The Belly of the Bow

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The war was born prematurely and, as is often the case with infants who come into the world before their time, to begin with it was touch and go whether it would survive.

The first blow was struck on the deck of a Colleon freighter riding at anchor in Leucas Bay, two hundred miles from Scona, and none of the men involved in the fighting were from either Scona or Shastel. The freighter’s master, whose name is not recorded, was on his way to Shastel in the hope of hiring his ship to the Foundation as a troop-carrier. So as not to make the journey with an empty hold, he’d taken on a cargo of one hundred and six barrels of prime Colleon raisins, always a profitable commodity in the market at Shastel. The captain of a Leucas coaster happened to overhear him talking in a dockside inn about what he had on board and resolved to help himself to it. In order to justify this action, he decided to take advantage of Leucas’ famous neutrality decree, which stated that the Senate and people absolutely declined to intervene in any military action fought on their land or in their home waters, by declaring himself to be a Scona privateer and running up the ensign of the Loredan Bank, which he had taken the precaution of buying from the Bank’s agent a few hours earlier. In order to make absolutely sure that the coastguard wouldn’t intervene, he also gave formal notice of his intentions to the nearest available state officer, who happened to be the customs inspector; who, having been given a generous token of respect by the master of the Colleon freighter in return for a fairly cursory inspection of his ship’s hold (declared as empty in the landing manifest), decided it would only be fair and reasonable to send a customs clerk after the freighter to warn them what to expect. In consequence, when the coaster pulled alongside and declared the raisins legally seized in furtherance of legitimate harassment of enemy shipping, it found the sides fenced in with loosely gathered tarpaulins to foil grappling-hooks, and the crew lined up on deck with such weapons as they possessed, ready for a fight.

These were not the sort of terms on which level-headed Leucas merchant venturers chose to do business, and so the captain of the coaster broke off the engagement and fell back. For some unaccountable reason, however, the freighter decided to give chase. Among its crew were four Santeans, all of them enthusiastic crossbowmen, and they were amusing themselves by taking long-distance shots at the departing coaster. One shot happened to hit the coaster’s first officer in the leg, making him slip and fall overboard. The coaster came to a full stop in order to rescue him, allowing the freighter to come alongside and show signs of preparing to board the coaster. In order to do this, its master ordered the tarpaulins to be lowered, and the coaster captain, who on balance preferred the thought of fighting on someone else’s ship, immediately sent across a boarding party of his own to prevent this. As a result, a Leucanian sailor by the name of Sepren Orcas, being the first man aboard the freighter, inaugurated the Scona- Shastel war by striking the freighter’s sergeant-at-arms a glancing blow across the back of his shoulders with a cutlass.

As it happened, the battle was relatively short. The Leucanians were better armed and more experienced fighters, but the freighter’s crew outnumbered them three to one, making a successful opposed capture of the freighter virtually impossible. Having done enough damage to make sure the freighter’s men had other things on their minds beside boarding the coaster, they pulled out, struck the Loredan ensign and resumed their course back to the harbour. No one on either side was killed, and the only serious injury was accidental – one of the freighter’s crew was in such a hurry to scramble up into the rigging to avoid the boarding party that he lost his footing, fell to the deck and gave himself severe concussion, eventually leading to the loss of one eye. In the reliable accounts of the engagement his name is variously given as Horg Pilomb of Colleon, Mias Conodin of Perimadeia and Huil Laphin from the Island.

It was, in short, the sort of battle that gives proper, serious-minded warfare a bad name: confused, inconclusive and largely pointless. When news reached the Foundation on Shastel, they immediately issued a proclamation that no ships were to be described as in the service of the Foundation without prior consultation with and agreement from the Shastel Faculty of Navigation and Commerce, with the intention of safeguarding commerce by discouraging any repetition of the Leucas affair, not to mention their own reputation – after all, the battle would be remembered as the first in their war, and they didn’t really want that sort of foolish behaviour attributed to graduates of the Cloister.

The bench was uncomfortable and Bardas Loredan, who hated aimless sitting around under any circumstances, was tired and bored and wanted very much to get out of his wet clothes and warm up in front of a fire. He felt a strong urge to stand and walk away, but he couldn’t quite muster the energy and besides, he had nowhere to go and no money.

Eventually a clerk found him, his head lolled forward onto his chest like a man who’s died in his sleep, and woke him up.

‘She’ll see you now,’ he said.

‘Right,’ Bardas replied hazily. ‘All right, yes.’ He stood up and followed the clerk into Niessa’s office. She was alone.

‘Hello, Bardas,’ she said.

‘Hello, Niessa. Can I sit down?’

‘Of course you can, you don’t have to ask. Would you like some hot soup?’

It crossed his mind that he’d been kept waiting outside while his sister made the soup; but he was hungry, and said, ‘Yes, please.’ Niessa filled a wooden bowl from a ladle and handed it to him; he tilted the bowl back and swallowed a mouthful. It was a thick, spicy fish soup and quite palatable.

‘That’s good,’ he said.

‘Shastel recipe,’ she replied. ‘They have people who study everything over there.’

He nodded and drank some more. ‘How about some cider?’ she asked.

