then, Poldarn thought. Just like the song, which suddenly he could rememberTwo crows sitting in a tall thin tree Two crows sitting in a tall thin tree Two crows sitting in a tall thin tree And along came the Dodger, and he made up three.

He felt better for remembering that; a half-remembered song is like an itch you can't reach, and its incomplete pattern rattles around in your head, the broken parts spinning round in an infuriating cycle that gradually drives out everything else. He had no idea what it meant, or who the Dodger was supposed to be, or why they sang the same, fairly uninspiring, song both here in the Empire and far away, at Haldersness. Presumably at some distant time, someone had made up the song to commemorate some important event; the reason for the song had long since been forgotten but the song remained behind, like the head of an arrow deep in a wound when the shaft has been broken off. Memory had put the song there, and then been lost, leaving only its barbed and rusty sting behind. (The bee dies when it stings, its guts pulled out; the sting remains in the wound. Probably religion; everything else is.)

'What was that you were humming?' she said.

'Sorry, I didn't realise.' He felt embarrassed, to be caught humming in public. 'Just a song I heard somewhere. You know what it's like when one gets stuck in your mind.'

'Like getting something wedged between your teeth,' she said. 'I know exactly what you mean.'

Poldarn thought for a moment. 'You didn't recognise the tune, then?'

'You hum very badly,' she told him, 'always did. It was endearing when you were very young.'

'It's a song about crows in trees,' he said. 'That's all I know about it.'

'Oh, that song,' she said. 'My mother used to sing it when I was a small child. I never liked it much.'

He grinned. 'I must've liked it a lot,' he said. 'It was practically the only thing I could remember, when I woke up that time.'

'Oh.' She looked at him, face blank. 'That's odd, I don't remember ever hearing you singing or whistling it.'

'I wonder where I picked it up,' he said. 'Not that it matters. It's just that I suddenly remembered the last line, just now. Of all the things to remember-'

'Or you may have heard it since, somewhere,' she said. 'It's a very common song, people sing it all the time.' She sighed. 'Apparently, Cleapho's going to be at this dinner party, assuming he gets back from Tulice in time.'

'Cleapho,' Poldarn said. (The guests are beginning to arrive.) 'What do I need to know about him?'

She counted off on her fingers. 'He controls the Treasury and most of the civil service, which is fine because it saves Father a lot of work he doesn't like doing; he also controls the army, now that Muno Silsny's gone-he killed Muno, of course, but we can forgive him that, I suppose; but he doesn't have any support in the Amathy house, which is why they're coming to dinner. I'm not sure why he wants to be Emperor; it may sound odd, but you don't make it as far as Father or Cleapho unless you actually have a strong motive. In Father's case it was simply staying alive that bit longer, but Cleapho-deep down, I have a nasty feeling that he believes in something. Not religion per se, gods and stuff; but I think he believes in religion in a sort of abstract sense, which is rather worrying. I think he wants to do things with the Empire, rather than just having it. He was at school with you, of course, but I think you already know that. He was very close to-well, Feron Amathy, a year or so back, but something went badly wrong and threw out all his plans, which is how Father was able to get his foot in the door. He means to kill us all, probably just because he feels we make the place look untidy. That's about it.'

Poldarn shrugged. 'Most of that went over my head, I'm afraid,' he said. He hesitated, then asked: 'How old is Feron Amathy? He seems to have been around for years.'

She didn't answer.

Why am I here? he asked himself.

It was dark; the curtains were as thick as armour, proof against even the sharpest point of light. He'd hoped to be able to snatch an hour's sleep before the ordeal of the dinner party, but apparently not; instead he lay on his back on the bed and stared at the darkness where the ceiling could be assumed to be.

Why am I here?

That was too complex a question, so he broke it down into smaller pieces, splitting off How did I come to be here? since most of that had been other people's doing. What remained was Why did I leave Dui Chirra and head for Torcea? He still couldn't make much headway with it.

He could remember quite clearly what the answer used to be. He'd come to Torcea because he was fairly sure he'd find Tazencius here; and he'd very much wanted to kill him, for some reason that had blurred somewhat in the intervening time. As far as he could recall, the justification was that Tazencius was to blame for everything bad that had happened to him; Tazencius had sent to the far islands for a weapon, and Halder had sent him his own grandson, to be sharpened, burnished and used. Tazencius had put him through school and set him up in business as the most evil man in the world. It was all his fault.

