Shadow

Chapter Six

'No point trying the act in Sansory,' Copis had said earlier that day. 'Wouldn't work. If a god were to show up in Sansory they'd kidnap him and hold him to ransom.'

The first thing they saw after they'd driven under the amazingly high arch of the city gate was a fight. They had no option but to stay and watch, since the crowd of enthusiastic spectators had jammed the street solid and it was perfectly clear that nobody was going anywhere until there was a result. The participants were two old men: one was tall, bald and stooping, and the shaggy fringe of white hair around the back of his head was streaked with blood from two deep scalp wounds on his crown; the other was just under average height, with grey spikes plastered across his forehead and a palpably smashed jaw. They were fighting with quarterstaffs, which clattered together with a sound like a fast-running capstan as they struck and parried faster than Poldarn could follow. It didn't take him long to see why both men's wounds were to the head; it was clearly the primary target in quarterstaff play, with a few shots being reserved for the solar plexus, groin, kneecaps and elbows. The stamina and ferocity of the fighters was quite awe-inspiring, as was their apparent ability to take punishment. The bald man, for example, misjudged a ward and was jabbed in the teeth (he hadn't had many to start with), followed by two lightning-fast cracks to either temple, a savage downward blow in the middle of his forehead, and an upward cut directly under his chin that knocked his head back so sharply that Poldarn was sure his neck must have been broken. But, after staggering back three or four paces, still managing to dodge a shot or two while he was at it, he found a wall to back into and straighten himself up again, and launched himself at his enemy with a feinted jab to the throat, instantly converted into another feint to the groin, and carried home as a slanting smash to the cheekbone that sprayed the first three rows of the crowd with a fine mist of blood. Then it was the other man's turn to stagger for a moment; three or four exchanges later, however, they were back to being evenly matched, both of them moving as fast and as fluently as ever.

Poldarn leaned over to whisper. 'Does this sort of thing…?'

'All the time,' she replied, her eyes fixed on the fight. 'It's part of their rich and unique cultural heritage. Whee!' she added, as the shorter man stepped into his enemy's attack, deliberately taking a sickening blow to his left temple so as to close and slam his staff into the other man's groin. 'You must admit, they put on a good show here.'

Even the bald man couldn't keep standing up after a shot like that one. He doubled up, his head bobbing forward, straight into a chin-lifter even more blood-curdling than the one he'd planted on the other man a few moments before. It was followed up by four crushing side blows, two to each ear, and rounded off by a left-to-right lowhand cross that broke his nose and set it back at a truly bizarre angle, leaving him crumpled up on the ground like a child who's just fallen out of a tree. After that he didn't move at all. The shorter man, having kicked him in the ribs a few times in the interests of total security, spat on his face and hobbled awkwardly away, using his staff as a crutch.

'One thing we must do while we're here,' Copis said, 'is try the smoked lamb. It's the local speciality. Apparently, it's something to do with the kind of wood they use.'

Now that there was nothing left to see, the crowd dissolved, like earth becoming mud under heavy rain. Copis edged the cart carefully through the mass of bodies.

'You were staring,' she explained. 'One thing you must never do in a place like this is stare. You'll see a lot worse than that while you're here, I promise you.'

'Sorry,' Poldarn said. 'It just seemed so pointless, that's all. I mean, at their age wouldn't it be simpler to wait a few years and see which one of them outlives the other?'

Copis laughed. 'I suspect you're a country boy,' she replied. 'Nobody in the city waits for anything if they can help it. Which is strange,' she added, 'since living in a city means you're bound to spend a large slice of your life standing around in queues or waiting for the traffic to clear; you'd have thought patience would've become a survival trait by now. Right,' she said, stopping the cart without warning, to the extreme disgust of the traffic behind her, 'let's try here.'

'What are we going to do?' Poldarn asked, as she jumped down and made the reins fast to a tethering-post. The carter who'd been following them squeezed his cart past between their wheels and the opposite pavement, his face bright red with rage as he yelled abuse at them. Copis didn't seem to notice.

'See if we can sell all this stuff, of course,' she replied. 'Pull down a couple of jars while I talk to the stallholder. Well, come on. We're blocking the road.'

