Shadow

Chapter Twenty

'I've never seen anything like it,' Poldarn repeated.

'You can't remember seeing anything like it,' Copis pointed out. 'In your case, that doesn't mean much. For all you know, you used to live there.'

Poldarn frowned; he wasn't in the mood. 'It's amazing,' he said. 'And you honestly believe we're going to be able to sell them buttons?'

From the top of the rise they could see Deymeson, dramatically backlit by the sunset: the town, slopped round the foot of the hill as if it had seeped out under the walls of the castle; the fortress, with its double wall and star-pattern bastions; the abbey and the citadel, topped with a massive low, square tower. Nobody in their right mind would ever call it beautiful. It made Poldarn think of the machines in Potto Dec's factory: entirely functional, designed to execute some process or operation he couldn't begin to understand. If Copis had told him that the gods lived there, he'd probably have believed her.

'For what it's worth,' Copis was saying, 'I've never seen it before either; but I've heard about it, of course, and I'd have recognised it at once because there's a picture of it on the back of the silver hard-quarter. Doesn't do it justice, of course; makes it look pretty.'

Poldarn shook his head. 'I don't believe that anybody who could build something like that uses buttons. Or clothes, even. They're probably covered from head to foot with scales, or feathers.'

Copis sighed. 'We aren't here to sell to the monks, silly,' she said. 'You may not have noticed, but there's a fair-sized town as well as that granite monstrosity. That's where they keep the people who do all the work-you know, scrub the floors, slop out the latrines, cook the food. And do you know what makes them special, as far as we're concerned? They get paid, in money. Therefore,' she concluded with a smile, 'we can sell them buttons.'

They stopped for the night at an inn down in the valley, where for some reason they seemed to cause something of a stir; the grooms and the servers looked at them oddly and wouldn't say why. That made Poldarn nervous, but Copis swore blind she'd never been there before, let alone tried out the act. 'I'd remember,' she said, 'trust me.'

In the morning they drove up the hill to the Foregate. The Foregate was a gate, but there was no town wall, just an arch, at least fifteen feet high and twelve feet wide, made up of mirror-smooth granite blocks with no decoration or embellishment of any kind, free-standing in the patchy grass. No walls, but two sentries.

'That's silly,' Poldarn pointed out. 'You could just drive round the whole thing.'

Copis shook her head. 'Wouldn't advise it,' she said. 'If you did that, they'd call out the guard and you'd find yourself in a cell in the watch-house, if you were lucky.'

Sure enough, the four carts that had been ahead of them on the road were drawn up in line, waiting to go through the gate, while the sentries questioned the drivers. 'Symbolism, you see,' Copis explained. 'Deymeson doesn't need a wall, because its defence is the awesome reputation of the sword-monks.'

'Fine,' Poldarn said. 'Then what's all that masonry further up the hill?'

'Walls, of course,' Copis replied. 'Symbolism is all very well, but some people are too stupid to understand it. The walls and towers and stuff are for their benefit.'

Apparently the sentry hadn't heard of buttons, or else didn't believe in them, because he insisted on opening all the barrels and rummaging about inside, like a man loading grain with his empty hands. He gave up eventually, but there was a resentful glow in his eyes that suggested that he didn't take kindly to being baffled, and would be keeping a very sharp eye on them in future.

Beyond the gate and the scrappy five-acre parcel of scuffed grass and bare mud it stood in were the first houses of the town, warehouses or granaries if their windowless facades were anything to go by. The main street led straight up the steep hill, and the buildings on either side of it gave no indication of what they were used for; two narrow windows per frontage, like scratches or blisters in the blank grey stone, and even those were all on the second or third floor. Some of them had no visible doors or windows at all. There were no people to be seen anywhere.

'I knew this was going to be a waste of time,' Poldarn muttered, 'as soon as you told me this was some kind of religious place. They're probably all at prayers or doing meditation or something.'

