Shadow

Chapter Eighteen

They dragged him, bleeding and dizzy, from the cart to the tent flap (and as his feet trailed behind him, each bump and jolt jarring the broken bone, flooding his body and mind with pain, two crows got up out of a dead spruce tree and flew away; one of them had something gripped in its beak, but he wasn't sufficiently interested to lift his head and see what it was). The sentry outside the tent blocked their way with his spear.

'What's the hurry?' he asked suspiciously. 'And what's that?'

'Top priority is what it is,' snapped the trooper on his left. 'Urgent. You know what urgent means?'

'It's all right.' The voice came from inside the tent. 'Let them through, I'm expecting them.' A hand pulled back the tent flap, and they hauled him through and lowered him to the ground like a sack of grain, gently enough to stop him splitting open, but beyond that not too bothered.

'Lift his head.' A hand gathered enough hair for a grip and pulled upwards, lifting his head enough for him to see the man in the tent. 'That's him. Fine, good work. Now, you two go and get something to eat, catch a few hours' sleep. We're moving out just before dawn.'

He couldn't see the two troopers now, so he assumed they were saluting or whatever cavalrymen did; all he could see was six square inches of threadbare carpet. But he could hear the rustling of canvas, which led him to believe they'd left the tent.

'Do you know who I am?' the voice said. A pause-he didn't reply, mostly because that would involve moving his jaw, which would be very painful. 'Hello, can you hear me? I asked you a question.'

Something hit him just above the waist, confirming his impression that at least one rib on that side was broken. He rode out the pain like a man in a small boat in a gale; so long as his connection with this body was minimal, he could stay above the breakers, not get swamped by them.

'I said, do you know who I am?' If he'd been feeling a little better, he'd have laughed. Possibly he'd have made a witty reply-something along the lines of, I don't even know who I am, or, Sorry, but my mother told me never to talk to strange men. He didn't know who he was, of course; or if he did, the knowledge had been crammed into an inaccessible corner of his mind by the pain, and he couldn't reach it. Didn't really want to, either.

'Well,' the man said, 'in case you don't know, though I'm pretty certain you do, my name is Feron Amathy. What's yours?'

Good question, and it occurred to him that if he didn't answer the man might kick him in the ribs again. He didn't want that. He couldn't remember his name, but he knew a name he'd called himself once or twice, when on a mission using a persona. He opened his mouth-his jaw hurt like hell-and managed to make a noise that sounded like 'Monach'.

'Yes,' the man replied. 'I know. Just wanted to see if you'd tell me the truth. It's what we call a control; ask questions you know the answer to, it helps you get a feel for whether the subject's likely to lie or not. So,' he went on, sitting down in the chair whose feet Monach could just make out in line with his nose, 'you're the famous Monach, are you? Bloody hell, you're a mess. What on earth did they do to you?'

He hoped that was a rhetorical question, because he couldn't remember. Generally speaking, if you want an accurate description of a fight, don't ask the man lying on the ground getting kicked and stamped on. All he can see is boots and ankles, and his concentration is apt to wander.

'Looks like you must've put up a hell of a fight,' the man went on. 'Which did neither of us any favours, of course. You got beaten into mush, I can't get a sensible word out of you. If you'd given up and come quietly, think how much better it'd have been for both of us.' He heard the chair creak, and the feet in front of his eyes moved. 'Let's get you sitting up,' he said. 'We might have better luck if you're not sprawled all over the floor like a heap of old washing.'

The man was strong, and not fussed about what hurt and what didn't. When he opened his eyes again, his mind washed clean by the waves of pain, he was sitting in a chair. Opposite him was the man who'd been talking.

'Better?' the man asked. 'All right, now, you're going to have to make an effort and answer my questions, because it's very important and there's not much time. If you don't, I'll take this stick and find out which of your bones are broken. If you understand, nod once.'

Nodding wasn't too hard. He managed it. That seemed to please the man, because he nodded back and sat down in his chair, a three-foot thumb-thick rod of ashwood across his knees. He was younger than Monach had expected, no more than forty, with plenty of curly brown hair and a slightly patchy brown beard, thick on the cheeks and jaws but a little frayed-looking on the chin itself. He had a pointed nose, a heart-shaped face and bright, friendly brown eyes.

'Splendid,' the man said. 'All right, pay attention. Do you know where General Cronan is?'

Apparently he did, because his head lifted up and then flopped back, jarring his jaw and making him shudder. The name Cronan didn't ring a bell at all.

'Yes? And?'

He felt himself trying to say something. 'At the Faith and Fortitude,' he heard himself say, 'on the road from Josequin to Selce.' That didn't make any sense. He'd never heard of any inn called the Faith and Fortitude, or a place called Selce. The man was nodding, though, as if the answer made perfect sense to him. Then he remembered the two crows, one with something in its beak. Thank God for that, he thought, it's just another dream. A real pity it's so vivid, though. A dream kick to a dream broken rib only causes dream pain, but dream pain hurts just as much as the real thing, apparently.

'I know where you mean,' the man said. 'Very good, now we're getting somewhere. Next question: have you sent some of your people to kill him?'

Just a dip of the head this time, to indicate Yes.

'Buggery. When?'

The answer, apparently, was that morning, two hours before noon.

'Which means… How were they going? On foot, horseback, wagon?'

