The Belly of the Bow

CHAPTER TWO

It was late afternoon by the time Gorgas Loredan’s ship dropped anchor in Scona Bay, and he decided to put off making his report until the next morning. There was, after all, no hurry; the enemy would still be dead tomorrow, and quite probably the day after as well, and he could see no pressing reason why he should toil all the way up the steep hill to the Director’s office and hang about there for an hour or so until his sister condescended to see him when he could be at home, with his boots off and his feet up on a footstool, watching the sun set over Shastel with a mug of hot spiced wine in his hand.

From the Quay he strolled down the long sweep of the Traders’ Dock, making a mental note of the ships that had arrived since he left and checking them against his comprehensive mental register: two more ore-freighters from Colleon (Why all this activity in the copper trade? Was someone trying to corner the market?); a huge timber-ship from the South Coast with thirty enormous cedar logs stacked pyramid-fashion the whole length of the ship; a handful of light, fast cutters from the Island, three of which he’d never seen before. It was good to see the dock this busy; it suggested confidence.

As usual at this time of day, the Dock was crowded with people taking the pre-dinner stroll around which the life of Scona seemed to revolve. This was the time of day when the shops and stalls did their best business, while merchants gathered under the white awnings of the taverns to put deals together and deplore whatever it was that was threatening them all with penury and ruin that week. Craftsmen and shop owners walked slowly with their families along the curve of the sea-wall at the top end of the Dock, husbands and wives arm in arm, their eyes fixed straight ahead in case they caught sight of someone they didn’t want to have to stop and talk to, while the children ambushed each other from behind the barrels and bales that stood outside the warehouses of the Bank. The deep hum of voices in pleasant conversation that pervaded the place always reminded Gorgas of sleepy bees on a hot day, and put him in mind of the seven hives that used to stand at the top of their home orchard, a perpetual terror to him when he was a boy; perhaps it was that association that always made him uneasy here on the Dock in the early evening. He preferred to take his walk in the Square, and let his children play round the base of the grand fountain, with its three sad-looking bronze lions.

He left the Dock and walked uphill along the Promenade into the Square, passing the vast bulk of the Bank’s new offices on his left. Half the facade was still covered in scaffolding, masking its outline like three hundred years’ growth of ivy, so that he still didn’t really know what the building was going to look like. Given the awesome scale of the thing it was almost self-effacing; a stranger could quite conceivably walk past it and not notice. Partly this was because it had been chipped out of the side of the great rocky outcrop that dominated the town, so that the frontage was just a small panel cut into the side of the hill, like the worked face of a quarry. Mostly, though, it was because they couldn’t be bothered with grandiose columns and porticoes and all the other clutter of which builders were so fond. There was no need to tell the people of Scona that this was an important building. They knew that already.

There is something almost arrogant about the lack of ostentation displayed by the Directors of Scona; a hectoring determination to prove that they have nothing to prove. Gorgas smiled as he savoured the words in his mind; the Dean of Shastel at his supercilious best, in a letter they’d intercepted a month or so back. On balance, he had to admit, he preferred the bewildering and vulgar complexity of Shastel architecture to the slab-sided four-walls-and-a-roof approach his sister had chosen, but he wasn’t sure that he liked himself for liking it. When his sister got going on the subject, as she often did, and started talking about every cornice and archetrave on Shastel being stained with the blood of forced labour, he tended to keep his head down and his mouth shut. As he passed the fountain he converted the smile into a wry grin and went left into Three Lions Street, where he lived.

He had only just turned the corner when a small, incredibly fast object hurtled down the paved street towards him yelling, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ and collided sharply with his midriff, knocking the wind out of him. He stepped back, put down his kitbag and lifted the object up, so that her eyes were level with his.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘I banged my head on your belt,’ his daughter said reproachfully, ‘and now it hurts.’

Gorgas solemnly examined the slight red mark on her temple. ‘We’ll have to post you as wounded in action,’ he said. ‘We’ll ask Mummy if you deserve a medal.’

The little girl smiled at him with a mercenary glint in her eyes. ‘Please can I have a medal?’ she said. ‘I’d really like one. You get medals for being brave.’

‘That’s right,’ Gorgas replied, putting her down and taking her hand. ‘And you’re going to be very brave and not cry just because you bumped your head.’