'Not the ones who live down here,' Copis said firmly. 'For a start, the order doesn't pray in the sense you're thinking of, they prance about hitting each other with wooden swords. And they live up in the castle, not down here. I don't suppose they see a monk in this part of town from one year's end to the next.'

Just then Copis noticed a turning on her left. It was an archway, just wide enough for the cart to get through if they weren't too fussy about scraping the wheel hubs. 'Let's try this,' she said.

'We can't. For all you know, that could be somebody's private courtyard.'

'Then they ought to put up a gate and lock it,' Copis replied, pulling the cart out in the middle of the street to give herself the right angle to get through the archway. 'Besides, I've got a theory.'

Poldarn signed. 'More symbolism?'

'We'll soon see.'

The archway led into a narrow passage, paved with slate and roofed over, very high up, with dark red tiles. After a very sharp bend, it led into a square.

'Now that's more like it,' Copis said.

It was as if the street had been turned inside out, the way a cushion is turned to hide the seams. In the middle of the square was a fountain, flanked by two statues of young women playing harps. All four sides of the square were lined with open doors; some were shops, with trestles covered with merchandise standing under oilskin awnings; the rest were ordinary houses. Why their owners bothered having them wasn't clear, since it was fairly obvious that everyone spent most of their time out in the open air, standing on one side of the traders' trestles or the other. There was one boy with a tray of evil-looking sausages; another sitting on top of a huge barrel, his legs swinging, his hands cradling a big tin cup; on the side of the barrel was chalked a tariff-a quarter a cup, or six for a turner. As for the stalls, pretty much anything you could ever want to buy was there, in every possible permutation of size, colour and quality, from coarse white sailcloth to seven-colour brocade ('First time I've seen that north of the bay,' Copis whispered in awe), from cheap pine-handled bean-hooks to pattern-welded walking-swords, from clogs to court slippers with absurdly long toes and savagely tight gussets, from green-turned wooden bowls to four-handled pewter goblets, from blanket-cloth ship-jackets to the sort of complicated audience gown that needed two strong maids and a three-foot-long buttonhook to install-everything, in fact, except for buttons.

('Now are you glad we came?' Copis muttered.

'All right, yes.')

The nearest thing to a button in the square was a card of sand-cast brass toggles, rough and unfinished and priced at five quarters. Copis grinned like a dog smelling blood. 'No competition whatsoever,' she sighed happily. 'The one thing I was afraid of was that there'd be a deep-rooted button cartel who'd run us out of town for trying to shove in on their pitch.'

'Doesn't look that way,' Poldarn replied. He'd tied up the horses to a conveniently placed rail and was unstepping the awning poles. 'This is extraordinary. Nothing at all like this in Sansory.'

Copis nodded. 'And this is the first place we came to. For all we know, the whole damn town could be like this. You know, we should've brought all the stock.'

They set up the stall, expecting a soldier or bailiff to arrive at any moment and demand to see their trading permits, but nobody paid any attention, apart from a few good-natured enquiries about what they were selling. To their relief, when they replied, 'Buttons,' they weren't stared at or asked what a button was; in fact, quite a crowd had gathered by the time they opened the stall for business. By noon, the table was looking decidedly threadbare.

'Definitely coming back here again,' Copis said, during an uncharacteristic lull. 'And we can easily jack the prices up a quarter or so; to judge from what they've been saying, they reckon we're practically giving the stuff away.'

'We'll see,' Poldarn replied. As far as he was concerned, their mark-up was steep enough as it was without increasing it further. In fact, there was something about trade in general that struck him as rather dishonest, only a step or two removed in legitimacy from the god-in-the-cart scam. 'I figure luck's a bit like a cart. Pushing it when you're struggling uphill is usually all right, but when you're coasting gently downhill it's probably not a good idea.'

Copis shook her head. 'Don't believe it,' she replied. 'I know this kind of people, they're like we used to get in Torcea. The more expensive something is, the more likely they are to buy it. I mean, look at some of the stuff on these stalls. This lot aren't short of a quarter.'

