Memory

Chapter Eight

'I was desperate,' someone said. He recognised the voice, couldn't quite put a name to it. Desperate had been the in word in fourth grade, enjoying a brief vogue in between howling and essential. 'I thought the old bastard was going to have a fit and drop dead on the spot. Boy, he was absolutely frothing.'

Frothing helped narrow down the time-span even further; it had been Cordomine's pet word for the first half of Hilary term in fourth grade, and they'd reluctantly adopted it for a week or so, until the sixth-graders started saying steaming, setting a trend that nobody dared flout. So, he asked himself, what happened in the fourth, fifth and sixth weeks of Hilary term in fourth grade? He had an idea he ought to know, but he couldn't quite remember. Meanwhile, the old stone crow carried on leering at him from its place on top of the pillar (he could feel it, even with his eyes shut) which could only mean they were in the chapter house at Deymeson, waiting in their appointed places for Father Abbot to lead in the faculty for the start of Traditional Prayers; in which case, it had to be fifth week, because 'So,' someone else interrupted, 'did you see them? What do they look like? Any good?'

The first speaker paused to consider. 'The middle one's a solid seven,' he said. 'The eldest-she's the one who's married, to that captain in the guards-she's just a milky old doe. The youngest, though-' Words apparently failed the speaker at this point.

'Hot?' The other voice prompted.

'As a stove-pipe,' the first voice confirmed. 'Like, so hot you could fry eggs.'

Ah, Ciartan thought, now we know where we are. Of course, there was no excuse for not remembering this day of all days. He opened his eyes and looked round.

The first speaker, as he should have known all along, was Elaos Tanwar; the second voice, Gain Aciava. Beside him, looking distinctly frosty, was Xipho Dorunoxy-she always wore that pained, constipated expression when the boys were discussing girls, particularly when they started using the scale of one to ten. Without looking round, she said, 'You'd better not let Turvo hear you talking about his sisters like that.'

Elaos grinned. 'You're just jealous,' he said; and ducked, just in time, as Xipho tried to reach round the back of Gain's head to stick a finger in his eye. Sword-monk reflexes.

'Do you bloody well mind?' Gain snapped; then he too had to dodge out of the way as Xipho tried again. Elaos, of course, was grinning like a monkey.

'I can't believe it,' he heard himself say, 'Turvo having sisters who're half decent-looking. It's hard to imagine a female version of Turvo. Just as well,' he added, 'I missed breakfast.'

'Cordo says they take after their mother's side,' Gain replied. 'Course, he knows the family. His lot know everybody, bloody social climbers.'

'Where is Cordo, anyhow?' the Earwig asked, from his place next to Xipho, on the left. (What was the Earwig's regular name? Couldn't remember; he'd been the Earwig since before Ciartan had come to Deymeson. Even the faculty called him that, so rumour had it.)

'Infirmary,' Elaos replied, his tone of voice suggesting that he believed Cordo's illness was wholly tactical. 'Anybody want to bet me he'll make a miraculous recovery shortly after Third Bell, so's he can go prowling round the Sty just when Turvo's giving them the guided tour?'

Xipho sniffed her disapproval. 'Trust Cordo to find a way of skiving off double Theory,' she said scornfully. 'I know for a fact he hasn't done the practicals, because he was creeping round me last night after Seventh Bell asking for the answers.'

'Which you refused to give him, of course,' Gain said dangerously.

'Of course I didn't,' Xipho replied. 'I'm amazed he had the nerve to ask.'

Something in Gain's grin suggested that he believed that Cordo had had certain motives beside attempted cheating for lurking round the girls' common room after dark. Fortunately, Xipho was looking the other way and didn't see him.

'It really shouldn't be allowed,' Xipho was saying. 'It says explicitly, in the rules, that visits from family aren't allowed in term-time except at Commemoration and Intercessions, or during Elections with special permission. It's only because Turvo's dad is some kind of minor royal. I thought we were above that sort of thing here, but apparently not.'

Elaos made that funny snorting noise of his. 'Tazencius is more than some kind of minor royal,' he said scathingly. 'He's, what, ninth in succession? Or is it tenth? Can't remember. Anyhow, he's quite a nob. We should be honoured. And I expect Father Abbot and the candle-wobblers'll be after him with the begging bowl.'

Xipho sniffed again. For a girl who'd never had a cold in her life, she could sniff quite majestically. 'It's disgusting what the faculty'll do for money,' she said, and then glowered angrily as the boys (the Earwig excepted, of course) started sniggering. 'Well, it is,' she went on. 'And they shouldn't have to. If the government saw to it that our tithes were paid in full, we'd have more than enough funding-' The last thing the boys wanted to talk about, needless to say, was tithes and indulgence of clergy; not with three new girls in town (or two, discounting the milky old doe). Of all of them, leaving the no-hoper Earwig out of the reckoning, Ciartan was probably the least interested. Unlike them, he hadn't been a monk since puberty, and therefore the subject wasn't as mysteriously fascinating to him as it was to them. Generally speaking, in the interests of not making himself irredeemably unpopular, he tended to shut up and let them get on with their highly theoretical speculations. Even so: a visit by three half-princesses of the blood was distinctly out of the ordinary, and he couldn't help being just a little curious. And if Elaos was right, and the youngest really was hotter than a stove-pipe, it couldn't hurt just to take a very brief look, if by chance he just happened to be passing By the same time next day, Ciartan was about ready to give up. Turvo's sisters had proved to be harder to reach than a mountain top. Father Tutor's apoplexy, which Elaos hadn't exaggerated at all, wasn't enough to stop him devising security measures that'd have done credit to the Imperial Guard, all designed to make sure that nobody just happened to be passing any place where Turvo and his sisters (and, infuriatingly, Cordo, who'd contrived to attach himself to the party as visitor-liaison officer, on the strength of the old family friendship) could see them, even to the extent of a distant glimpse. Throughout the long, hot day an endless stream of students was evicted from every hiding place on the premises by grim-faced prefects, temporarily enjoying powers of extreme violence over their fellows. Not for nothing, on the other hand, did the Deymeson syllabus cover persistence, endurance and diabolical ingenuity, to the point where the challenge presented by the faculty's efforts at security outweighed the attraction of three pretty girls (or two pretty girls and one milky old doe.) A cynic would've been forgiven for assuming that Father Tutor had set the whole situation up as an Expediencies practical; if so, he should have been proud. Deymeson rose to the challenge and excelled itself.

Faced with such a level of competition, Ciartan decided he couldn't really be bothered. Once you've seen one pretty girl, he told himself, you've seen them all, and the best of them wasn't worth the risk of getting on the wrong side of the prefects. There was also a very palpable fringe benefit to be considered 'Hello,' Xipho said. 'What're you doing here?'

'Me?' Ciartan shrugged. They were the only two living souls in the library, usually crowded at this time of day. 'Reading up for the Theory presentation, of course.'

She looked at him. 'Oh,' she said.

He yawned. 'Where is everybody, anyway?'

'Them.' A look of contempt crossed her face. 'Buzzing round the honeypot, of course, trying to get a look at Turvo's stupid sisters. Why aren't you out there with them?'

Ciartan shrugged. 'Can't be bothered,' he said. 'Can't see what all the fuss is about, really.'

Xipho didn't comment on that, but he could sense a slight relaxation of her legendary guard. 'Really,' she said. 'How many fingers am I holding up?'

He sighed. 'No, I haven't gone blind. And yes,' he added with a very mild leer, 'I do like girls. But-' He judged the hesitation nicely; that hint of a busy, mysterious past, enough to intrigue without involving him in telling outright lies or, even worse, the truth. 'Well, I've been around a little bit, and you know what? Half the human race is girls; so if I don't see these particular specimens, chances are I'll run into some others before I die. You never know.'