‘All right. Then will I get a medal?’

‘If you eat all your dinner.’

‘Oh.’ The little girl frowned thoughtfully. ‘I don’t think I really want a medal, actually,’ she said. ‘I’m not very hungry.’

‘Oh, really?’ Gorgas made a pantomime of ferocious scowling. ‘You mean you’ve been stuffing yourself with nuts and honeycomb all afternoon, so you haven’t got any room left for proper food. I know you too well, my girl. Now run indoors and tell Mummy I’m home.’

He watched her scuttle into the house, and not for the first time wished he hadn’t agreed to call her Niessa, after her aunt. It had been a bad omen, in his opinion; far better to have named her after her mother, or picked a name that had no connotations at all. I wouldn’t mind her having her aunt’s brains, he told himself, or her strength of will, or even that clarity of thinking that’s so easy to mistake for callousness and cruelty; but that’s about all I’d want for her out of that particular package. Let’s all hope she takes after her mother.

Though comparatively modest for one of his position and means, Gorgas’ house was large by the standards of Scona and reflected the tastes and experiences of its owner. The central courtyard with its surrounding covered cloister was in the approved local style, but whereas nearly all the houses on Scona were entirely inward-looking, offering nothing to the outside view except four dour walls with narrow slits for windows, Gorgas had built a verandah on the side that faced the sea, Island-fashion, where he could sit and look out across the channel to Shastel and the mountain ranges of the mainland. The builders who’d executed his design hadn’t known what to make of it; they’d insisted on calling it the look-out, on the assumption that it must have something to do with his position in the Bank. Presumably they imagined him sitting there with wax tablets and stylus, jotting down details of the ships arriving at the Dock, or brooding over maps and military textbooks as he planned the next phase of the war. Fortunately the verandah was hardly overlooked at all, and so only a few of his neighbours ever got to see the scandalous sight of the Chief Executive sitting idly in a huge cedarwood chair with his wife on a pile of cushions beside him and his offspring playing with wooden bricks at his feet.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the interiors all betrayed more than a hint of Perimadeian decadence; there were frescoes painted on the walls, bushy and inedible plants in pots dotted round the edge of the cloister and, in the middle of the courtyard, a fountain supplied by a natural hot spring in which the members of the household were rumoured to wash themselves at regular intervals. Infuriatingly for the neighbours, Gorgas’ servants were all foreigners and depressingly reticent about their master’s eccentricities, and (since they also formed his personal bodyguard) it was deemed unwise to press them too closely for information they weren’t prepared to give. One consequence of this tantalising shortage of hard data was the quite bewildering cloud of rumour and speculation that had settled around the man, which included such bizarre and improbable tales as the one that held that he’d fled from his native country after prostituting his sister and murdering his father and half his family. Needless to say, nobody actually believed that particular fantasy. But there were plenty of quite sensible people who felt there was no smoke without fire, and that there might well be secrets in Gorgas’ past that would be better left undisturbed for everybody’s sake.

He dumped his kitbag in the lodge and went straight through into the courtyard, which was the likeliest place to find his wife at this time of day. She had set up her desk in the shade of the cloister, just clear of the ring of sparkling fallout from the fountain, and he kept back in the shadows for a minute or so watching her as she painstakingly copied a long legal document. At the end of each line she carefully read through what she’d written, comparing it a word at a time with the original. A strand of her long black hair had worked loose from the tight bun on the back of her head, and was dangling perilously close to the ink pot.

‘Watch out, Heris,’ he said softly. ‘You’ll get ink on the page.’

She twitched, almost knocking over the ink. ‘Idiot,’ she replied, with a smile. ‘Don’t make me jump like that. So you’re not dead, then.’

‘Not so as you’d notice,’ he replied, strolling across the courtyard and kissing her gently on the cheek. ‘All well?’

She nodded. ‘A couple of men came looking for you, middle-aged merchant types, yesterday, and an old boy this morning. They both said it wasn’t important and they’d come back. Vido sent the North Coast papers down, and I’m copying them now. Luha got sent home from school for fighting,’ she continued with a frown. ‘Again. Oh, and She wants us to go round for dinner tomorrow.’