Poldarn shrugged, not being inclined to take the subject further. He beckoned to the boy sitting on the barrel and held a coin up in the air. The boy duly brought him a tin cup, which turned out to be full of quite palatable wine, not stale beer as he'd expected.

'And a quarter a cup, too,' Copis remarked, after she'd had a mouthful. 'That's very reasonable. You know, we could do worse than buy a barrel or two while we're here and sell it on in Sansory. No point taking the cart home empty.'

'We could,' Poldarn replied without much enthusiasm. Something was definitely making him uneasy, though whether it was Deymeson, the morality of commerce or something else he couldn't quite put his finger on, he wasn't sure. 'Next time, maybe,' he added, 'once we've had a chance to find out if there's actually a market for the stuff there. And we'd better look into things like excises and tariffs if we're going into the wine trade.'

Copis sighed. 'That's the problem with you,' she said, 'no spontaneity. I think you were probably a counting-house clerk in your previous life. And I'll bet your books always balanced at the end of the day.'

'And that'd be a bad thing?'

'You know perfectly well what I mean,' Copis replied. 'Still, I suppose it's a good combination, one brave and impetuous and the other sensible and boring.'

Poldarn looked up. 'That's how you see us, is it?'

Copis nodded. 'I was exaggerating a bit,' she said, 'but not that much. The thing about you is, I think that deep down you've got this urge to live a really dull, ordinary, commonplace life, which suggests that to you it's all new and fascinating, being ordinary, and that before this you used to be something dashing and dangerous.'

'You just said I was probably a clerk.'

'Changed my mind.'

Poldarn clicked his tongue, a habit he'd picked up from Copis. 'If I'm going out of my way to avoid excitement and adventure, I'm not making much of a fist of it,' he said. 'Except for the last week or so, I suppose, that's been refreshingly quiet. In fact, it's been days since I last killed anybody.'

'My heart bleeds,' Copis replied gravely. 'You'll just have to make do with fleecing people instead. Not as effective as killing them, but it means you can carve off another slice or two the next time you're passing through. I guess you could say it's the difference between hunting and rearing livestock.'

The market dissolved abruptly an hour before sunset, like a giant turned to stone by the first light of dawn. The stallholders lifted their tables off the trestles and carried them, still laden with goods, back into their houses, while their wives and children scurried backwards and forwards with table legs, stools, barrels and bales. It all happened so quickly that if Poldarn had happened to be kneeling down lacing his boot at the time, he'd have missed it and stood up again to find the square suddenly and inexplicably different (ah, the difference one moment can make…).

'You'd better get a move on,' someone said as he stood gawping at the empty square. 'If the bailiffs come round and catch you still trading, you'll be for it.'

'Oh,' Poldarn said. 'Thanks. Why?'

'Curfew,' the stranger replied, and hurried away.

'Wonderful,' Copis muttered, grabbing dishes and trays of buttons and pouring them into jars at random. 'Well, don't just stand there, tear down the stall. And if you can stop someone and ask, find out if it's a general curfew or just trade.'

She seemed to be taking it very seriously, so he dismantled the canopy and unshipped the poles as quickly as he could. Nobody came close enough to the cart to be stopped and questioned; in any event, they were moving too fast and too purposefully towards their houses, which suggested that the curfew was general and that they really didn't want to get caught. That, of course, presented them with a fresh problem.

'There'll be an inn or something,' Copis reassured him. 'Nothing to worry about.'

As soon as they had the stall down and packed away in the cart, they headed across the square to the inn (the Dogma and Doctrine), arriving a couple of heartbeats after the door bolts went home and the shutters were snatched in with a bang. Knocking on the door proved to be a complete waste of time.

'Marvellous,' Copis said edgily. 'Now what?'

Poldarn wasn't listening; he was watching three robed men with staffs walking across the square towards them. Since there was nobody else in sight, it wasn't difficult to guess what they wanted.

'I suppose they must be sword-monks,' Copis whispered. 'You hear all sorts of things about them, of course, but I've never seen one before.'

'Well, they don't seem to be carrying swords,' Poldarn said. I'll have to take your word about the monk part.'

