The Belly of the Bow

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

‘Hello, Clefas,’ Bardas replied. ‘Hello, Zonaras. It’s good to see you again.’ The two men regarded him steadily, exhibiting no emotion of any kind. Some sort of Mesoge recognition ritual. Athli speculated, wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Doing her best not to be obvious about it, she took a long look at Bardas’ two long-lost brothers. There was a family resemblance, to be sure, particularly round the jaw and chin, and Zonaras, the taller of the two, had Bardas’ eyes. Even so, it was almost shocking to see Bardas’ features mirrored in these two nondescript middle-aged farmers; it was like walking through a bazaar in somewhere like Inagoa or Sizma, some primitive backwater of a place where they used seashells for money, and coming across an obvious piece of loot plundered by pirates from an Island ship, an enamelled silver jug or an ivory-framed mirror among the asymmetrical coil-made pots and scraped-out wooden bowls. Clefas, the short one, was pot-bellied with fat cheeks and an enormously thick neck; he looked about ten years older than Bardas, though she knew for a fact he was the youngest of the brothers. The other one, Zonaras, seemed shorter than he actually was because of a bandy-legged stoop, and the hair on the top of his head was beginning to go. His ears stuck out, and he had a straggly beard that was thin at the point of his chin and absurdly bushy at the sides. Both of them had huge red hands with bitten fingernails.

‘This is Athli Zeuxis,’ Bardas went on, ‘a friend of mine from the Island. She’s a trader.’

The brothers looked at her as if she was something on a stick at a puppet show. Neither of them said anything, but there wasn’t any need. Their expressions fairly shouted, So her name’s Athli Zeuxis; what d’you expect us to do about it? She’d certainly never felt less comfortable in her life. A minute or so dragged away, and still neither of them had said a word, except for Clefas’ perfunctory greeting. She glanced at Bardas out of the corner of her eye and saw with relief and amusement that he seemed to be feeling just as embarrassed and out of his depth as she was. It occurred to her that Bardas hadn’t even tried to introduce the boy, but that at least seemed to be in keeping with what passed for normal behaviour here. Children, it seemed, were like dogs; everybody had one or two huddled round their feet or trotting round in the background looking for a fight while the big people talked to each other (or at least while they stood stock still and practised their glowering) and nobody ever seemed to notice they were even there.

Just when Athli was about to scream, or fall asleep on her feet, Clefas gave a little sigh and said, ‘You staying long?’

Bardas blinked once. ‘I’m not sure yet,’ he said. ‘I haven’t really got any plans in any direction at the moment.’

‘You’d better come up to the house,’ murmured Zonaras, in the tone of voice of someone who’s just found a badly injured stranger in the road, right at the most inconvenient moment possible. The total lack of expression had subtly changed into a hostile, suspicious stare, the face of a man who fears the worst. That’s odd, Athli said to herself. I’m the one who’s a complete and utter stranger among these lunatics.

It wasn’t far to the house, which proved to be a long thatched affair with a steeply angled roof and tiny, almost token windows. There was a huge front door, solid oak studded with the heads of big square nails, and a doorway at the side with no door whatsoever, just a board put across to keep the pullets from escaping. The yard was littered with junk; smashed and mossy barrels with ferns growing up through the gaps between the slats, what looked like a perfectly good and serviceable chain harrow almost completely overgrown with bindweed, any number of holed and rusty iron buckets, the green and decaying skeleton of a cart that had been gradually robbed of its boards and fittings, like a beached whale after the local people have cut off the best meat for salting; a water-butt with a bubbling leak in the side, and green moss marking the course of the escaping water; a pile of bones stacked up like logs against an outhouse wall; the skin and bones of a huge rat nailed to the planked-in sides of the woodshed half a century ago, now tanned and cured by the wind and sun to a brittle crispness; a sheep’s skull on a pole, set up as a slingshot target gods only knew how long ago, chipped and cracked and still incredibly in one piece; a leaf-thin rusty scythe blade lodged between loose stones on top of a crumbling wall. A fat, blind old ewe nibbled lichen off the stones of the mounting block. Oh, for gods’ sakes, Athli muttered to herself as she passed through, surely it wouldn’t kill them to tidy the place up say once every seventy-five years?

‘Cosy,’ she whispered in Bardas’ ear, as Zonaras laboriously shooed away the pullets from the doorway and lifted away the board.

‘Personally, I preferred it when it was just left scruffy,’ Bardas replied. ‘Mind you wipe your feet before you go indoors.’

