Memory

Chapter Nine

According to Galand Dev, it was foolproof. Nothing could possibly go wrong-which was just as well, considering how far behind schedule they were, and how ghastly and terrible the news was from outside. He wouldn't explain the last part of that, but the name Feron Amathy featured prominently in all the rumours; the Amathy house was on the move, had openly declared war on the government, had crossed the bay with an enormous army, had stormed Torcea with horrendous loss of life, was besieging the Emperor in the palace, depending on who you listened to and how long you managed to keep your attention from wandering.

Galand Dev, with Spenno's highly qualified approval, had designed a new furnace. There was a deep pit, in which the mould, properly baked and cured, stood on its end. The pit was lined with two courses of brick, so that the heat from the filled moulds wouldn't dry out the earth and cause a cave-in; the props were thick iron posts, not timber. Over the pit they'd built a tall crane, to lower the moulds and hold them while they were being aligned. Once the moulds were in place, the pit was filled up with handspan-thick layers of slightly damp earth, tamped down with bronze weights (gently heated so the earth wouldn't stick to them) until it was compressed to the point where it was hard work to stick a knife blade into it further than an inch. Each layer was topped off with an inch-depth of potsherds. All this had to be done quickly, so that the damp from the earth wouldn't seep into the bone-dry moulds and spoil them, so everybody took a hand-even Brigadier Muno and his immaculately dressed staff, who made a point of kneeling on sacks to save the knees of their trousers from irreversible ruin.

The furnace itself was a tall brick tower with a ground-level square opening on one side. The firebox, packed with alternating layers of charcoal and cordwood (elm, birch, and beechwood only), was under the furnace floor. Ten double-action bellows, each made from four full hides, blasted up through, forcing the flame through the firehole into the furnace chamber (circular, nine feet across, flat-bottomed), where it played on the carefully proportioned mixture of scrap and virgin bronze-nine parts copper, one part tin-from all sides, to ensure an even, pure melt. To prepare the furnace for the first melt it had been charged and fired and left to burn gently for three days, to dry out the fireclay without risk of cracking. Galand Dev reckoned it would handle ten tons of bronze easily, twelve at a pinch. When the melt was perfect-after three fluxings and skimmings to draw off the slag; when a pine log thrown onto the surface floated, with no bubbles coming up through the glowing yellow pool, until it burned away to cinders, which spat up from the meniscus with no bronze clinging to them (essential, according to Spenno and his book), and when a greenish-white cloud rose off the melt and hung a few inches above the surface-a weir in the furnace wall could be drawn open and the molten bronze allowed to flow down the shallow incline of a brick-and-clay race (carefully heated by a long bed of glowing coals raked out from the furnace) that fed the in-gate of the mould. In theory, according to Galand Dev. Assuming it didn't rain once the furnace was running, in which case the whole thing would probably blow up.

The entire workforce had been toiling day and night to get it built. Now it was finished, dressed, dried, cured, fettled, and for some reason nobody was in any hurry to try it out. Spenno was sitting on a barrel next to the mould pit, staring up at the lead-grey clouds, as if willing it to start raining. Galand Dev was rumoured to be confined to the latrines by a severe case of terror, with Brigadier Muno standing over him demanding to know if he was done yet. Messengers from Falcata and Torcea were arriving practically on the hour with furious demands for progress reports. Fifty tons of new charcoal had come in from the colliers' camp (but there was nowhere to put it, so they'd shovelled it off their carts into a huge pile in the middle of the yard and left it there). Scouts sent out at dawn rode in at noon to say it was raining at Ang Chirra but sunny and warm at Tin, and the wind was either northerly, southerly, easterly or westerly, depending on who you chose to believe.

'Pity you aren't fit to be up and about yet,' Chiruwa was saying. 'You'll miss the fun.'

Poldarn looked at him. 'What, you mean when it starts pissing it down once the furnace is at full heat, and the whole lot goes up? I think I'd rather be in here, thanks.'

Chiruwa shrugged. 'They're talking about roofing it over,' he said, 'only they're worried that with all that heat going up, the roof'd catch fire and come down on the pit. Makes you wonder, actually, whose bright idea it was to do all this in the wettest place in the empire, in the rainy season.'

'There'll have been a good reason,' Poldarn replied. 'You've got to have faith, that's all.' And the matter is closed, he thought, and I have no opinion on it.

'Maybe,' Chiruwa said. 'Here, did you ever find out what became of that bloke, the one you pulled out of the cave-in? He was in here with you, and then he left.'

'I was hoping you could tell me,' Poldarn replied.

Chiruwa shook his head. 'Friend of yours, was he?'

'I knew him years ago,' Poldarn said, wondering if he was telling the truth. 'I wouldn't call him a friend, though. Just someone I knew.'

'You risked your neck getting him out of there, though,' Chiruwa said. 'Bloody impressive, that was. I wouldn't have done it. Got more sense.'

'I never said I was intelligent,' Poldarn replied. 'Any idea when I'm likely to be getting out of here? They were supposed to be fetching a doctor from Falcata, but nobody's said anything.'

'Roads are still bad,' Chiruwa told him, 'though all these messengers from the army and the bosses over to Torcea don't seem to be having much trouble getting through. You're looking better, I must say. You were a right bloody mess when they fished you out of there. Mind, if I were you I wouldn't count on winning any beauty contests from now on, and pulling birds is going to be a problem, unless they're blind.'