Maybe he'd overdone it, he thought, because Xipho was frowning slightly. Nevertheless. There was an old saying back home, about the fox knowing many tricks whereas the hedgehog knows one bloody good one. His bloody good trick was dropping veiled hints about his past, but never actually letting slip anything outright, concrete. He knew perfectly well that if he told them he'd grown up on a big farm in a valley but had had to leave in a hurry because of trouble over another man's wife, he'd have committed his reserve and be left with nothing in hand except the rather inadequate resources that made up his personality. Leading them to believe that his history was as rich, dark and exotic as the Empire's was a game he could play easily, and although he was sure they'd figured out by now that there was considerably less to him than met the eye, they still couldn't quite resist the lure, like cats who know it's just the end of a piece of string but can't help lunging after it when it twitches. How long he could keep up this man-of-mystery pose he had no idea, but while it lasted he was determined to make the most of it.

'Well,' Xipho said eventually, 'maybe you're not as shallow as a pauper's grave after all. Did you come here to do some work, or just to be annoying?'

He smiled on the inside. A compliment, even a backhanded one, from Xipho Dorunoxy happened about as often as a dry summer in Tulice; and although it was murderously difficult to impress her, once you'd managed it she generally stayed impressed. On balance, therefore, well worth the effort. (Besides, if Turvo's sisters were anything like their brother, you'd pay an extortionate price in excruciating boredom for their good looks. Also, Turvo loved garlic; if he'd picked up the taste for it at home, Ciartan was in no hurry to meet other members of his family.)

He spent a couple of hours reading Zephanes on Deception (he was actually enjoying Expediencies this term) while basking in the unshared proximity of Xipho-the line of her neck and shoulders silhouetted against the high west window was enough to boil your brain out through your ears, but he'd just about mastered the art of ignoring it. Then she closed her book with a snap, called out, 'See you tomorrow, then,' as she stood up to leave, and actually smiled. It was faster than the draw, one of those moments-in-religion that are over so quick that they never actually happened; but if you're lucky enough to survive them, you carry the scars for life.

Fuck, he said to himself, just when I thought I was being so cool and smart; but there it is, it's happened and I can't ignore it, any more than I could ignore nine inches of steel poked in my ear. I really am in love with her; not just a fancy or the intellectual interest of long-term flirtation, not just the fascinating challenge of the vain quest to get into her pants. That flash of the eyes, too quick for me; past my guard like it wasn't there, sidestepping my wards, a moment of true religion. And he thought, so it does exist after all, that moment (he'd never stumbled across it in the draw, though he was faster than any of those who reckoned they'd found it there), that less-than-a-heartbeat that changes everything, because suddenly between you and the other there's a third presence, that of the divine. He'd never been there before, but he'd seen the place from a distance; years ago, in a muddy ditch beside a stream, where he'd crouched waiting for the crows to pitch and then found himself ducking down again, with the memory of a stone in his hand and a death in mid-air. On that occasion he'd fancied he'd talked with a stranger for a minute or so, an older man who reminded him of himself, but with someone else forge-welded into him, layer and fold and layer, fire and hammer; and he'd wondered, in his immature faith, whether he'd possibly had a vision of the great god of his people, the divine Poldarn, who lived under the hot springs on the high slopes of the mountain.

And this was the divine, the moment of religion, which he'd found in Xipho's tense little smile. He compared the two, and found the similarities were too many and too great to be mere coincidence; in which case, he decided, he must have seen the god of the forge there that day, when he slaughtered the crows over the spring peas. Somehow, that was a comforting thought (because he'd always worried about it, at the back of his mind; if it hadn't been the god, was there something wrong with him, because normal adolescents don't chat with imaginary friends?); in a way, oddly enough, it felt like coming home.

He reproached himself for thinking that way. Being in love with Xipho wasn't something to be pleased or happy about. Rather, it was as good a definition of being in deep, deep trouble as any conscientious lexicographer could ever hope to find. Being in love with the only girl in a class of nineteen monks-He wondered if there was still time to drop by the Infirmary and have his head pumped out, but probably not. Too late. He was stuck with it.

Pity about that: it complicated things horribly. For one thing (he realised, as he put Zephanes back on his proper shelf, and headed for the door) there was the small matter of end-of-grade tests. Deymeson didn't encourage friendships among the students; love was out of the question, when you had no way of knowing who you'd be facing down the narrow steel road, which led half of the class to the next grade and the other half to the closely planted plot of ground outside the back gates. Of course, love wouldn't get in Xipho's way, even if she was capable of it, which everybody was inclined to doubt: she'd cut her lover down for religion's sake as cheerfully as slicing through the neck of a rose. But if he, on the other hand, ended up facing her at year's end, he'd be dead. Consideration; was Deymeson the only place on earth where the lover's traditional promise to love until death was a practical proposition? Discuss, with examples.

Yes, but it wouldn't come to that; and she could kill whoever she liked out of the others and bloody good luck to her. But what if she didn't make it to fifth grade; suppose someone else got put up instead of her, and-? That wasn't going to happen either, he reassured himself. In sparring, the only ones who'd ever outdrawn her were himself and the absurd Earwig, who'd had a crush on her long before his voice broke. Pointless worrying about that.

Pointless, all of it; pointless as a man with no hands buying nail scissors. Nothing good could come of being in love with Xipho Dorunoxy; even a sublimely gifted chancer like himself didn't have a hope. It was just bad luck: infuriating, meanly capricious on the part of Destiny, who could so easily have paired him off with somebody else-Turvo's kid sister, for example, hotter than a stove-pipe and rich as egg soup into the bargain. (What an amazing career move that'd be, though, a real coup for an ambitious young man of the cloth. They reckoned that Tazencius was a man to watch, that his son-in-law was practically guaranteed a top-drawer chaplaincy, and after that, the gods only knew. And if anything-heaven forbid-ever happened to good solid old Turvo, such as coming second out of two at year's end-)

He strolled across the yard, nothing to hurry for, his mind bent on long, improbable thoughts; accordingly, he was almost back at the entrance to Morevich House when a voice called out to him.

He looked round.

Now, for some reason, he had no idea what it could be, Turvo (Depater Turvonianus, only son and heir of Depater Tazencius, prince and hereditary marshal of all sorts of obscure places) had taken a liking to Ciartan the outlander, farm boy and general outcast. The liking wasn't reciprocated. On the rare occasions when Turvo wasn't painfully boring, it was because he was being objectionable enough to court serious injury. But the fact remained: Turvo was always pleased to see Ciartan whenever Ciartan hadn't seen him first.

'There you are,' the idiot was saying. 'Come over here a minute. I'd like you to meet my sisters.'

Not now, Turvo, you arsehole; not now. If you make me do this, then so help me but I'll find some way to rig the ballot for who fights who at year's end. 'Actually-' he started to say; but what excuse could he possibly make for ducking out of what the whole Upper School had been desperately trying to achieve all day? I've got an essay to finish, I have to go and polish my boots. Whatever he said, it'd be perceived as a mortal insult, not just to the moron Turvo but to his great and influential family.

Praying to the god (if any) who lived under the hot springs of Poldarn's Forge that Xipho wouldn't choose this particular moment to stick her head out of a window and see him, he crossed the yard He was woken up by a scream.

Not often you hear a man screaming, Poldarn thought, as he opened his eyes. Extreme pain will do it sometimes, but usually only when there's extreme terror as well. He stuffed his feet into his boots and stumbled out through the door.