Because it was so dark inside the house, Athli’s first impression was of the smell, a bizarre mixture of cheese, smoke and apples. It was strong, rich and delicious, and not at all what she’d been expecting. It was also pleasantly cool, thanks to the thick stone walls and flagged floor. When her eyes became accustomed to the light, she saw a long, bare room with a huge fireplace at one end, almost hidden behind a massive iron spit with an elaborate mechanism for turning it, and beside it a cavernous bread oven; there were sunken alcoves with steps leading down on both sides of the room, and a massive table in the middle that was almost as long as the room, with a low bench on either side. From the crossbeams hung ropes of onions, low enough that Bardas and Zonaras had to duck, and a bewildering collection of tools and implements, some of which looked as if they hadn’t been disturbed for a hundred and fifty years.

‘Where’s Father’s chair?’ Bardas asked.

‘Broke,’ Clefas replied. ‘We put it up in the hayloft.’

‘Pity,’ Bardas said. ‘I’ll see if I can’t mend it.’ He sat down on the bench and planted his elbows on the table. ‘And the pot-hook too,’ he added. ‘I see nobody’s got around to fixing that since I’ve been away.’

Clefas and Zonaras looked at each other, then sat down opposite him; it reminded Athli of some tense moment in a long, drawn-out business deal, the point when the parties stop pussyfooting around and get down to cases. She perched on the edge of the table at the far end, while the boy pulled up a low three-legged stool and crouched on that.

Clefas drew in a deep breath. ‘If it’s the money you’re after,’ he said, ‘you’re out of luck.’

Bardas frowned. ‘I wasn’t, actually,’ he said. ‘I sent it to you for you to use, though I can’t say there’s much sign of it.’

‘It’s all gone,’ Zonaras said.

That seemed to throw Bardas completely. ‘What do you mean, gone?’ he said. ‘Come on, talk sense.’

Zonaras shrugged. ‘It’s gone,’ he said. ‘We haven’t got it any more. Simple as that.’

Athli knew what that look meant – Bardas, keeping his temper. ‘Don’t talk soft,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I sent you enough money to buy this whole damned valley. Which is what I assume you did with it, right?

Clefas and Zonaras looked at each other. ‘We bought the farm,’ Clefas said. ‘This place.’

‘And?’ Bardas leant forward across the table. ‘Come on, I sent you enough for that in the first year. What did you do with the rest of it?’

So that’s it, Athli said to herself. That’s what he did with it all. He sent it home. All the time she’d known him in the City, when he’d been earning enormous sums of money as a fencer-at-law and never seeming to spend a copper quarter of it, when he’d been living in a bleak, miserable apartment in an ‘island’ block and eating dry bread and coarse, cheap cheese; he’d sent the rest of it back to his brothers here in the Mesoge. She felt her mouth drop open; she knew more or less exactly how much money was involved, since she’d been his clerk, living very comfortably off her five per cent share. More than enough to buy this dismal valley; the Loredan brothers should have been living in a castle in the middle of an ornamental lake, with long avenues of sycamores lining the road and a model village set back at a discreet distance for the estate workers to live in. Every fight, every burdening of the already obscene odds against him, every drop of blood he’d shed, every morning he’d woken up and looked out through his tiny window at a sun that might not be there that evening; where in the gods’ names could all that have gone, and leave the brothers still living in this squalor?

‘We bought the mill,’ said Zonaras after a while. ‘But it burnt down.’

‘We built it again,’ Clefas added, ‘but then Leucas Meuzin built another one over at Ladywood and he charged less than we did, so we gave it up.’

‘All right,’ Bardas said, ‘so you make one mistake. That would have been a drop in the ocean. What about the rest of it?’

And then the long, dreary catalogue began; a ludicrous recital that made Athli want to howl with laughter – if only she could remember it when she got back to the Island, what a party piece it would make, with the funny accents and the two of them interrupting each other like a pair of professional storytellers. There was the cattle-ship, which was going to make the run to Perimadeia once a month and bring in a king’s ransom in easy profit, except that it hit rock on its first run out and sank. There was the weir across the Blackwater, to catch the salmon; but there were problems, and instead of a month to build, it had taken a year and huge quantities of stone shipped in specially from Basleen in a specially modified ship; and it worked so well the first year that now salmon were extinct in the Blackwater, and the weir had clogged up and flooded and they’d had to pay all the neighbours the cost of draining their flooded land. There was the seam of pure tin someone had discovered up on top of the moor, an absolute fortune just waiting to be carted away; the salt pans and oyster beds on the coast; the deposit of fine white sand in the dunes beyond Turnoys that was going to be the foundation for a glassmaking industry to rival anything in the world; the wagon in Lihon; the diamond mine and the carpet-weaving syndicate and the cedar plantation, and of course the Bank of the Mesoge-

‘But why?’ Bardas interrupted. ‘For pity’s sake, Clefas, why didn’t you just buy land like I told you to?’

Clefas scowled at him. ‘But we don’t want to be farmers any more,’ he said. ‘We want to be like – we wanted to make money and be rich.’

‘You wanted to be like Niessa,’ Bardas said softly. ‘If she could do it, so could you.’