'I was wondering about that,' Poldarn said mildly. 'They said my face got a bit scorched-'

'Trying not to worry you, I expect,' Chiruwa said. 'Next time I come visiting, I'll fetch along a mirror or something. I mean, a bloke's got a right to know.'

On that cheerful note, he left and went back to work; they were going to dress out the mould one more time, just to be on the safe side. Poldarn lay still for a while, then reached out and felt for his book, Concerning Various Matters. There wasn't really enough light in the shed, so he could only read for a short while before his head began to hurt; even so, he was three-quarters of the way through. It was very hard going, most of it about things that didn't interest him in the least.

He found his place. He'd just finished reaping machine, to build; a bizarre contraption involving long, sharp blades attached to the spokes of an enormous wheel, driven through a gear-train by four oxen on a treadmill. He hoped very much that nobody had ever tried to build one; it sounded rather more dangerous than a squadron of attacking cavalry.

Recurrence, eternal. He frowned. Even harder going than the designs for labour-saving devices were the philosophical and religious bits, and he considered skipping ahead to red spot, on cabbages, to eradicate. But he had nothing better to do, and there was a reasonable chance that recurrence, eternal might send him off to sleep.

Recurrence, eternal, he read. It is a precept of religion that nothing happens for the first time; that all learning is recollection; that the perfect draw is perfect because it has already taken place. Oh for pity's sake, Poldarn thought, but he carried on reading anyway. The argument runs that in religion everything progresses to a state of perfection (q.v.) in which further improvement is impossible, whereas outside of religion everything tends to a state of dissolution, in which no further deterioration or decay is possible, e.g. decomposition of organic material, erosion of rock into dust, reduction by fire of solid material to smoke and ash; the two final states, perfection and dissolution, being parallel and essentially the same in nature, though not inform or quality. Religion predicates that, since the world is over five thousand years old (see gods, origin of; world, age of; creation, history of), inevitably both processes-progress and decline-must by now have run their full course and be complete, in which case it necessarily follows that the material world as we encounter it is made up of the end products of said processes, namely religion (the perfected state) and that which is outside religion (the declined state, chaos) and that all human experience is therefore merely recollection of incidents that have occurred during the course of one of the two said processes, remembered out of context, as if in a vision, hallucination, prophesy, nightmare or dream. This conclusion is expressed in religion in the form of the divine Poldarn, who will return at the end of all things-which has, of course, already taken place at some unspecified point in the past-to destroy the world and replace it with perfection (namely the state of affairs currently pertaining, i.e. in religion). In applied religion, perfection is expressed in the draw, where constant repetition during training and practice eliminates the act of drawing in the moment at which the intention is formed, so that the sword has already left the scabbard as soon as the hand moves towards it. In observed religion (see ethics, applied) the process of dissolution is expressed in the reduction of materials, e.g. by rotting, weathering, burning, and the process of perfection is expressed as surviving that of dissolution in the perfection of reduced materials, e.g. by fire, e.g. sand to glass, wood to charcoal, ore to metal; essential religion is expressed in the salvation of reduced materials, e.g. scrap reshaped into new objects; the latter giving rise to the so-called essential paradox, whereby salvation can only occur where memory is destroyed in salvaged materials (i.e. when they lose their old shape and are given a new one), the paradox being that the superior or religious process of perfection is thus observed to follow and be dependent upon the inferior or secular process of destruction. This paradox is most usually expressed in the image of the burned scavenger.

Poldarn wasn't quite sure he followed that, but he couldn't be bothered to go back and read it again; if Spenno spent all his time reading this idiotic book, he thought, no wonder he's barking mad. He turned down the corner of the page and put the book where he could reach it again once his head had stopped hurting.

It hadn't done its job, in any case; he'd only bothered with it in the hope that it'd distract his mind from going over once again what Gain Aciava had told him, and the snatches of what he assumed were memories that stayed with him when he woke up from dreams. As for Gain Aciava himself, whisked away in a cart by soldiers-arrested? Recalled? Rescued?

I'd run away, Poldarn thought, if only they'd let me up out of this bed.

The very least of his concerns was missing the inaugural melt and pour of Galand Dev's utterly foolproof new furnace; but Chiruwa came by a certain time later (how long, Poldarn had no idea; days passed, and he'd long since lost track of them) with the latest news. A fifteen-inch crack had appeared in the firebox wall; the prime suspect was non-homogeneous clay, but birchwood charcoal was also under suspicion. Galand Dev and Spenno had almost but not quite come to blows over the question of whether it could be salvaged or whether they'd have to tear the whole thing down and start again.

A certain time after that, Banspati the foreman came to see him.

'What're you doing still in bed?' he demanded. 'You look just fine to me.'

'Oh,' Poldarn replied. 'That's good. Does that mean I can get up?'

Banspati thought for a moment. 'They were supposed to be getting a doctor in from Falcata,' he said, 'but I don't know what became of that idea. Do you feel all right?'

'More or less,' Poldarn replied. 'But I don't really know what's going on under all these bandages. Do you think I could take them off and have a look?'

Banspati seemed unwilling to commit himself. He wasn't a doctor, he pointed out.

'Well,' Poldarn suggested, 'how'd it be if I said it was all right?'

'You aren't a doctor either.'

'I could be,' Poldarn said, 'for all either of us know.'

Banspati didn't seem very impressed with that line of reasoning. 'Maybe you should just stay put till the doctor gets here,' he said. 'I mean, it's been weeks since they were going to send for him, so he could arrive any day now.'

'So he was sent for, then.'

