The Belly of the Bow

CHAPTER ONE

The sergeant was pulling at his sleeve. ‘Get out of here, Father,’ he said urgently, only just audible over the shouting and the nearby clatter of weapons. ‘They’re coming. You’ll be killed if you don’t get out now.’

Doctor Gannadius stared at him and grabbed his wrist. It felt solid enough. ‘This is wrong,’ he mumbled. ‘I can’t be here.’

‘Get out!’ the sergeant screamed; then he pulled his wrist free and set off at a clumsy skidding run down the corridor, crashing into a book-case as he went and scattering book-rolls on the floor. In the other direction, far away but getting nearer, Gannadius could hear more shouting – orders, by the sound of it, yelled by an officer at the end of his tether, but he couldn’t make out the words or tell whether it was the enemy or his own side.

‘This is wrong,’ Gannadius repeated softly. ‘I was never here. I left before this happened.’

A few yards away from him, a shutter flew open and a man’s head appeared through the window, backlit in orange. It was a nightmare face, foreign and dangerous, and Gannadius instinctively shrank away. Logically, he should be running. Very far back in second place was the notion of grabbing one of the discarded weapons that lay on the floor and trying to kill this intrusive stranger before he got through the window. Gannadius couldn’t do either. In the back of his mind, he was making a note on the effect of blind terror on the unwarlike, sedentary individual: paralysis, involuntary bladder activity, an apparent extension of the moment, as if time was frozen or no longer applied.

‘But this is wrong,’ he insisted loudly, except that his voice didn’t work. ‘I escaped from the City before it fell. I was never here.’

‘Tell it to the judge,’ grunted the enemy soldier as he wriggled his left shoulder through the window frame. ‘I expect you’ve got a note from your mother, too.’

An enemy soldier shouldn’t be talking with a strong City accent, using City phrases. But on the other hand, Doctor Gannadius, Perimadeian refugee currently domiciled in Shastel, shouldn’t be here talking with him. Someone was breaking the rules, he thought, how horribly unfair; but once he’d been killed, who would ever know?

The sordid and uncomfortable feeling of piss running down his leg, and the smell of burning bone filtering through the window – how much more real can it be? I’m here. Damn.

‘Please,’ he said. The enemy soldier grunted again, swung one leg through the window and put his foot to the ground. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘run. Well?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Gannadius replied. ‘I can’t. I don’t seem able to move.’

The enemy soldier shrugged and reached behind his back for an arrow. I’m not really bothered, his eyes said, one way or the other. You can run if you like, or I can kill you now. You’re dead anyway. Gannadius closed his eyes: it would be too horrible to watch the arrow actually coming towards him, and with time running slow like this he was sure he’d be able to see it in the air, observe for himself the operation of the phenomenon known as the Archer’s Paradox, whereby the arrow actually bends round the bow at the moment of loose. A true scientist would want to see that. Not me, he said aloud, but the words didn’t work any more. I don’t understand. Unless this is some horrible mess-up in the operation of the Principle, which means that instead of going forward, I’ve been hauled back, maybe to where I should have been all along. Is that the way it works? We think we can spot the flaws in the Principle, prise open cracks in the points in the future where momentous things happen and slide in our acts of intervention. But what if it works both ways, and the flaw’s closing up on me? In which case it’s all Alexius’ fault, and mine for getting involved. Perhaps-

Something prompted him to open his eyes; and he saw the enemy soldier staring at him, his face suddenly contorted with a fear that mirrored Gannadius’ own. There was an arrow in the man’s chest that hadn’t been there before.

‘Loredan,’ he said, then turned round. A man stood in the archway, a short black bow in his hand, his face frustratingly in shadow. Loredan, yes; but which one? Not that it mattered if he was safe now, but there were two Loredan brothers, and one was good and one was bad, and the elder of them was taller and bald-headed (but he still didn’t know which one he was looking at).

Whichever Loredan it was took a step forward, then called out, presumably some warning. It came too late, because Gannadius could see the arrow coming, spinning elegantly around the axis of the shaft-

So I died here, after all. How ironic.

Someone touched his arm, and he jerked round. It was a girl, one of his students, not the most promising of them but terribly enthusiastic. She was smiling, amused to see an old man fallen asleep in his chair, so peaceful.

‘Doctor Gannadius,’ she said. ‘I’m here for my tutorial. It was today, wasn’t it?’

His mind was still fuzzy with sleep, because he replied with something like, ‘I thought so too, but it turned into then, and now it’s now again.’

‘Doctor Gannadius?’ She was staring at him, eyes puzzled and worried; very sweet she looked, too.

‘I’m sorry,’ he sighed, stretching his legs and finding them afflicted with pins and needles (maybe they explained the arrow). ‘It’s this hatefully comfortable chair. The moment I sit in it I’m fast asleep, and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it.’ He had a splitting headache, too.

‘If you like, I can come back later.’ Oh, how disappointed she looked, and how brave she was trying to be – was he ever that enthusiastic about anything, ever in his life?

‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘No, stay. I’m awake now. Please, sit down.’

She was one of those awkward perchers, the sort who balance on the very edge of a chair as if they’re afraid they’ll break it or that the person who’s really entitled to it might show up at any minute. Her name – absolutely no chance, he admitted to himself, of remembering her name this soon after waking up. Machaera.

Fancy remembering that.

‘Remind me,’ he said. ‘What were you doing for me this week?’

She straightened her back even more until she looked like a human plumb-bob. ‘Projection exercises,’ she said. ‘Like you showed us.’

(Hah! Savage irony, if you like. You want to stay well clear of projection exercises, my girl. They’re not safe. In fact, they could be the death of you.)

‘I see,’ he said, steepling his fingers and trying to look as if he had a clue about anything. The truth was that these famous secret Perimadeian projection exercises, which were basically what had got him this superb job, were little more than his garbled attempts to duplicate the techniques by which Alexius and he had (accidentally) managed to achieve a number of projections (with disastrous effects) shortly before the City fell. About the only thing that could be said in favour of these exercises he was now teaching was that they didn’t work. At least, he devoutly hoped they didn’t, or they were all due to be in ever such a lot of trouble.

‘Shall I…?’ she mumbled. She was embarrassed, like a patient taking off her clothes in front of a doctor. Gannadius nodded. ‘When you’re ready,’ he said.

‘All right.’ She huddled up in her chair, as if she was out in the rain without a coat, her eyes squeezed painfully tight. He could almost feel the gigantic effort of will she was making – counter-productive, of course. Which was all to the good.

Nevertheless: ‘Relax,’ he said, ‘try and-’ How to describe it? Not a clue. ‘Try and make everything seem as normal as you can. If you think about it, all you want to be doing is standing still in a room or a street somewhere, which is about as mundane as you can get. The only difference would be, you’d be out then and not back now. Chances are you won’t feel any different at all. It’s not magic, remember; it’s a perfectly natural phenomenon, like dreaming.’

She relaxed – relaxed savagely – and Gannadius had to make an effort not to laugh. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Oh, I see. Yes, I think it’s working.’

It can’t be, surely. ‘Are you sure?’ he said, forcing himself to stay calm. ‘Just look around you and tell me what you see.’

‘I’m not sure,’ she muttered. ‘It’s somewhere I’ve never been. The nearest place to it I can think of is the library. And there’s-’ She lifted her head, her closed eyes directly in line with his (although he’d moved since she closed them; how did she know where he was?). ‘Doctor Gannadius, you’re-’ Suddenly she screamed, a horrible, shrill, painful noise that seemed to vibrate along the very same nerves in his head that the headache was affecting. He jumped up and grabbed her hands, which she was paddling wildly in the air like a drowning cat; she pulled her hands free and pushed him in the face so hard that he fell over on his backside, and swore.