Zonaras slapped the table with his huge palm. ‘It didn’t seem fair,’ he said, ‘her running a bank and having money pouring in, when by rights she’d married Gallas and should have been an ordinary person. If she could have all that, we wanted it too. I guess we just weren’t as lucky as her. And now the City’s fallen,’ he added bitterly, ‘and there’s no more money, and here we bloody well are.’

At that moment, what Athli wanted more than anything else she could think of was for Bardas to pull Zonaras across the table and bash his face in. But he didn’t move. After a long time, he pushed his hair back from his forehead and said, ‘What have you got left? Anything?’

Clefas nodded. ‘There’s the farm, like I said. And we bought Palas Rafenin’s place when he died, that’s another thirty acres. And there’s the rap up on the moors where the tin mine was going to be, we let the keep on that to Teufas Tron for nine quarters a year. And there’s the rosewood plantation, of course, but that won’t be worth anything for fifty years-’

‘Nothing,’ Bardas said. ‘All gone. Wonderful. I’ve kept every swindler and chancer in the Mesoge for all these years and my own brothers are still chasing sheep and hoeing onions.’ He drew his fingertips down his cheeks as far as his chin. ‘You bloody fools, I was trying to look after you, all of us. I wanted it to be so that none of us would ever have to worry about anything ever again; and like you said, Zonaras, here we bloody well are, right back where we started.’

‘Heris,’ Gorgas Loredan called out, ‘I’m home.’

‘We’re in the cloister,’ his wife replied. He smiled, dumped the heavy bag he’d been carrying and strolled through the dark shade of the hall out into the courtyard.

An appealing sight, if ever there was one; his wife sitting in her favourite cedarwood chair, sewing. At her feet, his daughter Niessa playing with her little wooden horse on wheels. Behind her, his son Luha lying on his stomach on the grass, propping himself up on his elbows and reading a book; and to his right, perched on a small ebony stool, the latest addition to the family, his niece, who was having her hair combed by the maid. Gratifying how well she’d scrubbed up – oh, for sure she’d never be a beauty or anything more than ordinary with a hint of strange-looking, all bones and eye-sockets. But at least she was clean and respectably dressed in one of Heris’ old linen smocks and a good plain pair of sandals. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘That’s what I like to see, a hive of industry. Any messages?’

Heris looked down at a wax tablet balanced on the arm of her chair. ‘Vido brought over the excise figures, they’re on your desk. A man called Bemond Grus would like to talk to you about five hundred pairs of boots, FOB the Sea Falcon, whatever that means. She sent someone to see if your were back yet, but there wasn’t a message. Oh, and I’ve done those transfer deeds, all except the long one that needs a coloured plan.’

‘You have? That’s splendid,’ Gorgas replied, trying to remember which deeds she was talking about. It seemed a long time since he’d had nothing more urgent to think about than paperwork. How wonderful it must be, he thought, to be bored.

He grabbed a cushion from the pile, dropped it on the grass and stretched out, like a good dog after a long day herding sheep. ‘So what’s been going on since I’ve been away?’ he asked. ‘Luha, how did you do in your verse-composition test?’

‘Nine out of ten, Father,’ the boy replied, without looking up from his book.

‘That’s not bad,’ Gorgas said. ‘Did anybody get ten?’

‘No. Well, yes. Ruan Acher did, but his dad’s a poet, so-’

Gorgas frowned. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘Nine out of ten’s good, don’t get me wrong, but ten would have been better. If Ruan Acher can do it, then so can you.’

‘Yes, but Father, verse composition,’ the boy said. ‘When am I ever going to want to do verse composition? It’s not like it’s any good for anything.’

The frown condensed into a scrowl. ‘Don’t let me hear you talking like that,’ Gorgas said. ‘And don’t go spoiling good work with a bad attitude. After dinner I want to look at your work, and we’ll go over it and see if we can spot where you went wrong. Niessa,’ he continued, turning his head a precise few degrees towards her, ‘have you been practising your flute like you promised?’

‘Yes, Daddy,’ the little girl answered proudly. ‘And Doctor Nearchus says I’m nearly a grade ahead of everyone else in the class. Shall I get my flute and play you my piece, Daddy?’

‘That’d be nice,’ Gorgas said. ‘You’re excused.’

Niessa scampered off, and Gorgas lifted up on one elbow.

‘What about you, Iseutz?’ he said. ‘Settling in?’

His niece looked at him, and one corner of her lip twitched. ‘Absolutely, Uncle Gorgas,’ she said. ‘Yesterday we did my teeth, and today we’ve been doing my hair. And tomorrow we’re going to do my fingernails, though I don’t suppose there’s really a full day’s work to be done there. Can I have the afternoon off if we finish early?’

Gorgas breathed out through his nose. ‘I take it that means you haven’t been to see your mother yet,’ he said. ‘You know, the sooner you do it, the sooner it’ll be done.’