'They were going to send for one,' Banspati replied.

'But you don't actually know whether they ever got round to it?'

Banspati scowled. 'I'm only the bloody foreman,' he protested. 'I can't do every single fucking thing myself, can I? Besides, you're still alive, so what're you cribbing about? If what they say about the doctors up Falcata's right, he'd have killed you for sure.'

In the end they compromised, as men of goodwill always do when their interests coincide; Poldarn was to stay in bed until the next morning, after which he was at liberty to get up, take off his bandages (entirely at his own risk, needless to say) and report for work. If he was still alive at the end of his shift, he could consider himself officially better.

Perhaps it was the effort of arguing the toss with the foreman; Poldarn slept well, without dreaming, and woke up feeling strong and cheerful. His legs felt unsteady, calflike, after so many weeks of disuse, but he refused to indulge them, and walked awkwardly up and down the shed until they began to regain their memory. Once he was fairly confident that he could make it across the yard without falling over, he sat down on an empty barrel and unwrapped the bandages on his hands.

His skin felt cold without them, but it was still there; white and unnaturally smooth in places, extremely sensitive. He flexed his fingers until he could extend them without discomfort. Everything seemed to be in order; business as usual.

It took him a while to find the knot that secured the bandage wrapped round his face; it was at the back of his head, cunningly placed so as to be almost inaccessible (and he was clumsy with knots, he discovered). He picked at it for a while until he noticed a small knife, rusty and neglected, lying on the floor a few yards away. It was blunt too, but sharp enough to saw through the knot, eventually. The bandage was stiff, as though it had been starched. Once again, these was a distinct chill on his skin once it had gone. No matter.

The daylight hurt his eyes, even though the sky was black and grey-still the rainy season, then, and no comfort for Galand Dev, with his potentially self-destructive furnace. But the air smelled wonderfully fresh, and most of all, different. Poldarn grinned as he walked slowly across the yard, heading for the small stream that fed off the river, just below the mud-diggings.

He found a place where the stream ran between broad, flat rocks. Ferns had somehow found a footing there, and their shade had attracted moss, deep and soft. Where the stream fell from one rock to another there was a shallow pool about a handspan deep. He knelt down-knees grudging and rusty-and looked at his reflection.

Strange, he thought. It would've been a shock if he'd known the story that went with his old face, which wasn't there any more. Instead there was white shiny skin, smooth as fine clay carefully levelled and worked flawless by the tip of the sculptor's finger; a fine setting for a pair of huge round eyes, and between them a melted, featureless nose. White and flat, almost transparent; wasn't that the way ghosts were supposed to look? It was a human face made by someone who'd never actually seen one, working from a rough sketch and a vague verbal description.

The so-called essential paradox, he thought, expressed in the image of the burned scavenger. Now if only this had happened a while ago, that day when he'd pulled himself out of the mud beside another river, how convenient that would've been; nobody would have recognised him, and the man he'd used to be (Gain Aciava's old fellow-student, Xipho Dorunoxy's despised admirer, Ciartan Torstenson of Haldersness) would have been lost, like unwanted memory bleached out of good salvageable material. Salvage and salvation, the essential paradox, or whatever.

He sat down, made himself comfortable. Somewhere at the back of his mind there was the faint recollection of an old story he'd heard as a child, about the gods' mirror, in which a man can see himself as he truly is, not as he wants to be seen or as others insist on seeing him. A wonderfully useful piece of kit for a god, or a king, or a prosperous man of business: hang it on the wall behind the chair where your guests sit down, and you'll never again be troubled by shape-shifters, goblins and elves disguised as humans, princesses cruelly enchanted to look like dairymaids, improvident bankrupts wearing expensive clothes when they come to borrow money. If only he'd had such a mirror (a mirror such as this) on the day when he'd woken up in the bloody mud, with only dead men for company, he could have looked himself in the eye, seen who he really was, seen something rather like this (And wouldn't it be fine if men and women could be melted down, when the quality of their raw material had become tainted with a bad memory; if you could melt flesh in Galand Dev's completely and utterly reliable furnace, flux it and rake it and flux it again to draw off the past, pour it into a carefully cured and fettled mould and turn out a high-class flawless casting every single time: featureless, pearly white, translucent.)

Would anybody recognise him now, he wondered. He hadn't been around for a while, and in a place where people came and went, it was easy to forget a face. He watched himself grinning, as it occurred to him that if he wanted, he could simply walk out of his life and into a new one, no longer tethered to his past by his face No, he couldn't, of course; nobody was allowed to leave the compound without express permission from Brigadier Muno. He was surprised at how disappointed he felt. And of course it wouldn't be long before everybody in the place figured it out, equated the brave Poldarn who'd been horribly burned rescuing a fellow worker with the pearl-faced creature who'd be so very hard to miss. Talk about your paradoxes of religion; he'd never been more immediately recognisable in his life.

'Bloody hell.' He turned round to see who'd spoken. He knew the face, couldn't put a name to it. 'What the fuck happened to you?'

Poldarn didn't answer, and he had a feeling it'd be unkind to smile.

'Oh,' said the man whose name had slipped his mind. 'It's you, isn't it? Only I didn't recognise you there for a moment. So,' the man went on, taking a deep breath, 'you're up and about, then.'

'Apparently,' Poldarn said.

'You feeling all right, then? In yourself, I mean.'

Poldarn shrugged. 'Never felt better in myself in my life. That I can remember,' he added.