'Quiet,' Copis replied. 'I should be able to handle this.'

Sword-monks or not, the three men didn't seem to be in any hurry; they were strolling rather than marching. 'Hello,' one of them called out from about fifteen yards. 'You're strangers in town, aren't you?'

'That's right,' Copis said. 'We're terribly sorry, we didn't know about the curfew.'

The monk who'd spoken to them shrugged his shoulders. 'That's all right,' he said. 'We aren't going to lock you up for ignorance. I take it you haven't got anywhere to stay.'

Copis nodded. 'We tried the inn over there, but they've locked the doors.'

'Don't worry, we'll see to that,' the monk said, and nodded to one of his colleagues, who set off quickly across the square towards the inn. 'Right,' the monk went on. 'The rules are pretty straightforward. Nobody on the streets after curfew-that's three-quarters of an hour before sunset, there's sundials in every square, so knowing the time's easy enough. All inns and shops closed and locked on time; all foreigners registered with the prior's office and able to show proof of accommodation for the night. You aren't either of those, are you?'

Copis shook her head.

'Not to worry,' the monk said, and nodded towards the inn. 'It's perfectly straightforward; I issue a vagrancy notice and billet you in the nearest registered accommodation. If they're full you might have to put up with a night in the stables, but it's bound to be better than the watch-house lock-up. I'll trust you to report to the prefecture by an hour after sunrise tomorrow morning; just tell them who you are and why you're here and that you didn't know the rules before you arrived, and they'll issue you with the necessary passes and stuff. Quite painless,' he added, 'so long as you follow procedure.'

The innkeeper and his wife weren't overjoyed at having a sword-monk hammering on the door, and would probably have harboured a grudge against them if it wasn't for the fact that earlier in the day they'd bought six sets of buttons for the price of five (Copis had been feeling generous) and were quite delighted with the bargain. Accordingly, although the inn was full, the innkeeper's younger son was turned out of his room and sent to sleep under the table in the kitchens, while Copis and Poldarn got a bed for the night, albeit a small one, and a view out of the tiny fifth-floor window over the bleak main street down towards the gate-with-no-walls and the moors beyond. By the standards of Sansory or any of the main-road inns they'd stayed in it was damp, cramped and miserable. On the other hand, it could easily have been far worse.

'Actually,' Copis was explaining, while Poldarn leaned his elbows on the window ledge and watched the last glow of sunset fading in the west, 'curfews aren't all that uncommon, but mostly you get them in Guild towns, so it didn't occur to me that there'd be one here. Of course, it's like a Guild town in ever so many ways, so maybe I should've suspected. Never mind,' she went on, 'there's no real harm done and we can find somewhere better in the morning.'

'Doesn't bother me,' Poldarn replied truthfully, as he watched a distant glimmer of light. 'But I guess the innkeeper's son would like us to go away so he can have his bed back. Are we allowed to move on, though? I got the impression that once we're registered somewhere, we've got to stay put till we leave.'

Copis frowned. 'Not sure,' she replied. 'The impression I got was that we aren't committed to staying anywhere till we register in the morning; so if we get up good and early we can scout around and find somewhere before we sign in at the what's-its-name, prefecture.' She yawned. 'This is an odd town,' she said. 'Not the oddest I've ever been to, not by a very long way, but still odd. Good for business, though.'

'That's true,' Poldarn said absently. He was still watching the light. 'One of these days, you'll have to explain to me about Guild towns. I've heard people talking about them, but all I've gathered so far is that they're different and not all that pleasant to visit.'

'You've been to Mael,' Copis said sleepily. 'That's a Guild town.'

'True. Now that was an odd place.'

'Tell you about it in the morning,' Copis sighed, and turned over on to her side. She was occupying the whole bed, and Poldarn didn't feel like bickering, so he grabbed the cushion off the chair for a pillow and lay down on the floor. Just before he fell asleep, he thought he heard something moving about in the thatch directly over his head, but he wasn't sure; it could just as easily have been the crows in his dream, spreading their wings and launching themselves wearily into the darkness of his mind.

