The Belly of the Bow

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The next morning, Bardas Loredan left the house shortly before sunrise. He took with him a felling axe, three wedges in a leather bag and a quart barrel of cider.

He walked for about twenty minutes, found what he was looking for and set to work. He hadn’t been at it long when he saw Athli coming towards him, struggling gamely through the long, wet grass in her fashionable boots.

‘There you are,’ she said. ‘I followed the sound of the axe.’

‘Good thinking.’ Bardas leant on the axe-handle for a moment. ‘I’m out of condition,’ he said irritably, ‘getting soft and fat in my old age. Did you want something?’

Athli shook her head. ‘I felt like breath of air,’ she said.

‘Right.’ Bardas lifted the axe and pointed with it at the tree he was felling. He’d cut deeply into the trunk on two sides; the cuts looked neat and symmetrical. ‘My great-grandfather planted that tree,’ he said, ‘when he was a boy. It was a tradition in our family – you planted a tree for your eldest son to cut down and make into the roof-tree of his house. Somehow my grandfather never got around to using this one, and it became a sort of family mascot.’ He looked up into the branches. ‘From up there, you can see right across to Joyous Beacon, assuming it isn’t raining.’

‘And you’re cutting it down,’ Athli said.

‘That’s right.’

‘I see.’

Bardas took a step or two to the side, changed his grip on the axe and swung. ‘The idea,’ he said, punctuating his words with precisely aimed blows, ‘is to cut away on three sides, the fourth side being the opposite direction from the one you want the tree to fall in.’ He worked briskly and without apparent effort, raising the axe-head and letting it fall under little more than its own weight, making sure that each cut carried on from its predecessor in a planned logical sequence. ‘Now, I want this tree to fall that way – right where you’re standing, in fact – so the trunk will be supported by that little hump in the ground when I come to start splitting. Important to take the support away from each side equally – that way, when it’s ready it’ll go, just like that.’

Athli watched for a while, trying to think of something to say. ‘What kind of tree is it?’ she asked.

‘Osage,’ Bardas replied. ‘Very few of them left in these parts now. People will insist on cutting them down, you see.’

‘I see. And why’s that?’

Loredan moved across a little. ‘It’s the best timber of all for bow-making,’ he said, his eyes fixed on the cut. ‘Better than yew or hickory or ash or elm, if you can find the right stuff. About one tree in twenty’s fit for the job; the rest’s firewood. Of course, you can’t tell it it’s any good until you’ve felled it. Evil stuff to work with, of course. If you violate the growth rings, you’re finished.’

Athli watched for a while, as he took out the third side and moved round for the final assault. ‘What’s a growth ring?’ she asked.

‘Look at a trunk that’s been sawn through, and you’ll see lots of concentric rings, right? They’re growth rings. If the tree was a family, each ring would be a generation, and the present generation would be the bark. That’s the only bit that’s actually still alive.’

‘I think I follow.’ She looked up at the tree. ‘Where should I stand?’ she asked.

‘I’d come behind me, if I were you.’

He was making rapid progress; now, with each blow of his axe, the branches shivered. ‘Is this what you’re planning to do, then?’ she asked. ‘Start up a bow-making business here in the Mesoge? I thought you told me the people in these parts were mostly self-sufficient.’

‘They are.’ His pace was slowing now, and he paused after each cut to make sure he was on line. ‘This one’s for me. Hence the choice of timber.’

A few more cuts, and the tree made a sharp cracking noise and seemed to nod, as if in agreement with something he’d said. ‘Nearly there,’ he panted. Two cuts later, the tree groaned again and slowly toppled forward, directly onto the little hump he’d indicated earlier. ‘Now we’ll see if it’s any good,’ he said.

He walked up and down the fallen trunk a few times, lopping off small branches and studying the bark. Then he shook the wedges out of his bag, picked a spot and knelt down, holding the axe just below the head. ‘Now, if I’m lucky,’ he said, ‘it’ll come apart along this line like a book opening.’ He tapped the wedge in just enough to start it, using the back of the axe-head as a hammer; then he stood up and swung. The axe-head rang on the wedge with a sharp, brittle sound that made Athli wince. After a few heavy blows, he took the next wedge and tapped it in little further down the line, repeating the procedure until all four wedges were started. Then he walked up and down the trunk, hammering each wedge in turn, until one long continuous split appeared quite suddenly in the bark. ‘Amazing,’ he said, ‘how something this big and solid can be taken apart with five bits of metal and a stick. Remind you of anything?’