'Well, that's good.' The poor fool was trying not to stare. 'There was supposed to be a doctor coming up from Falcata, but I don't suppose he could've done anything.'

'He could've killed me,' Poldarn replied. 'That's what everybody keeps telling me, anyhow. I imagine it's all for the best, really.'

'Right,' the man said. 'Good attitude. And you know what it's like, sooner or later people'll get used to any bloody thing.'

'I'm sure,' Poldarn said. 'By the way, do you happen to know what became of Gain Aciava?'

'Who?'

'Gain Aciava. The man I rescued.'

The man frowned. 'That wasn't his name,' he said. 'But the bloke you pulled out from under the furnace, when you got-well, anyway, him. They came and picked him up. Soldiers, is what I heard.'

'Proper soldiers?' Poldarn tried to think of the right word. 'Regular troops, from Torcea or wherever?'

The man shrugged. 'Search me,' he said. 'I didn't see them myself, and all I heard was soldiers, in a cart. There's been so many bloody soldiers in and out of here since this Poldarn's Flute thing started, you lose track. Anyhow, that's all I know; bunch of soldiers came in and arrested the bugger, and they took him away.'

'Arrested him,' Poldarn repeated.

The man nodded. 'Or they were taking him for questioning, or he'd been sent for. Nobody tells you anything around here any more. You know what, if I could get out of here I bloody would. It's getting to be a right misery.'

'Thanks, anyway,' Poldarn replied. 'How's the job coming along, by the way? Banspati told me to report for work today, but I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing.'

The man looked vaguely alarmed. 'You don't want to go starting work yet,' he said, 'not when you're only just back up and about. Besides, there's bugger-all to do. They're still faffing about trying to decide if they can fix the crack in the firebox. You heard about that?'

Poldarn nodded. 'So what's everybody else doing?'

'Standing about, mostly. I got pissed off and came on. Waste of time, if you ask me, the whole bloody thing.'

'No desperate panic, all hands on deck, that sort of thing?'

It seemed to take the man a while to figure out what Poldarn was trying to say. 'Don't reckon so,' he replied eventually. 'So if you're not feeling a hundred and ten per cent, I'd not bother going in if I were you. Most like you'd only get in the way.'

'Thanks,' Poldarn said graciously.

That still left him with the problem of finding something to do. He'd had quite enough of reading, given that as far as he was aware the only books in the whole camp were two copies of Concerning Various Matters. He wasn't wanted at work, which wasn't happening anyway. He wasn't hungry or tired, and judging by the way the man whose name he couldn't remember had reacted at the sight of him, he could forget about socialising, too. A leisurely walk round the inside of the perimeter fence would take him a quarter of an hour. That didn't really leave much.

He was seriously considering going back to the shed and getting back into bed when someone called out to him. He turned round, bracing himself for a similar reaction to the one he'd just received.

The newcomer was Spenno, the pattern-maker; and if he'd noticed anything different about Poldarn since the last time he'd seen him, he didn't show it. Poldarn had only spoken to him a dozen times since he'd been at Dui Chirra; but Spenno was acting as if he'd been looking for him.

'So you're up and about, then,' Spenno said. 'Feeling better?'

'More or less,' Poldarn replied. 'How's it going?'

'Isn't,' Spenno said. 'I keep telling them, whole lot's got to come down, says so in the book, but will they listen?

Hell as like. And they call themselves engineers. Whole lot of 'em between them couldn't peel a carrot.'

Poldarn shrugged. 'Must be pretty trying for you,' he said.

'You get used to it.' Spenno frowned, as if trying to remember what he'd been meaning to say. 'Anyhow,' he went on, 'I want your opinion about something, if you've got a moment.'

A moment; which doesn't exist in religion. 'Sure,' Poldarn said. 'But I don't imagine I can be much use to you. I'm just unskilled labour around here. Unless,' he said, remembering, 'it's a blacksmithing job.'

But Spenno shook his head. 'Nothing like that,' he said. 'No, it's rather more important than that. I need to know, you see, who's going to win the war.'

Poldarn looked at him. 'What war?' he asked.

Spenno didn't appear to have heard him. 'It's pretty fundamental, really,' he went on. 'I mean, here we are, making these bloody terrible things; once I've managed to get through to that clown Galand Dev, anyhow. But we'll get there in the end, no doubt about it. And then the question arises: once they're made and proved and finished and all, who're they going to get pointed at? Got to look at the whole picture, see. Otherwise I'm simply not doing my job.'

Spenno didn't look like he was drunk, or as if he'd been breathing in the fumes off the etching tank. 'I'm sorry,' Poldarn said cautiously, 'I don't know anything apart from what we were all told. You could ask Brigadier Muno, but I don't imagine-'

