Shadow

Chapter Eleven

The letter was still there; so was his sword. He jumped down from the cart and tried to trace the direction the horses had been driven off in from the hoofprints in the mud, but there was just a confused mess, open to various interpretations. He looked up and down the road, right and left; two choices, back to that old game again. This time at least, he had something to motivate him: the letter, a job to do, his duty to the Falx house, their trust in him… He didn't give a damn about the Falx house, but it made a pleasant change to have some reason to do something. On to Mael Bohec, then. Easy.

After he'd been walking for a couple of hours, he saw three men on horses coming down the road towards him. Not again, he thought, but when they were close enough for him to see more than an outline he relaxed. There was a large middle-aged man in a red cloak and a broad black felt hat, and two younger men in rather less gorgeous clothes who were almost certainly his sons; the older man was leading a packhorse, unladen (so the chances were that they were on their way home). 'Excuse me,' he called out, 'but can I buy your horse?'

That got their attention. The man in the red cloak introduced himself as Cobo Istin. The other two were Cobo this and Cobo that; Poldarn didn't catch their names, and he got the feeling he wasn't missing much. Yes, Cobo Istin said, he might entertain the idea, provided the price was right. (It was a rather sad horse; it didn't take much imagination to picture the look of amazed joy on the face of Cobo Istin's wife when her husband walked through the door and announced, 'Guess what, I've sold Dobbin!') When Poldarn offered him thirty quarters he said, 'Yes,' without thinking, and his hand shot out like a lizard's tongue to receive the money.

'We haven't got any spare tack,' Cobo Istin added mournfully as soon as his fingers had clamped tight around the coins. 'Otherwise we'd-'

'That's all right,' Poldarn replied. 'I can make up some sort of bridle out of the leading rein.' The expression in his eyes warned Cobo Istin that the leading rein was included in the price; Cobo let the missed opportunity pass with only a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth.

'By the way,' Poldarn continued, 'are you going to Sansory?'

'That's right.'

'Good. I want you to do me a favour. About an hour down the road, you'll find a cart with a dead body in it. When you get to Sansory, send someone over to the Falx house and let them know about it; it's their cart and their dead body. I can't go myself. I've got things to do.'

Cobo Istin looked at him as if to say, I knew this was too good to be true. 'Now just a moment,' he said.

'It's all right,' Poldarn sighed. 'Don't if you don't want to. But Falx Roisin usually pays ten per cent salvage when someone helps him get his stuff back. I'd have thought you'd have known that.'

He left Cobo Istin torn between the prospect of still more free money and the threat of getting involved; he felt slightly guilty about ruining the man's day, and he hoped Falx Roisin wouldn't react too noisily if Cobo did show up at the door and start asking for money.

Gotto had mentioned something about a village with an inn and other amenities of civilised life on the road one day out from Mael. Because the horse turned out to be rather less sad than it had looked, Poldarn arrived there just before sunset. The inn wasn't hard to find (it was the first building he came to in the village and it had INN written in big letters on a hanging sign over the door) and the innkeeper was delighted to see him and take his money; as a glimpse of another, entirely different way of living, in which things generally went all right and people were still there and alive the next day, it was all painfully tantalising. For his two and a half quarters he got a stall for the horse, a genuine bed in an otherwise empty room, and a bowl of bean and bacon soup that didn't taste bad at all.

It was raining when he woke up, but nothing horrible or even unusual happened to him all that day, and he reached Mael Bohec in the late afternoon. He'd been expecting it to be another Sansory-perhaps a little bigger, a little tidier, but basically the same sort of thing. Whether the reality of it came as a pleasant surprise or a shock, he wasn't sure for some time.