'It's him, isn't it?' one of them said.

'It's him.' The speaker, an old man with a thick bush of unruly white hair, rested both palms on the table-top. 'No doubt about it whatsoever.' He paused for a moment, catching his breath, then went on: 'I was more or less sure when I heard the report from Sansory, about the man who met with Chaplain Cleapho but escaped before they could catch him. Then there was the message from the inn-full marks to your sword-brother, by the way, it was an inspired idea to set the innkeeper to watch out for him-and I was almost certain. Now I've seen him with my own eyes. It's him.'

There was a long silence. 'That's settled, then,' the abbot said at last. 'Now that we know it's him, what shall we do?'

There were no suggestions. Father Abbot leaned forward a little in his chair, elbows on the table. 'The obvious solution would be to kill him, or to load him with chains and send him to Torcea. I'm not sure what we could charge him with, but there's bound to be something. In any event, I don't suppose the emperor will be very particular about details.'

He paused, waiting for someone to contradict him. Nobody seemed inclined to say anything. Father Abbot frowned. For once, unanimous agreement with his decision wasn't what he wanted.

'With respect.' At last, the abbot thought. More than anything else, he wanted a way of not having to do what obviously needed to be done. 'With respect,' the man who'd spoken repeated, 'I don't believe either of those courses of action is either necessary or advisable.'

Father Abbot gestured to him to continue.

'The point is,' the speaker continued (he was a short, fat monk with very curly grey hair and a rather babyish face; he was also the deacon in charge of security and defence), 'we have excellent grounds for believing that-well, we may know who he is, but he doesn't.'

That wasn't what the abbot had been expecting to hear. He was interested.

'My agents have been looking for him for some time now,' the deacon went on. 'The plain truth is, they couldn't find him, except for one; and for practical reasons that agent was in no position to file regular reports. I've now had an opportunity to piece together what we've learned so far. I think you'll agree, it puts a different complexion on the matter.'

'Go on,' Father Abbot said. Nobody else spoke.

'To cut a long story short,' the deacon said, 'we believe that on his way from here to Boc he was ambushed by an enemy unit sent specially to find him-how they knew where to look I'll deal with later-and there was a short but very fierce fight. We believe that he was the only survivor of that battle; what's more, we're almost certain that during the fighting he took a heavy blow to the head that knocked him out. When he woke up, he found that he'd lost his memory. He didn't know who he was, where he was, or even what language he was speaking in. We believe that he still hasn't got his memory back; in fact, I've taken advice from my colleagues in the infirmary and one or two lay experts in the field, and they assure me that the most likely outcome will be that unless he's suddenly presented with the truth about his past, he'll quite likely never remember, neither who he is nor what he's done. To all intents and purposes, he's a different man altogether. And as such,' the deacon said, 'not only would it be wrong for us to kill him or betray him to the authorities; it would also be a wickedly negligent waste of a remarkably useful opportunity to make use of him.'

'Well,' said the abbot, 'we can't have that, can we? Perhaps you'd better explain your idea to the rest of us.'

The deacon made a short, crisp bow. 'By all means,' he said, and proceeded to tell the chapter what he had in mind. At the end of his presentation, Father Abbot was wearing a very slight smile.

'A very elegant solution to the problem,' he said, 'provided, of course, that your information is accurate and you can get him to do what you have in mind. It's also the nastiest, most vindictive punishment I've ever heard anybody suggest, and therefore entirely suitable. As long as you're sure on those two points, I'm quite happy for you to proceed. Opinions, gentlemen?'

Nobody spoke for a long time. Then one of the monks shook his head.

'I'm not sure,' he said. 'I know who he is and what he's done-more to the point, what he would've done if it wasn't for this freak accident we've heard about. Even so, I wouldn't do that to my worst enemy.'

Father Abbot breathed out through his nose. 'Your humanity does you credit,' he said. All in favour.'