‘Doctor Gannadius!’ She was gazing at him with a mixture of horror and terminal shame, and her eyes were as big as catapult-shot. ‘What did I do?’

He picked himself up and made a humorous play of dusting himself down. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Nothing broken that I’ve used in a long time. Tell me what you saw.’

‘But Doctor-’

He sat down and looked at her. ‘Tell me,’ he said quietly, ‘what you saw.’

She found a handkerchief in her sleeve and started twisting it. ‘Doctor Gannadius,’ she said, and the horror was already tinted with just the faintest flush of pride, ‘I think I saw the fall of the City. You know, Perimadeia. And-’ She swallowed and took a deep breath, as if she was about to dive off a high rock. ‘I think I saw you get killed.’

Gannadius nodded. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Tell me, how’s your head?’

She felt the back of her skull. ‘You think I might have banged it and I’m seeing things? I’m sure I-’

‘How’s your head?’

‘Fine. Well,’ she added, looking down at her hands, ‘I do have a bit of a headache, but apart from that-’

‘How did I die?’ Gannadius asked. He was perfectly still and his voice was perfectly even; only the palms of his crumpled-up hands were sweating. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘I won’t be offended.’

‘You were shot,’ she replied in a tiny voice. ‘An arrow hit you in the face, it went right through-’ She stopped and made a succession of alarming noises, which sent Gannadius scurrying for a big copper bowl that usually held fruit. He made it back with the bowl just in time.

‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘It was the stress, it can take people that way sometimes. I should have warned you.’

She looked up, the lower part of her face muffled by the handkerchief. ‘So you do believe me?’ she said. ‘Oh, I’m so glad – oh, that sounds such a stupid thing to say, what I meant was-’

‘I know what you meant. If it’s any comfort,’ he lied, ‘I was sick the first time too. And I didn’t even see anything horrible.’

‘Doctor Gannadius-’ She stood up, sat down, stood up again. ‘I – please, do let me wash out the bowl for you. I am so terribly sorry-’

Not half as sorry as I am, Gannadius reflected, once he’d finally shooed her away to her cell. I think disasters must follow me round like a sausage-maker’s dog. A natural, someone who can break through into the Principle at will… A really sensible man would follow her back to her cell and cut her throat at once. But.

‘Damn,’ he muttered, flopping onto the bed and curling his legs round. As he closed his eyes, he thought of his former colleague Alexius – apparently still alive, by some miracle, and cooped up on the Island, miles away from this war and presumably safe. For a while he toyed with the idea of trying to reach him by projection – Are you out of your tiny mind? You don’t stop a fire in a timber-yard by setting light to your neighbour’s oil store. Remarkably soon under the circumstances he fell asleep; and though he had vivid dreams, he couldn’t remember anything about them when he woke up.

Towards the evening of the second day they found a single straight ash tree growing in the ruins of a derelict cottage.

‘It’s not perfect,’ he said, ‘but it’ll have to do.’

Bardas Loredan let the reins slip through his hands and sat for a while looking at the ruins, the stones standing out through the light sprinkling of snow like elbows poking through a frayed sleeve. Burnt down, by the look of it, maybe fifty or sixty years before; even after all that time, the marks of fire were plain enough. This high up in the mountains, moss and ivy and the other types of vegetation that seem to regard it as their duty to cover up human errors don’t seem able to take hold on fallen masonry; there were a few patches of wispy grass growing in the cracks of the exposed mortar, two young rowan saplings perversely trying to make a living in the gap between the wall and the hard earth, and this fine, mature ash tree he had chosen to cut down, standing tall in what should have been the middle of the floor. If he was a superstitious man and one given to reflecting on past horror and glories, he might be tempted to make a connection between the fall of the house and the rise of the tree. But he wasn’t, and it was the only piece of straight timber he’d seen in two days.

Beside him on the cart’s box, the boy shifted impatiently.

‘That’s ash, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I thought we were after yew or osage.’

‘It’ll do,’ Loredan repeated.

The boy jumped down from the cart and saw to the horses while Loredan walked round the base of the tree, peering up into its branches and mumbling calculations under his breath. The boy watched him with his head on one side.

‘I thought you said this stuff was rubbish,’ he commented. ‘More trouble than it’s worth, you told me.’

Loredan frowned. ‘Maybe I exaggerated,’ he replied. ‘Get a fire going, then come and give me a hand.’

He lifted the big axe down from the cart and tested its edge with his thumb. It felt dull, and he licked it over with the stone before slipping off his coat and squaring his shoulders for the first stroke.

‘I can’t get this fire to light,’ the boy complained. ‘Everything’s damp.’

Loredan sighed. ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it after we’ve done this. Got your axe? Right, you go round the other side and try and match me cut for cut, try and keep it even. And for pity’s sake watch what you’re doing with that thing. Take it steady, don’t go wild.’

He adjusted the position of his hands on the axe, left hand at the bottom of the handle, right hand just under the axe-head, then fixed his eyes on where he wanted the blow to fall and swung. The shock of impact jarred his shoulders and he felt an uncomfortable twinge in his back, warning him to ease off a little.

‘Don’t just stand there,’ he grunted. ‘Your turn.’

The boy swung; typical boy with a big axe, wanting to show how strong he was. It was a wild, flailing swing, and he missed, hitting the tree with the handle of the axe rather than the blade. Needless to say, the head snapped off, whistled past disconcertingly close to Loredan’s elbow and landed in a patch of nettles.

‘Idiot,’ Loredan said indulgently. He remembered doing exactly the same thing himself when he was just a kid; younger than this boy, of course – by the time he was the boy’s age he really had known everything there is to know about felling a tree, instead of merely thinking that he did. ‘Go and find the axe-head.’

‘It went in the nettles,’ the boy replied.

‘I know.’

He carried on cutting, swinging the axe in a slow, economical rhythm, letting the weight of the head do all the work. After twenty or so strokes he moved round to the other side and evened up the cut; then he started again a quarter-circumference round, until he’d cut through to the core on three sides. He paused and leant on the axe-handle.

‘Found it yet?’

‘No.’

‘Gods, you’re slow, it’ll be dark soon,’ he said. ‘Come on, leave that and fetch the ropes.’

Together they roped the upper branches and made fast to what was left of the cottage’s doorframe. ‘Keep back,’ Loredan warned. ‘And don’t get under my feet.’

He finished the job then; and when he was all but through, the weight of the tree ripped away the last few splinters of heartwood and the trunk jerked sideways, came up against the restraint of the rope and slid off the stump, coming to rest more or less where Loredan wanted it to be.

‘That,’ he said, stepping back, ‘is the proper way to fell a tree. If you’d been paying attention, you might have learnt something useful.’

‘You told me to look for the axe-head,’ the boy replied. ‘Anyway, what’s the big deal about cutting down trees? You just hit them till they fall over.’

Loredan breathed out slowly. ‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘Get the saw. There’s still just about enough light left to make a start.’

The boy yawned and fetched the long two-man bowsaw, and together they trimmed off the axe-cut point of the log, leaving a flat circle with the growth rings clearly visible.

‘That’ll do for today,’ Loredan said. ‘We’ll leave the next stage till tomorrow; that’s the important bit. Now find that axe-head while I light the fire.’

‘My arms are all stung,’ the boy pointed out mournfully.

‘Use the hook to cut back the nettles,’ Loredan said patiently. ‘Then you’ll be able to find the axe, and you won’t sting yourself.’