The stallholder turned out to be a small man, almost spherical, with a smooth, shiny bald head and a pointed nose, like a carrot. He was sorry, but he didn't buy small quantities, no matter how cheap they might be. His regular order with the plantation agents was finely calculated to give him exactly the amount of stock in hand that he could be sure of getting rid of before it went green and started to sprout; anything extra he bought would be money thrown away. Copis pointed out that at the prices they were asking he could almost give it away, thereby attracting new customers to his stall and increasing his sales without hurting his margins. That suggestion made the stallholder very sad, because, as he pointed out, every bushel of cut-price flour he sold meant another bushel of full-price flour, which he'd already paid for, that he wouldn't be able to get shot of; in effect, he'd be waging a price war against himself. Besides, he explained, he had a Guild charter and a quota; if he bought or sold more or less than what was written down on his licence and the Guild found out about it, that'd be twenty years of hard work out of the window. Not worth it for a dubious chance of making a few extra quarters. Sorry.

'He meant it,' Copis said, frowning, as she climbed back into the cart and pulled out, nearly causing a nasty accident. 'I hadn't realised the Guild had got this far. Bloody nuisance. Never mind,' she added, 'at least we won't go short of things to eat for awhile.'

'What's the Guild?' Poldarn asked.

'Long story,' Copis replied, ducking to avoid a low-hanging sign. 'Tell you later. Well, that solves the problem of which inn to stay at. The cheapest.'

Poldarn nodded. 'We'll have to ask someone,' he said.

'No need,' Copis replied, pulling a face. 'It's the one thing everybody knows about Sansory.'

It was a pleasant relief to discover that he could read; the sign over the wide archway was black with soot and mould but he could still make out the words Charity and Diligence in big red letters against a faded gold-leaf background. 'Used to be a religious order,' Copis explained as they passed under the arch. 'All the inns and brothels in these parts were religious houses once, only really changed when the monks started charging for board and lodging. I guess that's the coach-house over there.'

Poldarn saw a huge shed in front of them, nearly twice the size of the ruined temple they'd slept in at Cric. Next to it was an even bigger shed; next to that, a massive square stone building, with fluted white columns and a flight of twelve broad, shallow marble steps leading up to a pair of bronze doors, still awe-inspiring despite a thick layer of verdigris. The steps themselves were nearly invisible for the huge number of people sitting on them, bunched up together like calves in a pen. They ranged from scruffy to bundles of rags, and mostly they sat still and quiet, staring at the ground or straight in front of them. In the doorway itself stood two very large men with folded arms and grim expressions on their faces. When one of the scruffy people got up and tried to push past them through the doorway, they grabbed him by his arms, lifted him off his feet and threw him down the steps like a bale of straw. He landed badly, his fall partly broken by a couple of the silent sitters who hadn't got out of the way in time. There was a little bit of shrill cursing, which didn't seem to bother the men in the doorway at all, and then things settled down again.

'Typical Sansory,' Copis said as they waited for someone to come and open the coach-house door. 'They couldn't pay their tab, so they're slung out and the house keeps their tools and stuff. Without their tools, they can't earn any money to pay off their tab and redeem their tools. So they sit and wait for something to happen. Like I told you, this is pretty much a place where you stop because you can't go any further.'

The doors opened eventually, and two very silent, very efficient grooms unyoked the horses and led them away, while two others manhandled the cart into a stall in a long line that stretched the length of the shed. Another man, who'd kept perfectly still while the others were working, then handed them a little bone counter with a number on it-Copis explained that so many carts and wagons passed through the Charity every day that the stablemaster couldn't be expected to remember them all, hence the little ticket with the stall number on it. There was a hole drilled at the top, through which Copis passed a piece of hemp cord she'd picked up off the floor (it was covered in the stuff). She tied the ends together, hung it round her neck and tucked it away out of sight. 'Lose the ticket, lose the cart,' she said. 'It's that kind of place. Now you can see why I'd have preferred something a bit less basic.'

'What about our things?' Poldarn asked, thinking of the big lump of gold hidden by the tailgate. 'The fireworks and all the rest of our stuff. Do you think they'll be safe there?'

Copis grinned. 'Guaranteed,' she replied. 'Tradition of the house: no fighting, no stealing, except by order of the management. I don't know if you noticed the two porters on the main door; it's a fair bet there's at least a dozen more like them inside, and as many again in the staff barracks waiting for their shift. Free company men, probably; it's one of the usual careers for when you've had enough of the road.'

Getting up the steps past the silent sitters looked like it would be next to impossible; but Copis exhibited a thoroughly efficient technique that basically consisted of treading hard on the hands and ankles of anybody who didn't shift out of the way, and Poldarn followed nervously in her wake. The owners of the squashed fingers and joints swore at them, but didn't bother to look up; instead, they mumbled their curses into the air, like sleepy monks saying their responses.

