Shadow

Chapter Twelve

'Terrible,' said Falx Roisin, looking up from the column of figures he was working on. 'He'd been with the house sixteen years. I'll miss him.' He frowned, and drew a little line on the ledger to mark where he'd got up to in the sum. 'And you're sure it was just bandits?'

'That's right,' Poldarn replied. 'As soon as they attacked, I ran for it, and they didn't seem at all interested in me.'

Falx Roisin nodded. 'It was the right thing to do,' he said. 'The letter was far more important than the cargo-that's what insurance is for, after all, though in this case… It just strikes me as odd that they didn't actually take anything.'

Poldarn shrugged. 'Maybe they decided they didn't want twelve barrels of copper rivets,' he said.

'Maybe. But they're worth good money, there's a shortage. Of course, they may not have known that.' Falx Roisin rubbed the tip of his nose with the palm of his hand, an indication of serious thought. 'Now if they'd hit you on the way back, they'd have got a nice sum in cash and twenty bales of best Mahec valley wool. That's good,' he added, 'implies they don't have a source of information inside the house. At least, not this particular outfit. No way of knowing how many gangs there are working that stretch of road.' He glanced down at his figures, then looked up again. 'Mind you,' he said, 'it's also possible they thought Gatto was the courier, not you. Anyway, no use crying over spilt milk, as my mother used to say.'

Poldarn nodded. The dead man's name was Gotto, not Gatto; Poldarn had only known him for a couple of days, not sixteen years. Still, when it came to a good memory for names, he was hardly in a position to criticise someone else. 'Maybe it was just the horses they were after,' he said, for the sake of saying something.

'Didn't you hear?' Falx Roisin looked at him for a moment. 'We found the horses, they'd just been run off, not stolen. Hadn't gone far, either. Now there's another thing. All right, they didn't want the rivets, so they left them. But why unyoke the horses and run them off? Doesn't make sense.'

'Maybe they panicked,' Poldarn said. 'People do all sorts of weird things when they panic.'

'Maybe,' Falx Roisin replied. 'Not that I'm complaining, mind. After all that, we didn't lose the shipment, or the cart, or the horses. It's just a terrible tragedy about poor Gatto, that's all.'

Poldarn left him to his grief and went for a walk. In the back of his mind he was still a little worried about wandering about the town, just in case any of the men who'd broken up his meeting with Cleapho were still hanging around, but they weren't watching the gates now, as he'd proved when he'd passed through on his way to Mael Bohec, and since he didn't really have a clue who they were or what they wanted, it seemed pointless to spend the rest of his life hiding from them.

Nothing to do for the rest of the day, money in his pocket and all the delights of Sansory to explore. Having thought about it for a while, he decided that the only thing he really wanted was a new coat, to replace the one he'd given to the man who'd called himself Tazencius; he supposed he could go and get a replacement from the bins in Eolla's storeroom, but the idea didn't appeal to him. Just for once, it'd be nice to have something that hadn't previously belonged to someone who'd died by violence.

Buying a coat in Sansory turned out to be far more complicated than he'd imagined. At times it seemed as if the whole city was made up of clothiers' stalls, every single one of them cheaper than the last, all of them offering a better, brighter, warmer, more exactingly specified product for a fraction of the price of the one he'd just looked at and decided to buy. As if that wasn't bad enough, he found out that the act of standing in silent thought between the rows of stalls in the market was enough to attract swarms of tailors, who swooped down on him from their shops and booths like crows on a dead body and swore blind they could make him the coat of his dreams to measure for a third of what he'd pay for some piece of off-the-peg rag. Since all the coats he saw looked perfectly good and excellent value for money, he was soon utterly bewildered and bitterly regretting getting involved in such a horrendously complex issue. By noon, he'd almost resolved to give it up and make do with anything Eolla offered him that didn't have a brown-edged hole exactly halfway between the shoulder blades. Instead he bought a pancake and a mug of cider from a sad-looking man behind a barrow and sat down on the corn exchange steps to rest his aching feet.