The boy grunted. ‘You might have told me that earlier,’ he said.

Loredan looked up from the pile of kindling and smiled. ‘I was hoping you might have worked that one out for yourself,’ he replied. ‘Get a move on, we haven’t got all night.’

They came an hour after sunset; five long black ships with their masts down, making almost no sound as they slipped through the two rocks that stood in the mouth of the cove. It was a fine piece of seamanship, bringing five warships through a narrow gap at twilight, and it was done with confidence and efficiency.

They disembarked quickly and quietly, every man knowing what to do, then their officers marshalled them into two parties and led them up the beach. There was nothing to hear, no clinking of armour or weapons or creaking of straps, no talking or careless footfalls. From where he lay, Gorgas couldn’t see well enough to count them, but he put the number at over two hundred, possibly as many as two hundred and fifty. A substantial force for a simple foreclosure, except that no foreclosures were simple any more.

‘There’s more than we expected,’ whispered the man at his side. He sounded frightened, which was how it should be.

‘We can handle them,’ Gorgas replied softly. ‘Now shut up and keep still.’

Brave words, he said to himself; odds of nearly three to one aren’t good business. He glanced up the hill towards the farmhouse; there was a light burning in the tower, as he’d ordered, and the path from the beach led straight up to the front gate. Logically they’d follow the path until they were maybe a hundred yards from the stockade and then split up, one party to the front, the other round the back. That’s what he’d have done. There weren’t that many options; it was a relatively simple job.

The raiders were hard to see against the rocks that crowded the sides of the path, and Gorgas could make them out only because he knew what he was looking for. It would have been much simpler to have taken them there, with the rocks for cover, but the line would have been too extended; he couldn’t have engaged all of them at once and the rearguard might have made things unpleasant for him if they kept their heads and didn’t run. Besides, if they were expecting an ambush, that was the obvious place for one.

The leader of the first party was passing the stone Gorgas had measured off as his fifty-yard mark. He could see them rather more clearly now, there were recognisable arms and legs and heads instead of a dark moving blur. It was, he realised, all rather like still-hunting deer in the forest when he was a boy. The trick was to be patient, to wait for the last possible moment before standing up and shooting, but with the proviso that the longer you waited, the greater the risk of spoiling the whole thing with a careless sound or movement. There was a small, fine irony there: he’d always been the impatient one, anxious to get it over with and shoot as soon as the animal was within range. Just as well he’d learnt his lesson.

The last man was clear of the rocks, and they were still moving at a smooth, unhurried pace, unaware that there was anything wrong. Probably, if they were experienced men, they were feeling a little surge of relief now that they were clear of the rocks, where an ambush might have been waiting. Between them and their objective, the ground was open and level. They’d be reckoning they were as good as home and dry.

Gorgas stood up and called, ‘Loose!’ at the top of his voice.

He’d chosen his ground well. The path ran along the crest of a slight ridge, so slight that you’d hardly notice it, but just enough to give his men sufficient angle to shoot up towards the path without the risk of dropping arrows among their own people on the other side. At fifty yards, even in this light, there was no excuse for missing, and he’d seen to it that his men could shoot. The first volley was gratifyingly effective.

The enemy leader was down, so there was no one to give the immediate orders that might have made a difference. Instead, most of the raiders froze, not knowing what to do, plenty long enough for a second volley. Gorgas realised his own first arrow was still on the string. He picked a man at random, looking at him down the arrowshaft as he drew back with his right hand, pushed forward with his left; then, as his right forefinger brushed the corner of his mouth he relaxed his right hand and let the arrow fly. He didn’t stop to see where it went; the enemy was still holding, but he could hear their officers shouting – Left wheel, about face, keep the ranks together! – and there was no time to lose if he wanted to keep the initiative. They were one volley ahead of the game already, which had probably gone some way towards reducing the numbers problem. He shouted, ‘Go!’

It was an awkward business, that clash of arms in the darkness. The man he came up against must have taken him for one of his own, because he turned to meet him with his shield lowered, started to say something but never got the chance to finish. Gorgas shot him from about four feet away, and he could hear the arrowshaft snap under the force of such a close impact. The man went down without a sound, and Gorgas looked around quickly. He could no longer tell friend from enemy himself, which was disconcerting. He quickly nocked another arrow and started to flex the bow, ready to make the last pull and push to full draw as soon as a target presented itself. In the event, he didn’t have long to wait. Someone barged towards him, presumably an enemy, certainly too close to take risk. He opened his chest into the strain of the bow, and something snapped.

For a moment he wasn’t sure what had happened. Something had hit him hard, in the face and the pit of the stomach simultaneously, and his fear told him the enemy had taken him and he was done for. But the man he’d been about to shoot had brushed past him, gone on a few paces and suddenly fallen; and then Gorgas realised that his own bow had broken at full draw, and the two ferocious blows he’d taken were the two limbs of the bow striking him. He swore joyfully, at the same time gloriously happy to be alive and furious that his favourite bow was broken. Why would it do that after all these years? he demanded angrily as he let go of the handle and fumbled for his sword. Of all the rotten luck…

Someone was standing directly in front of him, no more than a foot or so away. Gorgas pulled out his knife – the damned thing snagged in the sheath, nearly didn’t come out – and stabbed quickly. The other man gave a little sigh and folded up, his own weight pulling him off the knife. As he slid to the ground, Gorgas saw that he was an enemy.

When he looked round again, he realised it was over. There were men with torches running down the slope from the stockade – his reserves, too late and not needed. Just in time he remembered to give the order to disengage, before anybody mistook anybody else for an enemy. That, he realised as he stepped over the body of the man he’d just killed, had probably happened a few times in the course of the evening’s events; but in the dark nobody else would know, there’d be no point worrying about it. These things happen.

The torchlight showed him a sight he could be well satisfied with. About seventy of the enemy had dropped their weapons and sat down as soon as they’d realised they’d been had; the rest of the raiders were dead, most of them taken out in the first two volleys. He’d lost seven killed and a score or so injured, only a handful seriously. There was one man with an arrow through his lung; he wasn’t going to make it and that was unfortunate, since none of the raiders had carried bows. He noticed another man whose face had been cut open from the cheekbone to the lip, so that his cheek was peeled back to show his teeth and jaw. There were enemy wounded too, but the Bank’s policy was quite clear there and saved him the trouble of making a decision.

‘All right,’ he said in a loud voice, ‘looks like we’re all through here. We’ll get some sleep and bury the bodies in the morning.’ He looked round and found the young clerk he’d been next to before the ambush. ‘Get the wounded up to the farm, organise some clean water and bandages. You’d better put them in the main house. The rest of us can go in the long barn.’

The young man nodded and hurried away. He looked very shaken, appropriately enough for a kid after his first taste of combat, and having something to do would help take his mind off things. Gorgas knelt down and picked up two pieces of stick joined by a waxy string.

‘That’s your bow,’ said a voice above his head. He nodded.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘The bitch snapped on me right in the middle of things. Pity, I’d had it years.’

The other man, a senior clerk who worked in his office, sat down on the ground beside him. ‘It went off all right,’ he said.

‘Can’t grumble,’ Gorgas replied. ‘Except for this. I’d better go and talk to the farmer. After all, that’s what we’re here for.’

He stood up and walked away, taking the broken bow with him. Somehow he couldn’t bring himself just to throw it away.