The porters at the main door looked at them closely but let them pass (the man behind them wasn't so lucky, and ended up on his back on the stairs) and they found themselves in an enormous hallway. The ceiling was so high that Poldarn had to lean his head back as far as it would go in order to see the paintings, still startlingly beautiful despite the effects of decades of smoke and grime on their colours and gold leaf. The mosaics on the walls were even finer, though only a few patches were still discernible. He found that he couldn't afford to stand gawping for long, however. There were too many people in the hallway, moving too fast. For her part, Copis barged her way through to a trestle table set up in the far left corner; she came back some time later with two more bone tickets, one of which she handed to him.

'These aren't quite so precious,' she said. 'We have to show them to get food or a place to sleep in the dormitory. Still, if you lose yours you'll end up outside with the rest of the poor sad people, because that's the last of our money. We'd better give some thought to how we're going to get some more.'

Again he thought about the lump of gold, and probably would have mentioned it if she'd stayed put long enough to let him. Instead she started pushing and slithering her way to the door. 'To be honest with you,' she explained, when they were back in the fresh air again, 'I don't like it much in there. A bit too crowded, and I'm not desperately keen on the smell. Let's go and find the junk market, see if we can get something for your predecessor's boots.'

The fifth boot stall they tried in the junk market was buying, and they came away with three and a half quarters, a quarter more than Copis had been expecting. 'Which means he figures he can get five,' she pointed out, as they turned sideways to squeeze through a narrow gap between two barrows. 'Wonder why rubbish like that's going so dear. Panic, probably; because of what happened to Josequin. People get scared, prices go up. Fact of life.'

There was something about the goods for sale in the junk market that Poldarn found familiar, though he couldn't quite work out what it was. It was only when they had to stand and wait beside a clothing stall while a wide cart went by and he saw a big brown stain around a hole in a tunic that he realised where all the stuff came from.

'That's right,' Copis confirmed, when he asked her. 'It's one of the biggest businesses in town. Someone told me once that three-quarters of all the stuff stripped off bodies on battlefields ends up in Sansory market sooner or later. It's because so many of the free companies have their headquarters here, and all the others have at least a recruiting office or a dormitory. They're all in the upper town, of course; they wouldn't be seen dead down here in the Sump.'

'Pity,' Poldarn said. 'If only I'd known, we could have made some money here.'

'What do you mean?'

He remembered; he hadn't told her about the two dozen dead men he'd woken up with. Hadn't got round to it, and it was too late now. 'Oh, I was just thinking about those horsemen we ran into,' he said.

'True. But at the time we weren't planning on coming here. And used military equipment isn't the safest thing in the world to carry around with you, especially if you've come by it the hard way, like we did.'

'Fair enough,' he said. 'Well,' he added, stopping and looking about him, 'at least nobody's burned it down yet. Makes a pleasant change as far as I'm concerned.'

The stalls were colourful, if nothing else, and (as Copis was at pains to point out) you'd be unlikely to see anything like them anywhere else in the empire. There was a whole stall full of helmets, for instance, well over half of them crushed, cut or punctured in some way; the ones on the back shelves had been straightened, beaten out and patched, while the rest were presumably as the gleaners had found them. There were several stalls selling nothing but loose links for mailshirts, and behind them two or more old women were slowly dismantling shirts that were too badly damaged to be worth repairing. One old woman would cut the rivets with a big pair of shears, while another opened out the rings with two pairs of pinchers and dropped them in a copper basin by her feet. You could have had your choice of half-pairs of marching boots; three stalls sold only left boots, whereas four sold only right. There were belt stalls, buckle stalls, tunic, cloak and trouser stalls, button stalls, stalls selling plates, pots, pans and cauldrons, stalls with neat trays of horn buttons, bone and steel needles, sharpening stones and belt loops for carrying them in; stalls selling knapsacks, water bottles, blankets and tents. There were racks of tools for blacksmiths, armourers, farriers, carpenters and a host of other trades; also spades, shovels, picks and even a few wheelbarrows; folding chairs, tables and beds. It was hard to think of anything that wasn't there, in some shape or form, right down to fur-lined slippers, books and musical instruments, though their comparative rarity suggested that they'd come from the bodies of senior officers rather than ordinary footsloggers.

'Seen enough yet?' Copis asked, trying to detach him from a display of thick woollen socks. 'This lot gives me the creeps, if you must know.'

Poldarn shrugged. 'I was just looking around,' he said. 'After all, if I see something I remember, like a uniform I may have worn once, or some distinctive-looking kit from the bodies of people I used to fight against, it might set the ball rolling and help me remember the rest.'

She clicked her tongue. 'You're not still on about that, are you?' she said wearily. 'Look, if I were you I'd let it go. After all,' she added, lowering her voice, 'there's a chance that if it does all come flooding back, it'll be stuff you really don't want to know. Or me, for that matter. Leave it alone, is my advice.'