Mael Bohec started two or three miles from the walls and gates, at the point where the high, rolling moor dropped down into the flat river valley. Later, he learned that the place was known as the Crow's Nest, after the lookout platform on top of the mast of a ship; from there you could see right down the river as far as the point at which it bent round the foot of Streya, the range of tall, bare-topped hills that separated the Mael valley from Weal and the more favoured country to the west. What struck Poldarn first was the astonishing precision of the roads, walls and hedges of the rich garden country between himself and the city; they all ran for miles in perfectly straight lines, like marks scribed by a skilled craftsman on a sheet of brass. The fields and enclosures and the small woods that made up the chequerboard pattern all looked to be the same size as each other, and arranged in an orderly pattern-five fields down and you came to a hedged lane, five fields across and you came to a drain or a rine; every fifteen fields along, a road, every thirty fields down each road a building; every third field diagonal was fallow, every twelfth field a wood. In the middle of the chequerboard was the perfectly square city, with a gate in the middle of each wall flanked by two identical hexagonal towers and a great square tower on each corner. Even the river was straight, and worked carefully into the pattern so as not to offend regularity or symmetry, since it was balanced on the northern side by the road and a thick line of trees. Whoever designed this place, Poldarn couldn't help thinking, couldn't draw a curve to save his life.

As he went further down the slope, he lost sight of the pattern, and of course it wasn't visible at all once he reached the plain, at which point the flat land on either side of the road became invisible and there was nothing to see except the marching column of trees to his left and the untidy, cloud-smudged hills to the right; all he could do was carry the pattern in his mind and believe in what he'd seen, trusting his memory however improbable it might seem.

He remembered the right-angled spur that left the road and led straight to the northern gate; he took the turning when it presented itself and found himself squarely facing the wall about a mile in front of him, with the two square towers visible at the ends, the gate directly ahead of him in the middle. A blind man could have walked from the road junction to the gate without fear of straying, provided he could walk in a straight line and assuming nobody tripped him up or ran him over.

That would be a major assumption; the spur was crowded with people, on foot, on horseback or in carts and wagons. On the right-hand side of the highway, everybody was heading towards the city, on the left-hand side, they were all coming away from it, so that anybody stupid enough to try walking down the middle would've been cut neatly in two, as by a pair of shears. Virtually all the people, coming and going, were men; most of them were carrying something or leading pack mules or driving carts with broad beds and high sides, laden or unladen, all of them on business, all knowing where they were going and what they were meant to be doing. It was strange, comic, wonderful, intimidating and not a bit like Sansory.

It took him an hour to cover the last hundred yards or so to the gate. The cause of the hold-up turned out to be soldiers, who were searching carts, turning out the contents of panniers and saddlebags, and generally making nuisances of themselves. 'Is it always like this?' he asked the man next to him.

'Or worse,' the man replied. 'It's a Guild town, what do you expect?'

Not wanting to show his ignorance, he didn't ask for an explanation; instead he nodded and sighed, which seemed to do the trick. When it was his turn the soldiers waved him through, and he passed under the gatehouse, past the lodge and out into the foregate.

Inside the walls, it looked a little more like Sansory: the same crowds of people, the same slow bustle as they tried to filter through the narrow places, the same awkwardness and tension. It didn't take him long to start noticing differences, however. For one thing, there were far fewer carts, wagons and carriages, and virtually nobody was on horseback. There were no stalls or booths anywhere; instead, he saw before him what looked like a street of houses, average size by Sansory standards, but with doorways, exactly in the middle of the front elevation, two or three times as wide as Sansory's. In each doorway stood a table, with the merchandise laid out neatly in rows, small objects at the front, large ones at the back. Invariably, a small wooden sign hung over the lintel with the owner's name and trade in neat, rather pointed letters, followed by a number.

As he walked down the street he could see the workshops behind the tables, in each one a workbench, a tool-rack, the specific equipment of each trade, everything neat and tidy and in its place. It struck him that there were rather more shops than customers, but he assumed that was something to do with the time of day, week or year.

The letter inside his shirt was addressed to Cunier Mohac at the Cunier house, close under Northgate. Gotto had interpreted that as meaning due south of the foregate, not far along, on a straight line toward the centre of town. At the time he'd thought that as an address it was rather too vague to be useful, but in Mael Bohec, he soon realised, it was all the information he'd need; substantial buildings, such as commercial houses, stood at every fifth intersection and were clearly named and numbered. Ten blocks down from the gate, he saw 'Cunier Mohac 3771' inscribed in granite over a massive oak door in the exact centre of a large building with no front windows. Success.

There remained the problem of getting inside. He tried hammering on the door, but he guessed from the pain in the side of his fist that the door was three inches thick at the very least, more than enough to soak up any sound he could make. There was a wall round the other three sides, high enough to make climbing it a dangerous experience. Short of digging a sap under the walls like a besieging army, he couldn't think of any way of gaining entry, and that was ridiculous, surely.