That lie had kept him moving and motivated as far as Falcata; at which point it fell to bits like an old rotten tree stump, though he'd pretended he still believed it. Since leaving Falcata, he'd been more concerned with running away than with arriving anywhere, right up until the moment he'd blundered into Ciana (who was really his old school chum, the prince Turvo) in the woods. Even then, if he was honest with himself, he'd only asked for a lift to Torcea because he needed to specify a destination, and he'd still been kidding himself about what he was planning to do.

Now here he was, in Torcea, in Tazencius's house; and killing Tazencius was no longer even a daydream. Instead, apparently, he'd come home. Maybe that was because, having run out of people to lie to, he'd had a go at lying to himself, and failed; at which point, somehow, inexplicably, the game was over.

So: what am I going to do now?

That was an even harder question. He had no idea what the answer might be. What he wanted to do was escape, yet again; but he'd finally been forced to come to terms with the fact that he was the King of the Snails, that whenever he tried to run away, he had no choice but to take his home with him.

So: eventually, after enduring unspeakable hardships and battling overwhelming odds, here he was, and he had no idea what he wanted to do next. Absurd; because an easier man to please didn't draw breath. How absurdly happy he could've been, digging mud at Dui Chirra or staring into the colliers' fire at the charcoal camp, or mindlessly following the pattern of chores assigned to him before he'd even been born, if only he'd been a fieldhand's son at Haldersness rather than the heir apparent. Instead, here he was: an expensive but obsolete piece of equipment, hung up in the rafters because nobody had any use for it any more. He didn't even have a use for himself. The only person who wanted him, apparently, was his wife, Tazencius's daughter, and she only wanted him as an ornament or curio.

A dog running through a cornfield with a burning torch tied to its tail. Was the dog to blame, or the man who made and attached the torch? Was it really possible that all the false, forged prophecies had actually come true, out of spite, and that he genuinely was Poldarn, the god in the cart? He grinned; he could dismiss that one out of hand, because gods didn't exist. Poldarn, he knew for a fact (because Copis had told him, or someone else), was an unmitigated fraud, invented by greedy monks to boost offertory revenues. Unless, of course, he'd created the god himself without even meaning to, like a careless sorcerer accidentally summoning the wrong demon.

He thought: The crows are beginning to arrive, because someone's set out a convincing pattern of decoys. Now that was fair comment; he'd been tricked and beguiled here just like the thousands of birds he'd drawn into his killing zones, back in the fields at Haldersness. He'd come expecting to kill, and now What makes a good decoy? Why, familiarity, which itself is born of memory. The crows see what look like a mob of their own kind pitched among the pea-vines. But there the comparison ended. Whatever had drawn him down here, it wasn't the search for his own memories. He'd been trying to run away from them all along.

Even so; they were starting to arrive, wheeling and turning in to the wind, gliding and dropping into the killing zone, all the old crows from the song. The question was: had he come here drawn by the decoys, or was he the pathfinding scout, leading the rest of the flock? What if (What if there was a traitor in the flock-one crow who deliberately led the rest down onto the decoys, into the killing zone? There never could be such a creature, of course, since all crows shared the same mind, just like the Haldersness people. But what if a crow lost its memory, mislaid its share of the group mind; and, while its mind was empty, was persuaded or tricked into turning traitor? What if one crow led the others down onto the bean field, and it turned out to be the cinder bed of a volcano, or the decoy pattern of the boy with the bucket full of small stones? Would that, he wondered, meet the criteria for a moment of religion?)

What if they were all still lying, he wondered; what if Noja, who apparently was his wife Lysalis, mother of his son, the youth whom he'd killed in ignorance on the road in Tulice while moonlighting as a scavenger; what if she'd decoyed him here to be killed, because Tazencius hated him, or because he was the most evil man in the world?

Like it mattered. The truth was, he'd reached the moment of religion where the outcome is no longer important, only the state preceding it-because what we practise is the draw; the death of the man drawn against is an incidental, because the man is different every time. Only the draw can be perfect, since it's capable of infinite repetition, each time exactly the same. He'd reached just such a perfect moment, where there was no longer anything he wanted-not to kill or be killed, not to stay or escape; no material things had any attraction for him, and all people were now the same to him, friends and enemies and lovers and family. In this moment, every individual thing and person had blended together into a great, undistinguished flock, all colourless (the black of a crow's wing is the absence of colour), all sharing the same mind, face, memory. It was the moment when all the wonderful things made by men's hands are broken up and loaded into the furnace to be purged by the fire into a melt. If they killed him, how could it possibly matter? Nothing unique would die with him, since he had no memories of his own. The scouts drop in on the decoys and die, and the rest of the flock takes note and goes elsewhere to feed. How sensible.