‘But Uncle,’ she replied, with a nice touch of horror in her voice, ‘you can’t expect me to go and see Mother until I’m finished. It wouldn’t be right.’

Gorgas shrugged. ‘You do what you like,’ he said. ‘Just don’t expect me to keep the peace between you indefinitely, that’s all. You know you’re welcome to stay here as long as you like, but-’

‘We’ll just have to try and get my toenails done ahead of schedule, then,’ she said. ‘Maybe we should get in a night shift.’

Heris turned her head and looked at Isentz sharply, but didn’t say anything. The girl looked uncomfortable for a moment, then said, ‘For what it’s worth, I really am doing my best. If I could sew, I’d sew. But I can’t. And I don’t want to go and see my mother. I can’t imagine saying anything to her that wouldn’t make things ten times worse.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ Gorgas said.

‘And besides,’ she went one, ignoring him, ‘what on earth makes you think she wants to see me? If she was that keen on the idea, why hasn’t she come here? Or at least sent a message or something?‘

‘She’s a busy-’ Gorgas started.

‘Yes,’ the girl interrupted, ‘I know. And that’s fine. She can be busy, and I can sit here being put back together again, like something the cat’s knocked over, and everybody can be happy. Come on, Uncle, what exactly is it that makes you believe we all want to love each other?’

There was a moment of complete silence; then Heris quickly gathered up her sewing and wasn’t there any more, and Gorgas got slowly to his feet, walked across and sat beside her. She kept the rest of her body still, but couldn’t keep her head from flinching away just a little.

‘That’s all right,’ Gorgas said, so quietly that she could hardly hear him. ‘That’s fine. You go ahead and give up. After all, you proved your point while you were in the prison, and before that in the City. You had this fine life all lined up for you, you were going to get married and live the way people are meant to, and then a man called Bardas Loredan came along and he killed the man you were going to marry, and that life wasn’t there any more. So you decided, right there on the spot, you decided: no compromise, no giving an inch, you wanted justice, or revenge, or whatever you want to call it, not that it matters a great deal. And you know what? You failed. Total waste of time and blood, and all for melodrama.’ He was right up close to her ear now, like an awkward boy edging nervously along a bench at a wedding towards the girl he’s afraid to talk to. ‘Look at you. You’re a mess. There are bits of you missing. But here I am, and here’s your mother, and we never give up on anything; not because it’s impossible, not for armies or storms at sea or plagues or fires or the earth opening up and swallowing whole cities, and certainly not for melodrama. Now I don’t care what you want or what you’re feeling or even what a complete and utter mess and waste of good food and water you happen to be; nobody gives up in this family, because there’s a lot of enemies out there, more than Shastel and Temrai put together, and on our side, there’s just us. Understood?’

‘That’s it, is it? We’ve got to love each other because nobody else ever could?’

A wide smile spread gradually over Gorgas’ face. ‘You’ve got it,’ he said. ‘There’s me; well, that doesn’t need explaining. There’s your Uncle Bardas, who killed people for a living and brought the plainspeople down on Perimadeia. There’s you. And there’s your mother.’

Iseutz nodded slowly. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Just out of interest, what did she do?’

‘Oh, she’s the pick of us,’ Gorgas said softly. ‘I kill in self-defence, Bardas killed for other people, you want to kill for revenge, or whatever it is that’s eating those holes in your poor little brain. But your mother killed a whole damn city, and you want to know why? Nor for revenge, though the gods know she had cause. Not because she had to. She killed Perimadeia to save money.’ He grinned suddenly, as if remembering a marvellous joke. ‘Not to make money, you understand, to save it. She was sick and tired of paying interest on the money she borrowed in Perimadeia to set up this stupid bloody bank – money down the drain, she said, and nothing to show for it – so she sent me to open the gates and kill the whole damned city. Isn’t that wonderful? Well, I think so. She may be an evil bitch, but you’ve got to admire her single-mindedness.’

Iseutz moved her head a little and looked him in the eye. ‘It was you who opened the gates,’ she said.

‘It was me. Your mother’s idea, and I did it.’

‘I see,’ Iseutz nodded. ‘And you did it.’

‘It happened to coincide with my own interests,’ Gorgas said, ‘but I’m not the one who takes the initiative. She suggested it, and I agreed.’

Iseutz looked at him for a long time. ‘Uncle Gorgas,’ she said, ‘why do you pretend to love your family when you hate them more than I do?’

Gorgas thought for a moment. ‘You’re confusing the issue,’ he said. ‘You’re mixing up hating and recognising evil.’ He looked away for a moment, a man at home enjoying his garden. ‘Do you really think it’s not possible to love someone when you know they’ve got this bit of evil inside them? You surprise me, I thought you were more grown-up than that. You think my wife doesn’t love me, in some part of her mind? You think I don’t love Bardas, my brother? Or Niessa, or you? This is strange,’ he added, leaning back in his chair, ‘being able to talk freely like this; I suppose it’s because I’ve got so much in common with you.’