From where he was sitting he had a clear view down a row of stalls. The stuff on them wasn't anything that interested him much-luxury fabrics, mostly, with some jewellery and almost-jewellery, a couple of men behind benches mounted with lasts who presumably made women's shoes, one or two specialising in mirrors and combs and boxes to put them in He looked back, and frowned. Then he swallowed the last of his pancake, got up, returned the empty mug to the man behind the barrow (who looked sadly at him but didn't seem to hold a grudge) and made his way down the alley until he came to the stall he'd noticed where a woman was arranging a display of mirrors.

'Copis?' he said.

Copis looked up at him. 'Oh,' she said, 'it's you. Hello.'

For some reason, she didn't seem particularly pleased to see him. She leaned out over the table and looked up and down the alley to see if anybody was watching, then scowled at him and said, 'You can't have it back.'

That threw him. 'Have what back?' he asked.

'Don't be stupid,' she said. 'Your great big lump of solid gold, of course, the one you hid in the back of my cart. Bastard.'

He really couldn't see the logic. 'What's the matter?' he said. 'What did I do?'

She looked daggers at him. 'All that bullshit about having lost your memory. I believed you, you creep, I was actually sorry for you. And all that time you were using me as cover to get past whoever you stole that thing from. No wonder people were forever trying to kill us.'

It took him a moment to catch his breath. 'It wasn't like that-' he said.

'Well,' she went on, 'the laugh's on you now, because I sold it and I've spent all the money-stock for this business, for one thing, and a house, which has got my name on the deeds and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it, and the rest's where you'll never find it, and it wouldn't do you any good if you did. So if you're here to make trouble, forget it.'

He couldn't help grinning. 'Is that it?' he said.

'What?'

'That's what you're so upset about? Keep it. All yours. I was going to share it with you anyway, but somehow I never got round-'

'Oh sure.' She looked quite angry. 'I believe you. You were waiting for my birthday, I expect, or All Fools' Day. Damn it, I could've been killed.'

'Yes,' Poldarn said, 'but it wasn't anything to do with that lump of gold. I found it.'

She pulled a face. 'You found it,' she repeated.

'Yes. You remember that burned-out temple, in the town where they'd cut down all the trees? It was in there. I tripped over it in the dark. I didn't steal it from anybody, or at least not anybody living.'

'I don't believe you,' she said.

'Why not? Come on,' he added, 'think. Was I carrying anything when you found me?'

'It was dark,' she reminded him. 'You could've crept up and hidden anything you liked in the back of the cart, I wouldn't have noticed.'

'Could I? I was too busy killing your friend.' He shook his head and took a step back. 'It's just as I've told you,' he said. 'I found it in that temple place. And I was going to tell you about it; I nearly did, several times, but-'

'But you didn't trust me.' She was scowling again. 'That's rich. Coming from you. You didn't trust me.'

Poldarn smiled. Ah,' he said. 'So now you do believe me?'

'I didn't say that. All I'm saying is, if you are telling the truth, then you're still a bastard. And you aren't getting any of the money, either way. Understood?'

'Perfectly.'

She looked at him. 'That's all right, then.' She reached out and adjusted the position of a mirror that wasn't exactly in line with the others. It reminded Poldarn of Mael Bohec. 'Just so long as we're clear on that.' There was a moment of rather awkward silence; then she burst out, 'So what the hell happened to you? I was convinced you were either dead or arrested. All those soldiers running about the place, and they brought out at least four dead bodies.'

Poldarn shrugged. 'I'll be honest with you, I have no idea,' he said. 'Cleapho knew who I was, but a bunch of soldiers burst in before I could find anything out. The really strange thing was, one of them knew me too.'

'So? What did he tell you? The soldier, I mean.'

Poldarn looked away. 'There wasn't time to ask him, either.'

'Oh, for pity's sake. You mean to tell me you haven't found out anything?'

'Enough to convince me that whatever I was mixed up in, I'm better off out of it.'

'God, what an attitude!' Copis stared at him, then shook her head. 'If it was me, I'd do anything to find out who I was, I just couldn't bear not knowing. Are you really trying to tell me you simply aren't interested any more?'