But Spenno smiled. 'Of course you know,' he said. 'I mean, it's why you're here, isn't it? You know, when you first showed up asking for a job, I couldn't figure for the life of me what you'd be wanting with an outfit that just made bells. Not your line at all. I thought, surely he'd be headed straight for Torcea, or else he'd have stayed out west, in the Bohec valley, where it all seemed to be happening. I couldn't imagine what it had to do with us-I mean eventually, yes, sooner or later it'd be here as well as everywhere else, but not yet, if you see what I mean. But anyway, you looked like you'd rather be left alone, and for crying out loud, it's not my place to tell you your job-I reckoned you had your reasons and you'd just get on with doing what you had to do. And then this all started; and so of course I knew, straight away; where else would you be? Which is why,' he went on with a gentle sigh, 'I haven't really bothered about this much before, since in the long run it's all a bit academic anyway. But like I said, you've got to look at the whole picture; and the way I figure it is, surely once it's all over and you've done your thing and everything's-well, you know; surely what a person did, you know, which side he was on in this war, whether he was one of the good guys, it's going to decide who makes it and who doesn't-afterwards, I mean. Assuming there is an afterwards, of course, and I know, everything'll be completely different, not like anything we can understand. But there'll be something, there's got to be, and I'm buggered if I'm going to lose out on my chance of that just because these Poldarn's Flute things got pointed at the wrong bunch of people. Now I've been assuming that because we're, well, the government, call it what you like, that we've got to be the good guys and whoever we smash to bits with these flute things must be the enemy, the bad people. But now we're so close, and suddenly it's all about to happen-well, you can't blame me for checking up, can you? It's just common sense, really, and it doesn't hurt to ask, just so as to be sure.'

'I'm very sorry,' Poldarn said quietly, 'I haven't got the faintest idea what you're talking about.'

Spenno grinned. 'I know,' he said. 'You aren't allowed to say. I appreciate that; I mean, if you go around telling all and sundry, the whole thing falls flat on its face. But it's all right, I don't suppose anybody knows but me-well, maybe Chaplain Cleapho, after all he's head of religion, isn't he? And the monks, the ones you spared at Deymeson, they'd know, of course; and your priestess, her in the cart with you at Cric. But people don't know-especially now, when they won't be able to recognise you any more. And obviously, I won't breathe a word to a soul. So there's no harm in telling me, is there, Poldarn?'

It took some time to sink in. Then he replied, 'No, you're wrong. It's not like that at all. It was just a trick, a confidence trick, a scam. To cheat the people in the villages into giving us food. And we only did it the one time, for crying out loud.'

This time Spenno seemed just a little bit offended. 'Don't worry,' he said. 'That's fine. I understand. I suppose you can't go making exceptions, even for people you know. Must be hard enough as it is, in your position. But it's not like I was asking for, well, special treatment when the time comes, anything like that. I just wanted to know what's the right thing to do. No harm in that, surely? I mean, if I'm trying to do the fight thing, then aren't we both on the same side?' He grinned weakly. 'Or would that be telling, too?'

For some reason, Poldarn felt it was important that Spenno be made to understand. 'Please,' he said, 'you've got to believe me. It was all just pretending, to get money and food out of those people. And Copis, the priestess, she wasn't even-' He stopped. Wasn't even a real fraud didn't sound right, and he couldn't tell the truth about why she'd been sent with him, even assuming that he knew what the truth was. 'She was only pretending,' he said. 'Really, she'd been sent by the sword-monks, on some mission or other-'

'Well, of course,' Spenno said, now distinctly annoyed. 'Of course. They're in charge of religion, it's their responsibility, of course they'd choose the priestess. Look, obviously I've said the wrong thing, but I wasn't to know, was I? All I ask is, you won't hold it against me, right?'

Poldarn shook his head. 'You're all wrong about this,' he said. Then something occurred to him. 'But how did you know that was me?' he asked. 'Did you see us, at Cric?'

'No, of course not, I was here. But I recognised you.'

'How the hell could you do that? I've never been here before-' He stopped. 'At least, I don't think so. Had you seen me before-before I turned up here for work, I mean?'

Now Spenno was looking at him, as if he was the one not making sense. 'I'd never seen you before in my life.'

'But you said you recognised me.'

'Well, of course. I'm not blind, you know.' Spenno was getting angry. 'I've read the book, see. So of course-'

'Book?' Book. Concerning Various Matters. 'Where the hell does it say in the book-?'

'Oh, for pity's sake.' Suddenly the book was in Spenno's hand-nobody had ever seen where he kept it, concealed somewhere inside his raggedy old coat. 'Here, book nine, chapter sixty-seven, lines forty-one to ninety-five.' The book was open; Poldarn reached for it but Spenno pulled it away. Of course, nobody was ever allowed to touch the book. And Poldarn's copy was back in the shed.

'You recognised me,' Poldarn said, 'because of something in the book?'

'That's what I said.'

'Fine. Would you mind reading it out for me?'

'Don't be daft,' Spenno replied, as though Poldarn was making fun of him. 'You know as well as I do, naturally; better. Well,' he added, making a show of looking up at the sun, 'I'd better be getting on, we're very busy at the moment, obviously. I'm sorry about saying the wrong thing, but really, I didn't mean anything by it. You do believe me, don't you?'

Spenno was staring hard at him. 'Yes,' Poldarn said, 'of course. And no, I won't hold it against you, it's perfectly all right.'

'Thanks.' Spenno sounded relieved. 'And I just want you to know: if I have got it wrong and the government people, the Empire, they aren't the good guys-well, I was only trying to do what's right, if that counts for anything. Don't suppose it does, it's not how things work. But…' A look of pain crossed his face. 'Damn it, how the hell are you supposed to know? I mean, it's so important, you'd think there'd be a way you could know for sure. Still.' He seemed to sag a little, as if he was giving up. 'There'll be a good reason. After all, it's all up to you, isn't it?'

Spenno closed the book and vanished it into his coat. Poldarn took a deep breath, then let it go.

'I'm sorry,' he said, not quite sure what he was apologising for.

'That's all right. Not your fault, after all.'