‘Fine,’ he replied, ‘though I’d just as soon have table beer, if you’ve got any. I’ve a headache from sleeping awkwardly.’

Niessa smiled and poured him a cup of weak beer. ‘Sweet dreams?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Bardas replied, ‘I can’t remember them. And the headache’s just from sleeping at an awkward angle, I’m sure.’

‘It’s your headache. So,’ she went on, sitting down behind her desk and steepling her fingers, ‘just what are we going to do with you this time, Bardas?’

He looked at her. ‘Don’t ask me,’ he said. ‘Nothing strenuous, if it’s all the same to you. That boat you sent was awful.’ He sneezed.

‘You’ll have to stay here in Town,’ Niessa went on. ‘After what nearly happened last time, I’m not having you wandering about on your own where some roaming band of halberdiers can grab you and drag you back to Shastel to be a hostage.’

Bardas nodded slowly and drank the rest of his soup. ‘That’s the explanation, it is?’ he said. ‘Well, I suppose it makes sense.’

‘It’s just as well I thought of it before they did,’ Niessa replied. ‘After all, if I could find you so easily, so could they. Home was an obvious place to look.’

Bardas sighed. ‘So tell me about this precious war of yours,’ he said. ‘You seem to be taking it very seriously, to go by what the men in the boat were saying. I take it it’s a bit more than just an escalation of the stuff I got caught up in.’

‘Six thousand halberdiers,’ Niessa replied. ‘Gorgas keeps insisting we can fight them; I have to keep reminding him that’s not the point. You remember the old story Father used to tell, about the old man and the barrel of pears?’

Bardas thought for a moment. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘no.’

‘Oh.’ Niessa looked surprised. ‘Perhaps it wasn’t Father then. Anyway, it’s a good story. There was an old man who had a fine pear tree, and one year he grew the best pears he’d ever seen. “I’m not going to waste these on the market in our village,” he said to himself, “I’ll take these to the City, where they pay top dollar for quality merchandise.” So he put the pears in a barrel, loaded it onto his handcart and set off. But he’d never been to the City and underestimated how long it would take him to get there, so he only took with him enough food for three days. Five days later, when it ran out and still he was less than halfway, he was starving and there was no sign of anybody living in the desert he was crossing; so he opened the barrel, chose the smallest and meanest pears he could find, and ate them. To cut a long story short, he reached the town all right, but along the way he’d eaten all the pears. Good story?’

‘It was all right,’ Bardas replied. ‘Not one of Father’s, though.’

‘Maybe you’re right,’ Niessa replied. ‘Anyway, I don’t want Gorgas spending all our money and resources just to win a war; that’d be like the old man eating the pears. And business has been all right lately, but not wonderful. No point fighting a war unless you know what the objective is.’

‘Now I do recognise that,’ Bardas said. ‘That’s what Uncle Maxen used to say.’

Niessa shook her head. ‘He used to say it, but I made it up, when I was just a little girl. He came to visit once, do you remember? Well, of course you do; that was when you told Father you were going to leave home and join Uncle Maxen and the cavalry.’

‘I didn’t, though,’ Bardas replied, ‘not till Father died.’ He pulled up short, waited, then went on. ‘Anyway, he got that from you. Whatever. It’s still a good saying.’

‘Thank you.’ Niessa studied him for a moment, her head slightly on one side, as if he was a puzzle she was just about to solve. ‘Either you’ve mellowed or you’ve lost interest,’ she said. ‘I’d like to think it’s the former, but I can’t see it. I take it Home wasn’t what you expected it to be.’

Bardas shrugged. ‘In case you were wondering,’ he said, ‘Clefas and Zonaras are just fine. Clefas and Zonaras. Your brothers.’

Niessa frowned. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘but I knew that already. I pay through the nose for a monthly report on exactly how they’re doing and what they’re up to. If you’d only asked, I could have told you and saved you a trip.’

Bardas looked up. ‘That’s interesting,’ he said. ‘Who’s your spy?’

‘It’s not spying, it’s looking after the family. And since you ask, it’s Mihas Seudan – you remember, he goes round with a cart mending pots and selling bits and pieces.’

‘Dear gods, is he still alive? He must be a hundred years old.’

‘Seventy-seven,’ Niessa replied. ‘Every month he calls in at the True Discovery at Tornoys, and he gives the report to the landlord, who passes it on to my courier when he comes back that way from Silain. I’ve been keeping an eye on them for years, just to make sure they don’t come to any harm.’

‘I see.’ Bardas thought for a moment. ‘So you knew all about the money I was sending them.’

Niessa nodded. ‘You never were terribly good with money, Bardas,’ she said. ‘Always inclined to throw good after bad. Like Mother used to say, you’d try and mend a leaking kettle by sealing it with water.’

Bardas shook his head. ‘Serves me right, I suppose,’ he said, ‘for assuming they could be trusted to do a simple thing like receiving money.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Do you remember the Witch, who used to live over at Joyous Beacon in that fallen-down old shed? Her son had been sending her money home for years, and she’d carefully buried it all under the floorboards, while she was living on turnips and gleanings and wearing old sacks. She reckoned she was putting it aside just in case she ever fell on hard times; and when she died and they dug it up, there was best part of three hundred gold quarters there, enough to buy a whole valley. I don’t know. Is that better or worse than squandering it all?’