It was as dark as fifty feet down a well outside, but he could see fast-moving lights, which he assumed were lamps and torches in the hands of running men. There hadn't been a second scream; bad for somebody. The lights were all headed in the same direction. He consulted his mental plan of the foundry: the casting yard. Hellfire, he thought (and he was surprised at his own reaction). The thoughtless bastards have started the pour without me, and some careless bugger's got himself burned.

Not that he cared an offcomer's damn about the Poldarn's Flute project; it was all a load of nonsense and nothing was going to come of it, that was an article of faith among the entire foundry crew. But not to be there when they did the first pour-he remembered the scream, which meant somebody badly hurt, probably dead, and felt ashamed of himself.

'Who the hell's making that bloody awful noise?' someone shouted. Nobody answered. People were gathering from all over the site, some running, some walking at the weary, reluctant pace of men going to a funeral. They were lighting the big lanterns in the casting yard, the ones that gave enough light to work by. One or two of the hands were running up with ropes, ladders, poles, then suddenly stopping, not doing anything-implying that there was nothing they could do.

The scene reminded Poldarn of something. It didn't take much imagination to figure out what had happened. On Galand Dev's orders, and flying in the face of the very clear instructions set out in Concerning Various Matters, the cupola furnace had been built on top of a mound of earth and clay, to provide the necessary height above the mould to allow the molten bronze to flow easily. What they should have done was dig a deep pit for the moulds, and run the melt down a channel from a furnace built at ground level; but Galand Dev had reckoned to save two or three days by having the mould on the surface and elevating the furnace, with the fire chamber directly underneath it. But the heat of the fire had dried out the mound, shrinking the platform on which the furnace rested. Result: the crucible, holding three hundredweight of very hot molten metal, had leant sideways, to the point where it had tipped over, pouring the melt down on the poor fools who'd been scraping the dried clay of the model off the inner wall of the mould. It must've happened quite suddenly, but it appeared as though there'd been a second or so for the men to get clear, because nearly all of them had made it. All, in fact, save one.

And even he'd been lucky, in a sense. Because the crucible had toppled before the molten bronze had reached flowing heat, the melt hadn't been hot enough to pour like water. When the mound collapsed and one of the heavy props had toppled over, pinning the unfortunate mould-fettler by the knee, the escaped melt had flooded out down the mound slope straight at him; but before it could actually reach him and reduce him to cinders, it'd cooled down enough to stop moving. This was good, up to a point. True, the wedged man wasn't going to be burnt to death by a lava flow from the crucible; but the metal was still hot enough to strip skin and muscle down to bone on contact, and if the mound dried out and shifted any more, as it was almost certain to do, a hundredweight blob of searingly hot bronze flash would go slithering down the slope directly on top of him; and by the time it had cooled enough for anybody to go in close, there wouldn't be enough remaining of the trapped fettler to be worth burying. Of course, only a lunatic would risk getting in close enough to pull him out, when the slightest movement could disturb the mound enough to get the hot flash moving.

The man pinned under the prop was Gain Aciava.

Even so, Poldarn told himself firmly; even so. This was the man who claimed to have all Poldarn's lost memories packed and slotted away in his own memory, like tools in a cabinetmaker's chest. If he died, all that would be lost (because heat draws the temper, relaxes memory; the symbolism was right bang on the nail, but Poldarn wasn't in the mood) and quite possibly he'd never know He was shocked.

Ordinary fear he could've forgiven himself for; and anybody with enough sense to breathe would have every right to be scared out of his wits at the mere thought of trying to get down there, heave a huge log out of the way, drag a helpless man up a muddy, slippery slope with that enormous glowing chunk of death poised to slither down on top of him; and all of it to be done in the face of excruciating heat. Perfectly valid reason, perfectly acceptable excuse for not getting involved, even if the man being cooked alive down there was an old, old friend (and he only had Gain Aciava's word for that, and maybe he hadn't been telling the truth). But that wasn't what was keeping him back; because wasn't he the man who'd tricked and beaten the fire-stream on the slopes of Poldarn's Forge, duping, conning the mountain into vomiting its burning puke on his best friend's house instead of his own? He knew fire, he had its number and its measure; fire was his pet, it gambolled alongside him like a big, happy dog being taken for a walk. He'd thrown sticks for it to fetch, sent it running down the mountainside onto Eyvind's wood, set it on Eyvind's roof and walls and doors. He was its master, made it work for him, softening steel, obliterating memory in the wrought object, wiping out past deeds and making new ones -And if he let it, fire was here now, ready to do his a favour by crisping another old friend, leaching out more memory, dissolving the past and all the horrors that might be trapped there, like flies in amber. If he let Gain Aciava die, he might never know who he'd been.

Fire, crouching in the cherry-red glow of the flash bronze, grinned at him, wagged its tail. Let him burn, it urged him, just like Eyvind, just like the men you fed me on the mountainside, Scerry and Hending and Barn; just like the crow you burned on the forge in Asburn's smithy. Burn the crow, burn the memory, and be free of them all for ever.

'Shit,' Poldarn muttered, and looked round for the men he'd seen earlier, the ones who'd brought rope. It took a while for him to explain what he wanted, longer to persuade them to cooperate (but Gain was still there, and the glowing hot metal, waiting for him; it'd have been too easy if the mud had given way while he'd been talking); and then he was gingerly picking his way down the face of the slope, edging by the heat-he could smell his own hair singeing as he passed it-digging his heels in to stop himself slipping forwards or losing his footing and sliding the rest of the way on his bum. I must be crazy, he told himself a dozen times, but he knew it wasn't true; I must be out of my tiny mind, all this to rescue some chancer who's probably just trying to use me in some godawful plot or scheme.

'Gain,' he heard himself whisper (as if he was worried he'd wake the fire; stupid). 'You all right?'

'Get this fucking log off me,' Gain Aciava replied graciously. 'And watch out, for crying out loud, you'll have the whole lot down on us.'

There's gratitude, Poldarn thought, loosening the rope tied round his waist and looping it round and under the log. No way he could lift the bloody thing on his own; an excellent chance that when the men up on top started hauling on the rope, the bank would shift, dislodge the hot bronze, and that'd be an end of it-the last thing he'd hear would probably be Gain Aciava screaming abuse at him: 'You careless, clumsy fucking idiot-'

He raised his hand to signal to the rope men to. take the strain. With his other hand he tried to guide, calm, control the log-deluding himself, thinking that'd do any good, because either the bank would come down or it wouldn't. Who did he think he was, some god almighty? As the log shifted, Gain yelled and cursed at him, which suggested that the procedure was causing him pain. Tough. Pain was beside the point, very low priority. After all, Poldarn could feel the skin roasting off his face and hands, and he wasn't making a fuss.

(Eyvind, he thought, in the burning house. And the crow. And rescuing Muno Silsny, whose legs had been broken, but who never cried out once.)

And the log moved slowly away, each bump and knot rasping Gain's broken bone, like a man roughing out a shape in wood. 'You bastard,' Gain was howling at him, 'you're fucking doing this on purpose-I'll kill you. This is just because she chose me, isn't it? It is, you know it is.' And eventually the log slid off his leg with a bump-a moment of sheer terror, because the jolt dislodged a double handful of burnt mud; Poldarn watched it tumble down the slope, observing every detail of its descent. But no more came after, or at least not yet.

'Gain,' he said, 'shut up.' He edged closer, a quarter step and then another, like a shy crab. 'Can you sit up? Can you move at all?' Gain shook his head. Lazy bugger, he's not even trying, expects me to carry him all the way up the bastard slope like a babe in arms. Well, he can forget that. 'Grab my hand,' Poldarn said, reaching out, 'I can't get in close, I'll have to drag you out.'