He opened his mouth to reply but started coughing instead. Coughing was a very bad idea. The man didn't approve, either, because he repeated his question, loudly.

'Riding,' he managed to say. 'Not hurrying. Can't risk.'

'Were they taking the main road?'

A nod.

'That's something, I suppose. All right, stay there, don't go away.'

The man left the tent, shouting a name, and left him alone. That was wonderful, he'd have a chance to relax, to catch up with the pain, which was racing ahead of his thoughts and blocking their way. He closed his eyes-it was better with them shut, in spite of the dizziness. At the back of his mind something was protesting: no, you mustn't close your eyes, you'll fall asleep or pass out. This is your only chance; look, there's a knife on the map table, you can reach it if you tilt the legs of the chair. You can hide it under your arm, and when he comes back you can stab him or cut his throat, and that'll make up for the rest. Must do it, can't afford not to. You've done very badly, but you still have one chance. Won't get another. Must He stayed still, put the voice out of his mind. Maybe if he knew what was going on it'd be different; if he knew why it was so important to kill this man-Feron something, Feron Amathy, and didn't that name sound familiar from somewhere?-then maybe he might just have made the effort. As it was, no incentive. Nothing outside his body mattered, outside his body and the invisible circle of pain that surrounded it. The pain defined everything.

A while later Feron Amathy came back. He looked unhappy. 'I've sent thirty light cavalry up the old drovers' trail, so if the Lihac's fordable they ought to get there an hour or so before your assassins. Still, it's cutting it fine.'

He sounded like a senior officer briefing a delinquent subordinate, not one enemy telling another how he'd frustrated his plans and made the sacrifice of his life to the cause meaningless. It wasn't cruelty, Monach figured, just a busy man thinking aloud, as busy men so often do. Probably he found it useful having someone to talk to, even if it was only a defeated, humiliated opponent. Monach could feel his weariness, the tremendous weight of responsibility clamping down on his shoulders. 'Now then,' he said, flopping back into his chair and letting his arms hang down. 'What are we going to do with you, I wonder? My instinct says send your head back to Deymeson with an apple stuck in your mouth, to let them know I'm perfectly well aware of what they're up to. On the other hand, why give them any more information than necessary? So long as they aren't sure whether I've worked out that they're involved, they'll have to cover both contingencies, which'll slow up their planning. In which case, I can either have you strung up here, make a show of it, issue double rations, give the lads something to cheer them up; or I could keep you for later, assuming you survive. God only knows what sort of useful stuff you've got locked up in your head, but will prising it out of there be more trouble than it's worth?' He sighed. 'Truth is,' he went on, 'nobody else is fit to interrogate you; even in the state you're in you're probably too smart for them, and I can't afford to let you muck me about with disinformation. I haven't got the time or, let's face it, the energy. Besides, you've caused me a real headache, and until those cavalry troopers get back from Selce I can't be sure you haven't really screwed everything up.' He sighed. 'I think I'll knock you on the head now,' he went on. 'Anything else is just wasting valuable time.' As he said that, he stood up, drawing a short knife from the sash round his waist. One step forward, finger and thumb tightening on his face, a sharp twist sideways, the knife starting to slice the skin of his neck Poldarn woke up, his right hand pressed hard against his neck. Usually the dreams didn't bother him once he'd woken up; they slid away, like ducks launching themselves on to a pond, and left nothing behind. But this dream had been different, much more real and immediate, so that the pain had hurt. He'd already forgotten what had caused it, but the memory of the pain was still with him, an uncomfortable twitch every time it burst into his circle.

'You do that a lot,' Copis said.

He'd forgotten she was there. 'Do what?' he mumbled.

'Sleep with your hand under your ear like that,' she replied. 'I wish you wouldn't, it makes you snore.'

He frowned. 'I don't snore, do I?'

'When you sleep with your hand under your ear, yes.'

'Oh.' For some reason, that bothered him a lot. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'Did I wake you up?'

She shook her head. 'I'm used to people making noises in their sleep,' she explained, with a slight narrowing of the eyebrows that made it clear that the subject wasn't to be pursued further. 'It's fairly moderate snoring, actually; cutting-damp-wood-with-a-blunt-saw snoring, not monsoon-winds-in-Morevich snoring. Are you going to lie there all day, or would you care to get up so we can go and earn a living?'

He remembered where he was: an inn called the Divine Moderation, a third of the way from Sansory to Deymeson. They were on the road, selling buttons. Yesterday had been a good day; they'd sold fifteen dozen buttons at four hundred and fifty per cent mark-up, and all the women in the village had told them how reasonable their prices were.

'This place we're going to,' Copis said, as he sat down beside her on the box, 'ought to be pretty good. Never been there myself, of course, but I've heard quite a bit about it. Apparently they've got wonderful soil, so they grow garden stuff for Sansory-fruit and vegetables, mostly, and a lot of flowers. Should mean there'll be some money about.'

The name of the place turned out to be Mestory, and it was almost large enough to be a town. The Sansory road brought them in on the south-west side, where there was a sprawl of new houses and fences that were hardly weathered at all, with the gates still hanging straight and held closed by their latches rather than lengths of fraying twine. The thatch on the roofs was still nearer yellow than grey, and all the buildings looked pretty much the same.

'Interesting,' Copis observed. 'New building. Definite sign of prosperity. We could do well here.'