Niessa clicked her tongue. ‘A peasant with money’s like a monkey with a crossbow – he’ll do no good with it, and probably a great deal of harm. Talking of family, by the way, you haven’t asked about Gorgas.’

‘No,’ Bardas replied, ‘I haven’t.’

‘Well, he’s been away for a day or so buying timber – masts for the commerce raiders he’s having built, and why I’m indulging him in that, gods only know; we can’t afford them, and I fail to see what good they’ll do when they’re done – but he ought to be back tomorrow for the next day. I want you here when he comes home. I’m not having any more of this daggers-drawn business between you two; I’ve got quite enough to cope with right now. I’m not saying you’ve got to love him; just don’t make any trouble, that’s all.’

Bardas smiled. ‘Me?’ he said. ‘Like you said a moment ago, I think I’ve lost interest. I tell you what; you make sure he stays out of my way, and I’ll stay out of his, and that way nobody’ll get hurt, fair enough?’

‘No, it isn’t.’ Niessa looked at him as if he was refusing to eat up his dinner. ‘I can’t afford to have him all upset and brooding, he’s got a war to fight. But we’ll deal with that later. One other thing, while I think of it. My daughter; she’s living with Gorgas now. We’re doing our best to make sure she doesn’t find out you’re here, but sooner or later she will, and then there’ll be more trouble. Oh, Gorgas says he can control her now, she’s much better than she was; but I’m her mother, I understand her, and she’s long past the stage where anything can be done with her. I don’t want to have to put her back in custody, but I can’t really see any other way. I’ll say this for her, she’s remarkably single-minded.’

Bardas rubbed his chin. ‘You’re going to lock her up,’ he said. ‘That’s interesting. How long for? Forever?’

Niessa looked at him impatiently. ‘For the time being,’ she said. ‘I’m just facing facts, she isn’t fit to be let loose. I shall have to organise something suitable this time. I admit I made a mistake putting her in prison; that was just feeding cream to a cat. No, I think she needs a nice quiet place with people to look after her, make sure she’s taken care of and eats properly, at least for now, so long as we’re here. As and when we move on, we’ll sort out something more appropriate. Anyway, provided you keep out of her way you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.’

Bardas nodded. ‘Everything’s under control,’ he said. ‘That’s all right, then. Can I go now, please?’

‘I suppose so,’ Niessa replied. ‘I want you here in the main building for now – the clerk’ll show you the way, it’ll take you a while to find your way around. I don’t know what you’re going to do with yourself, that’s up to you. You’re old enough to keep yourself entertained, I’m sure. But I don’t want you leaving the building without telling me, and you’re not to go sneaking out without a guard. Is that understood? It’s not too much to ask,’ she added. ‘You can see as well as I can that it’s for your own good as well as ours.’

Bardas sighed. ‘Whatever,’ he said. ‘But if it’s no trouble, I’d like to have somewhere I can work, and some tools and materials and such. Just enough to give me the illusion of doing something useful, you know.’

‘No problem,’ Niessa replied. ‘I’m sure Gorgas’ll say all contributions to the war effort will be gratefully received. He seems to think quite highly of your work, though I dare say he’s a little bit biased.’

‘I know,’ Bardas said. ‘He always was too soft-hearted for his own good.’

It was typical of the Islanders that they should build the grandest and most ornate council chamber in the known world, and refer to the assemblies they held in it as Town Meetings.

The Meeting House had been built seventy years previously, and it was the Islanders’ proud boast that every copper quarter of its cost had been raised by voluntary contribution. Quite how voluntary the contributions were in a society where failing to keep up with the neighbours was the greatest conceivable disgrace is another matter entirely; the fact remains that once the project was under way and there was no realistic chance of stopping it, the people of the Island dealt with it as they dealt with all their enduring problems: they enjoyed it.

More than anything else, it was this capacity for turning duty and obligation into pleasure that made them unique, and uniquely successful. Mostly it was a continuation of their obsessive need to compete; once one of them had given twenty gold quarters to the Meeting House fund, it was inevitable that the next contributor should give twenty-five, and the next thirty. It became a point of honour for every trader to bring back something for the project from every journey he made; a barrel of coloured mosaic chips, a bolt of red velvet, a silver candlestick, a load of beautifully figured yew planks, ten thousand Colleon steel nails, a Perimadeian stonemason. When eventually the Meeting House was declared complete, there were howls of rage and anguish from merchants who hadn’t yet had a chance to top their closest rivals’ latest offerings, and there were old rumours of cellars beneath the building crammed with unopened books of gold leaf, mildewed bales of samite, barrels of gesso set rock hard and crated frescos chipped off walls the length and breadth of the trade routes. Once it was done and the fun was over, interest shifted elsewhere and the flow of offerings slowed down and dried up, and these days nobody bothered to look at the dazzling mosaics or give the breathtaking span of the roof a second thought; the Meeting House had become an accepted part of daily life, as if it had always been there, and people thought of it simply as the place where meetings were held – an improvement on holding them in the open air, and that was all there was to say on the matter.