‘Not really,’ Athli said, shivering a little in the cold. ‘Any luck?’

‘Too early to say,’ Bardas replied. He carefully knocked out the wedges, hitting them sideways, first one direction and then the other, until they came free. ‘Now for the boring bit,’ he commented, and he set to work cutting the trunk off at the top, just below where the main spread of branches started. This part of the job seemed to take longer than the actual felling.

‘Why didn’t you do that first?’ Athli demanded.

‘If it hadn’t split the way it did, I’d have known the whole thing was useless and I wouldn’t have bothered cutting it off. That’s an important part of felling timber, knowing what’s good and what’s just waste, and not persevering with something you know you can’t salvage. Now I’ve got to roll it over to get the next line of wedges in.’ He knelt down and heaved, just managing to roll the trunk a third of a turn. ‘What I’m looking for,’ he said, ‘are flaws that run through all the way from top to bottom, right down through all the growth rings.’

‘From generation to generation, like a family curse. How melodramatic.’

‘Oh, it’s primal stuff, chopping down trees. A tree’s the oldest thing most men ever get to kill. Like I said a while ago, a tree’s more like a family than a single thing on its own.’ He tapped in the first wedge; it seemed to go in far more freely than the ones on the other side had done. He repeated the procedure, and when he’d driven the four wedges in almost as far as they’d go, there was another crisp crack and a section, like a slice out of an enormously thick cheese, came loose enough for him to lever it out. He laid down the axe and examined the section.

‘This bit here’s a possibility,’ he said. ‘The grain’s not perfect, but it’s straight enough, and I can get these kinks here out by steaming and bending.’ He moved back to the remainder of the trunk, heaved again and repeated the wedging process, until he was left with two more cheese-slices. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this bit’s completely useless, the grain’s waving up and down like the course of a river. This chunk’s all right, though; look, there’s a lovely straight bit here, see?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Athli said, giving it a cursory glance.

‘Wrong. There’s a knot here, look, it wrecks the whole thing. Sometimes you can work round them, but this one’s too big.’

‘Pity,’ Athli said.

‘Waste. Well, what we can’t use we can always burn.’ He looked up and grinned at her; she looked away. ‘It’d be a laugh if I can’t get one stave out of the whole of this great big tree, don’t you think? All those years, all that waste, and nothing at all to show for it.’

‘Quite.’

He drove in the wedges a third time, lugged the three sections around until they lay side by side, and examined them carefully for about a quarter of an hour. ‘Useless,’ he finally pronounced. ‘Not even if I cut the two limbs separately and spliced them in the handle. Isn’t that just perfect?’ He sat down on the grass and put his face in his hands.

‘Bardas.’ He didn’t answer. Athli studied him as dispassionately as she could, trying to remember what it had been like in the old days. She’d seen him in a mess often enough, but she couldn’t now call to mind the exact form the mess used to take. He hadn’t touched the cider; now that was different, because back in the City the first thing he did on a bad day was take it out on a bottle. She wished she could remember more of the pathology of his downswings, but it was starting to seem long ago and far away, as if she was the one who’d moved away and he’d stayed where he was, more or less. In a way, this was the right place for him, beside the stump of this particular wasted tree. He looked like he’d been there all his life.

‘I think I’ll go back to the coast in the morning,’ she said. ‘I want to have a closer look at the market in Tornoys. There may be things I can buy there.’

He nodded, without looking round. ‘Textiles, some of the local ceramics and brassware,’ he said. ‘The quality’s not up to much, but it’s cheap. They’ve been trying to set up factories, trying to find a good use for all the people we have hereabouts.’ Now he looked up, but not at her. ‘Pity you can’t just take an axe to people the way you can with trees,’ he said, ‘split ’em down the grain and have a look at the way they lie. You’d waste a good few, but you wouldn’t make nearly so many mistakes. And there’s plenty more where they came from. A man can be ready to fell in twenty years, but a good tree takes generations, and you still can’t tell…’

Somehow, seeing him like this made it easier, not harder, than she’d imagined. But like this, he was just waste, like the ruins of the tree. Lots of waste here in the Mesoge.

‘I expect I’ll be back this way from time to time,’ she said, glad that he wasn’t looking at her when she said that. ‘You take care of yourself, you hear?’

‘Thanks for the lift,’ he replied. ‘It was good to see you again. Oh, Athli.’

That tone of voice – would you mind passing me my hat, my sword-case, the bottle? ‘Yes?’ she said.