Poldarn smiled, and stepped aside to allow a customer to get at the table. But the customer turned out not to be a customer, just one of those strange but ubiquitous people who picks things up off stalls, glances at the underneath and puts them back again. 'How shall I put it?' he said. 'Who's the worst person you can possibly think of?'

'What?'

'Go on, it's a simple question. Who's the nastiest, most evil man who ever lived?'

'How should I know?'

Poldarn scowled. 'In your opinion, then, who's the worst man who ever lived? Just say a name.'

'All right. General Allectus.'

'Really?' Poldarn raised an eyebrow. 'Was he that bad?'

'No,' Copis admitted, 'but you were rushing me. All right; the leader of the raiders. Emperor Vectigal. The Boc Bohec scythe murderer. Feron Amathy. My stepfather.'

'Thank you,' Poldarn said. 'Now, supposing I was one of them-Emperor Vectigal, say, whoever he was-but I'd lost my memory, and after a month or so of wandering about I settled down, got a job and started a new and reasonably happy life. If you were me, would you want to know who you really were?'

Copis frowned. 'I wouldn't want to be Emperor Vectigal,' she said. 'Because he's dead. And before that he was a man. Of course, he was also the emperor, so I could probably have got used to it after a while.' Before Poldarn could protest, she nodded. 'Yes,' she said, 'I can see what you're getting at. But the odds against it are pretty damn huge, you turning out to be some kind of evil monster. Chances are you're just some ordinary man, with a wife and kids and a nice house somewhere. Can you really say you don't want to find out about them?'

Poldarn shook his head. 'Not worth the risk,' he said. 'Since we-well, went our separate ways, I've got a job and a place to live, I can start thinking about the possibility of having a future, instead of a past I can't even remember.'

'Really,' Copis said. 'So what's this wonderful job of yours?'

'I'm a courier for the Falx house.'

Probably, Copis' attempt not to laugh was genuine, though completely unsuccessful. 'And that's your idea of a future, is it?'

'It's better than nothing.'

'Oh, come on… Look, I've been in this town exactly as long as you have, and even I've learned that only real, desperate, suicidal losers end up as couriers for the Falx house. It's what you do if you're tired of life but you're too thick to tie a knot in a rope to hang yourself by.' She paused, and her expression changed slightly. 'You aren't really doing that, are you?'

'Yes,' Poldarn replied irritably. 'And it's not so bad. In fact, it suits me fine. Nice quiet life, getting out and about, seeing the countryside. Good money, all found-'

'You must be the one who had his driver killed the other day,' Copis interrupted. 'It's all over town. That's your idea of a nice quiet life, is it?'

'All right,' Poldarn admitted with a sigh, 'so it wasn't a very auspicious start. But it can't be like that all the time. I'll bet you nothing even remotely interesting's going to happen to me next time out, or the time after that, or the time after that. It'll be just fine, you'll see.'

Copis looked at him, then pulled a horrible face. 'Oh, all right, then,' she said wearily. 'I suppose I'd feel really guilty if you went out and got your throat cut, and I've got all your money. I can get you four hundred quarters by this time tomorrow-'

'No.' Poldarn realised he'd shouted, and lowered his voice. 'No,' he said, 'I don't want you to, really. At the rate I'm going, I'll be able to save up enough money to look after myself in no time at all. I've already got the best part of seventy quarters, and I haven't even been trying.'

'Don't be ridiculous,' Copis said, sounding like somebody's mother. 'You can't go risking your life like that, I'm not having it. There's plenty of money for both of us-eighteen hundred quarters; have you got any idea how much money eighteen hundred quarters is?'

'No,' Poldarn said quietly, 'but I can guess. Was it really worth that much?'

Copis nodded. 'Pure gold, twelve points above imperial standard; they haven't coined in that stuff for a hundred years. And I was ripped off; I got paid for the weight in modern coin metal, so you can add a fifth at least for what it was really worth. But I was in a hurry.'