Venart Auzeil arrived an hour early for the Town Meeting, but in the event he was very lucky to get a seat at all. The news that Shastel was looking to hire seventy ships and crews for their war against Scona had gone round the Island like a rumour of free beer, starting as an approximation of the truth and ending up as an open invitation to anybody in possession of a vessel bigger than a large soup bowl to come along and take a shovel to the contents of the Foundation’s treasury. In the end he managed to find a gap on a bench in the middle of the seventh row between a very fat lamp wholesaler he’d spoken to once at a fair and a group of sour-faced old men he suspected of being a herring syndicate.

After a very long time (time spent in the immediate vicinity of herring traders passes very slowly) the sponsors of the meeting got up on the dais at the front, introduced themselves and stated the purpose of the meeting; yes, Shastel was looking to hire ships, mostly bulk transports that could act as troop carriers, although they were also interested in a few fast cutters to serve as escorts. As accredited representatives of the Foundation on the Island, the sponsors were empowered to accept tenders for the contract from individuals, syndicates or companies; tenders were to be in writing, delivered to the Foundation’s main office in the Little Market Yard, and the results would be posted in the Square in three days’ time. Were there any questions?

Venart took a deep breath and pushed himself up out of his seat. ‘I’d like to say something,’ he roared, having underestimated the quality of the House’s legendary acoustics. Everybody in the building stared at him.

‘I’d like to say something, please,’ he repeated, in a quieter voice. ‘Now, for those of you who don’t know me, my name’s Venart Auzeil; you may well have known my father, Hui Auzeil. The point is, I have a sister, and she’s being held against her will by the Loredan family on Scona. Why, I don’t know; the bitch who runs the Loredan Bank sent for us both when we were over there a short while ago, and the upshot was that she arrested my sister and gave me two days to get off Scona. Well, I’m not going to stand here pointing out to you the implications of this for each and every one of us; it’s enough to say that our whole livelihood depends on our being able to go anywhere in the world, knowing that people aren’t going to push us around, because we’re Islanders and nobody messes with us. Obviously I’m biased; it’s my sister, and I’m going out of my mind with worry – well, you can imagine. But before you say, “That’s tough, but what’s it got to do with me?” I want you to consider this. If we let this matter ride, we’ll be sending a message to every thief and bully in the world that we can’t look after our own, and if that’s your idea of how to conduct business, I have to tell you it isn’t mine. Anyway,’ he added, ‘that’s enough from me. All I’m trying to say is that there’s other reasons apart from money why we should help Shastel against Scona; and while we’re at it, I think we should insist that Shastel makes the release of my sister one of their bottom-line peace-treaty demands.’

Venart sat down, and there was a brief silence, apparently made up of equal parts of pity and embarrassment. Eventually, someone got up in the middle of the eleventh row. Venart didn’t recognise him.

‘Actually,’ he said, ‘the last speaker – I’m afraid I didn’t catch his name – does have a valid point, or at least he’s raised one; I’m not sure it’s the point he intended to make. In fact, I’m quite sure it isn’t, but it’s a good one nevertheless. Anyway, it’s this. We’re traders, businessmen, that’s what we do. And one of the reasons why we do it so exceptionally well is that we all live here together on this island in the middle of the sea, with nobody from the outside daring to bother us because we’ve got more and better ships than anyone else, and nobody here on the Island trying to tell us what to do because we’ve proved over the last two hundred years or so that a society like ours neither wants nor needs a government of any sort. And it’s wonderful,’ the speaker went on cheerfully. ‘If we all had the whole world to live in and we could do whatever the hell we wanted to, we’d still all want to be traders living here on the Island, because nothing and nowhere even comes close. Think about that, neighbours. Think carefully.’

He paused for a moment. There was no sound of any kind.

‘Now then,’ he went on, ‘our friends here who hold the Shastel Bank franchise have come along today and offered us large sums of money for the hire of our ships. That sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? I tell you, when I heard the rumour I was up here like a squirrel up a tree; I’ve got two ships, a damn great timber freighter that’ll make a wonderful insurance claim one day when I can find a big enough rock to sail it onto but otherwise isn’t good for anything much, and a sweet little cutter that skips along like skimming a flat stone on a rock-pool and carries about as much cargo as I could comfortably fit in my pockets; and these kind people here are prepared to pay me more for a month’s work than I usually make in a season. But then I got to thinking, and this is what I want to share with you. The point is, Shastel wants to hire my ships for a war.

‘Now don’t get me wrong, if Shastel and Scona want to beat up on each other, they’re more than welcome to do so, and if while they’re at it they need to buy any stuff, such as food or timber or iron ore or any damn thing, I’ll be more than happy to sell it to either of them, or both, for choice. Taking a slightly longer-term view, I’d be delighted to see Scona getting a bloody good hiding, simply because it’s a stated policy of the Loredan Bank to diversify and expand – I’ll translate that for you, friends, it means barging in on our business, making stuff cheaper than we can buy it, supplying only their own trading syndicate and generally cutting us wherever we go. I really don’t like the sound of that, a government getting involved in business; it’s like a fox going in for chicken farming. So, if they come to a bad end, you can expect to see me walking around with a sprig of heather in my cap and a big grin on my face.’