Between the two of them, there was no need to specify who She was. By and large, Heris managed to cope remarkably well with the all-pervading presence of her sister-in-law. She’d known before she married Gorgas that there was no way in which she could compete with Niessa Loredan in any department of her life. When Niessa spoke, Gorgas listened, and when she gave an order, he obeyed. Dimly Heris was aware that it had something to do with various disagreeable things in the past, and she had the common sense to keep out of it. Common sense was, in fact, the cornerstone of her existence. If she had been the princess in the fairytale who was forbidden to go into the one locked and secret room in the castle, then into that locked and secret room she would never ever have gone, and the happy ending would have happened for her years earlier than scheduled. So, instead of making difficulties and trying to intervene between Gorgas and Niessa, she made sure that the things that mattered to her were areas in which Niessa had no interest or involvement.

The compromise was simple and effective, and only failed to be completely viable when Gorgas had to go away on business, most specifically the sort of business that made it necessary for him to wear his mailshirt under his coat and pack three days’ rations in his kitbag. There had been a time when she’d been able to keep her mind off those, too; but ever since his last trip to Perimadeia, when he’d barely managed to get out of there alive when the plainsmen sacked the place, she found she had difficulty in being properly detached about it all. That aside, she represented the part of his life that took place here inside the enclosed area of the house, where nothing too disagreeable was ever allowed to enter. Anything he did outside, be it his work, his relationship with his sister or even his occasional infidelities (and they were very occasional; or at least she had no reason to think otherwise) might have been the acts of some other man who by coincidence shared the same name. They were neither interesting nor relevant to her, just as the management of the house and the buying of vegetables for the evening meal were of no interest to him.

‘Tomorrow,’ Gorgas repeated, sliding into the chair beside her and peering over her shoulder at the mortgage deed she was copying. ‘That’s a nuisance. I was going to spend tomorrow evening catching up on the work that’ll have piled up while I was away. You know, I wish she’d think about things like that sometimes.’

Heris kept her eyes on the page and didn’t answer. Years ago she’d worked out that while Gorgas frequently said all sorts of unpleasant things about his sister, that prerogative was reserved for him alone. For what it was worth, she got the impression that Niessa liked her, or at least approved of her, in the same way a chess-player approves of one of his pieces when it stays where it’s been put and doesn’t go wandering off all over the board.

‘Have you got much more of that to do?’ Gorgas said. ‘I’d like to take a walk around the Square before dinner.’

Heris shook her head. ‘At least,’ she added, ‘I wasn’t planning on finishing it today. There’s miles of it. The parcels clause alone is two sides.’ She hesitated and wrinkled her nose. ‘This is a big place,’ she said. ‘Since when did we have clients among the landed gentry?’

Gorgas laughed. ‘You should see it,’ he said. ‘Three square miles of rock and scrub, no useful timber and about the only thing you’d ever grow there is old before your time. The two brothers – they’re both in their late sixties – gave up trying to make a living farming it years ago; they just net the weirs for salmon and pootle about in that little toy quarry they’ve got on the western edge. We’ll be lucky if we see a bent quarter out of that one while they’re still alive. But two old boys living on their own – call it a long-term investment.’

‘I see,’ Heris replied. ‘I expect you know what you’re doing. There,’ she added, drawing a line under a finished clause with her ebony ruler and putting the stopper back in the ink bottle. ‘That’s enough of that for one day. I’ll get Luha and Niessa ready while you put the desk away for me.’

It was almost dark by the time they arrived in the Square, and the evening promenade was nearly over. Around the steps of the fountain the stallholders were gradually packing up for the night; fortunately, they all knew Gorgas Loredan by sight and quickly unfolded their trestles, spread their cloths and started laying out their goods again. Heris bought a honey-cake each for Niessa and Luha, cheese and sausages for the evening meal and a quarter of cinnamon to flavour the wine, while Gorgas amused himself by haggling with an old friend and sparring partner for a new penknife and set of writing tablets he didn’t really want, and ended up striking such a good bargain that he was obliged to buy them.

‘Heris,’ he called out across the Square, ‘I’ve come out without any money. Have you got seven quarters?’

The stallholder grinned and assured him that his credit was good, but Gorgas looked suitably shamefaced and promised faithfully to send his boy out first thing in the morning with the money. The stallholder insisted on making a show of wrapping the things carefully in a square of waxed silk tied up with red cord, packed up his stall with a flourish and departed with his trestle and pack over his shoulder, whistling cheerfully.