‘Would you do me a favour and take the boy with you? Between you and me, I don’t think he’s cut out for peasant farming.’

Athli thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think I’m taking people on at the moment,’ she said.

‘I’d consider it a great favour if you did.’ Bardas sighed, picked up a chip of wood and looked at it, tossed it away. ‘No real future for a kid in these parts, and he’s City, after all. This isn’t the right place for young kids from the City.’

‘I’m not sure I can help you,’ she replied. ‘I feel sorry for him, but he’s no concern of mine.’

He closed his eyes. ‘I’ll ask you again. Please take him with you. This is a dreadful place. You can’t even get a tree to grow straight here.’

Athli sighed. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ she said. ‘I’ll take him to the Island and I’ll try and find a place for him. And I’ll do my best to keep an eye on him, at least till he’s settled. And that’s it, Bardas. No more souvenirs. These days, I can only carry cargo that pays its way.’

‘Thanks,’ Bardas said. ‘Tell him to take the valuable stuff – he won’t want to, he doesn’t like the way we came by it.’ He smiled. ‘Robbing the dead, he called it; stupid kid doesn’t realise, that’s what they’re for. Oh, and he’d better take that old sword of mine, it’s worth a lot of money.’

‘The Guelan?’

Bardas nodded. ‘Not many of them left,’ he said.

‘I know,’ Athli replied. ‘People will insist on breaking them, you see.’

‘Quite.’ Bardas moved his head and looked at her, as if she was a tree he’d split and found to be not suitable for his purpose. ‘Dreadful waste, but that’s how things are.’

‘The point,’ said Avid Soef, for the time being chief spokesman of the Separatists, ‘is quite simple, and all we’re doing is trying to complicate it. That’s silly. Let’s recognise that it’s simple, and try and deal with it. The point is, we have two choices before us in this war, double or quit. There is no third choice. So, which is it to be?’

Chapter was unusually quiet; and Gannadius, feeling cold and more than a little out of place, had to try hard to keep still. It was like those times he’d insisted on staying up when there were visitors, and then the grown-ups had started talking about things he didn’t understand, strange and frightening, and he hadn’t been able to slip away and go to bed like he wanted to. Beside him, Jaufrez Bovert was concentrating on the debate, apparently unaware that Gannadius existed.

‘On the one hand,’ said Avid Soef, ‘we can quit. There’s a lot to be said for that argument, and you know as well as I do that the Separatist movement has been advocating it for some time. In fact, we were opposed to these reckless military adventures from the start, and we never hesitated to say so, here on Chapter floor, where everybody can hear what we’re saying. But there’s a world of difference between we should never have started this and let’s end it now. The difference is, if we back off and make it look like the defeats we’ve suffered – I’m calling them defeats because that’s what they are, nasty, messy defeats that have cost us the lives of good friends and colleagues – then we’re lying to the world, and to ourselves. We’re saying, in a big loud voice, that Shastel is finished; a few smacks round the head from Gorgas and Niessa is enough to chase us away, and nobody need concern themselves with us again. I don’t like telling lies, gentlemen, it doesn’t sit well with me and I’d rather not do it. Which only leaves the other option, to double.’ He looked around; everybody was paying attention. He paused for a moment. ‘And that’s all I’ve got to say, really,’ he said, and sat down.

‘Mistake,’ Jaufrez whispered in Gannadius’ ear. ‘That’s a pity.’

Before Gannadius could reply, another man stood up on the other side of the chapter house. ‘Sten Mogre,’ Jaufrez muttered. ‘Redemptionist. I think we’re about to have something sharp inserted right up us.’

Sten Mogre cleared his throat. He was a short, bald, stout man with a little fringe of white beard, and his voice was very deep. ‘One thing I enjoy more than most,’ he said, ‘is agreeing with a Separatist. Now, like all true pleasures, it’s very rare, very rare indeed, and when I do get the chance, I like to share it with as many friends as I can. So, friends, enjoy.’

Gannadius heard Jaufrez groan softly beside him. Mogre looked round, then carried on.

‘I agree,’ he said, ‘that we shouldn’t abandon this war just because we’ve had a couple of setbacks. I agree, because the reasons we started the war are as valid now as they ever were, and I agree that patching up some kind of treaty with the Bitch would be dishonest and dishonourable. So it follows that I agree with what my friend Avid has just proposed, that we double. And there we are, basically, all in agreement with one another, the way good friends ought to be. All that’s left to discuss, I think, is the details of how we should go about it.’