Poldarn thought for a moment then shook his head. 'Doesn't matter,' he said. 'I still don't want it, I wouldn't feel right about it. I guess I must be superstitious or something.'

'More fool you, then,' Copis said, and he could tell that she was offended. 'I won't offer again, and since I'll probably be clearing out of here and heading back to Torcea-'

'That's fine,' Poldarn said, surprising himself by his own vehemence. 'Good idea. I think you should get away from here, go somewhere you'll be safe. I'd feel much better-'

'You want me to go.' She was positively angry now. 'Fine, I'll go. Now get lost, you're scaring my customers away.'

'All right,' Poldarn said. 'But for what it's worth, I'm very glad you're all right. You helped me out when I needed it; you deserve a bit of luck.'

'Drop dead,' Copis said.

He walked down the alley without looking round, and fairly soon he found himself in another area of the market where they sold excellent coats dirt cheap. This time he decided not to bother looking round and bought the first one he found that fitted. It was dark grey, with strings at the neck and a hood, some sort of blanket material, his for nine and a half quarters including the buttons.

On his way back to the Falx house, he heard a noise up ahead and saw that a crowd was gathering, watching something go by. It turned out to be a cart, very much like the one Copis had owned; it was being escorted by four cavalrymen in brightly polished helmets and breastplates, and in it sat a man and a woman, looking very frightened, covered with bruises, dried blood and dirt. The bystanders were yelling and jeering, and if they weren't throwing things it was only for fear of hitting the cavalrymen and being arrested.

'What's going on?' Poldarn asked the old woman he was standing next to.

'They caught 'em,' she replied with obvious satisfaction, 'and now they'll be tried and strung up, and a bloody good job. Hanging's too good for 'em, I say.'

'Really?' Poldarn caught sight of their faces again between the heads and shoulders of the crowd. 'What've they done?'

'You don't know?' (He was getting thoroughly sick of hearing those words, but he put up with it.) 'They're the two imposters who've been going all round the place in that cart, pretending to be the god and his priestess, the bastards. Asking for trouble, that is; they ought to be ashamed of themselves. And cheating honest folk out of their money and food. It's disgusting.'

Poldarn pursed his lips. 'What happened?' he said. 'How did they catch them?'

The old woman grinned. 'Got careless, didn't they?' she said. 'Tried the same trick in the same village twice. Only someone noticed there was something odd the second time, like they hadn't realised they'd been there before-well, a god'd know that sort of thing, wouldn't he?-and there happened to be a squad of the Company men riding through, so the village people turned 'em over and the Company men brought them here. There's a judge here, see, and a regular court, all legal and everything. And now they'll be strung up, and good riddance. I did hear tell there was a reward on them, but nobody said anything about who's paying it or why. Still, doesn't matter, does it? Main thing is, they're going to get what's coming to them.'

By the time she'd finished saying that the cart was out of sight and the crowd was too thick to allow him to catch up and take another look at their faces. That was probably just as well.

He got back to the Falx house about mid-afternoon to find the place in more or less complete chaos. Two carts were jammed solid in the gateway; the hub of one cart's offside front wheel was caught between the spokes of the other cart's nearside back wheel, perfectly immobilising both carts, and there was so little space left between the pillars of the arch that the house carpenters couldn't get in to cut them apart. Ignoring the protests of the carpenters, carters and sundry bystanders, Poldarn hopped up on to the boom of the outgoing cart, walked down it as far as the box, ducked under the arch and jumped off the tailgate at the other side. There was hardly enough room to jump down into; there was a line of a dozen carts wedged into the courtyard, so close that the tailgate of each one was pressing on the chests of the lead horses of the one behind. It might have been possible to clear the jam by backing the last cart in the line up into the coach-house, except that the coach-house doors opened outwards… On either side of the line waited men with barrows and handcarts, unable to cross from one side of the yard to the other.