There was a ripple of laughter from the crowd. The speaker let it die down before continuing.

‘But,’ he said, making his voice a little harder and sterner, ‘here’s the problem as I see it. Suppose we get involved in this war, and Shastel loses. Good for business? I don’t think so. I can’t see any of us being welcome on Scona ever again. All right, you say, not much chance of that happening, so what’s your worry? Fair enough; but suppose we get involved in this war and Shastel wins? Is that going to be any better? Come on, everyone, think about it. How’s it going to look everywhere else we go? It’s going to look like we, the people of the Island, formed an alliance with Shastel to make war on Scona. Put it another way: up till now we’ve always been individuals wherever we go, and as a result nobody bothers us. We’re good people to trade with, we deal fairly and by and large our prices are the best; there’s no advantage in turning us over, because all that means is that they’ll lose our repeat business, which is pretty much like putting money in a sack and chucking it in the sea. Now imagine what it’s going to be like if we start acting like a nation, a government. The Island joins Shastel against Scona. The Island demands the return of the hostage. I’m not going to spell it out for you, neighbours, I imagine you can see what I’m getting at perfectly well without me having to hammer the point into the ground.

‘All right, you say; what are you suggesting we should do? Boycott the offer? Turn down this highly lucrative new business on account of some vague fears about how the rest of the world’s going to feel about us? Doesn’t sound like a desperately smart move, does it? And suppose you’re a good boy and don’t take up the offer; how’re you going to feel when the man next door decides he can’t be doing with all this political bull getting in the way of business, and signs up with Shastel for the duration?

‘Here’s the deal. A big thank you to Athli what’s-her-name – Zeuxis, that’s right; Athli Zeuxis – and the rest of the Shastel Bank consortium, and anybody who wants to sign up with them should go right ahead and do so. That’s fine. But I’d like this meeting to send back a big fat raspberry to the Foundation, with the message, we don’t take sides, we don’t give or ask for either help or treaties with the outside world, because we aren’t a nation; we’re just a lot of people who happen to live in the same place, and most of us do the same kind of work. And whatever we do, we don’t mention this man’s sister at all; not one word. Especially we don’t interfere by making demands on the governments of other countries. Sorry, neighbour, and you really do have my sincerest sympathies, but that’s the way I see it. No foreign adventures, no taking sides, no moral support, nothing. None of our business.’

Venart left the meeting feeling angry and confused. At the start of the proceedings, it looked like everybody was in favour of the Shastel deal except for the small number of traders who did substantial business with Scona (later he found out that the speaker was one of this group, thereby learning as fact something that every other man in the Meeting House had guessed immediately after he’d started talking). The upshot had been that the Shastel agents had been given a rather insulting little homily to pass on to Head Office, along with a large number of signed contracts for the hire of ships. As the speaker had urged, there was no reference whatsoever in the homily or the contracts to a girl by the name of Vetriz Auzeil.

Venart went home, slammed the door behind him and went through into the counting house, where his clerks were copying letters and doing chequer-board calculations. He was in a foul mood by this stage; he swore at one clerk for lighting a lamp when there was still the last knockings of daylight left, and at another for taking a new pen from the pot when a bit of careful sharpening would have got another hour or so out of the old one, and the room was extremely quiet and tense when the doorkeeper came in and announced that Athli Zeuxis had called and was waiting to see the boss.

‘Rest assured,’ she said, as Venart poured her a drink of warm wine and honey with mint and grated cinnamon, ‘I’ll be doing whatever I can. Have you any idea what Niessa Loredan’s up to?’

Venart shook his head. ‘Well,’ he amended, ‘I’ve got a vague notion it’s all to do with that magic stuff we got mixed up in that time in the City, with old Alexius and Bardas Loredan. Which means,’ he added with a long sigh, ‘that even if someone told me what was going on, I wouldn’t understand a word of it.’

Athli nodded. ‘I know what you mean,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure I believe in it, even. Well, be certain that I’ll be doing whatever I can to get Vetriz out of there. It shouldn’t be beyond me to spin Head Office a report dropping great big heavy hints about things they can do that would go a long way towards getting the Island firmly on their side. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they took the bait; they simply can’t get their heads around the idea of the Island not having a government of any kind; they much prefer inventing some extremely secretive and well-hidden ruling class manipulating everything from behind the scenes and being incredibly devious about it all. The idea of a secret agenda of freeing hostages concealed behind a public declaration of neutrality is just the sort of twisted scheme they’d really go for. But,’ Athli went on, ‘even if they do go for it, I’m not making any promises about getting anywhere. The plain fact is, as far as I can tell, they want this to be an all-out war to the death; the idea behind it is to get rid of Scona for good and all, and nobody’s going to be all that interested in peace negotiations or making deals; not unless Gorgas Loredan manages to give them a couple of damn good hidings. Sorry to sound negative about it, but it’d be cruel to get your hopes up.’

‘Please do what you can,’ Venart replied, pouring himself another long drink. ‘I really can’t think of anything else I can do, short of tripping over some vital piece of military intelligence about Shastel war plans that I could trade for her with Niessa Loredan. And the chances of finding out something she doesn’t know already are pretty slim, to say the least. That’s one tough woman, Athli. I don’t think there’s much she wouldn’t do if it suited her.’