More surprising still was the marketplace; that was all new, too. There was a small but handsome corn exchange in the middle of the market square, so new that the edges of the stone blocks were still sharp and clean. Opposite the corn exchange there was even a temple-a miniature temple, with a toy portico and one self-conscious-looking half-life-size statue outside, but a temple nevertheless. The scaffolding up the side of the east wall suggested it wasn't finished yet.

'All right,' Copis said, 'I'm impressed. So where is everybody?'

As soon as she said it, Poldarn realised that that was what was wrong with the place: no people. There was a fine market, but no stalls. There were temple steps, but nobody sitting on them. Half the shops in the pristine-looking traders' row had their shutters up, and there were no more than a dozen people standing outside the shops that were open. The few people he could see appeared to be acting normally-drifting, chatting, window-shopping-but there was only a sparse handful of them, and it was an hour before noon.

'There's probably a simple explanation,' Poldarn said. 'Maybe everybody's out fetching in the asparagus harvest or something.'

'Fat lot you know about asparagus,' Copis replied accurately, but she was clearly just as bewildered as he was. 'Maybe they're all indoors. Could be a seasonal thing,' she added. 'Maybe, because they grow different stuff to most places, they have their midday meal at a different time.'

Poldarn hadn't thought of that, mostly because it wasn't a very convincing explanation. The place felt empty.

'We'd better ask somebody instead of guessing,' Copis said. 'Quick, ask that woman over there.'

Poldarn pulled a face. 'You ask her,' he said.

'Oh for… Excuse me.' The woman stopped and looked round. 'Excuse me,' Copis went on, 'but where is everybody?'

The woman looked at her. 'Where's who?' she said.

'Everybody. The people who live here.'

The woman shook her head and walked away. 'Just my luck,' Copis said, not lowering her voice. 'I have to ask the village idiot.'

'Maybe they aren't used to strangers,' Poldarn suggested, without any real enthusiasm.

'Maybe they're just ignorant,' Copis replied sharply. 'Anyway, we're here; we might as well set up the stall, just in case. They've got a temple, perhaps they're all in there, singing hymns.'

Poldarn listened for a moment. 'Pretty quiet singing if they are,' he said.

The stall was little more than the side of the cart, which was hinged and swung down; two posts for the awning went in the canopy-rod holes, with two more rods leaning forward at forty-five degrees to support the front. All that was needed after that was a trestle table and trays for sample buttons. The rest of the stock was in jars and barrels in the back of the cart. They took their time setting up, to give the word a chance to spread. When they couldn't spin it out any longer, they sat on the bed of the cart and surveyed the empty streets.

'If we're quick,' Copis said, a short while later, 'we could be in Forial by early evening.'

'Where's Forial?'

'Next village down the road from here. I don't know anything about it except the name, but it's got to be better than this.'

Poldarn shook his head. 'I can't be bothered,' he said. 'Besides, you never know, it could pick up. I've always fancied running a stall must be a lot like decoying rooks-you know, where you find where they're feeding, hunker down out of sight and put out a few dead birds stuck up on sticks to draw the others in. Then when they pitch you pick them off with a sling.'

Copis clicked her tongue. 'So far,' she said, 'I don't get the similarity. Or are you saying we should kill and impale the next person we see? The idea does appeal to me, I'll grant you, but not on commercial grounds.'

Poldarn grinned. 'The point is,' he said, 'you can sit there in your ditch or under your tree for the best part of the day and never see anything; and then, just when you've finally decided to give it away and go home, suddenly the sky'll turn black with rooks, and next thing you know you've run out of slingstones. Patience is the key to this lark, you wait and see.'

Copis turned thoughtful for a while, as Poldarn fiddled with the trays of buttons. Eventually she looked up and said, 'Where do you get the dead ones from?'

'Sorry?'

'The dead ones you put out in sticks, for decoys,' she said. 'Where do you get them from?'

'They're the ones you killed the previous day,' Poldarn explained.

'All right,' Copis conceded. 'But in that case, how do you start off? I mean, if you need a dozen dead rooks before you can start killing rooks, how do you kill a dozen rooks in the first place?'

'No idea,' Poldarn said. 'I suppose I must know the answer, since I seem to be pretty well clued up about the subject, but I can't remember offhand.'

'Fine,' Copis said. 'In that case, let's change the subject. The thought of dead rooks really isn't one I want to hold in my mind for very long.'

Noon came and passed, during which time two old women walked past the stall, apparently without noticing that it was there. Copis made a point of standing up and staring at them as they passed, explaining that she wanted to see if they were wearing any buttons. 'They were, too,' she added. 'Which makes it odder still. Unless there's a special tree in these parts that grows buttons instead of nuts.'

Not long after that a young woman with a baby in her arms walked by the stall, stopped and leaned over to look at one of the trays. Poldarn and Copis snapped to attention like a couple of farm dogs hearing a bowl scraping on the cobbles.

'Can we help at all?' Copis cooed.

'I was just looking,' the woman replied, taking a step backwards as though she'd been caught out doing something wicked. 'Very nice,' she added.

Copis smiled at her. 'Anything in particular you liked the look of?' she asked.

The woman hesitated and glanced down at the baby, which was fast asleep. 'Well,' she said, hesitating. 'Those ones there, the quite big ones with the rim on them.'