There was a slight shiver of tension in the chapter house, the sort of ripple of anticipation that used to mark the first drop of blood in the lawcourts of the City. Jaufrez leant back in his seat, folded his hands in his lap and closed his eyes.

‘And the first thing I want to say on that score,’ Sten Mogre said, ‘is that now we’re all friends, let’s act like friends, put our differences to one side, and pull together. Where the war’s concerned, we in the Redemptionist movement have always wanted to co-operate with all the other shades of opinion in this assembly – well, it’s only sensible, isn’t it, for pity’s sake? – but somehow or other it’s never quite seemed to work out that way. Don’t know why, it’s a mystery; fortunately, it’s not a mystery we have to bother with any more, so let’s put all that rubbish to one side and concentrate on getting it right. Agreed? Well, of course. I mean, who couldn’t agree on something as basic as that? Like my good friend Avid just said, it’s so very simple.’

‘Bastard,’ Jaufrez muttered. ‘So why not just get on with it?’

Sten Mogre put his hands behind his back and lifted his chin just a little, adjusting his stance and posture as precisely and carefully as an archer squaring up to his shot in a tie-break. ‘So here’s the deal,’ he said. ‘We Redemptionists are prepared to admit it: first time round, we didn’t do so well. In fact, we made a mess of things. Now, fortunately it wasn’t a big mess and the loss is really neither here nor there, but as my good friend over there just implied, for a Foundation as powerful and influential as ours, any loss is a disaster until it’s made good. So; I propose that we give up the conduct of this war and hand it over to someone who can be relied on to do a better job. And, after that quite inspiring speech he made just now, who can doubt that the best man for the job is my very good friend, Avid Soef?’

It was clear enough that everybody else in the building had seen it coming, like a thunderstorm you can watch drifting in from the distant hills. Gannadius, however, was taken by surprise, and had to fight quite hard to stop himself laughing.

‘I’ll go further,’ Sten Mogre said. ‘I think we should give Avid Soef all the resources he needs to do this job properly. I propose he be given command of two thousand men and a budget of forty thousand gold City quarters.’ He paused and smeared a broad smile on his wide face. ‘With resources like that,’ he added, ‘surely the result has to be a foregone conclusion.’

As he sat down, the Chapter seemed to bubble, like fermenting liquor. Jaufrez was scowling horribly. He nudged the man sitting on his other side and said, ‘Do something.’ The man nodded and stood up.

‘That’s easy for you to say, Sten,’ he said. ‘But I’m not sure I agree with you on one point. Sure, we ought to be able to make a better fist of it than you did, given adequate resources. And I agree that if – given adequate resources – we fail to do the job, then we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. Where I’m taking issue with you is on the definition of “adequate”. Two thousand men and forty thousand quarters, Sten? That’s a bit cheapskate, surely. Could it be that you haven’t really thought this through?’

Jaufrez stirred uncomfortably and hissed, ‘Careful, you idiot.’ The man nodded imperceptibly and went on. ‘Here’s what I think,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we can undertake a full-scale attack on Scona with fewer than four thousand men and a hundred thousand quarters. I know it’s a lot to ask,’ he said, holding up his hand as the hall started to buzz. ‘But I’m being practical; no fancy speeches about our wonderful fighting men, or how the enemy’s bound to cut and run just as soon as someone stands up to them. As I see it, we go in with overwhelming force or we don’t go in at all. And I think we need a vote on this before the debate goes any further.’

Gannadius found himself nodding, though he wasn’t sure why he should be taking sides on this or any other faction issue. Perhaps it was just the grace and skill of the recovery; to ask for a vote on a proposal that was so outrageous as to be inconceivable (half the army and a huge slice of the contingency fund) was inspired thinking, because a vote against the proposal would be a vote against the project, and the Separatists would have escaped the noose Sten Mogre had effectively draped round their necks, of potentially being responsible for a full-scale major defeat at the hands of Gorgas Loredan and his archers.

But it wasn’t over yet. ‘I’m having a wonderful day,’ said Sten Mogre, ‘I’m agreeing with two Separatists in one morning. I fully accept what my dear friend Hain Jaun’s just said. Two thousand men and forty thousand quarters was downright cheapskate. In fact, four thousand men and a hundred thousand quarters isn’t that much better. I say we send six thousand men and put the budget at a hundred and thirty thousand gold City quarters, and I say we vote on it now.’