‘You think so?’

‘Don’t be offended. I like you. You’re helping me put into words a lot of stuff that’s just been churning round in my mind for years and years. Come on,’ he said, sitting up again, ‘tell me what you think of me. I don’t mind.’

Iseutz considered her reply, thoughtful, like a student in a tutorial. ‘What you’ve just told me,’ she said. ‘It’s not something I can begin to understand. I mean, I can see it’s possible; one man can open a gate, it’s just a matter of sliding back some bolts, lifting a bar, and because that gate’s open, a city can fall and thousands of people can die. It’s the idea that someone could do that deliberately that I’m having trouble with.’ She ran the stumps of her fingers across her lower lip. ‘Is it something you enjoyed?’ she asked. ‘Did you like doing it?’

‘Do I need to answer that?’ Gorgas replied.

She shook her head. ‘No, it was a silly question. It’d be too easy to write it down to some sort of madness, on a par with the crazy people who kill small children in the woods. What’s the answer, then? Their rules don’t apply to us, is that it?’

Gorgas pursed his lips. ‘I think you’re getting there,’ he said. ‘I see our family as being small group of soldiers, like those Shastel raiders; we’re deep in enemy territory, outnumbered, every man’s hand against us, can’t expect help or relief from outside; so we do whatever we have to do, and we make it all right with ourselves because there’s so many of them and so few of us, they’re the enemy and we have some sort of right to survive. So the raiding party takes what it needs, does what it has to do, it keeps on going, and when you know they don’t take prisoners, you forget all about giving yourself up. I like to think of it as being like a different species of animals. It’s all right to kill animals to eat, or to wear, or because they’ve built a nest in your roof and they sting you whenever you go in or out. No, that’s not it, not that we’re better than them, just different. There’s some people you’re allowed to kill, and some you’re not. That’s why I can forgive Bardas; and why you should, too.’

Iseutz shrugged. ‘I’ll grant you, he’s probably the best of us. But he’s also the one who’s harmed me. So he’s the only one I hate. I really don’t want to think about the rest of it.’

Gorgas nodded. ‘No reason why you should,’ he said. ‘It may sound like I go around agonising about all this, but I don’t really. It’s that word evil, it’s not the right one. Would it be better to say it’s a different perspective on the value of human life, in absolute as opposed to subjective terms?’ He stood up. ‘You know, I’m really glad we’ve had this talk. It’s cleared the air, don’t you think?’

Iseutz made a vague gesture. ‘You really did that?’ she said. ‘Opened the gates of the City and let the enemy in?’

Gorgas spread his hands. ‘One lot of enemies killed another lot,’ he said. ‘I didn’t start that fight. I didn’t kill a single Perimadeian. Like you said, I pulled back a bolt or two and lifted a bar. Uncle Bardas didn’t start the war. Temrai didn’t start the war. Your Great-Uncle Maxen didn’t start the war.’

‘Oh, gods,’ Iseutz. ‘I’d forgotten him.’

‘And I’ll tell you another thing,’ Gorgas said, stooping to pick up an empty plate. ‘Your father didn’t rape your mother; it was just good business, at the time. There now,’ he said, frowning, ‘I don’t think I’ve left anything out, have I? At least I’ve been straight with you, and that’s one thing I do pride myself on, being straight with people. It’s like the proverb says, you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family.’

‘Doctor Gannadius!’

Now if only I was as old as I feel, I’d be deaf and not be able to hear you. Gannadius quickened his pace a little.

‘Doctor Gannadius! Wait!’

No chance, Gannadius thought sadly. He couldn’t have failed to hear a voice that loud if he’d been stone deaf, or even dead. He looked round and saw Volco Bovert bearing down on him like a fashionable prophecy. ‘Master Bovert,’ he said politely.

‘You’re a hard man to find, Doctor,’ Bovert said, catching his breath. There was an awful lot of Volco Bovert, probably more than would ever be necessary except in the direst of emergencies; ironic, in a way, since his official post was Tribune of the Poor. ‘I think it’s time we talked seriously about the Scona problem.’

‘My pleasure,’ Gannadius sighed. He’d only spoken to Tribune Volco a handful of times, at this or that faculty reception, but he knew him well enough to anticipate that insufferable habit of his of reducing the world and everything that happened in it to an order of business; thus, everything to do with Scona and the war became ‘the Scona problem’, just as anything connected with the Foundation’s commercial activities was swept into ‘the balance of payments issue’, while the sum of human knowledge and all attempts to expand or clarify it was lumped together under ‘the syllabus debate’. It went without saying that the quality that had earned him such a high position in the Shastel hierarchy (apart from being fifth in line to be head of the Bovert family) was his exceptional clarity of thinking and ability to pare away all the fat and concentrate on the meat. Where I come from, Gannadius reflected, we had a word for people like that. It was five letters long and rhymed with ‘midiot’.