'Gorgeous, aren't they?' Copis replied, exaggerating rather. 'Made in Sansory, Potto house. You won't find better this side of the bay.'

It was clear that the woman was tempted, and that she was fighting the temptation. 'Those other ones,' she said tentatively, 'the little ones on the bottom row. Are they cheaper or dearer than the big ones?'

'All the same price,' Poldarn said quickly before Copis frightened her off. In his mind he had a picture of a black bird putting its wings back and circling in a glide towards him. 'Two quarters a dozen.'

'I don't know,' the woman replied. 'Shouldn't the smaller ones be cheaper?'

Poldarn shook his head. 'If anything they should be more expensive,' he said. 'Harder to make, you see. Fiddly.'

'Oh.' The woman rubbed her cheekbones thoughtfully with thumb and forefinger. 'If I take two dozen, would it be cheaper?'

'No,' Copis said. 'Sorry.'

'Oh. Have you got any others, or is this everything?'

That took Poldarn rather by surprise, since he couldn't begin to imagine what need there could possibly be for the two hundred and forty different styles of buttons mounted on the display board. 'Sorry,' he said, 'but that's the lot. What sort of thing were you looking for?'

The woman shrugged. 'I won't know what it is till I see it,' she replied. 'Thanks very much.'

Poldarn was too bewildered to persevere, and let it go with a smile and a dip of the head. Copis waited till the woman was about fifty yards away then stuck her tongue out in her general direction. 'Time-waster,' she explained.

'She never had any intention of buying any buttons,' Poldarn said.

'Of course not. Just passing the time. Lots of people do it, I have absolutely no idea why.' She sighed. 'This is completely pointless. Let's fold up and get out of here.'

Poldarn glanced up at the sky. 'You know,' he said, 'we've left it a bit late if we want to reach that other place by dark.'

'I'd rather sleep in the cart than stay here.'

Poldarn could see her point. But packing up would mean having to get up and exert himself, and he was feeling lazy. 'No,' he said, 'let's stick to the original plan. Stay here the rest of the day and push on to Forial tomorrow.'

'Suit yourself,' Copis said. 'But you can mind the stall on your own. I'm going to take a nap in the cart.'

Poldarn couldn't see any objections to that, so he nodded. Copis climbed up behind him, laid a blanket in the corner of the cart bed, and went to sleep. She had a knack of being able to sleep at will that he found both remarkable and enviable.

Some time later a little girl, perhaps nine years old, wandered up and stood staring at the buttons as if they were six-headed goats. Apart from the time-waster's baby, she was the first child he'd seen in town. There was something about the way she was standing and gawping that told him she was neither willing nor able to buy buttons, but Poldarn could see no reason why she should be a complete dead loss.

'Hey,' he said.

The girl looked at him and said nothing.

'Come here,' he said. 'I want to ask you a question.'

The little girl scowled at him. 'My mummy says not to talk to strange men.'

'You should always listen to your mother. But I'm not strange.'

The little girl assessed him. It didn't seem to take her very long. 'Yes you are,' she said. 'You're old and ugly and you look like a crow.'

'Thank you,' Poldarn replied. 'Now, if you don't mind, please stop looking at my buttons. You'll look all the polish off them.'

The little girl frowned. 'You can't do that, silly.'

'Of course you can.'

'No you can't. Looking at things doesn't hurt them.'

'Want to bet?' Poldarn leaned back a little. 'You know how if you leave something out in the sun for a while, like a piece of cloth or something like that, all the colour fades out of it? Same thing. The sun looks at it too long and it fades.'

The girl thought about that. 'But I don't look as fiercely as the sun.'

'Maybe. But you're much closer, so it's as broad as it's long. Go away.'

She shook her head. 'No,' she said. 'I can stay here and look at your stupid buttons if I want to.'

Poldarn rubbed his chin thoughtfully. 'All right,' he said, 'but don't come any closer.'

He made a show of fiddling with the display, shifting the boards around, rearranging the buttons, turning some of them over. When he'd been doing this for a while, the little girl said, 'What was the question you wanted to ask me?'

'Doesn't matter,' he replied, not looking up. 'You probably wouldn't know the answer anyway.'

'Bet you I would.'

He laughed. 'No point betting you, you've got nothing to bet with.'

'Yes I have,' the girl replied, annoyed. 'I've got a brass ring and a rabbit-fur hood at home.'

Poldarn shook his head. 'They wouldn't fit me,' he said. 'All right, you can push off now. I'm busy.'

'What's the question?'

He made an exasperated noise with his tongue and teeth. 'If I ask you the question, will you go away?'

She shook her head. 'You've got to bet me.'

'Oh, for crying out loud. All right, then, what do you want to bet?'

'My hood and ring against a dozen buttons,' she replied. 'Those ones,' she added, pointing. 'They're nice.'

In Poldarn's opinion the ones she'd chosen were the most hideous of the lot, although they had some pretty stiff competition. 'If you insist,' he said. 'All right, here's the question: where is everybody? Why's this village got so few people in it?'

The little girl put on a sad face, as if pulling on a glove. 'They went away,' she said. 'The grown-up men had to go and join the-' She said something that sounded like merlicia. It took Poldarn a second or so to work out she meant militia. And then the raiders came and killed them all,' she added casually. 'Mummy said they aren't dead, they just went on a long journey, but I know that's not true because I saw where they got buried, in a big pit, hundreds and hundreds.'