The farmer and his family were in the main house, the man piling up wood on the fire, his wife fussing round another man with a slight but messy scalp wound, while the children scampered about the place with jugs of water, blankets and strips of linen torn for bandages. Gorgas suddenly found he wasn’t in the mood for being praised and thanked, but the whole point of the exercise had been to show these people that he could protect them, so he had to go through the motions, say the right things – it was nothing, a pleasure, that’s what we’re here for, time we showed those bastards they can’t do that kind of stuff any more. He was good at it, usually. Tonight, though, he just wanted to wash and go to sleep, and in the morning go home to his own house and family.

‘We owe you everything,’ the farmer’s wife was saying, ‘everything. We’ll never forget what you’ve done for us, risking your lives and…’

‘That’s all right,’ he replied, perhaps a trifle curtly. ‘Like we told you at the beginning, it’s all part of the service. You just be sure and tell your neighbours.’ He remembered something. ‘Now then,’ he went on, ‘we’re going to need some ground to bury the bodies. If it’s all right by you, we’ll dig the grave there, where the fighting was. My men want to be on their way, we’d rather not spend time in the morning ferrying corpses about.’

The farmer clearly didn’t like the sound of that, and Gorgas could see his point; it was fallow right now, but the battlefield was a good flat strip of land that probably yielded a decent crop, far too valuable to waste. He suppressed a grin, thinking of what his father would have said if someone had suggested burying a couple of hundred bodies in their back two-acre. ‘That’s settled, then,’ he said. ‘We’ll see to it in the morning. No need for you to bother.’

The farmer looked at him and said nothing. He could read the man’s eyes, the thought of having to go back and dig up two hundred graves, load the mouldy remains into a boat and tip them out in the sea. Days, even weeks of work before the patch would be ready for the plough, when they should be harrowing for the winter barley. He was right, it wasn’t fair. ‘On second thoughts,’ he said, ‘why don’t we cart them down to the sea for you? It’ll be no trouble.

The farmer’s face brightened and he nodded; a man of few words, clearly. His wife made up the balance with a further gush of gratitude. Gorgas stifled a yawn and went out to the barn.

Maybe they’re used to this sort of thing, he thought, as he walked across the courtyard. The place was recognisably a farm – every inch of space used for something, nothing for show, everything for a purpose – but it wasn’t like the farms among which he’d grown up. The stockade of twelve-foot stakes, the thick walls and massive gates, a fortified tower instead of a farmhouse; as if the life wasn’t hard enough already. Why did people do this sort of thing to each other? Pointless question; it’s the way things are here. They must like it like this. He suggested as much to his friend the senior clerk.

‘I don’t think so,’ the clerk replied. ‘They’re just used to it, that’s all. Amazing what you can grow up not noticing, just because it’s always been there. Our farm wasn’t much different from this. A lot bigger, of course,’ he added quickly, ‘we were a good family. But the same basic shape – perimeter, except ours was stone, and we had a gatehouse as well as a tower. Once, back in my great-grandfather’s time, we were besieged for six days.’ He sounded proud of that; Gorgas didn’t follow it up.

‘Stupid way to live,’ Gorgas replied, snuggling his back into a heap of straw. ‘Wouldn’t suit me, anyway.’

‘What, the farming or the fighting?’ The clerk smiled. ‘Can’t be the fighting, because that’s what you do. And didn’t you tell me once you were raised on a farm?’

Gorgas yawned. ‘Either is fine,’ he replied. ‘It’s the two together that’d get to me. I mean, how can you face ploughing and harrowing and planting every year when you know there’s a good chance some bastard’ll come along and set fire to it before you can bring it in? You’d go crazy thinking about it.’

The clerk shrugged. ‘Pests are pests,’ he replied amiably. ‘You get mice, rabbits, rooks and pigeons, and you get soldiers. You bring in what’s left. You make allowances and budget accordingly. And if you lose the lot one year, you increase your borrowing and start again.’ He frowned and looked away. ‘That’s how it all started,’ he said quietly, ‘and how it’s gone on. Just as well there’s people like us who’re prepared to do something about it.’

‘Quite,’ Gorgas replied, rolling onto his side. ‘And now I think I’d like to get some sleep, if it’s all the same to you.’

The clerk grinned. ‘You’re upset because you bust your nice bow,’ he said. ‘Which is fine,’ he added. ‘I can understand that.’

Gorgas thought for a moment. ‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘I am. Like I said, I’ve had the thing for years, ever since I was a boy. My brother made it for me, as a matter of fact.’

‘Which one? You’ve got so many.’

Gorgas smiled. ‘I’ve made some good shots with this bow in my time,’ he said. ‘Got me out of trouble more often than I care to think. And in it, too; but that wasn’t the bow’s fault, just mine.’ He collected the broken limbs and held them up to the yellow light of the oil-lamp. ‘Went in the belly, would you believe,’ he said. ‘There, in the layer of horn, that’s where the crack started, right up through the wood into the sinew.’

‘Really,’ said the clerk, bored. ‘Well, that’s just…’ He didn’t bother to finish the sentence. Gorgas put the remains down beside him and tucked his hands behind his head.

‘I shall have to get him to make me another one,’ he said.

‘The Director will send for you presently,’ the man said. He nodded at a cold, hard-looking stone bench, and walked away.

Alexius thought of his piles, groaned inside and sat down on the bench, which was just as cold and hard as he imagined. Perhaps it’d be better to stand; but he thought of his rheumatism and decided against it. All in all, he reflected, he was too old to hang around in stark, miserable waiting rooms outside the offices of people with titles like Director. Come to that, he’d been too old for that game on the day he was born.

Which was not to suggest that the place didn’t have a certain grandeur about it. The anteroom was wide and high, with a hammer-beam roof and thick ornamental pillars of roughly finished pink granite; no decoration, not even whitewash, but everything built in a way that suggested money and resources were no problem. That impression, he reckoned, was true enough. The Director (whoever that turned out to be) had enough of both effectively to buy him from the Islanders and have him whisked away on a big, fast ship before his rich and powerful friends on the Island had been able to do anything about it. But who these people were, let alone what they could possibly want him for, was beyond him entirely. This didn’t look like the establishment of someone who collected philosophers as a hobby.

The bench wasn’t getting any more comfortable with the passage of time, so he made the effort to stand up and hobble on his protesting legs as far as the doorway he’d just come through. That at least was vaguely familiar. It was an attempt to copy the grand Perimadeian style, done by somebody who’d never been to the City or seen anything like what he was being asked to copy. It looked bizarre and ever so slightly ridiculous.

Most of all, he realised, what offended and disconcerted him most about this place was the fact that it was obviously all so new. He was no expert, but if the clean, neat, sharp lines and unfaded colours were anything to go by, this whole building was no more than five years old. It even still had a faint residual smell of new building, the slight musty dampness of new plaster and the unmistakable scene of stone-dust. That tells me something, he said to himself. Not only rich, but suddenly taken rich. He tried not to let the thought worry him, but he couldn’t help it. Being a Perimadeian, he was uncomfortable in new buildings; even the outside privies in the City had been four hundred years old and made of polished basalt.

Suddenly taken rich; well, that could be honest trade – a newly discovered seam of silver or a better sea-route to the South – or piracy, or revolution and civil war. It could be a new dynasty or a usurping warlord, except in that case he’d be waiting to see a king, not a director. Director suggested trade, and he felt marginally more comfortable with the idea of a merchant prince of some kind. But didn’t newly wealthy merchants fill their palaces with gorgeous and vulgar splendour, the skimmings of five continents jumbled up together in a casserole, statues in every niche and pictures jostling each other for wall-space? This austerity suggested something else, something that was ever so slightly familiar – a contemplative order, perhaps, as it might be some newly schismatic and successful heresy. The combination of sparseness, discomfort and unlimited expenditure put him in mind of some of the establishments of his own Foundation back home, while the lack of ornament might suggest some taboo against pictorial images. Or it could just be a monumental lack of imagination, again not incompatible with contemplation and scholarship.