When all else fails, ask. He explained his problem to an elderly man who'd been watching him for some time, and asked what he was supposed to do.

The man smiled. 'New in town,' he said.

'That's right.'

'It takes a while to get the hang of Mael Bohec,' the man replied, 'but once you know the ropes it's a wonderfully simple place to live. Look, I'll show you.'

He pointed to a thin slot between the door and the doorpost, just wide enough to slide his little finger into. 'You put your identification in here, see,' he explained, 'Guild ticket, trader's licence, calling tally, warrant, letter of introduction; the porter sees it, checks it against his list of expected visitors and opens the door-unless it's a government warrant or a Guild seal, in which case he doesn't need a name on the appointments list, he's got to open up, it's the law. That's all there is to it.'

Poldarn didn't say what he thought about that. 'I've got a problem, then,' he said. 'I haven't got anything like that.'

The man frowned. 'I thought you said you had business with the house,' he said.

'I have. I've got a letter to deliver.'

The man shrugged. 'There you are, then. I don't see the problem.'

Poldarn shook his head. 'My orders were to give it to Cunier Mohac in person, nobody else. I can't just go shoving it through cracks in doors.'

'Why not?' the old man said. 'This is the Cunier house, it says so over the door.'

Poldarn thought it over for a moment or so and decided what to do. He shoved the letter into the crack and waited. When he felt the pressure of someone on the other side trying to take it from him, he clung on with thumb and forefinger, put his mouth to the crack and said, 'Open up.'

'Let go of the goddamned letter,' said a muffled voice from the other side.

'I can't. Letter for Cunier Mohac's eyes only. Open the damn door.'

'No.'

Ridiculous, Poldarn thought, then the porter tried to snatch the letter with a sudden sharp tug; Poldarn tugged back and saw a vivid mental picture of the paper tearing neatly in two. Fortunately, this prophecy went unfulfilled. 'Cut that out,' he snapped. 'Go and fetch Cunier Mohac. I'll wait.'

The porter sounded horrified. 'I can't do that,' he said. 'He'll be getting ready for dinner.'

'Fine.' Poldarn exaggerated his sigh so the fine nuances wouldn't be lost in three inches of oak. 'Please yourself. I'll go back to Sansory and tell my boss I couldn't deliver the letter because some clown of a porter was afraid of disturbing Cunier Mohac while he was shaving. That'll give you three days' start before they come after you.'

The pull on the letter relaxed, and after a short but noisy interlude while the porter shot back bolts and graunched keys in stiff-sounding locks the door started to open. As soon as he reckoned the crack was wide enough, Poldarn rammed the door with his shoulder and pushed through. The porter was crouched against the lodge wall, hugging his nose.

'What did you want to do that for?' he wailed. 'Look, it's bleeding.'

'I was making a point,' Poldarn replied calmly. 'If I ever have to deliver a letter to this house again, I want to be sure you'll remember me.'

The porter scowled at him, and wiped blood off his lip with his sleeve. 'I could have you taken in charge for that,' he muttered. 'This is a Guild town, you can't just go around beating people up.'

Poldarn grinned. 'Are you sure? I like a challenge.'

'This way,' the porter said, and as soon as he'd locked up again he led the way under the lodge arch into a large quadrangle with grass and a fountain in the middle. Straight ahead were the living quarters, offices and counting-house, elegantly faced in crisply dressed, recently cleaned sandstone; the other three sides were plain brick and windowless except for narrow slits just under the eaves-warehouse space, presumably, though they might possibly be workshops. In the far left-hand corner there was another archway leading to another yard, or a cloister. Poldarn guessed that the quarters for the help were out there, and probably the stables and the coach-house and any specialised buildings needed for whatever trade the Cunier house made its living from-forge, foundry, smokehouse, curing or cutting shed, millhouse, whatever. There was, of course, a corresponding archway in the far right corner. Poldarn could see far enough through the gate to recognise that it was a formal garden.