'Fuck you,' Gain replied.

So Poldarn went in a little closer, and then a little more, until he could get his hand under Gain's armpit and lift-He could feel muscles and tendons coming to grief in his shoulder and back, because that was no way to go lifting heavy weights, any bloody fool knew that. But he carried on with it anyway, and 'Gain,' he said, 'what did you mean by that? Who chose you instead of me?'

'For fuck's sake,' Gain yelled at him. 'Concentrate on what you're bloody doing.'

'Who was it?' he repeated, because even Gain Aciava (assuming he was a liar) wouldn't tell lies at a moment like this. 'Was it true, what you told me? Was all of it true, or just some of it?'

'You bastard, Ciartan. Watch out, you nearly dropped me then.'

Poldarn stopped. If he let him go now, if Gain's intolerable weight slipped through his grip and slumped back into the powder-baked mud, the whole terrible lot would come thundering down on both of them, and somehow that made it fair. 'Tell me the truth, Gain,' he said. 'Were you lying, or not?'

'Of course I wasn't lying, you shit,' Gain said. 'For God's sake, Ciartan, please-'

Oh well, Poldarn thought; and with his left hand he snatched at the rope tied round the log. 'Pull,' he shouted, and for a moment he was afraid they couldn't hear him or something; and then the log began to move, pitifully slowly, like an hourly-paid snail. More dirt tumbled down in his face; damn, he thought; never mind, it was worth a try, but then the log gathered pace as the men on the other end hauled and grunted, dragging Poldarn and his vituperative burden through the filthy dirt, across the face of the slope and up The bank did give way after all, and the massive blob of heat did go thundering down. But by then, Poldarn was being helped off his knees by the rope-pullers, people were running up, shouting, calling for stuff. Their hands on his skin were sheer torture and he swore at them to leave him alone. Stupid clumsy fucking bastards, they were only trying to help 'Tell Galand Dev,' Poldarn heard himself say; and he wondered, tell Galand Dev what? What dark and amazing secret had he noticed while he was down there? 'Tell Galand Dev he's an arsehole,' he heard himself say. 'And next time, to dig a bloody pit-'

Later, they told him he was a hero, but he wasn't inclined to believe them.

Much later still, he woke up out of a confused dream that slipped away before he was finished with it, and deduced from memory and the look of the rafters overhead that he was probably in the charcoal store.

Industrial humour, maybe: where else would you put a partially burned foundryman? Or maybe it was the nearest convenient place for a makeshift hospital. He tried to move his head for a more informative scan, but the pain persuaded him to stay where he was and make do with the view of half a dozen dusty rafters.

'Ciartan.' He knew the voice; then realised he knew it from recently: Gain Aciava, the unreliable witness. 'Ciartan, are you awake?'

'Probably. Dreams don't hurt as much. That you, Gain?'

'Yes. Ciartan, what the hell did you go and do that for? Could've killed us both.'

Bastard, Poldarn thought. 'I saved your stupid life, Gain. Or had you forgotten?'

'I hadn't forgotten. Are you all right?'

'I don't know,' Poldarn admitted. 'Am I?'

'I think you got burned up pretty bad,' Gain replied. 'I know I did, and my leg's busted where that prop fell on it. Hauling it across me didn't help much, but I suppose you had to do that. But they've sent for a doctor, from Falcata. He'll be here in a day or so, if the rain holds off.'

'Won't hold my breath, then,' Poldarn replied.

Silence for a while. Then Gain said, 'Ciartan, why did you ask me if I'd been telling the truth? Didn't you believe me?'

'I wasn't sure,' Poldarn replied. 'I mean, I don't know you from a hole in the ground.'

'Fine. Well, in that case, you risked your life for a stranger. I'm impressed.'

For a stranger, Poldarn reflected, I wouldn't have thought twice. 'You make it sound like it was out of character,' he said. 'Was it?'

'Yes,' Gain replied. 'Seems you've changed since Deymeson.'

'Good or bad?'

'Good. Mind you, any change'd have been for the better.' Pause. 'Last time, back at the inn, and afterwards, I got the impression you didn't want me to tell you; you know, stuff about the past. I probably should tell you; in your shoes, I'd rather not know either. Though of course, I wouldn't know that I wouldn't want to know, if you follow me.'

'Sort of,' Poldarn said. 'So in other words I was an evil bastard back then.'

'At Deymeson?' Strange question to ask, Poldarn thought. 'Well, you weren't the most popular boy in the school.'

'Fine,' Poldarn said. 'Who was?'

'No one,' Gain replied. 'It wasn't that kind of set-up. Friendships weren't encouraged, let's say.'

Poldarn wondered, but let it pass. 'Who was it chose you over me?' he asked. 'Was it Copis? Xipho,' he amended.

'Yes. Though that's not strictly true either; I mean, she turned you down flat, but I never got anyplace with her either. Really I only said it to be nasty.'

'Water off a duck's back,' Poldarn replied. 'I can't remember, remember?'

Gain laughed; the sound was familiar, not from recently. From a dream, maybe? 'You can't expect me to think of the finer points when I'm burning to death under a bloody great log,' he said. 'And I don't know why I said it. Just plain terrified, I guess, and lashing out because you were the closest. I do that,' he added.

'Human nature,' Poldarn said. 'So it really was all true, then? I've been wondering. Actually, I've been thinking about it a lot. I thought it might start the ball rolling, so to speak, and then I'd begin remembering things.'

'Did it?'

'Not sure,' Poldarn told him. 'You see, I took your advice, about how to remember my dreams when I wake up.'

'You put crows in them, right?'

Poldarn shrugged. 'Actually,' he said, 'I think the crows were there already; they've always been there in my dreams, since I was a kid. Probably because of all the time I spent trying to keep the horrible things off the growing crops, hence the deep-rooted symbolism or whatever.' He took a deep breath, though it was painful. He'd been burned before, in the forge or getting too close to the hearth, but never like this. He thought about Eyvind, and the crow at Haldersness. 'Back at the inn that time,' he said, 'you seemed to know a lot about me. At least, more than I do. And there's a lot you couldn't possibly know, unless I told you, or I talk in my sleep.'

'You do, actually,' Gain interrupted. 'At least, you always used to, don't know about nowadays. But we could never make out a word of it. Foreign language, or just plain gibberish. We reckoned it must be what they speak over where you came from.'

Poldarn thought about that. 'Figures,' he said. 'All right,' he went on, 'so here we are. Looks like we're going to be here some time.'

'Unless the Falcate doctor kills us,' Gain said. 'I've heard it said that folks over that way are so damned tight that they only go to the doctor when they can't stand the pain any more. So all the doctors have to take other work, to tide them over between terminal cases. Some of them are clerks, some of them run stills or make perfume, some of them are carpenters and joiners-handy with a saw, I guess. Butchers, too, and there's one who's supposed to make a good living in the glue trade, boiling down bones and hides. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence.'

Poldarn hoped that in this instance Gain was lying. 'Hope it rains a lot, then,' he said. 'Meanwhile, we're stuck here, just you and me. I guess you'd better tell me all about it.'

'About what?'

'My life,' Poldarn said. 'I get the feeling it's about time I knew.'

Silence. Then: 'Are you sure?'

'No,' Poldarn confessed. 'But I do know that for the next week or so I'm not going anywhere, so I can't suddenly lose my nerve and run away. Can't even move my hands to cover my ears. I figure it's the only time I'm liable to hold still long enough to hear you out, if I haven't got any choice in the matter.'

'That's not a very good reason.' Gain sounded doubtful.