‘I promise I’ll do my best,’ Athli replied, refusing a refill. ‘At the very least, I ought to be able to find some way of getting a message through to Vetriz, if that’s any use to you.’

Venart smiled, for the first time in a while. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ll write something tonight and send it over to you first thing tomorrow. At least I can let her know she hasn’t been entirely forgotten. Anyway,’ he said with an effort, ‘that’s enough about that. What do you make of this war, then? Is it a foregone conclusion like everybody says?’

Athli made a vague gesture with her hands. ‘If you do the arithmetic, it’s got to be,’ she said. ‘Six thousand halberdiers against – what, seven hundred regular archers and whatever conscripts Gorgas can chase up. You don’t need to be a treasury clerk to figure that one out. On the other hand,’ she continued, looking out of the window, ‘take a look at the run-up to this situation and maybe the numbers aren’t so important after all. We were getting close to the stage where Gorgas was running out of floors to wipe with Shastel raiding parties; not that he’s some kind of military genius, it’s just that the raiders made such bad mistakes.’ She smiled thinly. ‘We had a saying back in Perimadeia – it was attributed to General Maxen, Bardas’ uncle – that ninety-nine out of a hundred decisive battles are lost by the losers rather than won by the victors, and the art of strategy was little more than giving the other side rope to hang themselves with while trying not to make too many stupid mistakes of your own. Basically, that’s what Gorgas has been doing so far, and it’s worked pretty well; unless you count winning so often you provoke a full-scale war as a mistake, which is an arguable case. No, I could see Gorgas winning one or two very impressive victories and killing an awful lot of halberdiers; and my guess is that all he’d achieve that way would be an even bigger number of halberdiers assigned to catching him.’ She shook her head. ‘It’ll be interesting to watch,’ she said. ‘I’d say his only hope would be a big victory resulting in a major blow-up in Shastel faction politics; but it could just as easily be his own death warrant.’

The ink was full of dust again, and the pen was worn out and spluttering; the scraps of parchment had been scraped down so many times there were holes in them, and the ink just soaked away in places, making the letters look like trees grown shaggy and shapeless with moss and ivy; and the lamp needed a new wick. But Machaera kept on writing, because calligraphy was seventy marks (seventy marks just for the writing, regardless of what she wrote) and a good score would go a long way towards offsetting the inevitable disaster of Applied Geometry, and she had to do well in Moderations if she wanted to get into the top stream of Third Year…

There was a nick in the shaft of the pen, and it had worn a raw patch on her middle finger between the top knuckle and the side of her fingernail, and it hurt… There had to be some way to harden her skin up before the exam, something she could put on it to stop it rubbing away. Hadn’t she read somewhere that raw grain spirit did the trick? Not that that would be a lot of help, since she didn’t happen to have any raw grain spirit; although she had an idea they used the stuff in the Natural Philosophy workshops, and wasn’t that moon-faced boy who kept oh-so-accidentally bumping into her in the Buttery (Name? Can’t remember) a Nat. Phil. second-year?

She narrowed her eyes and squinted at the page she was copying from. The main text was clear enough; it was the bold, cursive script of about a hundred and twenty years ago, written in Perimadeia in a commercial copying shop by someone who understood how to lay out a legible page of text. Her problem was with the commentary, scrawled between the lines and crammed into the margins, running right to left as often as left to right, contorted with scholarly space-saving abbreviations and written with a pen shaved down to the thickness of a hair. Mcrb thnks th Passg prob corrupt, cf Euseb On Philos chp 23 ll.34 to 60 but cf opp Comm on Silen Gen Summary chp 9 ll.17ff wh var readings pref; all squashed into the gap above one line, with the last few words bulging out into the margin and marching upside down along the underside of the end of the line, like a column of ants on the stem of a flower. It could, of course, have been worse; there could be three or four generations of commentary squeezed in there, rendering the main text as illegible as the subsidiaries and making reading the thing as slow and painful as a child picking its way through its first horn-book.

Macrobius thinks this passage is corrupt, she wrote carefully, compare Eusebius, On Philosophy, chapter 23 lines 34 to 60; but note the opposite view in the commentary on Silentius, General Summary, chapter 9 lines 17 and following, where variant readings are preferred. Quite, she thought. And does it really matter, given that the text all this attention has been lavished on is nothing more than the trivial bickering of two scholars, both of them dead for over four hundred years, over a fine point of dogma in a theory long since discarded as quaintly primitive? Apparently it did, or else why was she crouched here copying it out on slivers of vellum scrounged from the bellows-mender’s shop in the vague hope that writing it out would somehow help fix it in her memory? It mattered because the men who set the exam thought it mattered, probably because they’d had to sit in this same library staring at this same copy of this book when they were her age, and that was the only criterion that counted for anything. Still, it would be interesting to know when this book was last read by someone who wasn’t studying for the second-year Mods; two hundred years ago? Three?