The front door of the master's quarters opened into a smaller, enclosed version of the courtyard outside; there was a square floor, slabbed with beautifully polished and waxed slate, with doors leading off at the cardinal points and staircases in the corners that gave access to galleries on all four walls. In the exact centre of the floor there was a large round oak table, on which open-topped boxes rested, slanting inwards like the spokes of a wheel. Each box was labelled-letters out, credits, debits (paid), debits (unpaid), requisitions, memoranda, copies archive-and a third full of papers. In the middle of the table stood a life-sized statue of a crow with a ring in its mouth, exquisitely carved out of coal.

'Excuse me,' Poldarn asked the porter as politely as he could after what had passed between them, 'but that statue; is that a family thing or business or what?'

The porter laughed. 'Don't show your ignorance,' he replied. 'That's a shrine. Poldarn, patron god of hearths, forges and useful fires.' He frowned. 'You do know what we do here, don't you?'

Poldarn shrugged. 'No,' he said. 'Didn't need to know, I'm just a courier. Just interested in the statue, that's all.'

The porter headed for the front left-hand staircase. 'Coal and charcoal,' he said. 'Biggest wholesale and retail collier in Weal Bohec' There was an almost absurd degree of pride in his voice. 'We dig coal in the Juhaim valley, north of the Mahec; we burn charcoal at a dozen camps between the two rivers; we've got seven big stores out of town and two here in Mael, besides the core stock we keep here. One of the biggest houses in Mael, we are, with six seats in Guild chapter and our own chapel in temple.'

'Good for you,' Poldarn replied, trying to sound bored. 'So where's Cunier Mohac? The sooner I can hand over this damned letter, the happier I'll be.'

The porter pulled a face. 'Like I said, he'll be in dinner, in the long hall. You want to disturb him at table, you go right ahead. I'm going back to the lodge.'

'Fair enough,' Poldarn replied. 'Which one of these doors is the long hall?'

The porter pointed to the back wall. 'Go right ahead,' he said. 'The footmen and sergeant will grab you before you've got your nose through the doorway; you can ask them to point Cunier Mohac out to you, that's assuming you don't do something to upset them and get your throat cut.'

'All right,' Poldarn said. 'Purely out of interest, what sort of thing do they find upsetting?'

'Oh, all manner of things. You'll find out soon enough.'

As it turned out, the guards didn't grab him, because he stopped as soon as he got through the door and didn't intrude on their circle. 'Letter for Cunier Mohac,' he said, 'urgent.'

A man in rather splendid blue and white livery held out his hand. 'I'll see he gets it,' he said.

Poldarn shook his head. 'Thanks for the offer,' he said, 'but I've got my orders, same as you.'

The guard didn't like that. 'He's busy,' he said. 'He's eating his dinner.'

'Fine. Let me give him this letter, then I can go and have mine. I haven't eaten for two days, and hunger makes me short-tempered.'

Another man in the same livery joined them. 'Keep the noise down, will you?' he said. 'They can hear you at table.'

'Man says he's got a letter for the chief,' the first guard explained in a tone of voice that suggested that he was reporting to a superior. 'He says it's urgent and he's got to hand it over himself.'

'I'll take it to him,' the other guard said. 'Happy with that?'

'No,' Poldarn replied.

Over the guard's shoulder Poldarn could see a long, substantial table with about two dozen people sitting round it. All the people whose faces he could see were staring in his direction.

'Oh, for God's sake,' the second guard muttered. 'All right, but you'll have to give me your sword. Or you can leave; or I can make you eat it. Your choice.'

Poldarn shrugged and took the sword from his belt. The guard laid it down on the table, then stepped in front of him. 'Follow me,' he said, and as Poldarn did as he was told the first guard fell in just behind his right shoulder. They were cautious people in the Cunier house.

The man at the head of the table had his back to them; he was talking to the woman on his left, apparently the only person in the room who hadn't been watching the proceedings at the door. The guard waited for him to turn his head.

'I'm very sorry,' the guard said to him, 'but there's a courier here, insists on delivering a letter personally. He says it's urgent.'

Cunier Mohac nodded. He was short but wide, noticeably broad across the shoulders, with a bald patch like a desert island in the middle of his thick, curly grey hair. He looked briefly at Poldarn and held out his hand for the letter. 'Wait there, would you?' he said as he took it. 'In case there's a reply.'

Poldarn watched as he broke the seal. He couldn't read the writing from where he was standing; all he could see was that the letter was short, only three lines long. Somehow that annoyed him. He thought he could make out the name Tazencius, but it could easily have been something else.