Brilliant. Gannadius reflected with a shudder. If they win, they’ll get no credit, because with that much power they couldn’t lose; in fact, they’ll have to win magnificently to avoid accusations of time-wasting and squandering resources. And if they lose – well, I wouldn’t give ear-wax for the lives of the whole lot of them. Wonderful. These people are all quite mad. And I have the feeling it isn’t even over yet.

He was right. Before the stewards had a chance to mobilise the assembly for voting, Avid Soef was on his feet again. The expression on his face was odd; it was the sort of look you might expect to see on the face of a man who’s falling to his death off a cliff, who manages at the very last moment to grab the ankle of his deadliest enemy and pull him down too.

‘Isn’t it wonderful,’ he said, ‘what we can achieve once we put all our squabbles behind us and start acting like grown-ups? Gentlemen, I’m not ashamed to say this, I never thought I’d live to see the day when the various movements in our community would suddenly and simultaneously decide to forget all the garbage and work together. Well, here it is, and isn’t it wonderful? I tell you, however the war pans out – even if we lose and lose badly, though thanks to the extremely sensible and statesmanlike proposals you’re about to vote on, I can’t see that happening, not in a million years – whatever happens in this war we’re going to come out the winners, because the best thing we could possibly hope to gain from it has already happened, here, before your very eyes.’ He looked round the chapter house, so that everybody could see how wide and ingenuous his smile was. ‘And as a token of good faith, not to mention in the interests of the general good, I’ve got one last amendment to the proposal. Now, my good friend Sten’s been kind enough to propose me as the leader of this expedition; I don’t know why, because I’m no soldier, the gods know, but a man like me doesn’t turn down an opportunity like this for getting into the history books. Still, I’ve got to say here and now, I’m not going to accept this assignment unless you vote for my really excellent friend and colleague Sten Mogre to accompany me as joint commanding officer. After all, two heads are so much better than one, and if one of those heads is Sten Mogre’s, then surely a result’s as good as in the bag.’

Jaufrez, who’d been slumped forward with his head in his hands, looked up sharply, as did pretty well everybody in the chapter house – except, of course, for Sten Mogre, who looked like a man who’s suddenly forgotten how to breathe. For a moment, Gannadius honestly believed the poor man was about to have some kind of seizure; then he stopped quivering and sat still, his expression beyond description.

The result of the vote was predictable enough: an enormous majority in favour of the proposal to send Avid Soef and Sten Mogre with an army of six thousand halberdiers and a budget of a hundred and thirty thousand gold quarters to attack Scona and end the war. Gannadius, who wasn’t eligible to vote, waited for Jaufrez outside the voting lobby.

‘Well,’ Jaufrez said, ‘it’s enough to make you believe in pixies. I really thought we were for it that time, and yet here we are, right back where we started, with no advantage whatsoever to either side. Still, I should have known Avid’d pull something out of the hat. Bless the man, he left it right till the end but he got us there.’

Gannadius waited till he’d finished. ‘Aren’t you forgetting one thing?’ he said. ‘Your precious Foundation’s now committed to an all-out war with Scona, and if you lose-’

Jaufrez shrugged. ‘If we lose, that’s the end of the Grand Order of Poverty and Learning. Very true. But at least we’ll all go down together, and that’s all that matters in the final analysis. Besides,’ he added cheerfully, ‘we aren’t going to lose, it’s impossible.’

Gannadius shook his head doubtfully. ‘I’m not so sure about that,’ he said, ‘really I’m not. Big armies have been humiliated by small ones before now; in fact, there’s a school of opinion that says in wars like this, over a certain level a big army’s a positive disadvantage. So-’

Jaufrez nodded, as if he’d just been told that fire can sometimes be hot. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You’re talking to a Doctor of Military Theory, for gods’ sakes. But we’re not going to lose because we’ve got a secret weapon, one that’s so powerful and effective that we’d win without putting a single soldier in the field.’ He grinned, and clapped a chunky hand on Gannadius’ shoulder. ‘We’ve got you.’

An hour or so after the debate, a senior member of the Foundation stopped at a fishmonger’s stall in Shastel market and, after a few minutes’ negotiation, bought a halibut for two copper quarters. When he’d taken his fish and walked on, the fishmonger’s teenage son left the stall and walked briskly across the market square to a livery stable, where he collected a rather fine chestnut mare and rode at a sharp canter out of Shastel City down the coast road to the sea. There he happened to stop and pass the time of day with an old family friend, a fisherman whom his father and uncles had been doing business with for some thirty years. When he’d ridden on his way, the fisherman whistled to his own three sons, who were mending nets on the quayside. They put the nets down and came over to where he was sitting. Not long afterwards, the two eldest boys took out the family’s smaller, faster boat and set sail, although it was several hours too early for the evening run.