Falx Roisin was standing on the box of one of the stuck carts, his hands clawing his hair. He gave the impression of having gone beyond the shouting stage and the all-right-let's-figure-this-out-calmly stage and was most of the way through the prayer stage. Eolla was standing in the doorway of the main house, yelling unheeded directions at a group of men who were trying to do something complicated with ropes and scaffolding poles. (Later, Poldarn found out that he'd been told to set up an A-frame crane to try and lift out one of the carts, thereby freeing up the others; Falx Roisin had realised how incredibly stupid and dangerous this idea was about three minutes after giving the order and had countermanded it; the clerk given the task of calling it off had told the men assigned to winch duty, but had forgotten to tell Eolla and his men. Fortuitously, they didn't even get as far as fetching the poles out of the store; otherwise, there could easily have been a nasty accident.)

Poldarn wriggled his way through the crowded yard and climbed up into the loft above the counting-house, where he had a good view of the whole thing. He lay there propped up on his elbows for half an hour, then went back down the stairs and pushed and clambered his way through to the cart Falx Roisin was standing on.

'Can I make a suggestion?' he said.

'What?' Falx Roisin looked down, staring at him as if he'd just grown an extra head. 'Yes, why not, every other bugger has, that's how we got in this mess to start with.'

'Right,' Poldarn replied. 'Here's what you've got to do.'

It took longer to explain the plan than it should have done, mostly because Falx Roisin kept interrupting and jumping forward to incorrect conclusions. When he'd finally finished his explanation, Falx Roisin scowled, closed his eyes for a moment and said, 'Oh, the hell with it, yes, give it a try. It's that or burn the whole place down and start again. You realise we've been stuck like this since just after breakfast?'

Phase one, which should have been the easiest part, turned out to be the hardest, or at least the most annoying, yet all it comprised was getting twelve men and some tools and equipment (spades, shovels, pickaxes, shauls, crowbars, buckets, planks of wood, saws, hammers, nails) out through the gate the way Poldarn had just come in. Why it was so difficult, Poldarn wasn't sure, even after he'd done it.

Phase two was digging a vertical shaft eight feet deep by four feet square. The Falx house had some fine diggers among its members, as well as four thoroughly competent carpenters, and the shaft was dug, braced and boarded in no time at all. There was a pause between the completion of phase two and the start of phase three, while Poldarn and a couple of men he didn't know but who seemed to reckon they knew something about mining operations tried to figure out a way of making sure phase five came up in the right place. The negotiations were fraught from the outset, and Poldarn eventually resolved them by unexpectedly applying the heel of his hand to the chin of one of the experts; after which, the other expert went away and left him in peace to do his calculations.

He'd expected phase three to be a real cow-digging a shaft four feet square and six feet long four feet under the gatehouse floor-but in the end it was no bother at all; the diggers dug, the dirt-haulers lifted out the spoil in buckets, while the carpenters cut and shaped the props and rammed them home. Phase four was the part of the exercise that called for precision: dig a vertical shaft upwards, to come out directly under the axles of the jammed carts, allowing the carpenters to saw through the axles, take out the two jammed wheels, and retreat. In the event the tunnel came up a foot short, which meant that phase five (sawing the axles) was trickier than it should have been, the carpenters having to work leaning diagonally with their backs braced on planks. They managed it, however, just about, and if the wheels came away rather sooner than expected and crashed down into the shaft with potentially lethal force (something Poldarn realised he should have anticipated but hadn't), it was all right, because of the shaft being offset and the carpenters accordingly just out of the way. ('Bloody clever, that was,' one of them congratulated him a few minutes later, 'the way you figured that drop just right. I was stood there while they were digging thinking, bugger me, that shaft's going to come up short, but of course I didn't realise it was on purpose. Bloody smart thinking, chum; well done.') Once the impacted wheels had been hauled back down the tunnel and out of the way, phase six, attaching ropes to the outgoing cart and hauling it clear, was easy as pie, as was phase seven, putting all the dirt back down the hole and making good so that the rest of the carts could get through without the risk of caving in the tunnels.

'Piece of cake,' Poldarn said, brushing mud off his knees. 'Don't know what all the fuss was about, really.'

Under other circumstances a remark like that could easily have cost him his life. As it turned out, however, his colleagues in the Falx house were either too busy or too exhausted to do anything more than scowl horribly at him as they scuttled or limped past.