Ah,' Poldarn said, feeling a little rattled. And what about the lady grown-ups? Did they go away too?'

'Some of them were killed,' the girl said, playing with a pulled thread on her sleeve, 'and some of them got sick and died. But a lot of them just went away. My mummy went away and I've got to live with my aunt. I don't like her very much. She smells.'

Poldarn nodded absently. 'That's dreadful,' he said. 'Where did they go? The ones who went away, I mean?'

'Don't know. Do I get my buttons now?'

'In a minute,' Poldarn replied. 'What do you know about religion?'

The girl looked at him. 'What's that?'

'Gods and stuff.'

'Oh,' the girl said, 'that. Well, there's lots of gods, and some of them live in the sky and some of them live under the ground or at the bottom of the sea, and the rest just sort of wander about. What do you want to know about them for?'

'Have you heard of a god called Poldarn?'

'Poll what?'

'Or a god who rides around in a cart, bringing the end of the world?'

'Oh yes, of course,' the girl said, her face relaxing as she addressed something familiar at last. 'Everybody knows about him.'

'What do they know?'

The little girl gathered her thoughts for a moment. 'Well,' she said, 'nobody knows what he's called, and he goes around from village to village, and wherever he goes gets burned down or invaded and all the people die; but it's not his fault, it's bad men like the raiders who do the actual burning and invading. He just sort of goes in front. Oh yes,' she added, 'and there's a silly bit, too, but I don't believe it.'

'Tell me anyway,' Poldarn said.

The little girl pulled a face. 'Well, they say he doesn't actually know he's a god, he just thinks he's one of us, a person. And he starts off by climbing up out of a river, and he keeps on going till he meets himself coming in the opposite direction. And then that's the end of the world. Like I said,' she added disdainfully, 'it's really silly, and I don't think anybody really believes it. Now do I get my buttons? You did promise.'

Poldarn found the right jar and counted out a dozen buttons. 'Thanks,' he said. 'You won your bet after all. You're clever.'

'I know,' the girl jeered, and skipped away.

By the time Copis woke up he'd got the awning down and folded up the trestles. 'You were right,' he said, 'absolutely no point staying here. We'll make a start towards Deymeson and sleep out; with luck, that'll get us to Forial good and early. Assuming,' he added, 'it's still there when we arrive.'

Forial was still there, and it was well and truly open for business. They did a very brisk trade all day, and in the rare intervals when he wasn't taking money Poldarn tried to find out about what had happened in the other village. Yes, it was true what the girl had told him; in fact the place had had a fairly dreadful time of it over the last twenty years or so. First it had been completely erased by the raiders, or by somebody-a lot of people reckoned it was the Amathy house, since they'd been in the district at the time on their way back from a war that got cancelled at the last moment, but of course there wasn't any proof; then the emperor himself had sent money and builders to restore it, by way of showing how much he cared about the northern provinces, not that anybody believed him. But it had been a good job, and quite soon they were doing a wonderful business in fruit and vegetables with Sansory and everybody was starting to get annoyingly prosperous. Then the Amathy house had shown up-definitely them this time, they were fighting for General Allectus against General Cronan, and they needed a couple of hundred labourers to build a wall or dig a trench or raise a siege mound or something of the sort, so they rounded up all the men and quite a few of the women and the older children-they had the authority; some kind of general warrant issued by the prefect of Sansory-and marched them off to do whatever it was that needed doing, but it all went wrong; the thing they were building fell down or caved in, or the enemy attacked it suddenly, and they were all killed. It was a terrible shame, the people of Forial told him, and a bloody good job Feron Amathy had gone there instead of here for his work detail. Feron Amathy was a menace, no two ways about it, though this new man, Cronan, he was probably just as bad, because when you came right down to it, they all were; them and the raiders and the government soldiers too. Still, at least it wasn't as bad as what happened to Vistock.

What happened to Vistock, Poldarn asked; and where was Vistock, anyway?

Ah, they told him, good question. Well, if he carried on up the road another half a day and he kept his eyes open and it was a time of year when the grass was short, he might just be able to make out some scorched patches on the ground, even now. That was Vistock. And that really was the raiders, they added. It all happened a long time ago, mind, over forty years ago, and though the land around there wasn't bad and it was all up for grabs, what with everybody being dead, nobody'd ever shown any interest at all in going out there and staking a claim. Well, apart from one old woman who still lived there, in some kind of mouldy old hut, but she was crazy, so that didn't count.

Poldarn supposed you'd have to be crazy to live all alone out in the wilds like that.

Ah yes, but she was a lot crazier than that. She figured she was the mother of the god in the cart; you know, the one who's going to turn up at the end of the world. Now that had to be a special kind of crazy, didn't it?

By nightfall they'd sold the best part of eight hundred buttons. When they'd packed up the stall, Copis asked where the inn was. There wasn't an inn. But the blacksmith might be prepared to let them sleep over in his barn for a few quarters. A few turned out to be six, rather more than they'd have spent in a reasonably good inn; the barn was cold, with a damp floor (like the Potto house) and a thoroughly objectionable goose, which brayed at them all night and managed to get out of the way of everything they threw at it.

They were ready to leave as soon as the sun rose. 'Deymeson,' Copis said. 'There's nothing to stop for between here and there, so we should be able to get there in a day if we don't hang about.'