For some reason, Poldarn was pleased to hear Spenno say that. He went back to the shed, found the book and tried to remember the reference Spenno had quoted at him. But he must've remembered it wrong, because all he found was a detailed description of the proper method of refining curing salt from goats' urine, using a simple refractory made from an old bucket.

It was dark: dark as a bag, dark as twelve feet down a well shaft, dark as crows' feathers. 'This is so stupid'-Xipho's voice, a tiny beacon of context in so much darkness. 'If we get caught, they're going to throw us out-'

'Shut up, Xipho, for the gods' sakes.' Cordo: Monachus Cordomine, his old schoolfriend. 'It's around here somewhere, we've just got to-Right. Lamp.'

Short, deadly silence. 'Well, I haven't got it.'

'What?'

'I thought you were bringing it.'

'Oh, for fuck's sake-'

A click; familiar sound, flint and steel. A tiny flare of light illuminating a face. Interesting: a face (he realised) that no longer existed, because of the essential paradox. Interesting, because these days he couldn't get a fire lit to save his life.

'It's all right,' he heard himself say, 'I brought one. Knew you three couldn't be trusted.'

'Speak for yourself.' Gain Aciava.

'Will you all shut up.' Xipho, extremely tense. He'd got the tinder going, he was lighting the lamp. At least, it was too dark to see himself doing it, but he could remember lighting it 'Yes!' Cordo, excited; and the lamplight suddenly blossomed, revealing his face, and Xipho's, and Gain's, and his own. 'This is it,' Cordo was saying. 'We've cracked it.'

'That'll bloody do,' Gain hissed. 'Just grab the book and let's get out of here.'

The lamp moved, its circle of light impinging on the spines of several books. 'You sure this is the right shelf?' he heard himself say. 'Only-'

'Here!' Cordo, his voice suddenly brittle. 'Look.' The lamplight picked out a certain book and flowed into the embossed lettering on the spine, filling it like molten bronze poured into a mould. Concerning Various Matters,

'Brilliant,' Gain muttered. 'It'd bloody well better be worth all this aggravation, is all.'

'Worth it?' His own voice, recklessly loud. 'Are you out of your tiny mind? This is it, this is the book. Worth it, he says-'

'It's chained.'

Xipho's voice, dull and final as the sound of the arrow that hits you. Absolute silence.

'What do you mean, chained?' Gain said at last.

'I mean it's fucking chained,' Xipho replied, suddenly shrill. 'Like there's a stupid great big chain bolted to the shelf, to stop you taking the book away. Look!' Her hand inside the light circle, her fingers lifting a solid-looking brown steel chain that hung from the top of the book's spine.

'Shit.'

'Oh well,' Cordo said, 'that's that, then. Waste of bloody time.'

'Of all the idiots,' Xipho hissed. 'How the hell could you not've noticed?'

His own voice, defensive: 'I only saw it for a moment, how was I supposed to know they're so bloody paranoid they chain the books to the wall? Pathetic. I mean-'

'Fine.' Gain's voice, suddenly heavy. 'Screw it, then. Let's get out of here.'

'You can't be serious.' Himself, angry, upset, cheated. 'After all we've been through getting here. We can't just turn round and give up because of a stupid little bit of chain.'

'What're you going to do, then?' Cordo, sarcastic. 'Chew through it with your little pointy teeth?'

'Oh, come on,' he heard himself reply. 'We're supposed to be bloody sword-monks, Deymeson's finest. Little bit of chain's not going to stop us.'

Hesitant silence; the light centred around the book, with only Xipho's hand visible above the lamp. 'Well,' said Cordo eventually, 'we can't cut through it, not without a file.'

'File wouldn't help.' Gain, sounding gloomy. 'Probably hardened steel.'

'That's right, look on the fucking bright side.' Himself, unreasonably angry. 'Look, all that's holding it is this little staple-'

'This big staple,' Xipho corrected him, 'driven into solid oak.'

'All right,' he replied, 'so how about the other end of the chain? Bring that lamp closer, I want to see how it's attached to the book.'

Hesitation again; then the lamplight circle contracting, getting brighter as it got smaller. 'See?' His own voice, cockily triumphant. 'All we've got to do is slit up through the spine and the chain falls off.'

'You can't do that!' Xipho, as if he'd just suggested murder. 'Borrowing it's one thing, but you can't go cutting it up, that'd be-' Obviously she couldn't conceive of how bad it would be. That bad.

'Watch me.' He couldn't see, but could remember himself fishing one-handed in his sleeve for a little bone-handled folding knife; too clumsy with nerves to open it with just his fingernails, had to use both hands. 'Keep the lamp steady, will you? This leather's tough.'

'You can't-'

(Now, he remembered, now we're coming to the bad bit. I'd like to wake up now, please. Please? But the big black crow only shook its head: No, I want you to see this.)

The little knife blade sliding, sawing through the crumbling, tough leather; suddenly a chink, as the chain falls away and clunks against the shelf. 'Gotcha.' His own hiss of victory: 'Right, now let's get out of here, quick-'

He didn't need to watch the dream, because he could remember it perfectly well; so he closed his eyes, but the dream carried on behind them. Now I'm going to grab the book with both hands and pull; but it's wedged in tight between two big fat books, it doesn't want to come and I've just slit down the spine, I've got nothing to pull it out by.

So I grab hold as best I can, both forefingers and both thumbs, and I heave-and here's the book coming out in a hurry, and me staggering back. Here's me stumbling, bumping into Xipho; here's Xipho dropping the lamp. Here's where the lamp hits the floor, smashes. Here's where burning oil flies everywhere-the book in my hands, the other books on the shelf. Cordo's sleeve.