Before Poldarn had a chance to state his views on the matter, Copis looked up at the sky and announced that they'd better be getting back if they didn't want to miss dinner. As if to reinforce her point, she added that it'd be quicker if they took a short cut through the scrap market. 'This way,' she said firmly and walked away quickly, so that he had to run a few steps in order to keep up.

The scrap market, filled up a long, quite narrow alley between the back of the Faith and Hope (formerly the prebendary temple) and the outer wall of the garden of one of the big commercial houses. There were stalls on both sides, leaving only just enough room for two files of pedestrians, or one cart; it seemed a profoundly illogical place in which to buy and sell large quantities of bulk metal, but Poldarn was quickly learning that logic had very little to do with the design or growth of cities. Here, Copis explained as they shoved and weaved their way through, was where all the busted and mangled metalwork left lying about on battlefields ended up, the stuff that was only fit for cutting up or the melt.

The explanation wasn't really necessary; the stock in trade crowded round him as he passed-piles of crushed and mangled breastplates, with rust clotting on the sharp edges of rips and punctures, crates and barrels of sword blades broken at the forte or sheared at the tang, spearheads snapped off at the top of the socket, arrowheads with their points curled in like seashells, plackets and beavers and gorgets twisted into bizarre shapes, coats of scales and coats of plates with the memory of the killing wound frozen in the distortion of the metal, where other metal had passed through and been drawn out. Each ruined artefact was as eloquent as a witness in a trial, recording its own failure-a bardische cracked along a flaw, exposing the white, gritty grain; a helmet torn apart along a welded seam; an overtempered spearhead bent double; links of a mail-shirt whose rivets had pulled through the eyes under the force of an axe cut. It was like some kind of eternal damnation of metal, where each piece was condemned to stay for ever in the image of that last moment of inadequacy, the point at which it had betrayed its owner or simply given up trying to hold the shape its maker had given it. In every tear, puncture, fracture and distortion was a memory of its own death-was that how the souls of evil men are punished, Poldarn thought idly, by being frozen for all time in the moment of agonised transition?

He hoped not, since he had no idea what he'd done and therefore couldn't repent and seek salvation, and he didn't want to end up on a stall in some crowded market of scrapped souls.

'What the hell do people want with all this junk?' he asked.

Copis grinned. 'It may look like junk to you, but it's prettier than a field of buttercups to some people. Just think of that town we passed through, where they'd cut down all the trees for charcoal. It costs a small fortune to make good iron, and as much again to turn it into steel, and here's all the raw material you could ever want, all ready to be heated up and bashed into any shape you like, none of that tedious mucking about with smelting and rolling and hammering into blooms. It's all good stuff, this,' she went on, gesturing vaguely at the heaps and piles. 'They don't make armour and weapons out of any old rubbish. Where else could you get best oil-hardening steel at twenty quarters a hundredweight?' She realised that Poldarn was looking at her oddly. 'I had a regular who was in the scrap trade,' she explained. 'Really loved his work, I guess, he'd go on for hours about what he called the poetry of it all-you know, taking something that was all busted up and finished with and turning it into something new and useful. I've got to admit, the idea of that appealed to me in a funny sort of a way. I mean, if you've got to have wars, it's nice that someone can get something useful out of it at the end.'

Poldarn nodded gravely. 'It's just a shame they can't do the same sort of thing with all the dead bodies,' he said.

'Don't you believe it.' Copis shook her head. 'There's bone-meal, and compost; and they say the ash from funeral pyres makes wonderful lye, for soap and perfumes and stuff. I've never heard of anybody making a business out of it, but then, it's not the sort of thing you'd admit to, not if you didn't want to turn off all your potential customers. I mean, one block of soap looks pretty much like another; who knows or cares where it came from?'

'You're joking, aren't you?'

'Yes,' Copis admitted. 'Probably. It was the look on your face. I had no idea you were so squeamish.'

'Am I?'

'Apparently. My guess is that in your previous life you were some kind of clerk, spent your life perched on a stool copying out letters and yelling the place down if you nicked your finger when you sharpened your pen.'

He looked seriously at her. 'Do you think that's a possibility?'

'Anything is possible, but that would be pretty low down the list.'

The evening meal at the Charity and Diligence consisted of boiled leeks and red cabbage in a thin grey gravy, with a slab of coarse barley bread the size of a roof slate and a wedge of hard white cheese. 'Nourishing,' Copis remarked with her mouth full, 'wholesome, and tastes disgusting. Welcome to the city.'