He sat up, walked to the window and drew the curtains; light flooded the room, scattering the shadows like startled crows. It was probably about time to leave for the dinner party.

I don't have anything I brought with me any more; all my clothes are new, my boots, everything. I could be anybody at all. But I'm not.

At least there was one thing-the backsabre he'd made with his own hands, the unique mark of his people, unmistakable anywhere. She'd given it back to him-the gods only knew how she'd got her hands on it, but she had a knack for finding things-and he'd hidden it away under the bed, just in case. He knelt down and fumbled for it. Of course, it wasn't there any more.

Not that it mattered.

'Feron Amathy isn't coming,' Poldarn overheard someone say. 'He got held up, is the official report; but there's a rumour going around that he's dead. Met with an accident, so to speak.'

He looked round, but it was hard to match words to speakers in this mob: dozens of people pressed in tight together, wearing identically fashionable clothes, all with the same well-bred voices, all saying more or less the same sorts of thing. Like monks, or soldiers, or black-winged birds gathered on a battlefield to feast.

'Sure,' said another voice. 'That'll be the fifteenth time this year. Listen: you couldn't kill Feron Amathy if you threw him down a well and filled it up with snakes.'

Poldarn wouldn't have minded hearing a bit more of this conversation; but people were moving, shuffling out of the way to make room, and they'd suddenly gone quiet. Tazencius? Poldarn wondered; but it wasn't that sort of silence. More shock, disgust and then pained forbearance. It didn't take much imagination to deduce that the Amathy house had just come to dinner.

They didn't horrify him particularly. Mostly they were just working men dressed in rich men's clothes, and they'd had their hair cut and their fingernails cleaned. They didn't seem in any hurry to mingle with the home side; instead, they hung back in a mob near the huge double doors. Quite likely standard procedure for a peace conference, if that was what this was.

Noja, or Lysalis, arrived, looking older and smaller than before. She smiled thinly at him through the gap between some people, but didn't join him. Apart from her, there was nobody there he knew, and that was more a comfort than otherwise.

After what seemed like a long time, someone opened another pair of huge doors, and the flock headed through them without having to be told (like mealtimes at Haldersness). Poldarn followed them into a long, high-roofed dining hall, where someone he didn't know tapped him discreetly on the arm and led him up the side to the top table, in the middle of which stood a wonderfully lifelike ebony statue of a crow with a ring in its beak. That was odd, because he was quite certain he wasn't dreaming; maybe the crow was a scout that had pitched there earlier to see if it was safe for the rest of the flock to feed. Opposite the statue sat Tazencius, quietly dressed for an emperor; Lysalis was sitting next to him, and on his other side was the broad-shouldered snub-nosed man whom Poldarn thought of as Cleapho, though at school his name had apparently been Cordomine. The table was covered with broad silver dishes and jugs. Poldarn was led to a seat down at the end, between two of the home team, both alarming in red velvet and seed pearls. Neither of them seemed to realise he was there, which was probably a blessing.

Food started to arrive, prodigious in its delicacy, variety and quantity. On the long tables below, Poldarn watched the Amathy house men; they were hardly eating anything, and they kept their hands over their wine-cups to stop them being refilled. Up on the top table, silver dishes were as thick as volcanic ash, and the true nobility was talking very loudly with its mouth full, but not to him. That was fine. He picked off a few bits and pieces from the trays and servers as they cruised by; he had no idea what he was eating, and it didn't taste of anything much, but the colours were amazing.

'And just then,' someone was saying, 'the stable door opened and in walked the sergeant; and he looked at the young officer, and he said, "Actually, what we do is, we use the mule to ride down the mountain to the village.'"'

It was probably a very funny story; at any rate, everyone but him was laughing, and someone suggested that that called for a drink. Before Poldarn could copy the Amathy contingent, his cup was filled up with red wine; then someone away in the distance called for a toast, and everybody stood up, apart from Tazencius. After the toast ('His majesty') they all sat down again and started drinking in earnest, even the Amathies. He noticed Cleapho laughing, his head thrown back, his mouth wide open, like someone who'd had his throat cut from behind. But the red was spilled wine or crushed velvet, and a moment later he was sitting up straight again, listening attentively to something Tazencius was saying. Poldarn also noticed that from time to time, apparently when they thought nobody was watching, some of the Amathies stared at him and frowned before looking away.