‘Not another penknife,’ Heris sighed. ‘You’ve got a whole box of them you never even look at, and you insist on using that old thing you made out of a pan handle that you’ve had ever since I’ve known you.’

Gorgas shrugged. ‘I’m afraid that if I take the good ones out of the house I’ll lose them somewhere. You know what I’m like. But if I leave the old home-made one somewhere or it falls out of my pocket, then it’s no great loss. Besides,’ he added, ‘it gets the job done. You can sharpen pens with it. What more do you want from a penknife?’

‘Rubbish,’ his wife replied. ‘You just prefer using things that are old and tatty.’

‘Old, tatty and functional,’ Gorgas said gravely. Heris laughed, but with just the trace of an edge; and that’s why you’re still with me, and not one of those girls you pick up when you’re away… She called to the children. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Time we were getting back.’

Niessa protested, needless to say, and made a specious but basically ill-founded case for being allowed to go paddling in the fountain, which her parents wisely ignored. Luha swallowed the last of his honey-cake and licked honey and the last flake of almond off his thumb. They were just about to go back when Gorgas stopped dead in his tracks.

‘Just a moment,’ he said. ‘You go on, I’ll catch you up. There’s someone I haven’t seen in a long while.

Heris nodded and led the children away. Gorgas stood motionless for a while under the shadow of the fountain, hard to see in the dim light, studying an old man who was buying the last loaf of bread from the last remaining stall. It was two years since Gorgas had seen him last, in the city of Perimadeia, on the night before it was stormed by the plainsmen. He’d heard since that the old man had escaped and was still alive, but the rumours had placed him on the Island, where he was said to be living off the thinly disguised charity of a young merchant and his sister. Gorgas frowned. He knew without understanding why that the former Patriarch Alexius was a very important man, important enough to have come to the attention of his sister. If he was here in Scona, it followed that she had had him brought here; and if that was the case, what was he doing pottering about in the Square buying stale bread at a discount?

He crossed the Square quickly and quietly, keeping in the shadows more from force of habit than for any conscious reason; but the old man saw him and recognised him before he spoke.

‘Gorgas Loredan,’ he said.

‘Patriarch,’ Gorgas replied, with a polite nod. ‘You’re looking well.’

Alexius smiled. ‘I can say the same of you,’ he said, ‘and with the added advantage of telling the truth.’ He hesitated, having nothing else to say; he remembered their last conversation, in his lodgings at the Academy.

‘Would you like to join us for dinner?’ Gorgas said. ‘We’re having lentil soup and a leg of lamb, and my wife’s just bought some rather fine-looking sausages. It’s not far, just around the corner.’

Alexius looked at him, and Gorgas was reminded of the expression in the stationer’s eyes as they argued over the price of the penknife. A bargain was being struck here, compromise traded for compromise. ‘That’s very kind of you,’ Alexius said, and he glanced down at the lump of hard barley bread he was holding in his hands. ‘But your wife won’t thank me for rolling up for dinner at a moment’s notice, I’m sure.’

‘Not at all,’ Gorgas replied. ‘We enjoy having people for dinner, and there’s plenty to go round. Our cook always makes at least one helping more than we need, and then eats it himself. He could do with losing weight, before he ends up getting hopelessly wedged in the scullery doorway.’

‘In that case,’ Alexius replied, ‘I’d be delighted.’

In the short time he’d been on Scona, Alexius had seen rather more than he’d wanted to of a couple of large, apparently official buildings and slightly less of the very cheap inn where he’d deposited his second-best coat and shoes. So far, he hadn’t seen inside a real house, and he had to admit to himself that he was curious. Why this should be, he didn’t know. Since he left home and joined the Foundation, he’d spent most of his life in dormitories, cells and lodgings, and the only ordinary dwellings he’d ever got to know properly were his family home and the house of Venart and his sister Vetriz, the merchants from the Island who’d rescued him from the sack of Perimadeia. The two establishments had been so unlike each other that any scientific attempt to extrapolate a model of an Ordinary House was clearly futile. Nevertheless, he wanted to see inside Gorgas Loredan’s house, and that was all there was to it.