The dining-room, which had served the same function when the building was still a religious house, was almost as big as the hall. There were four long lines of tables and benches on either side, enough room for three hundred people who didn't mind their neighbours' elbows in their gravy. It was full, and extremely noisy. From time to time a server passed up and down the aisles with a big earthenware jug; it was just as well that they'd managed to get places at the top end of a table, near the kitchens and the buttery, since the jugs never seemed to make it further than a third of the way down the line before running dry. Catching the server's attention was a simple matter of sticking out an arm or a knee. The paintings on the ceiling weren't quite as fine as those in the hallway, but the frescoes on the walls must have been exquisite at one time, before the damp got behind them and levered them out in handfuls. 'Scenes from scripture,' Copis told him with a yawn, when he asked. 'Not that I'm any expert; half of these don't mean anything to me. But there's Actis stealing the sun from the giants-bloody silly story, that-and that one's Cadanet sieving the stars, assuming that big round thing's meant to be a sieve, and the one next to it is Sthen and Theron drinking the sea.' She hesitated for a moment, then looked at him. 'You haven't got a clue what I'm talking about, have you?' she said.

He looked away. 'I know what you're thinking,' he said. 'We must have different gods where I come from.'

'Well…' She shrugged. 'I don't want to know. Eat your dinner before it gets cold.'

That seemed a sensible suggestion, and while he was doing it he tried not to look at the walls or the roof. It stood to reason, though; a man might forget his name and family, but something as basic as scripture (or mythology, or fairy-tales, whatever you liked to call it) ought to have stuck somewhere, along with language and how to tie knots and which hand to wipe your bum with. Even if they'd been knocked back into the scrap, seeing pictures that told the stories ought surely to bring them huddling back into the light. But she was right: none of it meant anything to him, except…

He froze, halfway through chewing his last slab of cheese. He'd recognised one of them, he was sure of it. He'd recognised it, but it was so familiar that he hadn't noticed it; his mind had pushed past it in search of something more interesting. He looked round, had to look three times before he found it 'That one,' he said, pointing. 'Over there, just under the window.'

Copis frowned at him. 'I'd really rather we didn't go into this,' she said.

'Yes,' he replied irritably, 'but I think I know what it is. That big man with the white beard, isn't he just about to open that box? And when he does, I think something escapes.'

'That's right,' Copis said, sounding excited. 'The four seasons. The old man is Cadanet, of course, and-'

'Cadanet,' he replied. 'Yes, I knew that. And his wife-that'll be the thin woman with the funny hat-'

'Veil of stars, actually, but-'

'Her name,' he went on, closing his eyes, 'is Holden. She gave him the box.'

'You've got it.' Copis nodded frantically. 'Go on, what else can you remember? Where did she get the box from?'

He clenched his fists, as if trying to squeeze the information out between his fingers. 'No,' he said, 'I don't know that. But it was some kind of trick.'

'That's it,' Copis said. 'Olfar gave her the box while Cadanet was sleeping.'

'And before he opened it, it was always summer?'

'Exactly.' Copis breathed a sigh of relief. 'You've no idea how relieved I am to hear you say that.'

He thought for a moment before answering. 'All right,' he said, 'but it doesn't prove anything. Just because I remember one story…'

'It's a start,' Copis interrupted. 'And it's a pretty basic story, the fall from grace. I think the first time I heard it was when I was four. Maybe even earlier than that, because everything before I was six is really just a jumble. What I mean is, it'd be one of the first ones you learned, so it stands to reason it'll be one of the first you remember. Assuming it works like that,' she added.

'Assuming.'

'Well, I don't know, do I? And why have you got to be so downbeat about everything? It gets on my nerves sometimes.'

He grinned. 'Who's being downbeat? I've actually remembered a name. You have no idea…' He paused; another picture had caught his eye. Irritatingly, it was too high up and far away for him to be able to see it clearly, but he could definitely make out a man and a woman in a cart, with a burning town in the background. He pointed at it.

'What?' Copis said.

'There,' he replied. 'Top left corner. It's in shadow from where we're sitting, but-'

'My God, yes, fancy that.' Copis leaned back to get a better view, jogging the elbow of the woman sitting next to her; she swore, and went back to her food. 'You know,' she said, 'that's odd. I could've sworn the cart was my idea.'

'What do you mean by that?'

'When I was a little girl, the end-of-the-world god rode around the place on a black horse with a white spot on its forehead. But there weren't any black horses with white spots in my price range when I was figuring out the act, so I went for a cart instead. Yes, that's definitely off.'

'Stay there,' he said, getting up. 'I'm going to have a closer look.'