'Excellent,' Cunier Mohac said at last. 'Best news I've had all week. Pen, somebody.'

Another man in livery materialised beside him, holding a tray with an inkwell, pen, dish of sand, bar of wax and miniature oil lamp. Cunier Mohac laid the letter down on the table and wrote a few words underneath the original message, sprinkled it with sand and shook it clear, folded it and sealed it with a big fat ring he wore on his left thumb. 'No copy,' he told the man who'd brought the tray. 'Get the messenger something to eat and drink, find him somewhere to sleep. Oh, and give him fifty quarters for doing as he was told.'

The rest of the table were still staring. Nobody had spoken. If their expressions were anything to go by, they'd never witnessed such an extraordinary scene in their lives.

As he escorted Poldarn to the counting-house to get his money, the guard's attitude was rather less abrasive. 'You got any idea what was in that letter?' he asked a second time. (Poldarn had apparently not heard him the first time.)

'No. None of my business.'

The guard nodded. 'All right,' he said, 'but what line of business is your house in?'

'Shipping, transport, carrying messages.'

'Oh. So the letter may have been from somebody else, and you lot were just delivering it.'

'Highly likely.'

The guard frowned as he waited for his knock on the door to be answered. 'Ah come on,' he said. 'Are you trying to tell me you're not curious?'

'I suppose I am, yes.'

Fifty quarters, in a dear little red velvet purse, duly changed hands. 'Sign here,' the paymaster said. Poldarn took the pen without thinking, then realised that he didn't know whether he could write.

'What's the matter?' the paymaster said.

'Nothing.' Poldarn leaned over and made a conscious effort to stop trying to remember. He closed his eyes and moved his hand; it moved as if guided by the grooves of a stencil, but when he looked to see the name he'd written he saw only three loops and a squiggle.

The paymaster was looking at him curiously. 'There,' he said, 'that wasn't so bad, was it?'

'Sorry,' Poldarn replied, 'my mind just went blank for a moment, you know how it is.'

The guard led him across the yard and through the left-side arch into the far yard, which, as he'd guessed, was where the bunkhouses were. 'Guest quarters are the loft over the stables,' he said, ducking under a low doorway. 'They're all right, if you don't mind horse smells.'

Poldarn hadn't been expecting luxury so he wasn't disappointed. There was a plain plank bed, a chair and a window looking out over the yard; no lamp, but so what? 'Thanks,' he said to the guard, expecting him to go away. But he seemed inclined to linger and talk. Poldarn had no problem with that, either.

'That was quite something, the way you good as kicked the door down,' the guard was saying. 'Good fun to watch, but take my advice and don't make a habit of it, not in Meal. Not that kind of place.'

Poldarn nodded. 'All straight lines,' he said, 'nothing curved. Looks good from a distance but I don't think it'd suit me for very long. Now then,' he went on, before the guard could answer, 'maybe you can tell me something.'

'I can try,' the guard said cautiously.

'Fine. I'm new in these parts, as you've probably guessed. Who's a man called Tazencius?'

The guard looked puzzled, then laughed. 'You're serious? Guess you are new in town, at that. Tazencius was the prefect of Mael, right up to the beginning of last week. Why, what about him?'

'I heard the name somewhere, that's all,' Poldarn replied. 'Would you recognise him if you saw him?'

The guard nodded. 'Of course. Anybody who goes to temple knows what Tazencius looks like. Smart, he always was. He had his stall built right under the skylight at the northern end of the transept so that during evensong, when it was his time to make the address, the light'd be coming through the window and catching him just right. Real impressive it was, even when you knew it was all put on.'

Poldarn smiled. 'I can believe that,' he said. 'About medium height but looks taller, middle to late forties, touch of grey in the hair but one of those faces that doesn't change much after about twenty-five; sharp nose and chin, big eyes like a horse-'

'That's him,' the guard confirmed.

'Ah, right.' Poldarn thought for a moment. 'So what happened last week?'