The far door opened and a man came out; not the one who’d brought him here, but very similar. He was gone before Alexius could even clear his throat. A busy man, then, which suggested trade or administration – but where were the sumptuous robes and round stomach of the clerk? Could it have been the Director? The man had looked more like a soldier, stiff-backed and quick-moving, and his drab dark-brown clothes could easily have been the sort of thing a fighting man puts on under his armour. Alexius shook his head and sat down again. He was cold, hungry and confused, and his bladder needed emptying as a medium-term priority. He decided he didn’t like this place very much.

I’m a philosopher, I should be sitting here contemplating the infinite, not the pain in my backside. What I wouldn’t give for something to read. But the only writing in the place was a single line of unfamiliar letters cut into the stone above the Director’s door, and he didn’t need to be a linguist to recognise NO ENTRY EXCEPT ON OFFICIAL BUSINESS when he saw it. He folded his hands, closed his eyes and wished he could go to sleep.

Curiously enough, he managed it; because somehow the place changed around him, and he was standing in a workshop of some kind, looking at the back of a man’s head. It was dark where he was; the man stood in the middle of a shaft of light that flooded in through the open door. He was standing over a workbench, planing a long, narrow piece of wood. The air was full of floating specks of dust, clearly visible in the limited beam of sunlight.

The man was Colonel Bardas Loredan, the fencer-at-law. What was he doing here?

Alexius tried to speak, but his voice didn’t seem to work properly here. Oh dear, this must be the future again. I thought I was done with all that. He noticed streaks of grey in the hair above Loredan’s ears; well, it had been two years, and Alexius was only too aware of how much he’d aged over that time. He tried to move to see Loredan’s face, but his feet appeared to be stuck, so he tried craning his neck instead. That didn’t help either. There was a horrible smell, which he recognised as burning bone, and he looked back over his shoulder and saw an iron pot simmering over a charcoal fire, the smoke drifting slowly up and out through a hole in the thatch.

A boy appeared in the doorway, briefly interfering with the light, until Loredan told him to shift.

‘Sorry,’ the boy replied, offended. ‘But you said…’

‘All right,’ Loredan grunted. ‘Put it down on the bench.’

The boy crossed the floor and put down what he’d been carrying: a tray covered in little bundles of some kind of thread or fibre, each bunch about a finger’s length and breadth. ‘Did I do them all right?’ he asked hopefully.

‘Fine,’ Loredan muttered without looking up. ‘Now lay them out where I can reach them. Got to work quickly while the glue’s still warm.’

The boy did as he was told, arranging the little bundles in a row down the side of the bench, while Loredan put down his plane and ran his fingers over the surface of the wood. Then he turned round, and Alexius caught sight of his face-

– And felt his head jerk sideways, as the shoulder it had been resting on was taken away. He opened his eyes and grunted.

‘I’m sorry,’ said a voice beside him, ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’

Sitting beside him on the cold stone bench was a woman, the owner of the shoulder he’d been using as a headrest. She studied the embarrassment in Alexius’ eyes for a moment, then smiled.

‘I do apologise,’ Alexius said, still groggy with sleep and a headache that presumably had something to do with the angle of his head while he’d been asleep. ‘I didn’t realise-’ ‘That’s all right, really.’ The woman was still smiling. She was probably taller than she looked; but she was plump, with a round face, a little knob of a chin crowning the space where her fat, smooth cheeks met at the bottom. Her hair was grey and looked as if it had gone that colour five or so years earlier than it should have. She wore it in a neat round bun secured with an undecorated whalebone comb; it was pulled in tight, like a prisoner’s arm twisted behind his back. She was wearing a plain grey smock, with a moth-hole skilfully darned on the point of the right shoulder. ‘You know, my grandfather was just the same; he’d fall asleep in the evenings and whoever was next to him on the settle had to stay exactly where they were till he woke up.’ She peered at him and frowned a little. ‘Actually, you do look tired,’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine,’ Alexius replied, straightening his back a little.

‘You don’t need to go for a wee or anything?’

‘No,’ Alexius said firmly, ‘thank you. Excuse me,’ he went on, ‘but you wouldn’t happen to know if the Director’s actually in his office, would you? You see, I’ve been sitting here for hours, and I don’t believe he’s really there.’

The woman nodded. ‘I was in there a moment ago,’ she said. ‘There’s nobody in there.’

Alexius sighed. ‘Then do you think it’ll be all right if I go now?’ he said. ‘It must be getting late, and I’ve still got to find somewhere to stay the night. The soldiers who brought me here didn’t tell me much, but I gathered that the Director’s summons didn’t include anything about a place to stay. I don’t know,’ he went on, ‘maybe they’re going to give me a guest room, or throw me in the cells.’

‘You’re here to see the Director,’ the woman said. Odd, the way she said it; not a question, not quite a statement. ‘You’re right, it is late. And you look as if you should be in bed.’ She stood up and went across to the door of the office. ‘Would you like something to eat or drink?’ she said.

Alexius considered for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘if it’s no trouble I’d quite like a long drink of water.’

‘No trouble,’ the woman said. ‘And something to eat?’

‘Maybe later. I suppose it depends how much longer I’ve got to sit here.’

The woman tilted her shoulders a little. ‘That’s fine,’ she said. ‘In that case, we’d better make a start. Let’s go through into the office. It’s more comfortable in there.’

Fine clairvoyant you are. ‘You’re the Director?’ Alexius said, stupidly. The woman didn’t reply immediately; she pushed open the door, strode across to a big, solid chair behind a big, solid desk – the roof could fall in, and when they dug it out of the rubble the furniture would be as good as new – flumped down and wriggled a little to get herself comfortable. Alexius followed. There was another chair, also monumentally built but smaller and straighter, on the other side of the desk. It was quite dark, and the woman fiddled briefly with a tinder-box to light a plain pottery lamp.

‘That’s better,’ she said, as the light began to spread. Just the one lamp, in a big, spare, empty room. He was used to corridors, pantries and closed-file stores being better lit than this. ‘Now then.’ She smiled, pinching little birds’-footprints-in-the-snow dimples in the corners of her cheeks. ‘Welcome to Scona.’

‘Thank you,’ Alexius replied. His head was hurting badly now, and even the pale yellow light of the lamp was painful. ‘I’m sorry,’ he went on, knowing as he spoke that he could only make things worse, ‘I didn’t think you were the Director. I thought…’

‘Not to worry,’ the woman said briskly. ‘I’m Niessa Loredan. I own the Bank.’

Alexius nodded, unable to think of anything intelligent to say. He noticed little dots in the lobes of her ears, where they’d been pierced for earrings long ago and left to heal over. ‘I think I know your brother,’ he said. ‘Bardas Loredan?’

She nodded, with no perceptible change in expression. ‘And I think you’ve also met another of my brothers, Gorgas,’ she said. ‘He’s mentioned you.’

‘Yes,’ Alexius said. ‘Yes, I met him once. Briefly.’

She looked at him thoughtfully, as if he was a fairly expensive cut of meat she’d bought for a dinner party, and she was trying to decide which was the best way to cook him. ‘And of course, I’ve got two other brothers back in the Mesoge, but you haven’t met them. Oh,’ she added, ‘I forgot. Your drink of water.’