'It's all over Tulice,' the man next to him was saying. 'They reckon they've got it stopped at the border, though; the only ships coming across are the charcoal freighters, and they're being unloaded by tender without actually putting in, and they're keeping the dockers segregated, just in case. I did hear they reckon it won't cross the Bay; seems that it only flourishes in warm, wet places.'

'Let's hope,' someone else replied, hidden behind his neighbour's head. 'Do they have any idea where it started?'

'Morevich,' someone else interrupted. 'By all accounts the place is practically deserted, all the survivors are drifting east into the desert or scrambling into ships and launching out into the ocean, heading west.'

'Let's hope they pitch up where the raiders come from,' someone else put in. 'Everything comes in useful sooner or later, as my old grandad used to say.'

'Now then.' Someone a little further off. 'We've all had a nice drink. How about some entertainment?'

It was a popular suggestion, something on which the home side and the Amathy contingent were apparently able to agree. Many of the men and several of the women too were cheering and stamping their feet.

Cleapho looked up at Tazencius. 'Well? How about it?'

Tazencius nodded, and made some sort of signal to someone or other in the background. After a brief interval during which nothing much happened, eight men in overstated livery brought in two large wooden frames (like window frames without glass or parchment). Inside each frame a human being was stretched like a curing hide, hands and feet pulled tight into the corners. One of them was a woman, and she looked familiar, although it was hard to make out the details of her face through the bruises and dried blood. The other was a man, in even worse shape; and on the top edge of his frame someone had written, in neat gilt letters, 'The Mad Monk.' They were both naked and dirty and thin, with raw ulcers and sores on their ribs and shins. Their heads had recently been shaved, and their eyes and mouths were red and swollen.

The men in livery manoeuvred the frames up onto a raised dais on the right-hand side of the room-they dropped the woman, which caused a great deal of mirth, particularly on the top table-and someone passed ropes over hooks in the ceiling beam. From these they hung the frames, securing them at the bottom with more ropes passed through rings set in the floor. The presence of these specialised fixtures suggested that performances of this sort, whatever it might turn out to be, were a regular event.

Once they'd finished fastening the ropes, the servants got out of the way in a great hurry; which turned out to be a sensible move on their part, because the company around the table were busily arming themselves with missiles of every sort, from soft fruit to the chunkily vulgar wine-cups. The barrage they let fly was more vigorous than accurate. Most of their projectiles banged and splatted against the wall rather than the poor devils in the frames; but such was the volume of shot that inevitably a proportion found their mark. Poldarn saw the man's head knocked sideways by a goblet, splattering the wall behind with wine or blood or both. Two of the men in the middle of the table were having a contest, to see who could be the first to land a napkin ring on one of the woman's breasts. Other diners were throwing spoons and knives.

It wasn't long before the table was stripped bare. The ebony crow had been the last missile to fly; it had been claimed by a tall thin man with a very long beard, who took a long time over his aim and managed to catch the woman square in the ribs with considerable force. The thin man got a good round of applause for that.

After the last missile had been thrown there was a general round of cheering, mixed with shouts for more wine (and more cups). When these basic needs had been provided for by the impressively efficient table-servants, one of the men down the far end of the table called out, 'Get on with it!' Everybody laughed and cheered, and two men appeared from the direction from which they'd brought the frames in. They were clearly very serious men indeed; they were dressed in military uniforms, with gleaming black boots and white pipeclay belts, immaculate red tunics and breastplates that hurt the eyes, especially after a drink or two. One of them was carrying a long stick like a broom handle, and the other a long knife with a curved thin blade.

The man with the knife stopped, right-wheeled, threw Tazencius a crisp salute and said, 'By your leave, sir.'

'Carry on, sergeant,' Tazencius replied. If anything, he looked slightly bored.

The sergeant turned to the man stretched in the frame and wiped a section of his midriff clean of fruit pulp and wine dregs. Then he pinched a fold of skin near the solar plexus and carefully inserted the point of the knife, working it in with the skill and concentration of a high-class surgeon. Once he'd made his incision he pushed the knife in an inch or so-he was taking care not to puncture any of 'the internal organs-and drew down in a straight line, slitting the skin like a hunter paunching a hare. He tucked the knife into his belt without looking down, then pushed his two forefingers into the incision and gently drew the skin apart to reveal the intestines. His skill and delicacy of touch earned him a round of applause from the diners that actually drowned out the noises the man was making; it was hard to see how the sergeant could keep his mind on his work with such a terrible racket going on, but apparently he was used to it, because he didn't seem to be taking any notice. Retrieving his knife from his belt, he hooked a strand of the stretched man's gut round his finger and snipped through it. Then he nodded his head and the other soldier handed him the stick, around which he started to wind the severed gut.