'Fine. What else are we going to talk about? It'd be crazy to survive all that just to die of boredom.'

Gain laughed. 'You were always a kidder, Ciartan. Nobody laughed much, though, except the Earwig. He thought you were a scream. Must've shared a sense of humour that the rest of us didn't get.'

'Tell me,' Poldarn said.

He counted up to fifteen while he was waiting for Gain to answer. 'All right. But if you want me to stop, just say stop.'

I first met you (Gain said) on the day before term started, third grade. I'd been back home to see my family, special compassionate leave because my sister was getting married. I ran into you on the road; long story, can't be bothered with it now. But I told you about Deymeson, suggested you might like to come along, see if they'd take you. Actually, I didn't think they would. For one thing, you were too old-you're two years older than me and the rest of us, so at the time you were, what, eighteen, we were sixteen. But either you were young for your age or the other way about; once you'd been there a month or so you'd never have guessed we weren't all the same age.

Well, they started you off in third grade. You had to cram all of grades one and two, it was a hell of a scramble, but you managed it all right. This probably sounds like I'm trying to be funny, but back then you had the most amazing memory; you only had to hear something once and it was in there for good. We all reckoned it was to do with your people all being these thought-readers. That really freaked us out when you told us, by the way, we were all convinced you could see inside our heads, what we were thinking. But you told us you couldn't, and we decided to believe you. Well, it was that or kill you and stash the corpse under the groundsman's shed, and we were only third-graders.

Anyhow, you picked it all up pretty damn quick; the theory side of it, I mean, the bookwork. The practical stuff, drawing and fencing and all, you were a complete natural; I think that's why they gave you a place. Essential religion, see? Someone who can draw that quick by light of nature must be a hundred miles closer to religion than someone who's had to learn it all painfully slow in a drill hall. Anyway, after a few sessions of private coaching you were a match for any of us. You weren't quite the model student, you made mistakes and there was a lot of stuff we all took for granted that you simply didn't know, stuff about the Empire, how things work here. But you were always a length or two ahead of the rest of us-Xipho excluded, of course. She was top in every damn thing; worked all the time, nose stuck in a book or extra sessions in Hall, hours and hours of practising draws and cuts. Because she was the only girl, you see; not in the whole of Deymeson, but in our class. Put her under pressure to be the best, I assume.

That's beside the point. You were good. You got on well, but truth is, the faculty didn't like you much. Basic stuff, really quite silly. Like, when you first came you had this weird accent you could have spread on new bread, and they didn't like that. Couldn't place it, for one thing, which drove them nuts. Being you, of course, you got rid of the accent in about two weeks; but they remembered even after you'd learned to talk normally. There were other things too. Attitude was a big one. There again, you were pretty quick to learn how not to get people's backs up, but even so they remembered you as the snotty kid, the one who always knew best and answered back. And I think how fast you picked things up spooked them a bit. I remember eavesdropping when Father Tutor was talking about you to one of the others; he said it wasn't like you were learning at all, more like you knew it all already and it'd temporarily slipped your mind, and all they were doing was jogging your memory.

Yes, straight up, that's what he said-maybe not word for word, but the general idea, anyway. And now you mention it, the other one, I think it was one of the research fellows; anyhow, when Father Tutor said that, he went a funny colour and changed the subject double quick. That's stuck in my mind, because he took it so big.

So anyway, that's how you were in those days. Smart, no two ways about it, but not the teacher's pet, and not Mister Popularity. Don't get the wrong idea, the rest of us didn't hate you or anything. But it was a strange set-up at Deymeson, because of the year-ends. You know about them, don't you?

Well, it's very simple. At the end of each year there were tests: loads of written and oral tests on theory, but what really mattered was the practical, because that was when we all lined up in Hall and Father Tutor announced who was paired with who. And we were all holding our breath, because the test was drawing and cutting, sharps not foils. If you were still alive at the end, you went up a grade. Coming second earned you a rectangular hole and a wooden box.

You bet it was a crazy system, and the gods only know what prompted people to send their kids there. I mean to say, how could you do that, pack your own kid off at the start of the year knowing he only had a fifty-fifty chance of coming back? And to keep on doing that, every year for six years. But my parents, the gods forgive them, they were up for it; in fact, my dad sold a third of the fields and half the herd to keep me there, and he was so proud, the day they wrote to say I'd got a place. I can't understand people.

So anyway, that's why friendship was something of a vexed issue. We never used to talk about it; it was understood, somehow. It's amazing how quickly kids can get a handle on difficult stuff like that, where grown-ups would talk and talk for years and never get close to coming to terms with it. Mostly we put it at the back of our minds; like, we never forgot about it entirely, but we found a way of living in spite of it. You can't stop kids making friends, like you can't stop beans climbing beanpoles. But all the other kids in the world, they've got friends and they've got a best friend. Not at Deymeson. Instead there were gangs, I suppose you could call them that, or clubs, or whatever. Ours was the Crow's Head Gang; you chose the name, after a carving on top of a pillar we always stood under in Chapter. You always did have this thing about crows. Point is, it wasn't like other kids' gangs, where A is best friends with B, good friends with C and D, gets on all right with E,F,G and H, doesn't really like I and J much but puts up with them because J's best friends with C-well, you get the idea. In the Crow's Head, we were all friends with each other equally, or at least that was the theory. That way, come year-end, it wouldn't be so hard…

What screwed that up, of course, was having Xipho in the class. There were, what, a couple of dozen girls in the grades at Deymeson, compared with a couple of hundred boys. Bad news. I swear, I'm sure they only arranged it that way to cause trouble, because anything that made life more difficult was good for our education. And, inevitably, at any given time out of those two dozen you'd get ten sluts, ten ice maidens, a couple who didn't like boys, if you get my meaning, and two who somehow managed to stay just about normal. Looking back, I feel sorry for them. It must've been hell on earth for a girl at Deymeson.

Xipho-well, she was the iciest of them all. God help you if you tried it on with her; and you did and so did I, and so did every poor fool, and all of us thinking at the back of his mind about year-end, and getting the brush-off, reckoning, well, probably for the best. Except you; maybe because you were from outside, you hadn't had time to think about it like we had, or-well, you were always different anyhow. But you kept on and on at her, it was quite embarrassing at times; and Xipho-Xipho didn't like you at all. I mean, no one ever knew what she was thinking, so when she told someone to get lost, they'd be thinking, Maybe she really likes me a lot, but she can't handle the thought of year-end, so that's why. But not in your case. Even if everything had been normal, like on the outside, she'd never have touched you with a ten-foot pole, unless maybe it had a sharp point on the end. And you could never see that. Strange, for someone who could read minds. Or maybe you just liked really, really difficult challenges.

About year-ends. First year you were there, they put you up against a kid from Thurm who lasted what we called a moment-in-religion, which means no time at all. That was all right, because he wasn't one of us, and nobody much liked him anyway. The next year was very strange. Father Tutor-he was a mean old bastard, no two ways about that, and he'd noticed that the Earwig was a special pal of yours. That's not quite right; he liked you, but you didn't like him or dislike him, he was just one of the crowd as far as you were concerned. Anyway, it was an interesting match, because you two and Xipho were far and away the quickest in the whole grade. Honest, I never saw the like. Year-end practicals usually lasted about as long as a sneeze, but you two were hacking and bashing away for several minutes before Father Tutor called it off and said you'd both passed. He was really pissed off, by the way, but he didn't have a choice. Maybe it was because he was so upset about it; anyhow, the year after that, he matched you with Turvo, Prince Tazencius's only son, and that had to be sheer spite, since you'd just got engaged to Turvo's kid sister.