The guard grinned. 'Wish I knew,' he said. 'The official line-well, first it was he'd been promoted and called back to Torcea; then it was recalled to Torcea, which isn't quite the same thing as called back, and nothing about any promotion. Then there were all these rumours going around about how he'd been arrested-troop of cavalry sent specially from Boc to pick him up, only captured after desperate chase, running battle between his guards and the soldiers, you know how these things snowball. Then it was official that he was going back to Torcea to testify in front of some board of enquiry, which is just polite for "arrested". Then we started hearing all kinds of wild stuff about a big conspiracy, some stuff about the royal chaplain, Cleapho-can't see what he'd have to do with anything myself, but that's what they were saying-and then you started hearing Feron Amathy all over the place-you know, the big bandit captain-and soon they were linking him with General Cronan, who supposedly hasn't been seen or heard of in months. Last thing was that Tazencius had been rescued by the Amathy house, and either they'd got him back or he'd got away; nobody's said he's dead yet, which is odd, you usually get that when someone's arrested. Anyway, you take your pick. Something's been going on with him, but God only knows what.'

'What do you think?' Poldarn asked.

The guard pulled a face, presumably intended to convey thoughtfulness. 'My guess is he ticked off the Guild once too often,' he said. 'He was always pulling their tail, after all. But this is a Guild town and Torcea's a long way away. If the emperor's whisked him away back to Torcea, it could be for his own good. After all, they're family. Not that Tazencius was ever anybody back at the royal court,' he added, 'just some second cousin getting under people's feet. He'd never have ended up out here if he mattered worth a damn. Come to think of it, I seem to remember something about there having been bad blood between him and Cronan years ago, before the Allectus business, even; if that's true, he's lucky he's still alive.'

Poldarn nodded, as if turning it over in his mind. 'So where would the emperor's chaplain-Cleapho, did you say his name was? Where would he fit into all this?'

The guard shrugged. 'No idea,' he said. 'I think that was just somebody's imagination. Though I've heard it said that Cleapho's quite a big man behind the scenes at court; used to be thick as thieves with the emperor's brother, then switched sides after he lucked out and started running Cronan instead. Now if there really was anything going on with Tazencius and Cronan and the Amathy outfit, I suppose Cleapho might be in the middle of it somewhere.' He grinned. 'Who knows what the hell's really going on?' he said. 'Who cares, come to that, so long as they don't start another war.'

'Quite,' Poldarn said. 'Only that might be on the cards sooner than you'd think, if you believe what they're saying, about the god coming back and everything.'

'That?' The guard laughed. 'You don't believe in all that garbage, do you? Strictly for the woollybacks, that stuff.'

'Maybe.' Poldarn shrugged the subject away. 'Just out of interest,' he said, 'is there any chance of getting something to eat?'

'At this time?' The guard stared at him for a moment. 'Sorry, I forgot, you're from out of town. No food or drink after sundown; it's the law.'

'You're joking.'

'No I'm not,' the guard replied, and Poldarn could see him consciously not taking offence. 'This is a Guild town, remember. Late-night eating and drinking leads to drunks fighting in the streets. We don't hold with that kind of thing in Mael.'

Poldarn breathed in, then out again. 'Fair enough,' he said, 'only I haven't eaten anything since this time yesterday. Nobody would know.'

'Don't you believe it,' the guard replied. 'Thirty days in the lock-up if you're caught, doesn't matter who you are. You're better off going to sleep and dreaming about breakfast.'

So Poldarn went to sleep; and perhaps because he was hungry, or because the guard had suggested it to him -He was sitting at the head of a table in a large tent, looking at the plate that someone had just put in front of him. A thick slab of bacon, old, cold and shiny; a narrow, deep wedge of hard, almost translucent yellow cheese; something else, either a piece of bread or a bit of broken grindstone, he couldn't be sure which; a small apple, with a skin like an old man's cheeks.

'Oh, for crying out loud,' he heard himself say. 'Hisco, this isn't fit for pigs.'

'With respect-' Hisco was the man standing behind him, who'd just put down the plate. 'With respect, that's all there is, and you're lucky to have that.'

'Hisco, you sound like my mother. What happened to all that white cream cheese we took out of that village down the valley?'

Hisco, still unseen, clicked his tongue. 'It'd gone bad,' he said, 'so I slung it out. I'd rather starve than be poisoned, thanks very much.'

'Hisco, it's supposed to taste like that, it's a fucking delicacy… You know how much you'd pay for a pound of that stuff in Weal Bohec?'