'It worked,' Falx Roisin said.

Poldarn frowned. 'You sound surprised,' he said.

'You bet your life I'm surprised,' he replied. 'I was convinced you were going to bring the whole gatehouse down on top of your head. Still, it worked, so who the hell cares? Well done. I owe you a favour.'

Poldarn shrugged. 'Just making myself useful,' he replied. 'I think I'll get on and wash this mud off my hands.'

'What? Oh, right, yes. You know, what you did back there, it reminds me of something, but I can't think what. Bloody clever, though. If I needed a house engineer, I'd give you the job like a shot.'

'Thank you,' Poldarn replied dubiously. 'I'll be going now, if that's all right.'

It was dark before the house finally got back to normal, and dinner was delayed accordingly. Rather than spend an hour getting congratulated for his cleverness in the mess hall, Poldarn sneaked round to the back door of the kitchens and charmed one of the cooks, a massive woman as tall as he was and nearly twice his weight, into letting him have half a loaf, a big slab of the more recent cheese and a small jug of beer. He carried his trophies off to the stables, had his dinner in peace and quiet down behind the feed bins, returned the jug and went to his quarters to sleep.

Falx Roisin was waiting for him there. He'd brought a lamp, rather a magnificent object in highly polished brass in the shape of a pig.

'I remembered,' he said.

'Excuse me?'

'That trick of yours,' Falx Roisin said. 'I remembered where I'd heard about it before. It's exactly what General Cronan did at Zanipolo.'

Poldarn looked blank. 'Two carts got stuck in a gateway, did they?'

Falx Roisin frowned. 'Illanzus had been besieging Zanipolo for eighteen months, and they were running desperately short of food, half the camp was down with swamp fever and the rebels were coming up fast with a relief force twice the size of the loyalist army. Cronan was just a captain then, attached to the engineers because nearly all their regular officers had been killed or had died of the fever. Cronan had them dig under the gatehouse; calculated it so perfectly that they came up right in the middle of the lodge. A few minutes later they got the gates open and that was that. It was the making of him, of course; never looked back.'

Poldarn thought for a moment. 'That's very interesting,' he said. 'And you left your dinner and came all the way up here just to tell me about it?'

'No,' Falx Roisin replied, sounding annoyed. 'I wanted to ask you if you'd ever been in the army.'

'I see. Why?'

That annoyed him even more. 'Answer the question,' he said. 'Were you in the army or weren't you?'

Poldarn sighed. 'No,' he said.

'Really. You're sure about that.'

Poldarn grinned. 'You think I'd forget about it if I had been? Yes, I'm sure. No, I've never been in the army. Why do you want to know?'

'There was a soldier here this morning,' Falx Roisin continued, 'just before the big screw-up in the yard. Military tribune from the guards, no less. He was asking after a deserter. The description sounded a lot like you.'

'Did it? What did he say?'

'Middle-aged, medium height, long nose, pointed chin. Hair just starting to go grey.'

Poldarn smiled. 'No offence,' he said, 'but it sounds to me like he was describing you. I mean,' he went on, 'there must be hundreds of men in this city who answer to that.'

'That's what I told him,' Falx Roisin said. 'And I didn't think of you when I answered him; I mean, you've only been here five minutes, and I've got a lot of faces to remember. But then he said this deserter was one of Cronan's staff. High-ranking man, brevet-major or something like that. Not the sort to go absent without leave on a nine-day bender. So I guessed it might be something serious.'

'Sounds like it,' Poldarn said, shifting his weight to his back foot, taking himself out of the circle of light from Falx Roisin's lamp. 'But nothing to do with me.'

Falx Roisin looked at him for a moment. 'So I pressed him for some details,' he went on, 'and he replied that he couldn't tell me a lot because it's all under seal and classified. But he did happen to mention something about Prefect Tazencius; he tried to escape, apparently, and he had accomplices waiting for him on the road between here and Weal, two people in a cart. I was wondering if you knew anything about that, either.'