She looked at the page in front of her and considered the next line in the main text. But that same foolish and opinionated clerk, in averring that the same essence could be at one and the same time corporeal and non-corporeal, commits a grave error; indeed, his ignorance and folly are such that no scholar would pay any heed to them. In consequence-

Machaera yawned and lifted her head until she could see out of the window. Outside it was a clear, crisp day, and the menacing silhouette of Scona Island was painfully sharp against the hard blue sky. Over there, apparently, lurked the Enemy, the latest incarnation of the dark and malevolent force that waited eternally for the weak, the helpless, and bad girls who didn’t eat up their dinners. She found it extremely unsettling to think that the Enemy was so close, only the width of a narrow channel away; if she wasn’t careful, she could easily spend hours staring at the water, imagining shadowy coracles flitting over the dark water, spear-points and helmet-ridges gleaming in the thin light of a watchful star – and then she’d never get any work done, and she’d fail Mods completely and have to go home. Oh, damn Scona, for being at war and distracting her from her revision!

She didn’t look up, because she knew that the man standing beside her wasn’t real, and that she was in another of those involuntary and unfortunately extra-curricular visions (if only they counted towards the year-end continuous assessment grades – but they didn’t, and a headache right now would be so inconvenient…)

‘Machaera,’ Alexius said. ‘I’m sorry, am I disturbing you?’

‘A bit,’ she replied, trying not to let her resentment show; after all, Patriarch Alexius was one of the greatest scholars ever, she should be proud-

‘You work too hard, you know,’ he said. ‘You aren’t getting enough sleep. Fine thing it’d be if you’re so exhausted you fall asleep in the exam. Don’t laugh; it happened to a friend of mine. He’d spent a whole year cramming for that one subject, got as far as writing his name, and the next thing he knew was the invigilator shaking him by the shoulder and taking his paper. He gave up philosophy after that and went into the wine trade, where he made a great deal of money and would have done very well for himself if he hadn’t been killed when the City fell. At least, I assume that’s what happened to him; it’s a fairly safe assumption. What’s that you’re reading?’

‘Veutses, On Obscurity,’ Machaera replied. ‘Doctor Gannadius says it’s the key to understanding the whole of neo-Tractarianism. ’

‘He’s right,’ Alexius said, ‘surprisingly enough, since I happen to know for a fact he’s never read it. Oh, he’s read the Epitome and the Digest, which contain everything you need to know; but as for sitting down and actually ploughing through the wretched thing, he told me himself, life’s too short. I did read it, once – a long time ago now, of course – and frankly I couldn’t make head or tail of it. So I went back and read the Digest entry and for the life of me I couldn’t remember any of the important points listed in the Digest article being in the original text. So I went back and read Veutses again, from beginning to end, and blow me down if I wasn’t right. All the important ground-breaking stuff was made up by whichever poor little clerk it was who did the Digest entry, not Veutses at all.’

‘Oh,’ said Machaera, visibly shaken. ‘But it says in the Commentary-’

‘Ah.’ Alexius smiled. ‘The purpose of the Commentary, which was written two hundred years later, was to take the conclusions reached in the Digest and then go back into the original text and find obscure and badly written bits which could be interpreted to seem as if they were the bits the writer of the Digest got his ideas from. It’s a wonderfully imaginative and inventive piece of academic writing, and just shows what you can achieve if you really set your mind to something.’

‘Oh.’

‘But for pity’s sake don’t go pointing that out in the exam,’ Alexius went on, ‘or they’ll fail you on the spot.’

‘Oh…’

‘As is quite right and proper,’ Alexius continued. ‘Because what you’ve been taught is that Veutses discovered Veutses’ Law of Obscurity, and the exam’s to test what you’ve learnt, not some theory or other you may have dreamt up for yourself. After all,’ he went on, ‘the conclusions drawn by the Digest writer are still just as valid and important, so why does it matter who wrote them?’

‘I suppose not,’ Machaera replied, frowning. ‘But it still doesn’t seem fair, really.’

‘Doesn’t it?’ Alexius shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t think it was ever supposed to be. If I were you, though, I’d skip the rest of the book and just read the Digest. After all, you can’t go far wrong if you emulate someone as distinguished as Doctor Gannadius.’

Machaera looked at him, then nodded obediently. ‘If you say so,’ she said. ‘But I still think-’

‘Give it thirty years and it’ll wear off,’ Alexius interrupted. ‘Thinking, I mean. It’s something you grow out of, like greasy skin and spots. And, all due respect, I didn’t come here to discuss Veutses and intellectual dishonesty. Do you mind if I sit down, by the way? I know this isn’t my real body, but even notional cramp in imaginary legs can be quite painful.’

‘Oh. I mean, sorry. Yes, please sit down.’

Alexius perched on the edge of the desk. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Now then, let’s get to the point. You and I are deadly enemies.’

Machaera looked shocked. ‘But we can’t be,’ she said. ‘Really, I would never-’

Alexius raised a hand, palm towards her. ‘I know, I know,’ he said. ‘But it isn’t up to us. It’s because of the war, you see. And it seems that you and I are like – oh, I don’t know – we’re two siege engines mounted high on towers, facing each other across the straits, ready to bombard each other and turn each other’s cities into rubble. Believe me, it’s true. I was brought here – to Scona, I mean – and you’ve been carefully encouraged when under normal circumstances you’d either have been scared into never using your latent abilities or strangled or something, just so we can be part of the war.’