The man was, of course, still alive; and Cleapho, who'd looked away for some reason, suddenly jumped up and called out, 'Fat lot of good your faith's doing you, Earwig. Your god's right here, look, and he's just sitting there. Why don't you ask him-?'

The man turned his head-following the sound of the voice, his eyes were both useless. 'Don't be silly, Cordo,' he said in a weak, pleasant voice, 'he's not that sort of god. You of all people should know that.' Then his face contorted into a shape Poldarn had never seen before, and his chin dropped on his chest. The sergeant had pulled out his heart. He put it down on the nearest table, shaking his fingers to flick off the blood. Cleapho sat down again; his face was white and drawn, his eyes were very wide. He reached for his wine-cup but knocked it over.

The sergeant was standing in front of the woman, his knife in his right hand, his left fingers delicately probing for the right place, like a tentative lover. Copis, Poldarn thought. He knew without having to look that Lysalis's eyes were fixed on him, waiting to see what he was going to do; Tazencius too, inevitably. Even if I wanted to save her, I couldn't, he lied to himself-he knew it was a lie, because a servant, quiet and unobtrusive as light seeping through a crack, had just put something down on the table in front of him, and it wasn't a bowl of soup or a warm flannel-it was a sword, one sword in particular, the only one he could remember having made for himself.

Nicely done, he realised. Lysalis knew that he knew that if he wanted to (Deymeson-trained, top of his year at swordfighting), with a backsabre in his hands he could rescue Copis, in spite of the guards and the Amathy house officers; he could carve a way out if he favoured the direct approach, or he could grab Lysalis or maybe even Tazencius himself as a hostage-There were only maybe a dozen people in the Empire who could realistically expect to manage such a feat of arms (a few moments ago there had been thirteen, but one of them had since died) but it was possible. Under other circumstances, it would constitute a justifiable risk. Therefore, since it was possible, everything turned on whether he wanted to do it or not; and he had a fraction of a second, a heartbeat, in which to make his decision-he'd choose on instinct alone, and therefore his choice would be irreproachably honest. She'd have a true answer to her question, after all.

Copis. The sergeant found his place and pinched a little flap of skin.

What the hell, Poldarn thought, and vaulted over the table, scattering silverware and fruit with his heels. He didn't want to kill the sergeant but there was no time not to. The poor fool hit the floor with his head hanging by a thin strap of sinew, by which time two guards were crowding Poldarn's circle and three more men were treading on their heels. Curiously enough, as he executed the manoeuvre (three enemies, north, east and west; back and sideways with the right foot as you draw, cutting East across the face; swivel round for an overhead cut to West's neck; as you do so, begin the forward step into North's circle, an overhead downward cut splitting his skull; the impetus will bring you round naturally to finish East in the usual way) he could hear a dry, thin voice in his mind calling him through each stage-Father Tutor, presumably, though the voice didn't sound familiar. The other guard, and the fool of a nobleman who tried to stab him in the back with a carving knife, were as straightforward as splitting logs; getting Copis out of the frame, on the other hand, was a bitch.

'You idiot,' she hissed at him. She wasn't pleased. He must've got it wrong again; but how was he expected to get things right if nobody told him-?

'It's all right.' Tazencius's voice, loud and slightly annoyed; maybe Lysalis hadn't thought to mention her cunning scheme beforehand. 'Leave him alone, for crying out loud. Get a chair for the woman, somebody, and a blanket or something.'

No blankets at a royal banquet; so they pulled the cloth off one of the tables. It had wine stains and streaks of gravy on it, but nobody seemed to mind.

'So now we know,' Lysalis said. 'Oh well. For some reason I honestly thought-'

Poldarn wasn't interested; he was looking round at the faces staring at him, trying to feel where the next attack was going to come from. But it didn't. The worst he'd committed, to judge by the expression on their faces, was a rather unseemly breach of etiquette, the sort of thing they expected from the likes of him but were prepared to overlook, in the circumstances.

Yes, but what circumstances?

'Screw you, Ciartan.' Cleapho was looking daggers at him from his seat at Tazencius's side. 'You're doubly pathetic: once for saving her, once for letting him die. I don't know why people ever bothered with you.'