They sailed right round Scona and, just as it was beginning to get dark, they came across an oyster-boat making its way home from its daily trip to the oyster-beds of Blutile Shoal. The two Shastel boys hailed the oysterman and asked if he had anything for them; the oysterman replied that he had, and he hove to. They talked for a while as they transferred the oysters to the boys’ boat; then they parted and went their separate ways, the boys back to Shastel, running in slowly and cautiously through the dark, the oysterman hurrying it up so as to reach Scona before the light failed. As soon as he made it to shore, he tied up on Strangers’ Quay and trotted up the hill with his money to the Bank, where he barged past the guards (who knew him well enough to let him through) and straight as a weasel in a warren through the corridors to the Director’s office.

When Niessa Loredan had heard what he had to say, she thanked him, paid him and shut the door after him. Then she called a clerk and sent him off with a string of messages. He went up the corridor and down a flight of steps to the messengers’ room, where five or six boys, ranging in age between twelve and sixteen, were playing knucklebones. He gave them their assignments and they scampered off down the back stairs out into the city. One of them ran down the hill, weaving in and out of the evening promenaders with remarkable skill and judgement, and arrived, out of breath and sweating, at the door of Gorgas Loredan’s house in Three Lions Street. He banged on the door until the porter came, in bare feet and shirt sleeves, and shot back the bolts. As soon as the porter saw who it was, he left the boy standing there and dashed through the portico and hallway to the dining room, where Gorgas and his family were just about to start dinner.

‘Eudo?’ Gorgas said, looking up. The conversation died away.

‘There’s a message at the door,’ the porter repled, and the way he said it made any further questions unnecessary. Gorgas stood up, put his napkin on his chair and left the room. ‘In my study,’ he said. The porter nodded and scuttled back to the porch, where the boy was sitting on the step, getting his breath back.

‘Thanks,’ the boy said, ‘I know the way.’

Another messenger ran up the hill, past the rainwater tanks and the cattle pen and into the tangled mess of streets known, for fairly obvious reasons, as the Drinking Quarter. He was taking a short cut; someone who didn’t know the city as well as he did would have gone the long way round, following Drovers’ Street around three sides of a square until he reached a cheap but tidy inn called the White Victory. It took him longer than he’d have liked to find the landlord, but as soon as he’d pulled his messenger’s badge out of his pocket and waved it under the man’s nose, things started to happen a bit more quickly. The landlord yelled for his eldest son, who appeared at the kitchen door with a tray of loaves ready to go in the oven for the morning’s bread.

‘Leave that,’ the landlord said, ‘and find the Islander girl and the old foreign git. Message for them from the Bank.’

The landlord’s boy stared at the messenger for a second or so, then shoved the tray into his father’s hands and set off like a runner in a relay race. He tried the foreigners’ rooms, but they weren’t there so he doubled back and looked in the common room, and then the side parlour.

‘There you are,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to come now. There’s a message for you from the Director’s office.’

Vetriz and Alexius were playing chess; Alexius had the white queen in his hand, holding it in mid-air above the table.

‘What do you think she wants?’ Vetriz said.

‘You’re asking the wrong person,’ Alexius replied. He put the chess piece back where it had come from. ‘We’ll call it a draw, shall we?’

‘We most certainly won’t,’ Vetriz answered sharply. ‘Make sure nobody touches the board,’ she told the landlord’s son. ‘Very important game. Issues of national security at stake. Have you got that?’

The boy looked at her as if she was mad, very much as he looked at all foreigners, then led the way down the stairs and across the courtyard to the long kitchen, where the messenger was drinking a cup of hot chicken soup he’d managed to blackmail out of the landlord’s wife.

‘You’re to go and see the Director immediately,’ he recited, putting the cup down and wiping his mouth. ‘I’ll show you the way.’

‘That’s all right,’ Vetriz replied. ‘We’ve been there before.’

‘I’ll show it you anyway,’ the boy said firmly.

Vetriz shook her head. ‘No, you won’t,’ she said. ‘You’ll go away and commandeer, or whatever the right word is, a nice clean, comfortable wagon and a couple of well-behaved horses, and,’ she added firmly, ‘some cushions. You can show them your badge or something, I expect you know what to do. Then you can escort us to the Director’s office. Understood?’