'Two people in a cart,' Poldarn repeated. 'You mean the two who were going round pretending to be the god?'

Whatever Falx Roisin had been about to say, he didn't say it. Instead, he narrowed his eyebrows, opened his mouth and closed it again. 'I hadn't thought of that,' he said eventually.

'Somebody else did, apparently,' Poldarn replied. 'They've caught them and brought them in. I passed them on my way back from town.' He paused, waited for a moment, then went on, 'Oh, I see. You were thinking that it was Gotto and me.'

'What? Oh, no, God forbid. The thought never crossed my mind.' Poldarn looked at Falx Roisin and was sure he could see machinery working behind his eyes. 'Damn it, if you're right, that'd make a whole lot of sense, wouldn't it? I mean, they've been going round prophesying the end of the world, spreading panic and doom and stuff, and now people are saying they had something to do with what happened to Josequin. Bloody hell,' he added, pulling a ferocious face. 'The bastards. All this time they were hand in glove with that arse-hole Tazencius-and the raiders, God damn it, just think of that. I just hope they string 'em up high, that's all, and Tazencius as well, even if he is some kind of minor royal. That's disgusting.'

'I thought so,' Poldarn said. 'Not to mention the blasphemy side of it. If that's not asking for trouble, I don't know what is.'

'Blasphemy? Oh, I see what you mean.' Falx Roisin looked at him with the atheist's gentle contempt for the believer. 'Well, quite,' he said. 'God, though, I'd never have guessed that one. Prefect Tazencius being in with the raiders. And to think I once gave him a silver dinner service.'

Shaking his head, Falx Roisin picked up his lamp and drifted away, still murmuring to himself about the iniquities of the world. Poldarn shut the door after him, kicked his boots off and lay down on the bed. Then he realised that he was still wearing his new coat, and that it was covered in dust and mud. He stood up, took it off and hung it over the back of the chair, and stretched his back, which was just starting to stiffen up.

Coincidence, he told himself. It was a fairly basic idea; if you can't get at something from straight on or above, try from underneath. Furthermore, take away the fact that both cases had involved a gateway and the similarity between them wasn't all that great. Even supposing it was, and that the idea had been in the back of his mind all along, and he'd used it for the Falx house emergency; just because he'd copied the idea, it didn't automatically follow that he'd been in General Cronan's army, or any army; Falx Roisin hadn't, to the best of his knowledge, but he'd heard about what Cronan's engineers had done; if Falx Roisin had heard of it through news or gossip, then in all likelihood so had he, and the idea had been snuggled away behind the screen along with the rest of his memories.

He pushed the whole business out of his mind and sat down on the bed. I wonder what Copis is doing now, he thought; and the truth was, he had no idea. What did normal people do after dark, the ones who weren't nameless strangers with no memories, the ones who didn't earn their livings in the death and intrigue business? He tried to work it out from first principles. The ones who worked hard all day would go home and sleep; if they weren't tired they'd light a lamp and mend their clothes or their tools, sing, tell stories, make love, whatever. Somehow he couldn't imagine it, any more than he could imagine what giants or elves or gods did in their spare time when they weren't being legends. Far more plausible to assume that they didn't exist in the dark, or if they didn't simply disappear when nobody could see them they sat still and quiet, inanimate, waiting for daybreak and the turn of the next page.

Pages. He wasn't tired; at least, he was very tired but he knew perfectly well he wouldn't get to sleep. But the generous and thoughtful Falx Roisin, by his duly appointed agent Quartermaster Eolla, had provided for him in just such an emergency and ordained that he should be issued with a small pottery lamp and a book. Two books, in fact. The man was all heart.

He lit the lamp, chafing a knuckle on the tinderbox in the process, sat down in his chair and examined the two books. He hadn't given them a thought since he'd received them, hadn't even opened them to find out what they were called or what they were about. That was ungrateful of him.

The first one was quite old; the ink was brown, the parchment was almost translucent in places, and it creaked alarmingly as he opened it. How do you look after books? he wondered. Are you supposed to rub the bindings once a month with neat's foot oil, the way you do with harness and boots, or would that make the ink run? Did the stitching down the middle wear out, and if so, was it easy to replace?