Before Alexius could say anything she was on her feet and pouring water from a huge embossed brass jug into a wooden cup. The jug looked like a trophy of war or a gift from a neighbouring ruler on a state visit. The cup was home-made, laboriously hollowed out with a gouge rather than turned out on a lathe. There was a tiny split in the rim. Alexius took it and held it in the palm of his left hand, not quite knowing what to do next. Would it be rude to gulp it down while she was talking to him, or offensive not to drink it now that she’d been to the trouble of pouring it with her own hands? This is a very sparse, tidy room, he noticed, irrelevantly. And she acts as if she’s just rented it for the week and doesn’t want to touch any of the fixtures and fittings in case she breaks something and has to pay for it. That jug’s Southern, there ought to be porcelain cups to go with it. I wonder if she keeps them for special visitors? A strange picture floated into his mind, of this woman busily tidying and dusting the room, just as his mother used to do when company was expected, while he waited miserably outside on a cold, hard bench. He raised the cup to his lips and took a little sip of water. ‘So,’ he said, ‘what can I do for you?’

She smiled again. Her face reminded him of a cooking apple. ‘You mean,’ she said, ‘why did I have you dragged halfway round the world to a place you’ve probably only heard of two or three times, and then dump you in the waiting room for hours? It’s a fair question. The answer to the second part is, I was busy. You will tell me when you want something to eat, won’t you?’

Alexius nodded and took a deep breath. He had no idea whether he was frightened of her or not. She was thirty years younger than he was, but she reminded him of his grandmother. ‘And the first part?’ he asked.

‘Oh, I’d assumed you’d already guessed,’ she replied. Without taking her eyes off him, she reached out and helped herself to a handful of raisins from a shallow unglazed pottery dish. ‘I want you to do some magic for me, please.’

Alexius took a deep breath. Not so long ago, he’d had a set speech for these occasions, one that neatly and concisely explained the difference between an abstract philosopher and a conjurer. It had been composed for the benefit of students and the wives of civic dignitaries making small talk at official receptions. Since the Director fitted neither category, he decided to improvise.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I’m not a magician. I couldn’t do magic even if I wanted to. I don’t think anybody can. What I do is study a half-scientific, half-metaphysical concept which we call the Principle, which is all about the structure of Time. Over the years, our studies have occasionally had bizarre and uncontrollable side-effects which could be confused with magic, but since none of us really knows the first thing about these phenomena-’

‘Of course,’ Niessa Loredan said, with a touch of impatience. ‘That’s the aggravating thing. You don’t know much about it.’ She laced her plump fingers together, and in that gesture Alexius could see the woman who’d founded and built up a highly successful bank. ‘You don’t understand magic, but you can do it. I understand it all right, but I can’t do it – well, not as much as I want to. So here’s the deal: I teach you, and you help me. Fair?’

A long time ago, Alexius had had an uncle who ran a sawmill. Now his uncle was very good at sawing wood, and not much else; but his wife (his second wife, fifteen years his junior) had a positive genius for business, and she’d taught the young Alexius a trick or two about negotiation. One: if they talk a lot, summarise and simplify. Two: as soon as possible, get to the deal. Three: let them know some of your weaknesses. Four: make them think you know all about them. Five: never try and strike a deal that doesn’t have at least some small benefit for the other side. Coincidentally, his aunt-by-marriage had been short and substantial.

‘You know about magic,’ he said. ‘That’s very interesting. We – the scholars of my Foundation – recognise the kind of person who has a natural ability to understand and even manipulate the workings of the Principle; we call them “naturals”, in fact. Usually they don’t seem to realise what they can do. You’re saying you’re one of them?’

Niessa Loredan clicked her tongue. ‘You haven’t been listening, have you?’ she scolded. Your “naturals” don’t understand, but they can do it. I’m the opposite. I’m not the natural in this room, Master Patriarch; you are.’

Alexius had already opened his mouth to reply when what she’d said sunk in. He sat quite still for two or three seconds without speaking.

‘And like you said,’ Niessa Loredan went on, ‘you’ve never realised what you can do. Come on, think about it. That business with my daughter and my brother Bardas; you did some fairly strong magic there, and I’ll bet you couldn’t tell me how you did it. Well?’

Again Alexius opened his mouth, then hesitated. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I can’t. Well, in very general terms, yes; but a step-by-step description of the procedure, no.’ He narrowed his eyebrows. ‘You’re telling me that you can?’

Niessa stifled a yawn. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘It’s what you might call simple but difficult. Like it’s a fairly simple operation to lift a huge boulder, but impossible to do unless you’re very strong. I know how to lift things, but I’m not strong enough to go humping boulders around. It’s the same with magic.’ She looked him in the eye for a moment, then continued, ‘I can see you’re uncomfortable with that word, but I can’t think of a better one. I suppose you’d call it “anomalous physical phenomena associated with manipulation of the Principle”, but that’s too much of a mouthful for me. Well? Do you want to learn, or don’t you?’

Alexius thought of his uncle’s wife. ‘You’re asking me to buy goods I haven’t seen,’ he said.

‘No,’ Niessa replied. ‘The deal is this. We agree the terms, then you get the goods, then you pay for them. After all, you can’t do what I want you to until you’ve learnt what I’ve got to teach you.’

‘All right,’ Alexius said cautiously. ‘Tell me what you want me to do first.’

Again, Niessa looked him in the eyes before answering. It was meant to be unnerving, and it worked. ‘It’s no more than you did for my daughter,’ she said.

Alexius shook his head. ‘I can’t be certain because I don’t know enough about it,’ he replied, ‘but I have an idea that what I did at the very least contributed to the fall of the City. It certainly caused an awful lot of trouble, and also made me very ill. I don’t think I want to get involved in anything like that, even if it means not learning what you know about magic. After all,’ he added, with a slight shrug that his aunt-by-marriage would have approved of, ‘it isn’t actually what I’m interested in.’

‘Very well,’ Niessa said. ‘Now let me tell you a little bit about my family. As you know, when we were younger and still living in the Mesoge, my brother Gorgas set me up to be raped by two rich young men from the City, and then murdered my father and my husband and tried to kill me and our brother Bardas, in an attempt to cover up what he’d done. When he got away, my brothers all blamed me for what happened – and yes, I’d been making eyes at the two City boys, hoping they’d take me with them to Perimadeia. Gorgas killed them too, which means he killed the father of my daughter. In spite of that,’ she went on, with a little shake of her head, ‘Gorgas and I are quite good friends; at least, we’re all the family each of us has got, since Bardas and Clefas and Zonaras all refuse to have anything to do with us.

‘Now Gorgas really believes in family; I’m not so bothered, I can take it or leave it alone. I’ve had to lock my daughter up in the guard house, because she’s not right in the head and keeps making threats and saying all sorts of dreadful things. Gorgas thinks I’m horrible for doing that, but since most of the threats are against Bardas – he dotes on Bardas, always has – he agrees it’s the right thing to do. But you see, Gorgas and I are business people; we know when to cut our losses, when to put the past behind us, we knew that together we could make a future for ourselves, and we did.’

Niessa paused for a moment, letting Alexius digest what she’d told him. ‘I suppose you could say that above all else, we’re single-minded, and practical. We’re practical about life and death, love and hate, right and wrong; and we’re practical about this thing you call lots of long, difficult words and we call magic. And that’s the sort of people we are. And if you think you have any choice about whether or not you help us,’ she added, with a slight smile, ‘then all I can say is, for an old man you’re pretty naive.’

Alexius nodded. ‘You want me to kill someone,’ he said. ‘Lots of people, because one man wouldn’t need magic.’