The vote was, of course, unanimous; every vote of the chapter in council since the foundation of the order had been unanimous, or at least that was what it said in the minutes. Nevertheless, Father Abbot wasn't blind or stupid. He could see that at least one of the councillors was unhappy with the decision, not counting himself. (But then, if he'd opposed every sensible measure that he found morally repugnant, the affairs of the order would've ground to a halt ten years ago.)

Poldarn woke up, and found that he was sitting upright, both hands clenched. He assumed that it was because he'd been having a bad dream.

This time there was definitely somebody moving about, and not just outside, actually in the room with them. He glanced over at Copis; she was fast asleep, lying diagonally across the bed, one foot and one arm sticking out from under the covers. Just to be sure, he kept still and waited to hear her breathe. It seemed to be a long time before she did.

Whoever it was moved again. Poldarn stretched out with his fingertips until he identified the hilt of his sword, and carefully teased it towards him until he could get his left hand around it and pull it smoothly across the floor. He wasn't wearing a belt or a sash, so when he got to his feet he held it pressed to his waist with his left hand in exactly the right place.

He closed his eyes-it was too dark to see anything, and somehow he knew he'd be able to make more sense of what was going on if he shut off his vision and relied entirely on hearing and touch. He had an idea he'd practised fighting blindfold or in a darkened room at some point in his life.

Curiously, as soon as he closed his eyes he could see his circle. It was like being back in his dream, the one he'd just come from (it wasn't the dream, because there weren't any crows; at least, he didn't think there were any crows. Of course, he wouldn't be able to see them even if there were any, in the dark with his eyes shut). The circle was as clear as anything; he knew where it was in the same way that he knew where his feet were, without needing to look or listen. He applied his mind to the presence of his enemy, feeling for his circle -And found it, a fraction of a second before it burst in on his own. The draw happened; but instead of the firm, soft resistance of flesh, he felt the sword in his hand spring back, like a hammer dropped in its own weight on to the face of an anvil. Whoever it was had parried the cut.

While he was still figuring out what was going on, his legs and arms were busy; he discovered that he'd jumped back the full radius of his circle and was standing in a position that came instinctively-feet a shoulder's width apart and at right angles, heel to heel; body chest on, with the arms extended equally, outstretched but the elbows slightly bent, the pommel of the sword level with his navel; it came as naturally as breathing, and suddenly he felt secure, in control, powerful, like a captain on the bridge of his ship. It had taken no longer than a single heartbeat. His circle blazed and flowed around him like a burning moat, like the invisible walls of Deymeson, and quite suddenly he knew he was home…

The attack came in on his left side, at sixty degrees to his sword blade. He could feel the violence of it before his circle was even breached. His left foot went back and behind his right heel, and at the moment when his enemy had to be raising his arms for the cut he launched his own sword at the place where the other man's hands must inevitably be (the best defence is no defence; the best attack is no attack… maxims that had always been there in his mind, asleep or silent) and felt the curve of the tip, the optimum cutting point, biting into the soft iron of a hilt. The right idea, then, but he'd missed by perhaps as much as an inch; by the time he realised that, he'd already wheeled his circle through ninety degrees to the right, reading everything there was to know about his invisible enemy from that one instant of contact. He knew that he was fighting someone so close to him in skill and experience that he might as well be fighting against himself; each could read the other's mind as clearly as his own thoughts, and nothing he or the other man could do would surprise or deceive the other. It was as if the darkness in the room was a mirror, and he was facing up to his reflection.

('…When will I know that I've learned the draw?'

'When you can outdraw your reflection in a mirror.'

'But that's impossible.'

'If you really believe that, it's not the end of the world. You're still young enough to get indentures with a clerk, or learn how to mend saucepans.')