The enormous presense of Tribune Volco backed him into a ledge in the Cloister wall, and he perched on the head of a low-level carved lion while Volco settled comfortably on a wide stone seat. ‘Thank you for sparing the time,’ Volco said. ‘Now then, about Scona. We need you to do something.’

For a moment, Gannadius was completely confused. All he could think of was that Volco, for some reason to do with the bizarre complexities of faction politics, wanted him to lead the next raiding party; and he didn’t really want to do that. He was still swimming in circles round the idea when Volco went on ‘You see,’ he said, in a low whisper that was probably inaudible a mile away, ‘we believe that the military option – the conventional military option – is not the ideal solution for us at this time. We therefore believe that the time has come to explore other approaches.’

Gods, Gannadius realised with a mixture of amusement and horror, the fat fool’s talking about magic. He wants me to hex the rebels into oblivion. He actually thinks-

The vision, or whatever you choose to call it. The great armada, with the ruins of Scona in the background. And Bardas Loredan leading the army.

He shook himself, like a dog climbing out of a river. ‘With respect,’ he said, ‘I don’t see how an abstract philosopher like myself can really presume to advise a practical man of affairs such as yourself-’

‘Other approaches,’ Volco repeated. ‘Oh, I’ve heard all about the sterling efforts made by yourself and Patriarch Alexius on behalf of Perimadeia. Now it’s true that in the long run, those efforts were conspicuously lacking in success; but we feel that in the context of the Perimadeian war, any such efforts, however well conceived and ably executed, were doomed to failure from the start. Whereas in the matter of the Scona problem-’

Gannadius looked into the Tribune’s eyes. No doubt about it, the man sincerely believed in magic – of course he did, because magic was such a perfect solution to the problems besetting his faction and the Bovert family, in which case it had to work. It would work, if only because Volco Bovert needed it to.

So what are you going to do? Refuse? Not advisable, since your position here is based on a whole series of misleading hints designed to give the impression that magic really does work, and that you know how to do it. Serves you right for trying to make a living selling snake-oil.

‘I see what you mean,’ Gannadius interrupted; and then inspiration struck. ‘And of course, I’ve been actively investigating the possibilities for quite some time. But I’m sorry to say I’ve run up against a difficulty.’

‘A difficulty,’ Volco said, as if referring to some abstruse type of mythical or heraldic beast. ‘I see. What kind of difficulty? ’

‘It’s very simple,’ Gannadius said. ‘You have me, but Scona has the Patriarch Alexius. I’m afraid we cancel each other out. Which means,’ he persevered, doggy-paddling frantically in a sea of self-contempt, ‘that I’m fending off his curses, and he’s fending off mine. The end result is that neither of us can actually achieve anything, other than making sure that magic can’t be used as a weapon by either side.’

Volco’s nostrils twitched as Gannadius spoke the fatal word magic, a word he wouldn’t have used if he wasn’t more or less at the end of his rope with the enormous Tribune and therefore tending to be dangerously sloppy in his choice of vocabulary. But as soon as the word was out, Volco’s whole demeanour changed; suddenly he was like a pig that’s heard the sty gate creaking on its hinges.

‘Fascinating,’ he said, ‘But really, we mustn’t despair of the, um, metaphysical approach so lightly. If it’s simply a matter of resources-’

Ah yes, here we go. Build more ships. Enlist more soldiers. Buy bigger and stronger magic. ‘Resources, yes,’ Gannadius said, ‘but sadly, not resources that are readily available. To put it in its simplest terms, to beat their magic we need more and better magicians, and I’m afraid that as far as our resources of magicians go, you’re looking at them.

Volco blinked, as if a horse had just galloped through a puddle at his feet, spraying him with muddy water. ‘I understand, ’ he said. ‘And what about the rebels? Do they have further and better magicians?’

‘Not as far as I’m aware,’ Gannadius replied cautiously. ‘Though to be honest with you, I’ve really got no foolproof way of knowing. I’m afraid that’s the nature of the beast, Tribune, we won’t know what they’ve got till they hit us with it.’

Volco thought for a moment; he looked like a volcano trying to remember the words of a song ‘This Alexius,’ he said. ‘Would you be able to neutralise him, render him harmless to us?’ Unfortunate tone of voice. ‘In which case, surely, you would then be able to-’

‘Tribune,’ Gannadius broke in with what he hoped was a disarming smile, ‘I would if I could but I can’t. I’m sorry to have to say this, but really, there’s nothing doing. I’d hate for you to waste your energies on a dead end.’