‘Oh, no,’ Niessa said. ‘Again, you haven’t been listening. Now this time, listen and use your brain. We don’t want anybody killed; quite the reverse. You were the one who wanted to kill Bardas, remember, and we stopped you. And now,’ she went on pleasantly, ‘we want you to make Bardas love us again. It’s for Gorgas’ sake more than mine, really, but it’d please me too. It’s time we were a family again, what’s left of us. And besides,’ she added, ‘we could use him in the business. You’re his friend; don’t you want to see him reconciled with his nearest and dearest?’

Alexius smoothed his beard with the palm of his hand. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘You want to give your brother your other brother as a birthday present?’

Niessa smiled. ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘After all, it’s something he wants.’

The boy looked up. His face was glowing in the light of the fire.

‘Why do we have to do this at this time of year, when it’s cold and dark?’ he said. ‘We could have finished in a single day back in the summer.’

Loredan didn’t turn his head; he was staring into the fire.

‘It’s better to cut the staves when the sap’s down,’ he said. ‘That way, they’re easier to season. When I was your age, we’d wait till the snow was a foot thick on the ground before we’d even think of cutting timber.’

The boy looked at him. ‘You’re not from the City, are you?’ he asked. ‘Originally, I mean.’

Loredan shook his head. ‘You haven’t heard of where I’m from,’ he said, without expression. ‘It really snows there. This is what spring’s like where I was brought up.’

The boy shivered. ‘Sounds horrid,’ he said. ‘This is bad enough. I suppose I’ll get used to it,’ he added forlornly. Loredan smiled.

‘Amazing what you can get used to if you have to,’ he said. ‘Try putting on more clothes, for a start. You shouldn’t have to be told that, at your age.’

The boy stared into the fire, as if trying to see what Loredan was looking at. ‘Is this what you used to do,’ he said, ‘before you came to the City?’

‘Not really, no. We were farmers, just like everybody else. But that meant you had to know all sorts of things. We never bought anything we could possibly make ourselves. I learnt this trade along with a couple of dozen others, and thought no more of it. I mean,’ he added with a grin, ‘it’s not exactly difficult, is it?’

The boy pulled a face. ‘I think it’s difficult,’ he said.

‘You would,’ Loredan replied pleasantly. ‘I don’t suppose you can shoe horses, either. Or build a house, or make nails, or cast pots, or weave rope. I can. Not well, mind you,’ he added, ‘but well enough. But I’ll admit, I was always better at this line of work than most people. And it’s light work and by no means disagreeable. Not a bad living, either, in these parts. This is a remarkably cack-handed race we’ve found ourselves among.’

‘Farmers,’ said the boy. ‘Oh, sorry, no offence.’

Loredan shook his head. ‘Not farmers,’ he said, ‘peasants. There’s a difference. I didn’t use to think so, but it’s true. Still, that’s none of our business. Thank the gods for the military, that’s what I say. All the work we can handle and they pay on delivery.’

The boy sucked his teeth. ‘I thought they specified yew or osage,’ he said. ‘Why’re we cutting ash?’

Loredan chuckled. ‘My friend,’ he said, ‘that lot couldn’t tell the difference between a yew tree and a stick of celery. They just said yew or osage because that’s what they read in some book. Ash’ll do just fine, so long as we back it with rawhide.’

He threw another lump of dead wood on the fire and lay back, his hands behind his head. Far away, down in the valley, a wolf howled. The boy sat up with a start.

‘Calm down,’ Loredan said, with a grin.

The boy looked at him nervously. ‘That was a wolf,’ he said.

‘Sure. Now go to sleep.’

‘But surely…’ The boy looked round, as if expecting to see the glint of eyes at the edge of the firelight. ‘Shouldn’t we climb a tree or something?’

Loredan yawned. ‘ You’re welcome to climb a tree if you really want to,’ he said. ‘Assuming you can find one, of course. I think we just cut down the last one. On the whole, though, I think you’d be better off getting some sleep. We’ve got a lot of work to do in the morning.’

The boy was clearly not convinced. ‘Well, at least one of us should keep watch,’ he said. ‘Just in case, you know.’

‘Please yourself.’ Loredan sat up, reached out for his toolbag, pulled it under his head and lay back again, closing his eyes. ‘Good night.’

Almost at once, he was asleep. He knew he was asleep, because he was standing on the ramparts of the great gatehouse of Perimadeia (which wasn’t there any more) and he was looking past the tents of the plainsmen towards the east, where the river seemed to flow upwards into the sky. Beside him on the walkway was his brother Gorgas; and in this dream they were on speaking terms, almost friendly, because Gorgas was telling him about the war in Scona, and he wasn’t really listening. Other people’s war stories are usually very boring.

‘You should come out to Scona,’ Gorgas was saying. ‘This city’s had its time. They’re going to win, and you don’t want to be here when that happens. I could use you back in Scona, a man with your experience.’

Loredan saw himself shaking his head. ‘No thanks,’ the dream-Loredan said. ‘What’s the point in sailing halfway round the world to fight a war when I’ve got one right here? Besides, I’m not a mercenary.’

Gorgas frowned at him, as if offended. ‘It wouldn’t be like that,’ he said. ‘You’re family. We should stick together.’

‘I’d steer clear of that subject if I were you,’ this other Loredan replied. ‘If I ever do leave the City, I’ll go somewhere I can earn an honest living without people trying to kill me all the time.’ He shrugged. ‘I might even go back to farming. Hey,’ he added, ‘did I just say something funny?’

Gorgas grinned at him. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just the thought of you back on the farm, that’s all. It’s enough to make a cat laugh.’

‘All right,’ Loredan said, ‘then I’ll set up in a trade. There’s all sorts of things I could do.’

‘Name three.’

Loredan thought before answering. ‘I could set up as a wheelwright,’ he said. ‘Or coopering. I used to mend all our barrels, remember.’

‘They leaked,’ Gorgas said. ‘You could never quite get the new staves to fit flush. Remember that year the damp got into the seedcorn, and when we took the lids off, it’d all sprouted?’

‘All right, not coopering. There’s still plenty of other things. I could be a coppersmith. I’d be good at that.’

Gorgas bit his lip and smiled. ‘I can see you now,’ he said, ‘with your pack on your back, trudging round the villages mending pots. Admit it, brother, for anything that doesn’t involve spilling blood, you’re useless. You should stick to what you’re good at, like I’ve done. That’s what I’m for; it’s all a question of the right tool for the job. I was designed for making money. You were designed for killing people. There’s nothing wrong with that.’

‘The hell with you,’ the other Loredan said in disgust; and the Loredan who was watching all this was heartily grateful that no such conversation had ever taken place, or ever would now that the City was in ruins. ‘That’s a nasty thing to say, and I don’t think it’s true, either. You make me sound like the knacker’s cart, with a swarm of crows always hovering around it just out of stone’s throw. And I don’t know where you get this idea of yourself as a straight-up businessman from,’ he added irritably. ‘If there’s anyone in this family who’s made his way in the world by cutting throats, it’s you.’

Gorgas leant his elbows on the parapet and studied the distant tents for a while. ‘I won’t deny that,’ he said. ‘I’ve done a lot of things I’d have preferred not to, over the years. But it was always as a means to an end; I never made a career of it. And if we’re going to be brutally honest here,’ he added, turning slowly and looking this other Loredan in the eyes, ‘then I’ll just make the point that at least I have made my way in the world, as you put it. You’ve spent your life simply floundering along, and every day some new fight to the death; you always win, of course, and the other poor bastard always dies, but where the hell has it ever got you? At least when I’ve shed blood, it’s always been for a purpose, and nearly always unavoidable.’ He sighed and looked away. ‘I’ll be straight with you,’ he said. ‘If I were in your shoes, I’d have trouble sleeping at night.’