Machaera looked at him gravely. ‘I’m not sure I want that,’ she said. ‘But you can’t be right about me,’ she went on. ‘Why me, when we’ve got people like Doctor Gannadius?’

Alexius chuckled. ‘Gannadius is a nice enough man, and quite bright too, in his own way, but he’s got about as much ability to use the Principle as I have wings to fly through the air. Anything he can do in the Principle he has to do through a natural. It’s the same with Niessa Loredan, and she’s the one using me.’

‘Oh.’

‘So I thought,’ Alexius went on, ‘why don’t you and I come to an agreement? Call it a private peace treaty all of our own. Because one of these days, quite soon, you’ll find yourself in one of these visions, and you’ll be at some critical point in the future of the war, and you’ll be standing there looking at a single moment in time where either of two things can happen. I haven’t the faintest idea what it’ll be; it could be a soldier standing in a doorway, or an engineer aiming a trebuchet, or a general putting his head up above a slit-trench to see what’s happening, whatever. That’s when you’ll find yourself making a decision about what should happen next – let’s say you decide that the soldier in the doorway sees the enemy approaching and runs away, instead of holding his ground and keeping them back until reinforcements arrive, or the engineer decides to add an extra two degrees to allow for windage, or the general thinks better of it and isn’t shot down by a sniper. When that happens, I’d like you to make a conscious effort not to make a decision. Switch off your mind, say out loud, “I don’t know what’s going to happen next.” And if we both do that-’

‘Excuse me,’ Machaera said.

‘Sorry?’

‘Excuse me,’ she repeated, ‘and please don’t take this the wrong way; but if we’re really on opposite sides, and I don’t make the decision, how will I know that you won’t make the decision either? I know this sounds awful,’ she went on wretchedly, ‘but if I do as you’re saying, won’t I be hurting my side and helping yours? And besides, I do want Shastel to win the war. It can’t be wrong to want that, can it? I mean, shouldn’t people do everything they can to help their side win, if there’s a war?’

Alexius narrowed his eyes. ‘But they’re using you,’ he said. ‘Just like Niessa’s using me. Surely you can see that’s not right.’

‘It’s all right if I don’t mind,’ Machaera replied. ‘And yes, the war’s a dreadful thing, and I wish ever so much there didn’t have to be one, because lots of my friends will have to go and fight and some of them may get killed or badly hurt, which is probably worse in a way, because then they’ll have to live their lives without an arm or an eye or something. But if I don’t do something to help, that won’t mean there won’t be a war, it just means we’re less likely to win; and what if I keep my side and you don’t? Then I’d really be hurting my side-’

Alexius scowled at her for a moment, and stood up; he raised his hand, drew it back and slapped her hard across the side of her head, at which point he wasn’t Alexius any more but a short, stout middle-aged woman she’d never seen before but somehow knew as Niessa Loredan. Machaera tried to scramble out of the way, but Niessa was coming after her; now she had a knife in her hand, and behind her shoulder Machaera could see Patriarch Alexius, looking horrified but not moving. She got as far as the doorway when Niessa managed to reach out and grab her by the hair. Machaera screamed, and as Niessa slashed at her with the knife she tried to fend the blade off with her hands. She could feel the knife cutting her fingers and palms, slicing through the knuckles of her right hand just below the first joint; but the sensation wasn’t pain, it was more like a kind of fear she could feel with her body as well as her mind. She screamed again, and then Niessa got past her flailing hands and stuck the knife into her, just below her ribs, in the place her father used to stick in the knife when he was skinning rabbits he’d snared up in the mountains orchard. She could feel the knife inside her, an intrusion, something that shouldn’t be there-

And she was sitting looking out of the window at a distant prospect of Scona, with her hands clasped in front of her, as if she was trying to keep her intestines from falling out. She’d scattered her bits of parchment and knocked over the inkwell.

‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’ someone said behind her; and the librarian stepped smartly forward and rescued the copy of Veutses’ On Obscurity just before the spreading pool of ink reached it. ‘For gods’ sakes, be careful, this book’s irreplaceable.’ He scowled down at her, just as someone had done a moment or so ago (but she couldn’t remember who, and she had a headache) and then sighed. ‘You fell asleep,’ he said, not quite so ferociously, ‘and knocked over the ink. Second year, I take it?’

Machaera nodded.

‘Swotting for Mods and not getting enough sleep,’ the librarian went on. ‘Well, you wouldn’t be the first. Go on, get out of my sight while I clear this up. Go to bed. You aren’t safe to be around innocent books.’

Alexius woke up with a start and opened his eyes.

‘You nodded off,’ said Niessa Loredan, smiling indulgently like a fond daughter. ‘In the middle of a sentence. You were just about to explain to me about Parazygus’ theory of simultaneous displacement, and suddenly you went out like a snuffed candle.’

‘Did I?’ Alexius put a hand to the side of his head, where something was banging away like a trip-hammer in a foundry. ‘How terribly rude of me,’ he said, ‘I do apologise. It must be old age.’

‘That’s all right,’ Niessa said. ‘And it’s rather warm in here, and you did eat four slices of cinnamon cake.’ She stood and picked up the knife. ‘Let me cut you another,’ she said.