'What happened?' Poldarn asked.

Gain laughed. 'I'm telling you, if you pissed off Father Tutor the previous year, it was nothing compared with that time. Bloody impressive show, though; got to hand it to you for that.'

Poldarn's throat was dry. 'What happened?' he repeated. 'Did I kill him?'

'Did you hell as like. At the moment of the draw, you did this little shuffle-quick as lightning, it was too fast for me to follow, but apparently as you drew, you also sidestepped through about sixty degrees, so Turvo's draw just cut air, and instead of yours slicing through his neck, all you did was cut him to the bone. Didn't even cut through an artery, though whether that was skill or luck I don't know and you presumably can't remember. Saved his life, though; poor bugger lost the use of his right hand, but neither of you got killed. Even the prince had to admit you'd done really well by him and his son. Lysalis-that's Turvo's sister, your girlfriend-she was all over you, reckoned you were fantastic risking your neck to protect her brother. Old Turvo wasn't exactly thrilled about it, him being left a cripple and made a fool out of, but that didn't matter in the long run.'

Poldarn frowned. 'What's that supposed to mean?'

'Oh, he died anyway,' Gain replied. 'But that's another story-remind me to tell you about it sometime. Anyway, that's the epic tale of you and Turvo, and how you outsmarted Father Tutor two years in a row. We were all dead impressed, except we reckoned you were probably too clever to live. Xipho was hopping mad, though. She'd been hoping Turvo'd do you.'

Poldarn couldn't help shuddering a little. He thought of her in the ruins of Deymeson, when she'd drawn a sword on him and he'd batted it away. Of course, he hadn't known at the time that she was one of the three best fencers in their year 'Was there another year after that?' he asked quietly.

'Of course. And typical, you saved the best till last. But we're skipping ahead; unless you don't want to hear the bits in between.'

Like I just told you (Gain went on) you hadn't exactly endeared yourself to Father Tutor, what with one thing or another. We all reckoned he'd either get you killed or he was training you specially for some very exalted and important job, probably a suicide mission. He had this thing about suicide missions, Father Tutor, seemed to feel they were a very useful and efficient way of getting things done.

You, on the other hand-well, you rather got it up your nose after the Turvo thing, reckoned you were very much the gods' gift to applied religion. Maybe you were trying to impress Xipho; I've got to say, getting engaged to Turvo's sister didn't seem to have any effect on you as far as besieging her citadel was concerned, and we couldn't make that out at all; because Xipho was, frankly, nice-enough-looking in her way but a bit on the stringy side even then, while Lysalis was an absolute honeypot, and talk about besotted-None of us could figure why you didn't pack in religion as soon as the two of you got engaged. After all, you'd only joined up because you had nothing better to do, it wasn't like you had faith or any of that crap; and there was Tazencius, practically begging to be allowed to set you up in a nice little command or governorship somewhere, no work, palace, posh clothes, nice food, no more fleas in the blankets. But no, you were dead set on finishing the course; and that made no sense, because naturally there's no such thing as a married monk, so you couldn't have made a career in the Order. We all reckoned it was because of Xipho: you weren't going to quit until you'd settled your score with her. I have no idea if that's how it was, and you can't tell me, needless to say. Pity, really, I'd love to know what was going on there.

And now I guess I'd better tell you about Elaos Tanwar. You may not like this bit. If you want me to stop, just say.

No? Fine. Elaos Tanwar-well, you've probably gathered by now we were an odd lot, all of us, and the Crow's Headers more than most. But Elaos-he was as near normal, I guess you could call it, as anybody could be at Deymeson. He was mostly straight down the middle, reliable, loyal, said what he thought, tried to be nice whenever he could; if he was on your side you were glad of it. We all liked him. I don't mean we were all his friends, because we were all each others' friends. I mean we actually liked him, thought he was a good sort. He had his faults, but not that many and not that bad. At Deymeson, that practically made him a saint.

One day in sixth grade, Elaos was sitting in the common room just after chapter. We had a study period, no lectures; Xipho was fooling about reading up for some tutorial or other, the rest of us were just hanging around, like you do. You weren't there. But Elaos was just sitting on his own, didn't want to talk, face like a failed harvest; and that wasn't like him. His face was his title-page, like we used to say; his expression told you exactly what was going on inside his head, no messing, and on this occasion he looked depressed and worried, which was very rare with him-he was usually a fairly cheerful type. So, naturally, we all clustered round and asked him what the matter was.

First off he just told us to go away, leave him be; but we weren't having that, goes without saying. So eventually we forced it out of him. He'd heard something that had got him puzzled and worried and upset, and he didn't know what to do for the best. And he hadn't said anything to us, he went on, because it was something to do with one of us. In short, you.

Elaos came from some little place in the Bohec valley; nowhere you'd have heard of, I can't remember the name. His dad was what passed for a big-time merchant in those parts, pretty small fry by Torcea standards but a slice above clod-busting. Well, you must know by now that the Bohec valley was where the raiders had been very busy for many years, to the point where it was getting completely out of hand-cities burned down, people slaughtered wholesale, Imperial armies wiped out, all that. Over the last couple of years, though, it'd all got a whole lot worse, and people were starting to wonder if the raiders hadn't somehow got themselves a new source of information; because whereas before they'd mostly just blundered about, hacking down anybody who was dumb enough not to have got out of the way in time, now they seemed to know all the useful stuff well in advance, they were going straight to where the pickings were best, sidestepping Imperial forces, suddenly appearing out of nowhere, using roads that weren't on maps, that only the locals knew about. But the objection to that was, what kind of maniac would collaborate with them, for the gods' sakes; and even if there was someone sick enough to be prepared to do it, how was it physically possible, since nobody knew a damn thing about them, knew where they came from, spoke their language, even. It'd be impossible, like a human being collaborating with locusts or crows.

But Elaos reckoned there was a traitor, and what's more, he knew who it was. Not to put too fine a point on it, you.

'Me?'

Short pause, silence; except that outside somewhere, someone was driving posts into the ground with a post-rammer-slow, regular thumps like a heartbeat.

'We were pretty taken aback too,' Gain said at last. 'You can tell how knocked sideways we were by the fact that nobody screamed and shouted or told Elaos he was crazy or anything like that. Just stood there gawping, while he started to point out the evidence: you came from a strange place far away that none of us even knew existed; in your sleep you spoke in a weird language none of us recognised; you'd said yourself that, as far as you knew, you were the only person from your country in the whole Empire. As for practicalities-all the big attacks were in the Bohec and Mahec valleys, and Deymeson's right in the middle of the area where the attacks were taking place; the Order had the best information-gathering resources in the Empire, all you'd have to do would be to sneak up to the Map Gallery at night, pick the lock and look around, and you'd see at a glance where all the Imperial troops were stationed, which ones were out in the field, exactly where they were at and where they were headed. Nobody outside the order or the military could find out that kind of stuff-and even inside the service, only the top brass on the general staff had access to it. So you see, you had the means; and if, as we guessed, your mysterious people were the raiders, you surely had a motive. As for opportunity-well, there's messengers leaving Deymeson and going in all directions every day, nothing easier than to slip in a note of your own, tell the rider it's a message to your girl back home who the cruel faculty wouldn't let you write to. Or maybe one of their people came round the back door pretending to be a bum begging scraps. Don't ask me; but you were always the smart, imaginative one, really hot at Expediencies. You'd have found a way-'

'But hold on,' Poldarn interrupted. 'This stuff is all-what's the word?-circumstantial. I thought you meant there were witnesses or something.'