‘But…’

Vetriz looked extremely stern. ‘Unless,’ she said, ‘you want to explain to the Director why Patriarch Alexius of Perimadeia died of heart failure trying to keep up with a fifteen-year-old boy running through the Town streets in the dark. I’m sure she’ll understand once she’s heard your side of the story.’

The boy was back in seventeen minutes, with a small cart and a bewildered-looking drover, who was wearing a horse-blanket over his shirt and stockings. ‘Now can we go?’ the boy asked pitifully. Vetriz nodded.

‘Now we can go,’ she replied.

‘Thank you,’ Alexius said, as the cart bumped and rattled down Drovers’ Street. ‘I really couldn’t have faced a forced march this evening.’

Vetriz nodded. ‘Bad headache?’ she said.

‘That’s right.’

‘Me too.’

They looked at each other.

‘So what did you see?’ Vetriz asked.

Alexius frowned. ‘It’s hard to explain, really,’ he said. ‘I was sitting in a large building, like a meeting-hall or a chapter house, and it was empty except for my old friend Gannadius – I’ve mentioned him before, haven’t I? Oh, you know him of course, I forgot. Anyway, he was sitting directly in front of me watching something I couldn’t see, and I kept tapping him on the shoulder, but I couldn’t make him look round. It only lasted a few seconds, and I can’t make head or tail of it.’

Vetriz shrugged. ‘Beats me too,’ she said. ‘And mine was – well, if I didn’t know better I’d say it was more like a daydream – you know, like normal people have? Except for the headache, of course, and that might just be falling asleep with my head at a funny angle. But I don’t think so.’

‘What was yours about, then?’

Vetriz’ nose twitched. ‘Well, it sounds silly, really. A bit – personal, let’s say. It had Bardas Loredan in it, and whoever I was in it, I certainly wasn’t me, if you see what I mean. Pity, really,’ she added.

Alexius looked grave. ‘It sounds to me,’ he said, ‘as if you’ve been using this wonderful gift that’s been vouchsafed to you for frivolous and unworthy ends. You must tell me how you do that when you’ve got a moment.’

Vetriz shrugged. ‘It wasn’t worth this headache,’ she replied. ‘Dear gods, I hope I don’t have to give a blow-by-blow account to Her. I wouldn’t know where to look.’

‘I expect the general outline will suffice,’ Alexius said. ‘Maybe that explains the secret midnight summons, and the urgency. She demands to know whether your intentions towards her brother are honourable.’

Vetriz sniffed. ‘Next time,’ she said, ‘you can jolly well walk.’

There was also a messenger who ran from the Bank down to Strangers’ Quay and the customs house, where the Deputy Chief of Excise and the duty watch were mulling a gallon of confiscated Colleon mead over the fire and toasting cheese. When the Deputy had heard what the messenger had to say, he pulled on his coat and his boots and stomped off along the quay, muttering under his breath, until he reached the Hope and Determination, a very plain and functional tavern whose idea of overnight accommodation was letting the customers sleep it off where they dropped. There he found the man he wanted, one Patras Icenego, a Perimadeian refugee and master of the Charity, a small, ugly cutter that was always tied up at the far end of the quay, fully rigged and provisioned, but never seemed to go anywhere. The curious thing about Patras Icenego was that, although he spent most of his life in the Hope and Determination, he never paid for anything and was always sober. As soon as he saw the Deputy walk in, he was on his feet. The two men talked together for a minute or so; then the Deputy went away, while Patras Icenego got up and left the tavern, walking quickly up the slope to the centre of town. He called at a variety of inns and taverns, and in a remarkably short space of time had assembled enough men, awake and sober, to crew the Charity. An hour later, the small ship was under way, its running lights fading into the sea-fret that hung around Scona like some form of protection.

‘I’m getting sick and tired of this bench,’ Vetriz said. ‘I’ll swear there’s grooves in it.’

Alexius nodded. ‘I’m tired of our cosy chats with the Lady Director,’ he replied. ‘Nothing ever seems to happen, I always end up with a headache, and I can never seem to remember what we’ve been talking about. I wonder if cows feel the same way after they’ve been milked.’

Vetriz looked at him. ‘We usually seem to be having two conversations at once; you know, one here and one over there, wherever there is. The trouble is, when we’re there it’s no earthly use trying to tell lies or pretend; they just don’t work. But we never seem to talk about anything significant. In fact, now you come to mention it, I haven’t a clue what we do talk about. I wonder if you’re right, about cows being milked.’ She shuddered. ‘Though I’d put it more in terms of flies and a spider.’