Poldarn shook his head. 'Actually,' he said, 'I want to stop off on the way.'

Vistock wasn't hard to find. It was where a village should have been, where the road forded a small, inoffensive river. The first thing they could make out was the shell of a mill-house, with a wrecked and moss-grown wheel sunk in the water. Inside the building they found a lump of rust that had once been an anvil and the charred stump of a trip-hammer. There was only one other structure still standing: half a barn (the other half had fallen in a long time ago, there were still signs of fire on the rounded ends of the rafters) surrounded on two sides by an overgrown wall.

'Over there, I suppose,' Poldarn said.

'What the hell could there possibly be in there worth stopping for?' Copis asked.

'No idea,' Poldarn replied. 'Come on.'

Someone had made a half-hearted attempt at boarding in the remaining half of the barn. There was even a door, hanging out of the fence of rotten timbers on two straps of mouldy rope. There really didn't seem to be much point in knocking, since you could get through the gap between the door and the fence if you went sideways and held your breath, but Poldarn knocked anyway.

'Go away,' said a voice from inside.

'Good God,' Copis whispered. 'There's someone in there.'

'I know,' Poldarn replied. 'That's why we're here.'

He opened the door into darkness. An egg hit him in the face.

Luckily it caught him on the chin, so he didn't have to worry about razor-sharp splinters of shell in his eyes. He wiped it away with the back of his left hand and called out, 'Hello?'

'Piss off. I got a knife.'

Poldarn peered round, but it was very dark indeed inside and he couldn't see anything. 'Can I come in?' he asked.

'No. Get lost, before I stick this knife in you.'

'There's no call to be like that,' Poldarn said.

'Yes there is. Get out, or I'll kill you.'

Poldarn was using the voice to find whoever it was. It was low for a woman's voice, rather breathy in a way that suggested some kind of chronic lung trouble. 'We don't mean you any harm,' he said. 'I'd just like to ask you a few questions.'

'Get out. Go away, before I set the dogs on you.'

It was fairly obvious that there weren't any dogs. 'Really,' he said, listening hard, 'we aren't going to hurt you or steal your stuff. We've come a long way.'

'I don't give a damn if you've come all the way from bloody Morevich, you're not-' That was enough for Poldarn to get a fix; he reached out quickly into the dark and grabbed, and connected with a thin, tight arm. He could feel small muscles, as hard as rope, under old skin.

'Sorry,' he said, dragging on the arm, 'but I do need to ask you some things. Won't take long.'

She may have been lying about the dogs, but not the knife, but Poldarn knew the moment her hand violated his circle, and he caught her wrist easily. A quick twist, enough to hurt without damaging, was enough to make her drop the knife. He pulled firmly, overcoming rather more resistance than he'd expected, and led her out into the light.

Not a pretty sight. It was fairly evident that she didn't feel the cold, since she wasn't wearing any clothes; as a result, it was hard to miss the shiny white scar that ran from her left hip almost to her navel. She had a fuzz of tangled grey hair, with things in it, and a jaw that had set badly after being broken a long time ago. She stopped struggling when Poldarn let go of her, and sat down on a log that looked as if it had done long service as a chopping-block.

'Who the bloody hell are you, then?' she asked, and sneezed.

Poldarn grinned. 'You know,' he said, 'that's a very good question. But if you don't mind, I'd like to ask you a question of my own first. Is it true you've got a son?'

She scowled at him, and wiped her nose on the back of her wrist. 'Come to make fun, have you?' she said. 'I know your sort. You'll be old too one day, and then you'll be sorry.'

Poldarn shook his head. 'I'd really like to know,' he said.

'All right.' She reached down behind the log and produced a small axe-Poldarn could have sworn it hadn't been there a moment ago. 'But you lay off me, or so help me I'll smack your head in. You got that?'

'Sure,' Poldarn replied. 'So, is it true?'

She nodded. 'I did have a son once, yes. Had him for all of ten days, before they came over from Vistock; said they reckoned it was about time for the kid to be born, and it wasn't right, trying to bring up a kid out here. They told me I had to go with them, I said I wasn't going. One of them grabbed him, my baby, so I cut his throat.' She paused to pinch something out of her eye; she was very delicate and precise about it, nipping whatever it was off her eyeball with the ends of her jagged nails and flicking it away. 'Well, that was him dealt with, and they went away. But they took the boy, and I've never seen or heard of him since. That was a long time ago.'

Poldarn, who was kneeling down beside her, nodded. 'What about this story I heard in Forial,' he asked, 'about the god in the cart? How did that start?'

She turned her head and looked at him. 'Oh, that's who he was, all right,' she said. 'He told me so himself.'

'I see,' Poldarn said, without emphasis. 'When he was ten days old.'

'No, of course not,' she replied, frowning. 'Don't talk so stupid. No, it was in a dream. I saw him.'

'You saw him,' Poldarn repeated. 'As a baby, or was he grownup?'

'Oh, he was all grown up,' she replied. 'But I knew it was him. And he knew who I was, too. He stopped the cart and got out-he was standing about where that stone is.' She pointed with her left hand, but Poldarn didn't turn to look; the axe was still in her right hand, and he didn't want to take his eye off it just yet. 'Anyway, he smiled at me-always did have a nice smile, of course-and then he got back in and rode away. The smile's from my mother's side, though he had his father's nose.'