Perhaps Cleapho couldn't see the two soldiers who'd materialised directly behind him; or maybe he knew they'd be there, so didn't need to turn round and look. He sounded like someone who'd just lost a game to an opponent he knew had been cheating; you'd won, but it didn't count.

'I'm sorry,' Poldarn heard himself reply, 'I haven't got the faintest idea what you're talking about.'

While he was saying that, he could already see what was going to happen next; he could hear that voice again, talking Cleapho (Cordo, his real name) through the sequence. Kick back with both feet as you stand up, so that the back of the chair impedes the man behind you; grab the other man's right hand with your left as you draw his sword with your right and draw its blade across his throat backhanded. Kill the first man, freestyle, in such a way as to get a good position for killing the man sitting on your right. Precepts of religion: you should be thinking about the death after the death after next. But Poldarn saw, as the chair legs scritched on the marble floor, that Cordo wasn't going to do as he'd been told and kill Tazencius. At the moment when Cleapho wrapped his fingers around the sword hilt, Poldarn felt the intrusion into his circle, and turned to face it. The year-end test, he thought, and here's everybody watching.

Here goes nothing.

Nobody tried to stop Cleapho as he strode forward, kicking the table over and stepping across it like a fastidious man in a farmyard. Probably it was because nobody wanted to die just then; but Poldarn could also sense the excitement, enthusiastic sword-fight fans anticipating a unique impromptu fixture. He could see their point: it wasn't every day you got to watch the two best swordsmen in the Empire fighting a grudge match. Even if you weren't a devotee of the art you'd feel bound to watch and pay attention, just so that you could tell your grandchildren about it.

In the event, it was all over and done with before it even started; Poldarn saw, clear as day, the stroke that killed his old school chum, before Cordo even reached his circle-there was all the time in the world, no time whatsoever. As the cutting edge caught in Cordo's neck and Poldarn felt it pull against his sword arm's aching tendons, his mind was already on other things: now what do I do, when I've just butchered the Chaplain in Ordinary in front of the cream of Torcean society? He remembered to pull back his right foot so Cordo's head wouldn't land on it as he hit the floor. He could feel the frustration among his audience; it'd all been so quick that they'd missed it. If the circumstances had been just a little bit less grand, they'd probably have thrown nuts at him.

He caught Tazencius's eye, saw Two birds with one stone. He nodded back very slightly: Glad to have been of service. But Tazencius's satisfaction at the death of his inconvenient, over-mighty chaplain was a small side-benefit, not the main issue. That, the Emperor's face told him, was still to be decided. Pity, Poldarn thought, because I've had about enough of this. He stayed where he was: any more for any more, or could he relax his guard a little?

Behind him, someone was muffling a sob. He made the time to glance round: Copis, huddled in her chair with her tablecloth around her, was crying because now there were only three of them left. (And where was Gain Aciava? Or did his absence mean that the class of '56 was now down to two?) Poldarn decided that it was just as well he didn't have the memories that were presently filling Copis's mind, quite possibly hers alone now. It must be terrible to be the only one left, he thought, the last crow of the flock, the one suddenly forced to stand for the whole.

'Fine,' Tazencius said suddenly. 'Ciartan, will you please put that horrible thing away? You have my word, nobody's going to bother you now.'

I have your word, do I? Lucky, lucky me. Poldarn righted an overturned chair, pulled it out into the open where he could see most of the room, and sat down, the backsabre across his knees. (It was wet and sticky, but his absurd red velvet trousers didn't show the marks. Functional, after all.)

'Right, then,' Tazencius was saying. 'One last bit of carnage, and then will someone clean up this mess?'

Someone who'd been standing at the back, leaning against the wall since the first course was served, now took five steps forward. He was holding a wide silver tray, on which rested a black cloth bag about the size of a large cabbage. It held a man's head, which the servant held up by the hair. Poldarn had no idea who it was supposed to be, but there was a general mumble of satisfaction from the dinner guests; particularly from the Amathy house contingent.

Tazencius cracked a thin smile. 'Gentlemen,' he said, 'Feron Amathy is dead.' Someone handed him a goblet; he took it without looking round. 'A toast, then,' he went on, suddenly looking straight at Poldarn, 'to our good friend Feron Amathy.'

Poldarn felt an urge to look round, in case there was someone behind him he hadn't seen. But he knew there wasn't. Instead, he stared at Tazencius 'You, you idiot,' Tazencius explained.