'Just let me tell the story, all right?' Gain complained. 'But you're right, and that on its own wouldn't have set Elaos thinking, because he wasn't that sort, seeing plots and conspiracies everywhere. And there was something else, too,' Gain went on. 'You and Lysatis, not killing Turvo, all that. Elaos asked us, he said how come a scruff like you-offcomer, no family, no money-how come a prince of the blood like Tazencius was letting you marry his daughter. Never mind giving his consent; you'd have thought he'd have had you strung up from a tree just for looking at her. But no, you asked for her and you got her-and then, instead of the big wedding the very next day, before he's had a chance to change his mind, you're still here, still training to be a monk, still drooling round after Xipho.'

'All right,' Poldarn said. 'So what's your point?'

'Not mine,' Gain said. 'Elaos's point. He said, what if Tazencius is in league with the raiders, and you're the link, the contact man? And before you ask, we asked it too-why the hell would Tazencius do that? But Elaos had an answer to that; he said, suppose Tazencius is ambitious, wants to be Emperor; but he's too far down the list to get his chance-unless something happens. Like maybe the raiders become a major threat, and Tazencius defeats them, becomes the popular hero with an army devoted to him, prepared to follow him if he marches on Torcea? Or maybe he's planning to use the raiders to take Torcea for him. Or there's his feud with General Cronan; was that genuine or just a blind? Was he in with Cronan-he supplies the big threat, then sets the scene for Cronan to win a big victory, and Cronan takes over, instals Tazencius as Emperor, they share the cake between them? There were any number of possible reasons, he said.'

'Speculation,' Poldarn broke in. 'Drivel. No evidence-'

'Let me finish, for the gods' sakes,' Gain said. 'Actually, Elaos said exactly the same thing when we all started raising the same objections. He'd told us all that, he said, just so we'd take him seriously when he spoke about what he'd seen and heard; otherwise we'd all think he was nuts, seeing things, or making it up out of spite.'

They'd stopped driving posts, at any rate. The only sound apart from Gain's voice was rain on the roof. They won't be able to pour in the rain, Poldarn thought absently. Water dropping on molten bronze is very bad news indeed. 'Go on,' he said.

'Here's what Elaos told us,' Gain continued. 'He said that one morning, early, before Prime, he'd got up because of a stomach bug, couldn't get back to sleep; so he walked down as far as the sally-port in the back eastern wall. He was sitting in the crook of the old fallen-down watchtower there-you could lurk up there and have a grand view over the wall, be able to hear someone talking through the sally-port, and they'd never guess there was anybody there. Anyhow, he said that he heard you, talking to someone; so he scriggled round until he could see. There you were. The sally-port gate was half open; outside there were a man and a woman sitting in a cart, with their hoods drawn right down over their faces, and that's who you were talking to. And there in the cart, at the man's feet, he could distinctly see a raider backsabre.'

Rain on the roof; no chance of the doctor coming out from Falcata while it was raining, the roads'd be a quagmire.

'Well,' Gain was saying. 'Everybody knows, the only people who carry those things are raiders; apart from them, nobody's got one. People said that there were only maybe a dozen in the whole Empire, and they were all in Torcea, at the palace or GHQ. Peasants in carts didn't carry them around for splitting firewood. Also, Elaos said, you were talking to these two in that strange weird language you used when you talked in your sleep, and they were using it too. Inference: the couple in the cart were scouts from a raider army, and you were briefing them. Not much on its own, maybe; but put it together with all that circumstantial stuff-He wasn't saying it was proof, he added, or anything like it; but it raised a question, was all, and until he got an answer that convinced him there was an innocent explanation, he was worried. Like, should he tell Father Tutor about it?'

'So,' Poldarn said. 'What did you all decide?'

'We didn't,' Gain said. 'Like I told you, it was way too much for us all to take on board. We couldn't actually bring ourselves to believe it, but we couldn't disprove it. Upshot was, we decided we'd all think it over, and have a meeting in a week's time, reach a decision then.'

'Fine,' Poldarn said, more than a little angry. 'And what did you decide at your grand meeting?'

'Never happened,' Gain said. 'Because the very next day, Elaos was found up in the same place, the old tower by the sally-port, with his neck sliced open.'

Oh, Poldarn thought. So did Gain trace me here to kill me? 'Was that me?' he asked. 'Did I do it?'

Pause. 'And a couple of hours later,' Gain went on, in a completely neutral voice, 'Father Abbot called a special emergency chapter, told everybody what'd happened, and said that the murderer had been caught and the matter was closed.'

'Not me, then?'

'You were at chapter with the rest of us,' Gain said.

'And did he explain what'd happened, why Elaos was killed?'

'No.' Gain's voice had become slightly brittle. 'The matter was closed, that's all he said. And we all wanted to believe him, of course. We wanted it to be outsiders-robbers or some wandering lunatic, someone who was nothing to do with us. It was very strange,' Gain went on. 'Elaos getting killed-well, if he'd died at year-end, that wouldn't have been a problem, we'd just have put him out of our minds, pretended he'd never existed. We'd learned how to handle that sort of thing, goes without saying. You had to, at Deymeson, or the place wouldn't have been able to keep going. But there's a huge difference between-well, failing an exam, and being murdered. That's the difference malice makes, malice or desperation or just sheer indifference, like where someone's murdered simply because he's inconvenient, in the way of some grand plan. Indifference is the scariest of the lot, believe me.'

Poldarn was silent for a moment. 'You didn't answer my question,' he said. 'Was it me? Did I kill him?'

'I don't know,' Gain replied without emotion. 'It's possible. Or else someone else killed him to protect you-and if so, you may have known about it in advance, or not. We didn't know; what's more, we didn't want to. Really didn't want to. You of all people can understand that, can't you?' Gain sighed. 'I'm sorry,' he said, 'but I'm feeling really tired now. I've got to get some sleep. I'll tell you the rest some other time.'

Poldarn lay awake long after Gain's breathing had fallen into the long, slow rhythm of sleep. As if in a court of law, he tried arguing a wide range of defences, each one of them further or in the alternative: Gain was lying; Gain was only telling part of the truth; Gain was lying about the murder; Gain was telling the truth about the murder but lying about betraying the cities to the raiders; Gain was telling the truth about betraying the cities (and it wasn't betraying, because they weren't Poldarn's people; the raiders were. You can't be a traitor if you betray the enemy-can you?) but lying about the murder. Elaos Tanwar had been murdered, but not Poldarn; or not for that reason. It was self-defence; or Tanwar had made up the story about him betraying the cities, and killing him was justified revenge. Or he'd done it, but only on the orders of Father Abbot, or Father Tutor, because Elaos Tanwar was the real traitor. So many possibilities, plausible alternatives; wasn't it perverse instinctively to believe in the one that showed himself up in the worst light? Besides; he'd taken a lot of lives, to his certain, recent knowledge. He'd killed soldiers, civilians, enemies, friends; just recently, he'd killed a kid less than half his age, in self-defence, there being no other way. He'd killed Eyvind's friend, that first time they'd met, on the road; he'd killed Eyvind. So what was one more death at his hands more or less? Might as well blame the scythe for chopping the necks of corn.

Eventually he drifted into sleep; and there was a crow There was a crow looking down at him from the top of a pillar; but it was only a carving, a mason's memory of a crow trapped in stone, like a fly in amber.

He was in the chapter house, but he was alone, just him and the crow. He was waiting for someone. The someone was late, maybe not coming at all. He wasn't pleased about that. It hadn't been easy getting there without being seen, and any minute the doors might open, someone else might come in, see him there, ask what he thought he was doing. He had no right to be there, it was against the rules As if that mattered; as if losing ten house points or getting detention mattered when blood had been shed (and all his fault, if he cared to look at it from that perspective). He didn't even have to stay here any longer; any day now, and he'd be out She came in through the small low door from the vestry, not the main doors as he'd been expecting. Typical Xipho, planning every entrance, figuring out the optimum strategic advantage, balanced against the acceptable and unacceptable risks. She treated life as extra tuition for core syllabus subjects.