'His father.'

'Yes, him.' She frowned. 'One of Feron Amathy's men, he was,' she went on, looking down at her feet. 'It was them burned the village, you know, and killed everybody. Never knew why; I suppose we were in the way or something.'

'Oh,' Poldarn said. 'I'd heard it was the raiders.'

'That's right. Feron Amathy's men. From across the sea.' She found a stub of twig and started whittling at it with the hatchet blade. 'When he was finished with me he was going to kill me, but I was too quick for him. Always was quick with my hands,' she added with a smile. 'That's how I got my knife. Been a good knife over the years, I'd be lost without it. It was lying there on the ground, he was reaching for it, but I got it first and stuck it in his ear. Just there,' she added, 'where you're kneeling, that's where he fell. Landed on his face, and I pulled the knife out and ran. One of his mates was just by the door, he took a swing at me with one of those big inside-out swords of theirs-that's how I got this, in case you were wondering.' She drew a fingertip down the line of the long scar, tracing it by feel, almost affectionately. 'And this was later,' she added, touching her jaw, 'when the government soldiers came through. Was that what you wanted to ask about?'

Poldarn nodded slowly. 'So your son, the god in the cart-his father was a raider, and you killed him.'

'That's right.'

'But he's the god in the cart.'

'I just told you that. You think I'm mental, don't you?'

Poldarn shook his head. 'I can't see any reason not to believe you,' he said. 'Do you think you'd know him again if you saw him, after all these years?'

She scowled. 'My own kid? Of course I would. He's got my mother's chin and his father's nose. I'd know him anywhere.'

Poldarn stood up. 'And you've been here ever since,' he said. It wasn't meant as a question. 'How do you manage? What do you live on?'

She smiled. Once upon a time, it would probably have been a very nice smile. 'I trade,' she said.

'I see,' Poldarn said. 'What do you trade?'

'None of your business.'

'I agree,' Poldarn replied. 'There's no reason why you should tell me if you don't want to, I'm just interested.'

With a turn of her wrist that was too fast for Poldarn's eye to follow, she flicked the hatchet into the log, right between her knees. 'I trade with Master Potto Ilec of Sansory,' she said proudly. 'He sends a wagon up here four times a year, with jars of flour and some cheese and bacon. He needs me,' she added, 'he can't get the good stuff anywhere else, for fear of people knowing. He sends his own son and his two brothers and his uncle, because he won't trust anybody else not to tell.'

Poldarn was holding his breath without knowing it. 'Would you like to tell me what you give him in return for the food?'

She reached down, pulled up the sole of her foot, like a farrier shoeing a horse, and examined it. 'Master Potto Ilec makes buttons,' she said. 'For the really special buttons he likes to use a special kind of bone, with a fine, straight grain and a good feather. It's got to be properly dried and seasoned, and it's got to be the right colour, dark brown. It's the colour that makes it so hard to find.'

'I think I see,' Poldarn said.

'You can't stain it,' she went on, 'it only goes that colour when it's charred in a fire-that dries it up, see, gets all the grease out-and then left to weather, out in the wind and the rain. Takes a long time to cure, according to Master Potto Ilec, you can't rush it. Very hard to find these days.'

'Thank you,' Poldarn said, 'you've been very helpful. Can I ask you one last question?'

She looked up at the sky. 'Don't see why not,' she said.

He took a step closer. 'Your son,' he said, 'did you give him a name, by any chance?'

She shook her head. 'Didn't get round to it. I had other things on my mind, really.'

'Right. Does the name Poldarn mean anything to you?'

'Poldarn.' She thought for a moment. 'No,' she said, 'doesn't ring any bells.'

Poldarn felt in the pocket of his coat. 'Those special buttons,' he said. 'Are they anything like these?'

She glanced at the buttons he'd taken from his pocket and shook her head. 'Too pale,' she said. 'And they're not quite as big as that. They showed me one once, so I could be sure to match the colour.'

Poldarn stepped back towards the cart, still facing her every step of the way. 'Thank you,' he said. 'Is there anything you'd like us to bring you? We'll be passing here again on our way back in a few days.'

She shook her head. 'I got everything I need right here,' she said, 'thanks to Master Potto Ilec, and Feron Amathy.'

Poldarn looked at her. 'You didn't need the kid, then.'

'No.'

'Ah. Well, thank you for talking to us.'

'You're welcome. And now you can piss off and leave me in peace.'

Copis didn't say anything for a long time, not until the ruins of Vistock were out of sight behind the horizon. It was as if she was afraid the mad woman would hear her. 'You didn't ask her name,' she said.

'You're right,' Poldarn replied, 'I didn't.'

'Oh. Why not?'

He shrugged. 'I forgot. I suppose I figured it wasn't important. Talking of which, is Copis your real name?'

She laughed. 'No,' she replied.

He didn't make any comment about that, which annoyed her. 'Aren't you going to ask me what my real name is?' she said.

'No,' Poldarn replied. 'You can tell me if you want to.'

She scowled. 'If you must know, it's Xipho Dorunoxy. And I'm not really from Torcea, though I did live there for years, when I was a kid. I'm from Exo.'

'I see,' Poldarn said. 'Where's that?'

'Oh, a long way away, inland to the east. It isn't even a province of the empire any more. I think it broke away about sixty years ago, though our people still come and go quite freely across the border. You aren't interested, are you?'