Alexius sighed. ‘I think the worst part of it’s the humiliation. Well, it would be,’ he added, ‘for me. After all, I was supposed to know about these things; Daisy the cow, Emeritus Professor of Dairy Studies.’

The door opened (‘Not so bad,’ Vetriz whispered. ‘Under an hour this time.’) and the usual bored-looking clerk collected them and ushered them in. There was a man standing behind the Director’s chair. He looked older and thinner than the last time Vetriz had seen him; but also taller and stronger, as if he’d grown. That was odd.

‘Hello,’ Gorgas said.

Vetriz nodded in reply, then looked at Niessa. She looked awful; her face had somehow collapsed, and even her hair seemed flat and thin. Perhaps she’s ill.

‘No,’ Niessa said, ‘just worry. Sit down, for pity’s sake. Now listen. At Chapter today, the Foundation voted to send six thousand halberdiers to attack Scona. It’s inconceivable that we can withstand an assault on that scale – be quiet, Gorgas – and even if we could, the effort would ruin us. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

Alexius nodded. ‘I take it you’re looking for somewhere else to fight this war,’ he said.

‘Of course. Obviously, the only sensible course of action is to change their mind.’ She paused and closed her eyes for a moment. ‘Unfortunately,’ she went on, ‘I seem to have underestimated quite how big their mind is.’

Gorgas took a step forward and sat down on the edge of the desk. ‘What she’s saying is,’ he said, ‘we’d probably have a better chance trying to fight them.’

‘I thought I told you to be quiet,’ Niessa said. ‘In fact, though, what my brother’s just said isn’t so far from the truth. Trying to fend them off in the Principle is going to be much harder than I’d ever imagined. It’s possible, of course, but it’s made much harder by the fact that they know what I’m going to do. I simply hadn’t anticipated that,’ she added. ‘I thought I had the world monopoly on magic, and I was wrong. I think that’s hurt me more than the prospect of losing the Bank, knowing that I’ve made such a stupid mistake.’

‘Excuse me,’ Alexius interrupted. ‘Are you saying that the Foundation can – excuse me, they can do magic?’

Niessa shook her head impatiently. ‘I’m not in the mood for an academic discussion about terminology,’ she said. ‘When I heard the news from Chapter, I used the – damn it, terminology again; call it a link or a conduit, whatever you like, the thing I’ve been building between you and your friend Gannadius. I tried to go through you to him, to make him change their minds. But I couldn’t get in. You remember, you saw him sitting in front of you, but you couldn’t get his attention, or see what he was looking at?’

Alexius stared at her and said nothing.

‘It amazes me that they’ve been able to keep it from me,’ Niessa went on. ‘But they’ve closed it all up. If I can’t even get in, how the hell can I expect to be able to do useful work there? And now,’ she went on, ‘as if that’s not bad enough, they’re attacking me.’ She turned her head and glared at Vetriz. ‘Attacking us, through Bardas.’

Vetriz felt herself go suddenly cold, the way you feel sometimes when you cut yourself deeply. ‘Oh,’ was all she said. Niessa looked at her unpleasantly, and Vetriz remembered Alexius’ joke about honourable intentions.

‘Of course,’ she went on, ‘I’ve taken such steps as I can. Bardas will be back here in a day or so, where he belongs.’ Here she gave Gorgas a filthy look; he turned his head away. ‘And now it seems that you’ve suddenly become terribly important to us all, which I must admit surprises me a great deal; another mistake on my part which no doubt I’ll live to regret. Really,’ she added, ‘I only kept you here for tidiness’ sake. Thank the gods I’ve had the sense to keep a few peasant virtues.’

Gorgas smiled at that. She ignored him. ‘So there we are,’ she sighed. ‘The defence of the realm depends on the three of you. Gorgas can go through the motions of trying to fend off six thousand halberdiers. Alexius – well, we’ll have to see what we can do. I have an unpleasant feeling that you’re going to be needed for defence more than anything more productive, now that they’ve got control of your wretched friend. And you,’ she went on, giving Vetriz her nastiest look yet; it made Vetriz want to giggle but fortunately she managed not to. ‘You’re going to have to look after our gods-damned liability of a brother, and I wish you the very best of luck. It’s something we’ve been trying to do these past twenty years, and you can judge for yourself what sort of a fist we’ve made of it.’