'You fucking idiot.' Gain, still under the impression that this is just a rotten accident, that the worst that can happen is that someone'll come and find us out. 'Now what're we going to do?'

Cordo, batting at his sleeve, but it's too hot for that, burns his skin. He screams, can't help it. Xipho, yelling 'Shut up!' Gain, trying to beat out the fire running up his friend's arm with his own sleeve drawn down over his hand. Nobody (except me) appreciating the true gravity of the situation; not just Cordo's sleeve, the whole fucking library is on fire That cold, sensible ability to assess a state of affairs and understand what's still possible, what's no longer possible. No longer possible to put out the fire, save the library or-regrettably-save Cordo; remember, the massive library doors are locked, the key's in the librarian's lodgings on the other side of the Great Cloister-Cordo and the library and Xipho and Gain and me, all smothered and burned to ash before the librarian can get here with it, even if he's running out of his front door now. As for scrambling back up the way they came, in through the skylight, impossible with a burning, screaming Cordo, but just possible without him-and then down the back wall into the deep shadows of the cloister, hidden from sight as everyone comes running with buckets and pails to fight the fire… Still possible (if Cordo is dispensed with) to save three out of four lives and get out of here, get back to the dormitory without getting found out.

Analysis: Cordo good as dead already, library beyond saving, but the three of us still capable of effective salvation.

'Come on,' he remembered himself saying. 'Back the way we came.'

'We can't'; Xipho, panicking. 'We can't get him up-'

'I know. Leave him. Now.'

Gain, lashing at Cordo with a burning book. Xipho likewise. Is it now too late to save them, too? Assessment: no, but action needed He remembered what he did next. Not the little knife this time; the big one, the one they laughed at him for carrying stuck down the side of his boot. Smooth draw, up, taking care to avoid getting burnt. One thrust into Cordo's side.

'Now leave him,' he heard himself say; and he remembered the looks on their faces 'You killed him.' Xipho, stunned.

'Yes.' His own voice. 'Now follow me.'

Born leader, me, he remembered thinking; maybe the first time it'd occurred to him that that was what he was born to do, lead others out of mortal peril. Of course, it had been his idea to steal the book in the first place; but the objective had been worthwhile, that stupid chain had just been sheer bad luck.

They'd hesitated, Gain and Xipho. But not for long. And the next day (by some miracle, none of them had telltale burns on their hands or faces and their burned clothes had been dumped over the wall into the cesspit, where self-respecting sword-monks would be too fastidious to think of looking) standing shocked, ashen-faced, gauntly silent, as Father Tutor broke the news to them: their friend Cordo, foolishly tried to break into the library, burned to death; the little Earwig sobbing (he'd refused to come with them, said it'd all end in tears; but at least he had the wit to keep his face shut in front of Father Tutor).

At least, Father Tutor was saying, at least they'd managed to save most of the books. But not (Father Tutor didn't say, but they knew) not the book, the one with all the answers in, unique, the only known copy, lost and gone irrecoverably for ever; memory consumed in fire, like the truth about Cordo He woke up, and as he stirred the book slid off him and hit the floor. He'd been reading about how to fix files in their handles using powdered rosin, and had fallen asleep. Not the most enthralling book in the world.

Outside-he poked his head round the shed door, wondering how long he'd been asleep. For the first time in days, people were moving about, even running. Curious, he couldn't help thinking; the last he'd heard was that Galand Dev had finally admitted that the crack in the firebox couldn't be mended, and so nothing could be done until the whole furnace was torn down and rebuilt. The furnace was still there, but now there was smoke pouring out of its chimney.

Oh well, he thought. Might as well go to work.

In the yard he ran into one of the old-timers, a small, shrivelled man who'd been hanging round Dui Chirra for decades. 'What's all this in aid of?' he asked, waving in the direction of the furnace.

The old man laughed. 'Where've you been?' he said. 'That short bugger' (Galand Dev, presumably), 'he's only gone and ordered a fire laid in. Spenno's shitting feathers but nobody's listening to him.'

'I thought he reckoned the whole thing'd crack up if they lit a fire,' Poldarn said.

'He was wrong, then,' the old man replied. 'Around about midnight he had the firehouse boys in there slapping cowshit and clay in the crack; laid in a bit of a fire just to cure it, and now they reckon it's good as new. Hasn't blown up yet, so they must've fixed it.'

'Oh,' Poldarn said. 'So, how far've they got?'

'Fire's been in full since dawn,' the old man told him, 'so it can't be far off ready to pour. Moulds are all in, so they can go as soon as he likes.'

Poldarn shrugged. 'So why the hurry-up all of a sudden?'

'Reckon the military's given Muno a boot up the arse,' the old man replied, with a grin. 'This way, if the whole lot goes up, he can say it wasn't his fault, he was only doing what he was told. But Spenno's in there cussing a blue streak, so maybe it'll work, at that.'

'Right,' Poldarn said. 'Suppose I'd better go and see if I can make myself useful.'

By the time he reached the furnace yard, there was a ring of men standing round watching. That they weren't entirely convinced of Galand Dev's success in patching the firebox was evident from the healthy amount of distance they were keeping. Poldarn nudged his way through to the front; he had an idea that even if the furnace blew, he'd probably be all right.