– Which was apparently some sort of cue, because Bardas woke up and saw that it was first light, and a cold, weak sun was swimming in thin grey clouds. The boy was fast asleep a few feet away; Bardas smiled and prodded his shoulder with his toe.

‘Wake up,’ he said. ‘The good news is, the wolves didn’t get you after all.’

The boy grunted and turned over, tugging at the blanket. Loredan pulled it away. The boy grunted and sat up, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles.

‘Get the wedges,’ Loredan said. ‘Come on, we’ve got work to do. You’d better pay attention, because this is important.’

The boy mumbled something as he dragged himself up off the ground, but it was too indistinct to make out and Loredan was pretty sure he didn’t need to hear the words in order to get the general idea. He sat down opposite the log-end and examined the growth rings.

‘What do you want me to do?’ the boy asked.

‘Fetch the saw,’ Loredan replied. ‘We’ve got to trim off the branches before we do anything else.’

The sun was high by the time they’d finished dressing up the log. There was no wind, and even a slight suggestion of warmth. ‘We’ll get four good staves out of this one,’ he said. ‘Maybe even five if we go steady. A lot depends on how cleanly it splits. Right, you sit on the log, I’ll drive in the first wedge.’

He placed the blade of the wedge on the line he’d chosen and tapped it gently but firmly with the back of the axe-head, one-handed, until he was sure it had bitten into the wood. Then he stepped back with the axe in both hands, left hand in the curve at the end of the handle, right hand just below the head. He fixed his eye on the head of the wedge, concentrated and swung. The back of the axe-head hit the wedge pretty square, and the first signs of a split began to show along the line he’d hoped he’d seen.

‘Got that?’ he said, straightening up.

‘No,’ the boy replied. ‘I can’t see anything from here, remember.’

Loredan sighed. ‘Come round here and take a look,’ he replied. ‘See how it’s just beginning to go?’

Ten or twelve hard blows opened the split up to just on five inches; long enough to admit the next wedge, which Loredan drove in from above with another dozen carefully weighed blows, each of them being nothing more or less than the weight of the axe-head falling from the top of his swing. ‘That’s really important,’ he said, stopping to catch his breath – was he really short of breath after a few swings with an axe? Getting lazy, or old. ‘Remember what I told you. Just let the weight of the axe do the work.’

‘You said.’

Two more blows were sufficient to widen the crack far enough for the first wedge to fall out. Loredan picked it up and pressed the blade a quarter of an inch into the top of the crack. ‘And so on,’ he said. ‘Are you paying attention?’

‘Sure,’ the boy replied guiltily. ‘I was watching, honest.’

Loredan grunted. ‘You ought to be watching this carefully,’ he said reproachfully. ‘There’s a lot more to it than you’d think. It’s not just a case of splitting it any old how, it’s got to be clean and straight or we’ll have wasted our time and a perfectly good tree. Did you find that axe-head you broke off, by the way?’

‘I’ll look for it later, I promise. Go on with what you were doing. I’m watching.’

‘You better had be. You’re going to be doing the next one.’

Loredan was pleased with how it went, each wedge in turn opening the crack a little further, splitting the wood along his chosen line and releasing the previous wedge until it could be lifted free without effort. Curious, he mused, the way my life’s become a sort of celebration of mechanical advantage. It’s enough to fool a man into thinking he’s in control of things. The final wedge, driven in diagonally, split the last couple of inches and the two halves of the log rolled apart on either side of his synthetic line, as neat and consistent as a proposition in algebra. He nodded, and handed the axe to the boy. ‘Your turn,’ he said. ‘Split the halves into quarters. And if you cock it up, you’re walking home.’

The boy looked at him resentfully, then stooped down to gather the wedges. ‘I’ll bet you didn’t get it right the first time you did it,’ he said.

Loredan laughed. ‘As a matter of fact, I did,’ he said, as the boy knelt down and studied the timber. ‘It was the second time when I wrecked the stave, chipped the wedge and broke the axe. It was two days before I dared show my face in the house again. So think on.’

‘Huh.’ Loredan watched the boy scrutinising the grain with all the fierce, brief concentration of youth, and suppressed a grin. It was like stepping back and watching himself, as if in a dream. He could remember that same furious indecision, the frustration of not allowing himself to ask advice. Look for the flaw, he wanted to say, there’s always a weak spot in every billet, it’s just a matter of knowing where to look. But he managed not to; let the boy work it out for himself, and then he’d know it for ever.

‘Got it,’ the boy said. He looked up and saw the stump of the tree, then slid the billet along the ground until it was jammed against it. Loredan nodded his approval, but the boy wasn’t looking. That was a good sign, too.

‘This time,’ he said, ‘for crying out loud don’t bust the axe. We’ll be here all week if we’ve got to stop and make new handles.’

‘All right,’ the boy replied, annoyed. ‘I’m trying to concentrate, you know,’ he added.

‘Sorry,’ Loredan said meekly. ‘You carry on.’

The boy took a deep breath and started tapping the wedge. The axe was too big and heavy for him to be able to manage it single-handed with any degree of comfort, and the wedge refused to bite. At the third attempt, the boy rapped his knuckles and swore.

‘Want me to start it for you?’ Loredan asked.

‘It’s all right,’ the boy said angrily. ‘I can manage.’

Loredan kept quiet. In the back of his mind he could see his father showing him the other way of starting the split, standing up straight with one foot bracing the wedge, holding the axe by the end of the handle and letting it swing gently like a pendulum to apply the small, measured degree of force necessary for the first bite. He could remember himself, raw-knuckled, red-faced and close to tears after he’d tried so many times and failed, and been told to get out of the way. On the other hand, this was a job of work, not an Academy seminar. ‘Stand up and brace the wedge with your foot,’ he said. ‘You might find it easier that way.’

As the boy straightened his back, Loredan looked away and then down at his hands, noticing the calluses that fringed his palms, the thick pads of skin between the first and middle joints of his first three fingers, the shaven patch on his left arm just above the wide purple bruise across the inside of his wrist, the characteristic and unavoidable injuries of his trade, that had become part of him over the last two years; because every human occupation leaves its own very specific disfigurements, and these were at least preferable to many. An observant man would know at once from these who he was and what he did, or at least what he did now.

The crisp chime of the axe-head on the wedge made him look up. ‘It’s starting to go,’ the boy said proudly. Loredan nodded. ‘Steady does it,’ he replied, ‘don’t go mad.’ The boy didn’t reply, he was concentrating on what he was doing, and without having to be told. Loredan turned his back. He could tell if the boy was doing it right by the sound of the axe-head. It didn’t sound too bad.

‘There, all done,’ the boy said. ‘Come and tell me if that’ll do.’

Loredan examined the work gravely, like a colonel inspecting his troops. ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Now you can do the other one, while I make a start on stripping the bark off.’

‘Oh.’ The boy picked up the axe again, a little less enthusiastically this time, while Loredan walked over to the cart and took the drawknife out of the box. The sky was clouding over. It’d be a good idea to get a move on if they didn’t want to have to finish the job off in the pouring rain. He felt the edge with his thumb; it was sharp enough for sloughing off bark, for which purpose a slightly dull blade is marginally preferable. As he turned to walk back, he heard the sound of the axe pecking the wedge.

‘That’s the ticket,’ he called out. ‘You never know, we might make a bowyer of you yet.’