He chose a page at random:

…Two pounds of chopped leeks, three cups of light white wine, a pound of raisins, half a pound of fresh celery and six eggs. First, hang the hare for twelve days. On the thirteenth day, remove the skin and guts, fillet and coat in flour. Pour the wine into a bowl…

A quick flick through confirmed his suspicions; it was all like that. He frowned, closed the book and put it on the floor. One to save, he decided, until he was really desperate. That still left the other book, which was not quite as old, though somewhat shorter and thinner. He was a little apprehensive about opening it; if it turned out to be another dud, could he take them both back to Eolla and demand to be allowed two replacements, or was he stuck with them for the duration of his service? He forced himself to remember that he'd had the pick of the books in the box, and had chosen these two of his own free will, purely on the basis of size. Nobody to blame but himself, and typical, he felt, of the luck he'd had so far in making choices.

He picked up the second book and decided that it probably wasn't going to bite him. This time, he started with the very first page:

The Complete Temple Of Wisdom

(That's more like it, he thought.)

Comprising a complete digest of all the other books heretofore written that merit the attention of scholars, soldiers, government officers and those of gentle birth and breeding, including but not confined to the books of religion, natural science, medicine, philosophy, law, the skills and crafts; the best works of the finest and most acclaimed divines, homilists, commentators and grammarians, historians, poets and writers of prose fiction; also including comprehensive tables of weights, measures, rates of exchange, statutes in force, common ailments and their symptoms and cures, fasts and festivals, prosody and metre newly explained, auspicious and unauspicious days; to which is appended the complete letter-writer, comprising over two hundred model letters for all occasions; the complete understanding of the counting-board, abacus and string tally; grammars and glossaries of all the known languages; the farmer's almanac and helpmeet (newly revised); the mariner's guide, including all necessary charts and tables of tides and a completely new and unabridged treatise on the practice of navigation by the stars; with over one thousand illustrations, diagrams and maps; by A Scholar of Sansory. Copied and bound at the sign of the Brown Dog in the precinct of the Old and New Temples, Sansory. Price: three quarters.

The last bit let the rest down, he reckoned; three quarters for all that wisdom. Admittedly the book was vilely copied in a tiny cramped hand on low-grade mutton vellum that had been scraped back at least three times, which probably helped to keep the price down. On the other hand, all the answers to all the questions in the world, not to mention ten pages of indices and a free bookmark, all for the price of a night in an inn-maybe that was all the concentrated wisdom of mankind was worth. That would explain a great deal.

Having nothing better to do, he looked up 'Poldarn' in the index. There was one listing, page 474; he flicked through, and read: An obscure southern god, now neglected. Iconography: a crow with a ring in its beak. Assigned duties: war, fire, sundry domestic and industrial crafts, the end of the world. Literary amp; cultural significance: none. Also known as Bolodan (Sthrn), Polidan (lit.), the Dodger (colloq.). See also: Mannerists; Life of Fthr Azonicus of Lomessa; Enlightened thought; prophecies; end of the world, the; Land and Sea raiders, the; carts amp; wagons.

He frowned, and stuck the bookmark in to mark the place, then looked up Josequin (two pages, mostly recommending popular inns, taverns, brothels and carpet stalls), the Guilds, Sansory (eight pages; lots of taverns), Mael Bohec, the empire and a number of other things, until his eyes were too tired to stay open and he fell asleep.

He woke up an hour later (just as he opened his eyes, he thought he saw two crows, wonderfully carved out of huge lumps of coal, come to life and flap away, croaking resentfully) with pins and needles in both feet and a sore neck, just in time to blow out the lamp before it burned up the last few drops of his monthly oil ration. Sleeping in chairs, he decided, wasn't good for him. As he stood up, he felt something under his foot (extremely painful, in the circumstances) and guessed from the size and shape that it must be the book, fallen from his hands when he dropped off. He groped around for it but it wouldn't come to hand, and he let it lie till morning.