From the other end of the room, staring directly up at it, he could see rather more detail. The man, for instance, had a short black beard and a golden crown of some kind (nothing at all like the tiara-thing they used in the act), and while he was brandishing what was presumably meant to be a thunderbolt in his left hand, he was holding an oddly shaped curved sword in his right. The burning town was just a random pattern of black silhouetted squares and rectangles, but the carthorses were both skewbalds, just like the two the grooms had led away to the stables. The part that really caught his attention, however, was the other panel of the painting, which he hadn't been able to see at all from where he'd been sitting. The man in it was definitely the same one as in the first panel; no sign of the woman or, indeed, the cart, but here were two other men standing with him, one on either side, and he was walking down the gangplank of a ship towards a landscape of green grass and decidedly unnaturalistic sheep.

He was about to turn away when someone bumped into him. Instead of swearing at him, the man apologised, which Poldarn took to indicate that he was an offcomer too. 'No problem,' he mumbled, expecting the man to go away. But he didn't.

'Looking at the painting?' the man asked.

'What? Oh, yes. Rather good, isn't it?'

The man grinned. 'I think it's awful,' he replied. 'But it's an interesting subject. Actually, I've just come twelve days' ride to see it.'

Poldarn turned his head and looked at him. He was enormous, the size and shape of a bear who'd got himself apprenticed to a blacksmith; he had a short black beard, just like the man in the picture, a small stub nose and very big round brown eyes. He was smiling.

'Professional curiosity,' the man explained. 'It's the only known pictorial representation of this particular myth this side of Morevish. Pity it had to be in a shithole like this, really.'

Poldarn nodded, not quite sure what to make of him. 'Maybe if you come back later,' he said, 'after dinner's over, you could get a better look at it-'

'Oh, I will,' the man replied. And I'll hire some ladders, possibly even a scaffolding team; also a whole bunch of clerks to draw it for me-I never was any good at drawing, even when I was a kid. I haven't come all this way just to gawp at it from down here and then go home.' He smiled. 'You don't recognise me, do you?' he added.

'No.'

The man laughed. 'Oh well,' he said. 'Makes a pleasant change, really. My name's Cleapho.'

That was obviously meant to mean something without further explanation. Poldarn's face must have betrayed his thoughts, because the man laughed again. 'It's all right,' he said, 'don't worry about it. Like I said, it's actually rather nice not to be recognised for once. So,' he went on, and Poldarn could feel the man observing him. 'You just like the look of it, do you?'

Poldarn nodded. 'What's the story behind it, do you know?'

'Yes. Do you?'

Strange edge to his voice when he asked that. 'Not a clue,' Poldarn replied. 'But I'd like it if you'd tell me.'

Cleapho nodded, having apparently satisfied himself about some point or other. 'It's a southern legend,' he said. 'Morevish, Tulice, Thurm, places like that. Not very widely known these days-I mean, that picture's something like three hundred years old, possibly older. The man in the cart is a god, and he's bringing the end of the world. The female's just some priestess; in some versions of the story she's got a name, Machaira, but that's probably a later gloss. The first scene is where he burns down a major city; and that's an interesting thing, because there's a version of the story where the city that gets burned at this stage in the story is supposed to be somewhere in the north, between two great rivers, which could just about be taken to mean Josequin-well, you can see the topicality, can't you? Unfortunately, that version's pretty late and a very poor source in any case-Mannerist epic poetry, thoroughly unreliable, they used to make up any old stuff and chuck it in just to get the rhymes-so it probably doesn't represent a genuine tradition or anything, just some rich dilettante's imagination. It'll be easier, of course, when I can get up there and read the writing.'

'Writing?' Poldarn squinted. 'I can't see any.'

'You wouldn't, not from down there. It's a religious thing, doesn't matter whether you or I can read the writing, it's not us it's addressed to. Lots of bloody stupid things like that in religion; they sound clever the first time you hear them, and then they're just annoying. You know,' he went on, stroking his beard, 'three hundred years is probably on the conservative side. It's difficult, of course, trying to put a date on religious painting, because styles don't change the way they do with commercial stuff. Another religious thing,' he added with a deep, rather exaggerated sigh; Poldarn got the impression that Cleapho was sharing a private joke with himself. 'Anyway,' he went on, 'as I was saying, it could be considerably older than that, though of course I'm no expert. Interesting, though.'

'I suppose so,' Poldarn said.

'But not to you, evidently. And there's no harm in that, either.' The man was chuckling again. Whatever the private joke was, it was clearly very funny. 'It's annoying that some bloody fool saw fit to smash a damned great window right through the interesting bit,' he said. 'Of course nobody mentioned that to me before I left Torcea, or I wouldn't have been quite so eager to come all this way. After all, the beginning of the story's pretty well cut and dried; it's the ending that's the problem. But instead of an ending, all we've got is a window. You know, that's probably highly symbolic, though what of I haven't a clue.'