A cut was on its way, slanting in from the right, aimed at the point where the collarbone faded into the shoulder. He stepped forward, knowing exactly where the point of the curve would pass, and as its slipstream cooled his cheek he swung low for the knees, bracing himself for the shock that would travel up the blade as the other man parried with the flat. He used it to spring his sword up, racing the other man to see who could get there first as he turned his wrist for an upwards flick at the underside of the jaw. The other man stepped out of the way, of course, and he gave ground himself to avoid the riposte, a side-cut that would have sheared through his hip into his spine if he'd been there to receive it. He was like a man reciting a poem he'd learned by heart so long ago that the words no longer mean anything, and as his body made each inevitable movement his mind began to wander, drifting into a state between sleep and waking, the place where the crows roosted.

'Stop,' said a voice in the dark. He stopped, knowing he could trust the voice implicitly. 'Is there a lamp or a candle in here?'

Before he could reply Copis grunted and woke up. 'Who's that?' she mumbled, in a voice still saturated with sleep.

'It's all right,' Poldarn replied. The other man's voice had only confirmed his position; Poldarn already knew exactly where he was. Nevertheless, by speaking the other man had pinpointed his location, an act of truce as clear and eloquent as dropping his sword on the floor. The least Poldarn could do was reciprocate by answering. Besides, if Copis was awake, it changed the whole nature of the fight. If she chose to stand up and wander about, she stood a better than average chance of getting in the way and being cut in half. 'Who are you?' he asked.

For some reason the other man laughed. 'I could ask you the same question,' he said. 'Is there a lamp or a candle? We'll probably understand each other better if we can throw some light on the subject.'

'No,' Poldarn replied. 'At least, I don't remember seeing anything like that.'

'Pity.' Poldarn heard the click of a sword being returned to its scabbard. 'Still, it's not essential. You'll just have to use your imagination.'

'Look,' Copis interrupted, 'who the hell are you, and what are you doing in our room?'

'Listen to me.' The voice had changed a little. 'You don't know who you are, do you?'

'No,' Poldarn admitted. 'I lost my memory a while ago-'

'When you woke up beside the river, after a battle. Yes, I know all that. I'm a little vague about what you've been up to since, but I-we know pretty well everything about you up to that point. Would you like me to tell you?'

Poldarn hesitated two, perhaps three heartbeats before answering. 'Yes,' he said.

'Then I'll tell you. But first-'

'No. Now.'

'First,' the voice said emphatically, 'I've got to warn you. Tomorrow morning, some senior officers of the order will send for you and have you taken up to the chapterhouse. There they'll tell you all about yourself, in great and very plausible detail. They'll tell you that your name is Brother Stellico, that you're a renegade monk of this order and therefore-technically-an outlaw already sentenced to death; that before you left the order, you were a father tutor-that's a very high rank indeed-and the senior deacon of applied religion, which is our term for swordfighting. According to what they'll tell you, I was your immediate subordinate and your pupil, and you taught me everything I know about the subject.' He paused. 'None of this is true,' he said.

'Oh,' Poldarn said.

The voice laughed softly. 'It's all entirely possible, of course,' he went on. 'And it fits everything you'll have learned about yourself. They'll go on to offer you amnesty and an impressive-sounding title and privileges, provided you stay here for the time being and send away your friend here-Copis, isn't it? And before that, you were called Xipho Dorunoxy, when you worked in the brothel in Josequin. That's not your real name, of course.'

He'd pronounced Xipho Dorunoxy perfectly, or as well as Copis had, at the very least. 'How clever of you,' Copis said. 'I won't ask how you know.'

'Thank you,' the voice replied. 'We prefer not to explain how we come by our information. It's not a dreadful dark secret, quite the opposite, in fact, all perfectly straightforward and unimpressive. Which is why we don't explain; it ruins the mystique.'

Poldarn breathed in slowly. 'Why would they want to tell me all these lies?' he said.

'Let me tell you who you really are,' the voice said reasonably, 'and you should be able to work it out for yourself. You'll also see why, even though I have every reason to hate you and see you come to harm, I couldn't stand by and watch them do this to you. I may not respect you, but I respect our order; if we stoop to acts of pure malice, such as what they have planned for you, we stand to lose everything we are.'

'All right,' Poldarn said. 'Now, tell me who I really am.'