Volco stood up. ‘Thank you for your opinion, Doctor,’ he said. ‘No doubt you’ll let me know as soon as the situation changes.’

Wonderful, Gannadius reflected, as he watched the Tribune barrelling off down the Cloister, now I’ve made an enemy of the sort of man who never forgives his hammer if he knocks a nail in crooked. He got up, thought for a moment, and headed back up the Cloister in the direction of the Clerk of Works’ office.

The post of Clerk of Works, like every job on Shastel that could be done with manicured nails, was purely formal; that is, the Clerk was a busy man with an important and responsible position, but not the one his title implied. The responsibility for making sure the buildings didn’t fall down resided with the Refurbishments Steward, who was nominally in charge of supplying fresh flowers for the war memorials.

What the Clerk did was infinitely more important. Because, once upon a time, the Clerk had been in charge of allocating meeting rooms to the various groups who wanted to hold regular discussions, the post had gradually mutated into that of semi-official referee of all faction activity. In formal debates in Chapter, the Clerk made sure that all appropriate protocols were observed, and outside Chapter he was the only man who could be seen to act as a mediator in faction disputes. Since the post had to be held by a man of unimpeachable neutrality, all the factions fought like tigers to secure it for one of their leading partisans, and for the time being the Separatists held the prize, in the shape of Jaufrez Mogre.

‘Hello, Doctor,’ Mogre said, looking up from whatever it was he’d been reading. ‘This is a rare treat. Come to get your feet dirty in the political sewers?’

That, Gannadius reflected, was what he liked about Jaufrez Mogre. Alone of all the Shastel factioneers he’d met, Mogre freely admitted that his life’s work was a game, and a dangerous and silly one at that. Useless, yes, and potentially disastrous, almost as bad as abstract philosophy, he’d cheerfully admitted, when after a long and lugubrious evening over a jar of genuine Colleon applejack Gannadius had actually voiced his opinion of Shastel politics. The difference is, we don’t pretend we can turn each other into frogs. Good applejack, this, have another.

‘Jaufrez, I want to tell you something,’ Gannadius replied, sitting down and looking meaningfully at the jug on a nearby table. ‘You may remember, a while back, we were talking about various things and I admitted that I couldn’t do magic?’

‘Yes, I remember.’

‘Well,’ Gannadius said, with a sheepish grin, ‘I was lying.’

Carefully, not allowing his attention to wander, Jaufrez poured two cups of Mavoeson perry in such a way as to make sure the bitter sediment stayed in the jug. ‘Is that right?’ he said. ‘That’s interesting.’

‘It’s true, Jaufrez. Not the sort of magic you’re thinking of, in fact it’s not really magic, but it’s not, well, normal either. I suppose you could say it’s halfway between the two.’

‘I believe you,’ Mogre replied, putting one cup down in front of Gannadius. ‘Don’t think you’re telling me something I don’t know, because you’re not. That’s why I’ve always regarded you as a dangerous bugger; you can sometimes do this stuff, but you don’t know how or why, and usually you can’t make it do what you want.’ He smiled over the rim of his cup. ‘I do read the intelligence reports, you know. I was reading about all this while you still thought the plainspeople would never take Perimadeia.’

‘Oh,’ Gannadius said. ‘I wish you’d told me.’

Jaufrez shrugged. ‘I thought you knew. Oh, right then, I’d better tell you some other stuff you might not know. Niessa Loredan,’ he went on, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. ‘She’s a witch.’

‘Niessa Loredan?’

Jaufrez nodded. ‘Straight up. She knows more about the Principle than you ever will. And if you want proof,’ he added with a wry grin, ‘you used to live in it.’

Gannadius frowned. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said.

‘Think,’ Jaufrez replied sternly. ‘The original curse, right? And before you ask, this is straight from the bitch’s mouth, via one of our most valuable snitches on Scona, so you keep this to yourself and don’t even think about it without telling me. The original curse was placed on Bardas Loredan by Alexius at the instigation of Iseutz Hedin, Niessa’s daughter. Alexius – and you, of course – then do everything you possibly can to lift the wretched thing, by which time it’s got hopelessly tangled up in the affairs of Perimadeia itself, because Bardas Loredan has become Colonel Loredan and is in charge of the City defences. Bardas doesn’t get killed by Iseutz, and the City falls. Now that’s history. The connection you don’t seem to have made is that the City falls because Bardas doesn’t get killed. Or had you grasped that already?’

Gannadius sat still and quiet for a moment. ‘Why?’ he said.

‘Because Niessa Loredan’s a witch,’ Jaufrez replied. ‘Easy. She brought together two unwitting agents: her daughter, and a man with an innate ability to manipulate the Principle – natural, I think you call them – Patriarch Alexius.’

‘What?’ Gannadius lurched forward in his seat, spilling his drink. ‘Alexius?’