'The men wouldn't touch it,' Hisco replied. 'Talking of which, that's the last of the bacon. Tomorrow it'll be oatmeal and dried fish. You may want to think about that.'

He turned round in his chair, but Hisco had gone; the tent flap swished behind him. 'Bloody cook,' he said bitterly. 'Dumps a thousand quarters' worth of Mausandy cheese and threatens me with oatmeal. I ought to stick his head up on a pike.'

'It'd be good for morale,' a man three places down from him replied. 'But he was right about the cheese. We thought something had died in the wagons.'

'Barbarians. Oh well, I suppose we'd better eat this, or we'll never hear the last of it.' He pulled his napkin out of the ring-dark rosewood, carved in relief with a design of two crows holding something in their beaks; the carving was too worn for him to be able to make out the details. 'Somebody tell me there's some beer left, or I'll burst into tears.'

Someone else passed him a tall silver jug; it matched the long-stemmed goblets and the side plates. All solid silver, every inch embossed and gadrooned. He took a sip and nearly spat it out.

'That does it,' he said. 'Cold greasy bacon I can live with, but this is beyond a joke. Get me the map, someone.'

They were all dressed in the most dazzling array of silks, brocades, velvets, linens that you'd ever hope to see outside the imperial court; the effect was spoiled slightly by the characteristic red-brown half-moons left behind by rusty chainmail after a week of continuous wear. Someone reached under the table and produced a bronze tube, two feet long by six inches wide. He fished inside it and pulled out the map.

'Right,' he said, 'we're here. There's the river and there's the mountains-no, that's wrong, they're further away than that. This map's useless.'

Someone laughed. 'Imperial survey,' he said. 'In cases where the terrain doesn't agree with the map, standing orders state that the terrain must be in error.'

He clicked his tongue. 'Tell me about it,' he said. 'All right; ignoring the fact that the mountains have been sleepwalking, there's a village about half a day downstream, between this wood here-oh, for pity's sake, there isn't a wood there, we'd have seen it.'

'Old map,' the other man replied. 'Probably the wood's been felled for charcoal long since.'

'Yes, maybe. According to this map, there's a village. It's a good step out of our way, but there's nothing else this side of the river; and I don't see why we can't cut back up the other side of this combe here and get back on the road that way. Assuming the village is there, of course. If it isn't, we'll be in big trouble, since at best we'll lose a day and a half.'

'There's still the oatmeal,' someone put in. 'Sure, we'll get a bit of attitude, but we won't starve.'

He scowled. 'Besco, Besco, you don't command the loyalty and love of an army by feeding them oatmeal. No, the question is whether we can trust this stupid map. What d'you reckon?'

Silence. Then the man at the other end of the table, who hadn't spoken yet, put down his cup. 'Should be all right, Feron,' he said. 'Those maps were originally drawn for the revenue, remember. They may get the hills and rivers wrong, but they're usually pretty careful about marking the taxpayers. The only problem would be if Allectus has been there before us.'

He rubbed his chin. 'That's a good point, Mashant,' he said. 'Hadn't thought of that. Still, it's unlikely. We've got him figured as crossing the river much further up; he'll have filled his boots at Josequin, so he won't need to go stocking up in the villages.'

Mashant shrugged. 'I suppose not,' he said. 'Anyway, I don't think we've got much choice in the matter. If we're down to the oatmeal already, we'll just have to risk it.'

'It'll be all right,' he said cheerfully.

Mashant laughed. 'I'll say this for you, Feron,' he said, 'nobody could ever say you aren't decisive.'

After he'd choked down the bacon and cheese (he couldn't face the bread or the poisonous beer), he took another look at the map, with nobody peering over his shoulder. Things were starting to fall apart, mostly because he still hadn't heard from either Allectus or Cronan. It was enough to make a man paranoid; what if they'd figured out what he was up to, and were deliberately letting him kick his heels and starve while they patched up their differences before coming after him? Absurd, of course; that would be making the fatal mistake of assuming your enemies think the way you do. But it was enough to drive a man crazy, marking time like this, knowing he was down to his last few days' supplies (and the fact that nobody else seemed to have noticed that before today was hardly reassuring; the deadheads who were supposed to be running the commissary were in for a nasty surprise when the crisis was over and he had a bit of time again).