Apparently he'd only just made it in time; because as soon as he reached the front of the crowd, Spenno (directing the operation from on top of a tall pile of scrap bronze) put his fingers in his mouth and whistled, someone pulled a lever, and a dazzlingly white stream started to trickle out of the side of the furnace tower. It crawled like a burning worm down a short clay gutter, and disappeared into the in-gate of the mould. Immediately a large round cloud of steam lifted into the air and hung over the mould pit, but there was no eruption or explosion of airborne white-hot spatter; that aside, it was like watching the fire-stream pouring out of the breach in the volcano above Haldersness.

Everybody seemed to be cheering, as though all their problems were over. Obviously premature; there were any number of things that could still go wrong. Even so, and in spite of the fact that he'd contributed next to nothing to the project, Poldarn couldn't help feeling relieved, even strangely proud. Crazy, he thought; or maybe he just liked seeing things burn.

The actual pour lasted less than a minute. Once the mould was filled and the leverman had cut off the stream of liquid metal, there was nothing to do except wait for the casting to cool down. It'd be hours before the mould could be chipped off the casting, and until then there was nothing anybody could usefully do. He sighed, and threaded his way back through the crowd, who seemed to be in no hurry to disperse.

So that's that, Poldarn thought; big deal.

That was the moment when he made up his mind to get out. If there was any connection with what he'd just seen, he couldn't pin it down: it wasn't as though he'd cared enough about the project that he'd been waiting to see if it'd come out all right; he hadn't been hanging on just in case they needed him for something. But it was as if someone else, for once, had taken the irrevocable step, so that now he had the unaccustomed luxury of proceeding safe in the knowledge that this time it wouldn't be his fault-And where that came from, he had no idea.

Getting out of Dui Chirra wasn't going to be easy. A very quick, low-key reconnaissance was enough to tell him that: a ten-foot-high stockade, sentries on the gate, further sentries patrolling the perimeter, still others pulling lookout duty from the surrounding high points. Stowing away in an outbound cart wasn't a viable option; the sentries seemed to be working out their frustration at being cooped up in the lousiest posting in the Empire by spearing every handful of straw or bundle of rags that trundled through the gateway. The only vulnerable spot in the defences that Poldarn could see was the river, which came in and flowed out under two watergates at either end of the compound. But the idea of taking that route didn't appeal to him; if he could spot it, it was too obvious. There was, he vaguely remembered, a precept of religion on the subject.

It took him a day of nonchalant strolling, admiring the depth and ingenuity of Brigadier Muno's security arrangements, to remember that he had a stone-cold foolproof no-risk way-out buried in the pocket of his other coat-some kind of small badge or brooch, with a pin and a keeper on the back. Poldarn recalled what Muno Silsny had said about it: combination safe passage and get-out-of-trouble token; show it to a watch sergeant or a guard commander and unless he's got specific orders to the contrary from the Emperor or myself, he'll say sorry for troubling you and forget he ever saw you. Perfect, just what he needed-assuming that it was still valid, now that Muno Silsny was dead. He found it, stood it up on its pin on the palm of his hand and stared at it for a while. It looked like the sort of thing you could buy in Sansory market for a quarter, if you and your money were easily parted. Even so; only one way to find out.

It didn't take him long to pack: his one change of clothes, hat, blanket, the sword he'd nearly finished making, the book Gain had given him, the little axe he'd brought from Haldersness, an issue water-bottle and as many ration biscuits as he could cram into a medium-sized feed sack. In the other pocket of his good coat was Muno Silsny's other gift, the chunky gold ring that was supposed to be worth a nice, snug little farm. Having thought about it for a while, he decided that the best time of day for his departure would be somewhere around an hour before dawn, when the sentry on the gate would be thinking about being relieved and not getting involved in anything that might keep him from his bed a minute longer than necessary. The approach, he decided, should be as simple as possible 'Here,' said the sentry. 'Where d'you think you're going?'

'Out,' Poldarn replied, raising his hand and opening his fingers.

'What's that supposed to be, then?'

Look of pained surprise. 'You mean you don't know? All right, then, we'd better go and have a word with your sergeant.'

Bad-tempered sigh from the sentry, who waved to his colleague outside the gate to come and take his place for a moment; then inside the guardhouse to wake up the sergeant, who was asleep under three blankets and a heavy non-regulation coat.

'This one reckons he's got leave to go out,' the sentry said, 'only he hasn't got a pass or anything.'

The sergeant grunted and swung his bare legs to the floor. 'All right,' he said wearily, 'what's the story this time? It'd better be good, because-'

Poldarn held out his hand, opened his fingers once again. The sergeant stared, as if he'd just met his mother in a brothel.

'Fuck me,' he said softly. 'Haven't seen one of them since I was in Torcea.' He frowned. 'How do I know it's genuine?' he asked.

Poldarn clicked his tongue and dropped the brooch into the sergeant's hand. 'Mind you don't stab yourself on the pin,' he said. 'It's sharp.'

The sergeant turned it over a couple of times, then stood up quickly. 'Very sorry to have bothered you, sir,' he said. 'Just doing my job.'

'Fine,' Poldarn grunted, holding out his hand for the brooch. 'No need to tell anybody about this, is there?'

'Understood,' the sergeant snapped. 'Anybody asks, I never seen you in my life.'

And that was that: the gates swung to behind Poldarn, the outside sentry stood aside to let him pass, just as the first red gleam of dawn diluted the sky. Where next? he asked himself, as if it mattered. Falcata, presumably, not that he knew anything about the place. But from what he'd heard it sounded as though it was on the way to somewhere, and that was all he needed it to be.