‘Ah, you didn’t know that either. Interesting.’ Jaufrez nodded. ‘It’s got something to do with the really rather bizarre history of the Loredan family – you do know about that, don’t you? Oh, good. Niessa wanted the City to fall, and she wanted Bardas back, and she wanted her daughter back as well. Now I won’t even attempt to go into the theoretical stuff, which is all equations and funny notation and long words, but basically, because of all the history of Bardas and Maxen and the systematic destruction of the plainspeople’s society, the fall of Perimadeia was Bardas’ fault. Niessa recognised that, she knew that in consequence the City would be destroyed by them, sooner or later, and it was just a matter of leaning on the right supernatural levers and tweaking the right pulleys to make it happen. But to save Bardas, not to mention Iseutz – remember, she’s caught up in this ghastly Loredan family thing, her mother was Maxen’s niece just as much as Bardas was Maxen’s nephew – she needed to find some way to protect them that wouldn’t jeopardise the fall of the City, which she very much wanted to happen. The purpose of the curse was to make Alexius avert it; to keep those two safe from each other, and therefore safe generally, by churning up the Principle all round them with shields and defenses and all manner of such things; the result being that while all this was going on, Bardas Loredan could have jumped in the sea with lead boots on and still not have drowned – charmed life, completely safe from anything you care to name.’

Gannadius pulled himself together; not easy to do. ‘But that doesn’t explain what you said about the City falling because Bardas wasn’t killed,’ he said. ‘Does it?’

‘Again, my friend, think it through. Bardas is carrying the blame for what Maxen did to the plainspeople. The necessary outcome should be that the City is punished, and Bardas dies. Again, don’t ask me to show you the maths, but Niessa worked out that the directon the Principle was tending towards was that Bardas should die defending the City, and the City survive. Not the desired result. But,’ he added, ‘with a little shuffling, a pair of silly old fools meddling with dangerous stuff they don’t understand – no disrespect intended, of course – and everything turns out the way Niessa wanted. Apparently she had a slice of unexpected luck when it turned out there was another natural in there rooting for Bardas, but otherwise it was all according to plan. And that’s why I worry about magic, and Niessa Loredan being a witch. And,’ he went on, staring hard into Gannadius’ eyes, ‘why I made damn sure we got you before she could. My big mistake was thinking Alexius was too old and frail to make the journey, or be any use to her if he did. Bad mistake, that. I should have realised that it was the Principle that nearly killed him back during the siege, not his own bad health. But,’ he added with a sigh, ‘when you’ve got a thousand and one things to take care of, you get lazy and jump to unwarranted conclusions. Sorry, I’ve been rabbiting on. You came here to tell me something?’

Gannadius was silent for a long time. ‘I think I owe you an apology,’ he said. ‘I thought you were just another of the faction buffoons, and in fact you run the place.’

Jaufrez looked scandalised. ‘Me?’ he said. ‘Not in the least. Shastel is run by the Foundation in Chapter, in accordance with the spirit of the precepts laid down by our founders, and if you think I think otherwise, you really are insulting me.’ He relaxed and smiled. ‘Gannadius, my dear old friend, what do you think we’ve all been doing these years? The Grand Order of Poverty and Learning is the greatest repository of knowledge and wisdom the world has ever known. We’d got the hang of the Principle back when your Patriarchs were still learning to do long division. Our problem is, rather like Niessa, we understand it but we aren’t much good at making it do useful work. Unnaturally low per capita level of naturals, probably as a result of our intensive study of the subject – don’t know why, but it seems that the more interested you are in the subject as a community, the less likely you are to throw up these lethal freaks of nature. Which is why we’re so excited about you and young Machaera. That and the link you’ve presumably still got to Alexius-’ his grin broadened. ‘Oh, come on,’ he said. ‘Otherwise why in the gods’ names would we hire an old fraud like you to be a Doctor of Philosophy in the greatest academic institution in the world? The boy who cleans your boots knows more philosophy than you do; but of course,’ he added, yawning, ‘he can’t change people into frogs.’

It took Gannadius nearly a minute to get his voice back. ‘Volco Bovert,’ he said.

‘My old tutor in Paranormal Dynamics, and the author of one of the standard commentaries,’ Jaufrez replied. ‘What about him?’

Gannadius licked his lips to free them. ‘And does he know I’m a fraud?’ he said.

‘But you’re not,’ Jaufrez said patiently. ‘Oh, you may think you are, but you’re not. You’re that exceptionally rare occurrence, the man who isn’t a natural to begin with, but who messes about with naturals for so long that the ability rubs off on him. Which is why, now that the war’s starting to go a bit yellow on us, we need you.’

Gannadius let go a deep breath, which he hadn’t realised he’s been holding. ‘So that’s it,’ he said. ‘You’re really a city of wizards.’

Jaufrez shook his head. ‘Only in our spare time,’ he said.