He scowled at the map, picked off a bit of frayed vellum from the edge. He really did have better things to do right now than go raiding villages for food. Quite apart from the detour, the loss of position, the risk of something going wrong, someone getting away, he didn't like the thought of doing something like this with not one but two imperial armies breathing down his neck. True, the armies were fighting each other, but they were still imperials, and both Cronan and Allectus were dutiful, honourable men, just the sort who'd leave their own war hanging in order to go chasing off after a party of raiders, if they heard there was one operating nearby…

It was cold, in spite of the two heaped-up braziers; he rubbed his cheeks with his palms to warm them. Part of him couldn't really believe that neither Cronan nor Allectus had yet figured out that half the attacks attributed to the raiders were the work of the Amathy house-how could they get to command armies and still be that naive? But they were imperials, Torceans, southerners; things were different down there-not better, he was sure of that, but the treachery took different forms, was played to different rules, some of which, no doubt, he'd be too naive to spot if he ever crossed the bay. No chance of that, if he had anything to do with it.

He was just rolling the map up again and thinking vague, disjointed thoughts about a variety of issues when the tent flap was folded back and a man put his head through it. 'Letter,' he said.

He looked round. 'Fine, thanks,' he said, making a point of keeping the excitement out of his voice. 'Just put it down on the chair, I'll deal with it in a minute.'

The head looked embarrassed. 'Sorry,' it said, 'but the courier says he's got to give it to you personally; orders and so forth. We tried to take it off him, but…'

He noticed that the head had a swollen lower lip. He managed not to smile. 'All right,' he said. 'Show him in.'

'You sure?' the guard asked. 'I mean-'

'You mean he could be an assassin pretending to be a courier.' He grinned. 'Don't worry about it, I could use the practice.'

But he wasn't an assassin, just a very thorough, dedicated courier, the kind that costs an obscene amount of money and is worth every quarter. And it was the letter he'd been waiting for.

'It's all right,' he told the guards, who were standing nervously at the back of the tent, their hands on their sword hilts. 'Thank you,' he said to the courier. 'Go and get a beer, then come back. There'll be a reply.'

The letter was, typically, short and to the point; Cleapho, touched by the Divine, to Feron Amathy, merchant; greetings, good health amp;c.

Concerning the small point of doctrine you queried at our last meeting; the Desert school, and Thauscus in particular, held the view that the rising sun conveyed more blessings on the observer than the setting sun, since it was hotter, having come straight from the divine forge, and more malleable, having not yet been quenched in the sea. Both the Desert school and the Ascetics held that it was inadvisable to wait until noon to look directly at the sun, and the latter party attributed great virtues to observation carried out just after sunrise, at the point when the sun's heat dries up the morning dew. I trust that this clarifies the matter to your satisfaction.

He grinned; Cleapho had a nice way of putting things, for a Torcean. And it was the answer he'd wanted: side with Cronan against Allectus and do it soon, before Allectus had a chance to get established north of the Mahec. He scouted around for his inkwell and pen and a piece of paper, and wrote: Feron Amathy, merchant venturer, to Cleapho, touched by the Divine; greetings, good health amp;c.

Thauscus is, of course, an excellent authority, and your point about the Ascetics is well made. I seem to remember something in Pevannio's commentary about the moment just before the sun breaks through the clouds being the most auspicious time for reading auguries and casting lots; do you think that might have any bearing on the matter?

He sprinkled sand and sealed it up, called for the guard 'Wake up.' The guard was standing over him, calling him. 'It's after sun-up, for God's sake, you should be on the road by now.'

'What?' Poldarn rolled over. 'Oh, right. Sorry, I was having a dream-'

The guard scowled at him. 'Do it on your own time,' he said. 'Cunier Mohac wants that reply on its way as soon as possible. You've missed breakfast,' he added with a definite touch of malice.

'Have I? Damn.' Poldarn yawned. 'No chance the kitchen could put me up something for the road, is there? Or would that be against the law too?'

The guard shrugged. 'I'll ask,' he said, 'no promises. Depends on whether they've thrown the scraps out for the crows yet. I told the stables to get your horse ready, there may just be time. It'll be bread and cold bacon if they can manage it, maybe a slice of cheese if you're lucky.'

'That'll do,' Poldarn said. 'I'm not fussy.'