She looked at him sourly. 'Melodrama,' she said. 'With you, everything's got to be a bloody performance. So, what do you want?'

'I needed to talk,' he said.

'Fine. Go ahead.'

'Xipho.' He felt like he wanted to be sick. 'I didn't kill him. Elaos. It wasn't me.'

'Well, of course it wasn't,' she replied. 'Father Abbot said so. Matter closed.'

'Yes,' he insisted, 'but is that what you believe?'

She looked into his eyes before answering. 'I don't have an opinion on the subject,' she said.

That made him angry. 'Of course you do,' he said. 'You've got an opinion on everything.'

'If you say so.'

Precepts of religion; the best fight is not to fight. 'Please, Xipho,' he heard himself say. 'Even if you think I did it, that'd be better than this.'

'Are you saying you did it?'

'No.'

'All right, then,' she said. 'Matter closed. Was that it, or did you want me for anything else?'

He shook his head. 'You don't believe me,' he said. 'You wouldn't be acting like this if you believed me.'

'I told you,' she said, 'I haven't got an opinion, and I don't believe anything. That's why we have doctrine, so we don't have to believe in every single bloody thing. Father Abbot says the matter's closed, which means that even if you confessed, even if you showed me a sword with blood on it, I wouldn't have an opinion. Do you understand that, or have you completely wasted the time you've spent here?'

He looked at her for a moment. 'You think I killed him,' he said. 'You think I killed him and Father Abbot either approved or he's got some reason for not doing anything about it. Bloody hell, Xipho, he was our friend.'

'No friends in religion,' Xipho replied. 'Against the rules.'

There was something about the way she'd said it. 'If I didn't kill him,' he said quietly, 'maybe I've got an idea who did.'

'That's an interesting choice of words,' Xipho said. 'Look, I'm sorry but I've got work to do. I thought you wanted to see me about something urgent. Not something that no longer exists.'

She walked out, not looking back. He sat staring at the door she'd gone through for a while, as if it was somehow to blame for the use it had been put to; then he stood up and followed. Instead of taking the north cloister, however, he turned east, past the stairs that led to the tower where Elaos Tanwar had died, until he came to a small door. He wasn't supposed to know what was behind it, and he wasn't supposed to be able to get through it. But a small piece of wire passed through a crack where one of the panels had shrunk with age was enough to lift the latch on the other side. He pushed it open and shut it quickly behind him.

He'd known about this place for some time, ever since he'd overheard a conversation in the porter's lodge between the senior porter and a large, round, well-dressed man who'd arrived on the box of a large cart. The round man's name, he'd learned as he eavesdropped, pretending to check his pigeonhole for messages, was Potto Ulrec, a button merchant from Sansory, and he'd come to collect something: a large, bulky consignment that was going to prove awkward to shift and load, especially with Potto's trick shoulder playing him up again. The senior porter had taken pity on him or was more than usually anxious to rid his lodge of unseemliness, so he'd sent one of the junior porters to help Potto with whatever it was he was collecting. For some reason, Ciartan had been intrigued enough to follow unobtrusively. On the way, the junior porter had made a detour to the small yard behind the tool store at the back of the east quadrangle, and had picked up a fair-sized wheelbarrow. He had trouble keeping up with Potto Ulrec, who was clearly in a hurry.

And so they'd come to this door. The junior porter had been entrusted with the key, a huge lump of iron on a long loop of string, which he'd hung round his neck. He unlocked the door, but then stood back, as though unwilling to enter. Potto gave him a mildly scornful look and went past him through the doorway. A few moments later he came out again, his arms laden with a substantial heap of bones.

Leg bones mostly; some arms. He stacked them neatly in the wheelbarrow, the way Ciartan used to pile lopped branchwood back home, so as not to waste space in the bed of the barrow. When he went back in, the porter looked away with a nauseated expression on his face. It took Potto four trips to fill the barrow; once or twice he'd stop, go back, pick out a leg or an arm that somehow wasn't suitable and take it back in with him. Ciartan remembered wondering what on earth he wanted with a load of old bones, and where they'd all come from. When the barrow was full-overfilled by the look of it, with femurs and tibiae balanced on top of the load, wobbling ominously as the porter lifted the handles-Potto pushed the door to and followed the porter back in the direction of the lodge.

Deductions: well, for one thing Potto was buying these bones by the barrowload, hence his anxiety to cram in as much as possible; and of course they made bottons out of bone, and Potto was a button-maker. Beyond that, however, it was a mystery; and it stayed that way for a long time, until one day Elaos and Cordo had been talking about something, while they were all hanging about in Hall waiting for a class to begin, and somehow the conversation had come round to how the Order disposed of the remains of students who'd failed their year-end practicals. Cordo was saying how he'd sneaked out to look at the graveyard out back, and how he'd done a few sums, and there simply wasn't room in the burial plot for more than five or six years' worth of dead novices; and Elaos had replied, well, of course not; they only leave them in there for a few years, long enough to compost down nicely, and then they dig them up again, bleach the bones and store them in the ossiary Memories of memories, recalled in dreams; and here he was (in the place where novices weren't supposed to go but where most of them ended up anyhow). A large place, like a vault, with a high roof, plain, the air musty, the smell not very nice. Very much like a woodshed, with the bones all carefully stacked to make the best use of the space available: against one wall a tall heap of legs; on the other side, arms, ribcages, pelvises; in the middle a pyramid of skulls, all facing the same way, like a good display of turnips in the grocery market down in the lower town; fat oak-staved barrels full of finger and toe joints. The most efficient way to break down and store what remained of the human body after everything that could be stripped out was gone; no way to tell one person's bones apart from another's or figure out which arm had gone in which socket, which skull had once fitted on which spine. All memory purged; nothing left but basics, components, scrap, the raw materials for the celebrated Potto range of buttons for all occasions.

(He wondered: if I was a god, do you think I could piece all these bits back together again, bodge up a new race of men and women to populate some derelict world somewhere? Like a faker, a dishonest tradesman; sling them back together again any old how, smear on a bit of flesh and a coat of skin, hair, eyes, pass them off as genuine human beings? What would come of that, he wondered: a head from one life grafted onto a neck from another, a farmer's hands on a blacksmith's arms slotted into a monk's shoulders, capped off with the head of a soldier and the legs of a charcoal-burner. Poor bloody fool wouldn't know what day of the week it was-)

And here he was again. He stood for a while looking at the racks and rows and stacks, then knelt down and picked something up off the floor: a sword, a raider backsabre, its blade crusted with rust and dried blood. He gave it a cursory examination, then slipped off his cloak, wrapped the sword up in a bundle, tucked it under his arm He woke up abruptly. 'Gain?' he called out. No reply. Well, Aciava was probably asleep. 'Gain? Wake up, will you, I need to ask you something.'

Still no reply; but he heard a door creak open, then shut. 'What're you making that racket for?'

He recognised the voice but couldn't put a name to it (a stack of voices on one side of the room, names on the other). Some foundryman.

'Sorry,' he said. 'Is he asleep?'

'Is who asleep?'

'Gain. The other bloke, in the other bed there.'

The stranger laughed. 'He's gone, mate. No, not dead,' he added. 'He's been moved out-orders. Cart rolled up an hour or so ago. Soldiers. They took him off somewhere.'