'You were telling me the story,' Poldarn reminded him.

'What? Oh yes, so I was. Where had I got to?'

'The god had just burned down a city.'

'Right, yes. Now, this is where the story gets a bit complicated, because it all depends on which version you're following. In the Tulicite version, for instance, that's the point where he meets the maker of false images-though there's a translation issue there, because the Tulicite word trahidur can also mean a worshipper of false gods, a confidence trickster or one of those people who clips little bits of silver off the coins, basically you can take your pick. Maker of false images sounds better, though. Well, that's the Tulicite version. In the Morevish version-well, there's two Morevish versions, but in the preferred texts the meeting with the maker of false images-only in this version he's the man who makes little bronze statues of demons and brings them to life-well, the meeting with him comes after he fights and overcomes the Saviour of the People, who's the only man on earth who could stop him and save the world-he doesn't, though, it's a very gloomy myth-except that there's a tradition in some of the later Mannerists that may well be derived from a Morevish source that we don't have any more, in which he murders all the priests of the true faith before he overcomes the Saviour, which you'd normally just dismiss out of hand as some Mannerist trying to be clever, if it wasn't for the fact that in the Thurm tradition, which as far as we can tell is much, much older at this point, the Saviour bit comes before the maker of false images, in fact before the old woman in the hut and the false images and the drink from the lonely fountain but after the visit to the museum of lost souls, which is downright perverse, if you ask me.'

'I see,' Poldarn said. 'If you'll…'

'And there, of course,' Cleapho went on, 'is where it really starts to get screwed up; because suddenly out of nowhere about three hundred and twenty-five years ago along comes this purely domestic tradition, right out of the blue with no warning, where the god in the cart isn't actually Poldarn but Poldarn's son, would you believe, and the battle with the Saviour comes right after the museum-'

'Excuse me,' Poldarn interrupted, 'but what was that name you just mentioned?'

'Poldarn. Him,' Cleapho explained, pointing at the picture. 'The one we've been talking about all this time.'

'Poldarn?'

'That's right.'

Poldarn took a deep breath. 'That's the god's name, is it?'

Cleapho frowned, looking puzzled. 'Well, of course. Didn't you know that? Sorry, I'd assumed you knew, otherwise why would you be interested in the painting? Yes, that's the name. Southern, originally.'

'And hundreds of years old?'

'More than hundreds of years down in Morevish and Thurm. More like thousands. They're very conservative down there, hardly ever change their gods. Not like us.' At that point he appeared to notice something and swore under his breath. 'Look,' he said, 'you'll think I'm very rude but I've just realised I've left my escort and about a dozen porters standing about in the courtyard-I came straight here, you see, from the jetty-so I really ought to go and sort them out, before they assume I've been murdered and tear the place apart looking for me. If you're interested in all this, catch me a bit later on and I'll tell you some more. Bye for now.'

Before Poldarn could say anything, Cleapho had marched briskly down the aisle and slipped out through the door; it was rather shocking that anything that size could be moved so fast without a crane and rollers, at the very least. Poldarn took one last look at the picture and headed back to his place at table, to find that Copis had come up the aisle and was only a few feet away.

'You do know who that was you were talking to, don't you?' she hissed.

Poldarn, who'd been about to say something else, frowned. 'He said his name was Cleapho,' he replied.

'That's right, Cleapho,' Copis said, actually sounding bewildered for once. 'Cleapho, the emperor's personal chaplain. Even I recognised him, and it's years since I was last in Torcea.'

'Torcea,' Poldarn repeated.

'That's right. You know, where the emperor lives. I must have heard him preach in temple-oh, dozens of times. And it's not a voice you forget.'

Poldarn hadn't noticed anything specially distinctive about it, but that wasn't the subject he wanted to talk about. 'You said you got the name off a roof tile,' he said.

'What?'

'You know, the name. Poldarn. You said it was the name of a brickworks.'

Copis looked even more confused. 'It is.'

'No it's not,' Poldarn told her. 'It's the name of this god I'm supposed to be, and that man Cleapho-'

'Outside,' Copis interrupted. 'Before somebody hears us.'

So they went outside, and found a corner of the yard that wasn't overlooked or near anything else. 'He told me,' Poldarn said angrily, 'that this Poldarn is a real god, from somewhere away down south, and there's all sorts of stories about him, including one where he drives round in a cart with a priestess burning down cities. You must've known that; it can't be a coincidence. So why did you tell me you'd picked the name at random?'