He shook his head. 'One thing I've learned lately,' he said, 'is how little it matters what people call themselves or where they come from. They seem to have an idea that without things like that they'll lose their shape and collapse, like a bowl of water if you suddenly take the bowl away. Well, I'm here to prove it isn't true.'

She looked at him in silence for a while. 'You're really trying hard to believe that, aren't you?' she said.

'Yes.'

'Any luck?'

'Not really, no.'

She laughed again. 'Did I ever tell you what the iron-master told me?'

'What iron-master.'

'Ah.' She took off her shoe and shook something out of it, then put it back on. 'Well, I've told you that some of the customers where I used to work liked to talk sometimes, tell me things. I haven't a clue why; I suppose I had a knack of looking like I was interested, and men who're important in business like to talk about what they're doing, stuff they're pleased or proud about, but of course it's usually technical, so nobody outside the shop can understand what they're talking about. Anyway, they used to explain things to me-how things work, how they're made, that sort of stuff.'

'And you listened.'

'It was better than work, that's for sure.' She pushed her hair back behind her ears. 'One of them was an iron-master, like I said. He had a big foundry for brass and copper, and an enormous furnace and great big trip-hammers for the iron and steel-apparently you can't melt iron, the fire's not hot enough, you can only make it soft and squeeze it out of the ore into big lumps, what they call blooms. Then if you want to make plates or bars or whatever, you've got to get it hot till it's soft and beat it into shape.'

'I see,' Poldarn said. 'How fascinating.'

'Shut up, I'm getting there. With scrap, you see, it's different. You sort it all out into piles-soft iron in one pile, hard steel in another, and the soft iron that gets turned into steel, like old horseshoes and wheel tyres and stuff, in a third; and then what you do is you get them all hot and you hammer them and hammer them until they're all welded together into the shapes your customers want-bars and plates and rods. Ever such a lot of work, he told me.'

Poldarn yawned. 'I can imagine,' he said.

'The point is,' Copis went on, 'when you make steel hard, you make it able to hold a shape. That's what hard is, really, being able to stay the same shape even if you get bashed on, unless you're too hard and brittle, in which case you shatter. Anyway, this being able to hold a shape; according to him, the word they used for it was memory. Like a cart spring or a crossbow prod, or a sword; if you bend it, it can remember the shape it used to be and go back into it, exactly the same shape it used to be before you twisted it back on itself. Or, if the memory's really strong, you can hammer and file at it all day and all you'll do is wreck your tools, because it won't budge.' She was looking straight ahead, not at him. 'But if you heat it up, past sunrise red and blood red and cherry red to orange, it'll lose its memory just like you lost yours, and then it stops being hard or springy and turns soft, so you can bash it and shape it and do whatever you like with it. Then, if you just let it cool down slowly in the air, it'll stay soft; but if you take it all red and bloody out of the fire and dip it straight into a pool of water, it'll immediately freeze hard, like the Bohec in winter, and then it'll have a memory all over again. Do you see what I'm getting at?'

'It'd be difficult not to,' Poldarn replied. 'You believe in the sledgehammer school of allegory, I can tell.'

She looked offended for a moment, then shrugged. 'I was just trying to be nice,' she said.

He nodded. 'It's the thought that counts.' He rubbed his face with the palm of his hand. 'So why did you start calling yourself Copis?'

'Because nobody could be bothered to say Dorunoxy,' she replied. 'So they called me Xipho, which of course is my last name, not my first, and where my family come from it's really rude to call someone just by their last name unless you know them really well, and even though I knew they didn't mean anything by it, it used to upset me a lot. So I changed it.'

'Fair enough. What about Copis?'

She laughed. 'Oh, it's a common enough name in Torcea, particularly,' she added, with a grin, 'in that line of work. It's the sort of name the customers expected me to have, so it was easy.'

He nodded. 'And now,' he said, 'what do you think of yourself as, Dorun-whatsit or Copis?'

'Copis.' She pulled a face. 'Which is really bad, because-well, a Copis, you can be pretty sure what kind of person a Copis is.'

'And you're not.'

Her expression changed. 'No. Well, what do you think?'

'Does it matter what I think?'

'Why are you deliberately trying to annoy me?'

He shrugged. 'I don't think you're a Copis, no. I'm just disproving the point you were trying to make at such interminable length a moment ago, that's all. You've changed your name and the shape you appear in, but you've still got the old memory; you're not a Copis, you're a-whatever it was. However hard you try to be a button, you're still a bone.'

She shook her head. 'Whatever,' she said. 'This is all getting a bit too involved and personal for me. I suggest we talk about something else, before we fall out.'

'All right.'

'That woman,' Copis said. 'Who was she?'

'I don't know. I forgot to ask her name, remember?'

'Be like that.' She turned her head away and pretended to look at the scenery for a while. There wasn't any, just a flat plain, and some mist where the Deymeson hills should have been. 'So why did we go out of our way to see her?'

'I was curious.' Poldarn shivered a little. 'Back in the other place, where we sold the buttons, they said she reckoned her son was the god in the cart. The subject interests me. Should be fairly obvious why.'

She raised an eyebrow. 'I thought you said you didn't ever want to do the god act again.'

'I don't. I'm just interested in finding out who I've been, that's all.'