'I did,' Copis said. 'It must just be a coincidence, that's all. Look, forget about all that now, it isn't important. Do you realise you've just spent ten minutes talking to one of the most powerful men in the whole empire?'

'What?' Poldarn said, disconcerted. 'I thought you said he was some sort of priest.'

'That's right, some kind of priest. And the emperor's some kind of government official. What the hell's he doing here? And what were you talking to him about for all that time?'

Poldarn was so bewildered that it took him a moment to remember. 'The picture,' he said. 'He told me he'd come all the way from somewhere-Torcea, I think-just to look at that picture. Then he started telling me the story, only he kept sidetracking himself.'

Copis shook her head. 'Cleapho's probably the cleverest man in the empire,' she said. 'If he was talking to you all that time, it wasn't just passing the time of day. What did you tell him? About us, I mean?'

'Nothing. He didn't ask.'

'No, you're missing something. He wouldn't make it sound like he was asking. The likes of him don't talk to the likes of you for a quarter of an hour unless it's a national emergency.'

Poldarn shook his head. 'He said the painting was three hundred years old. If it's an emergency, it can't be a very urgent one.'

'No.' Copis put on her decisive face. 'Something's going on. I don't know or care what it is, but I don't want to get mixed up in it. Let's go to Mael Bohec while we still can.'

'We've only just got here.'

'So? Anything special you were planning on doing while we're here?'

Once again he thought of the lump of fused gold in the back of the cart, and what better time to tell her about it than now? Somehow, though, it didn't feel right; whether it was the thought of how she'd react when she found out he'd been keeping the good luck from her, or perhaps a little scrap of suspicion, a trace element from the stranger he used to be that had survived the melt, or something else that was buried too deep to be found. 'I just don't see what the problem is, that's all,' he said. 'If this Cleapho's so very important, why the hell should he have the slightest interest in us?'

She looked at him. 'Define us,' she said. 'Oh, I know exactly who I am. You, on the other hand…'

He hadn't thought of that. Something the big, bearded man had said, You don't recognise me, do you? It had seemed to fit the context perfectly well at the time. Remembered in isolation, it could be made to mean all sorts of things. 'You think he knows who I am? From before…'

Copis looked away. 'I didn't say that.'

'You think he knows me,' Poldarn said, raising his voice a little. 'What's more, you think I'm the reason he's here.'

She tried to walk away but he grabbed her arm. He was gripping hard enough to hurt, but she didn't say anything about it. 'You think a man like that'd come all this way just to look at a mouldy old painting?'

Poldarn let go a little. 'It's a religious painting. He's a priest. For all I know it could be really, incredibly important.'

'Did he make it sound like it was, when he was talking to you?'

'How should I know? I don't know how priests talk. I don't know how anyone talks.' He closed his eyes, breathed out, tried to clear his mind. 'Think about it. You're suggesting he's come here on purpose to find me. How the hell would he know to find me here? Even we didn't know we were coming here till a few days ago. How long would it have taken him to get here from Torcea? Or are you saying he just packed a bag and set off on the off chance that he might bump into me somewhere in the northern provinces?'

Copis pulled a face. 'Yes, all right,' she said irritably, 'point taken. It's not just unlikely, it's impossible.' She lifted her head and looked him in the eyes. 'I still think we should clear out of here,' she said. 'When someone like that suddenly turns up, no civic reception or marching bands or little girls coming forward to present bouquets of flowers, it means something's up. Which means trouble. Which means sensible people like me leave town. Which is why-'

She was staring at something over his shoulder. He turned his head to see what it was, and saw two soldiers walking quickly across the yard towards them. Once again, they didn't look anything like any of the other soldiers he'd seen; they were magnificent creatures in burnished steel breastplates and gorgets with plumed open-face helmets carried in the crooks of their arms. Their clothes were clean and pressed, and their boots weren't even muddy. No prizes for guessing who they'd arrived with.

For a very brief moment Poldarn felt himself making a tactical assessment, but this wasn't some open plain in the middle of nowhere, without witnesses or bystanders, and besides, his sword was back in the cart. He dismissed the option from his mind. That left running away or staying put and finding out what was going on. Another choice. What fun.

'Next time I say we should leave town,' Copis hissed, but he shook his head. The soldiers were headed straight for them; no chance now that they'd turn out to be on their way somewhere else, nothing to do with them. It was at times like this, he reflected, that he really wished he knew what his real name was.

The soldiers stopped about a yard in front of them and, amazingly, saluted. Not having a clue about how to salute back, he kept still and waited for them to say something. Which they did.

'Lord Cleapho's compliments,' was what they said, 'and would you both care to join him for dinner?'