If he’d been hoping to find anything in common between the Loredan house and either of his two previous samples, he was disappointed. It was as if his old home had been cut open and turned inside out, like a rabbit’s skin; instead of the house being surrounded by the garden, what passed for a garden was in the middle of the house. A more inconvenient arrangement, he couldn’t help thinking, would be hard to devise. If you wanted to go from one room to another that happened to be on the opposite side of the square, you’d either have to traipse all through the intervening rooms or else walk across the grass – aggravating if it was dark or raining. Also, because the little patch of open space was surrounded by high walls, it was overshadowed at all times of day, which meant there was no chance of growing vegetables or fruit, and surely that defeated the whole object. He could only guess that this style of building was forced on these people by the needs of defence and security, so that each house was enclosed by high walls like a little city. A strange way to live, he reflected, and not to his taste.

On the other hand, it was better than the inn, although since the same could be said of virtually any building with a roof, that wasn’t a supreme compliment. Loredan’s wife, a pleasant-faced woman in her late thirties, seemed genuinely pleased to have company, and the little girl immediately understood, with that special sense that small children have, that here was an old man not particularly used to children who could be charmed to death. All in all, it seemed like a fine specimen of a family, the sort of household you might show students round as a field exercise for the part of the course dealing with human relationships. It was almost as if it had been designed that way, and the accessory family members carefully selected for the purpose; or was that just his knowledge of Gorgas’ past life colouring his judgement? Quite possibly. After all, he had about as much hard data on families as he had on dwelling-houses, and for all he really knew, the Loredan household might easily be as typical as it seemed.

There was one thing about normal family life that he was fairly sure of, however: in unhappy homes the cooking is usually lousy, and vice versa. On that basis, Gorgas Loredan and his family were as happy and contented as they looked. And, since he had no idea where his next good meal was coming from, he made the most of this one with all the professional thoroughness of the lifelong student. If his hosts were offended or amused, they showed no sign of it. If Loredan was deliberately trying to create images of normality about him, then as far as keeping a good table as befitted a man of his position went, he’d done a good job.

When the last plate had been cleaned off and taken away, the wife and children discreetly withdrew in the approved manner and left the two men alone. There was a well-laid fire in the hearth, with a kettle simmering over it to provide hot water for the spiced wine, the chairs were deep and comfortable and a fine chessboard stood conveniently at hand on a rosewood pedestal, though Alexius somehow had the feeling that it had never been used. Normally a heavy meal and a warm fire would have sent him straight to sleep, but he wasn’t even feeling drowsy. He nodded his thanks as Gorgas handed him a cup, and took a careful sip. The stuff was quite hot, almost black, highly aromatic and extremely sweet.

‘Welcome to Scona,’ Gorgas said with a grin.

‘Thank you.’ Alexius took another sip. The aftertaste was ever so slightly stale. ‘You’re the second person to say that to me. Maybe you know why I’m here.’

‘Me? Sorry.’

‘Oh, well. I thought, since your sister had me brought here-’

Gorgas’ mouth set in a dry imitation of a smile. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know the half of what my sister does. All I can say is, if she fetched you here, it’ll be for a good reason. Good for her, of course, and for the Bank. But I’ll do my best to see to it that your stay here’s as pleasant as possible. Which reminds me, where are you staying? Has Niessa had you installed in one of the lodges at the Bank, or have you been slung out to make your own arrangements? Actually,’ he added, ‘if it’s the latter it’s a good sign, if you see what I mean. From your point of view, that is.’

Alexius’ mouth twitched. ‘I asked one of the clerks at the place I was taken to if he could recommend a good, cheap inn. To be fair to him, it’s cheap.’

Gorgas laughed. ‘If it’s the Wildcat in Cat Street, it’d be cheap at half the price. It is the Cat, isn’t it? Well, in that case, I’d like it if you’d stay with us here. No, really,’ he added, as Alexius made polite noises. ‘The Cat’s one of the Bank’s inns and really, you don’t want to stay there. I’ll send my boy round there in the morning for your luggage.’

Alexius decided not to protest. True, there was something he could not quite fathom about this house that made him feel uncomfortable. On the other hand, he had no difficulty whatsoever in isolating any number of things about the inn that made him feel very uncomfortable indeed, ranging from the fleas to the certain knowledge that he wouldn’t have enough money to pay the bill after the first week. Mental discomfort, he decided, may be a cruel thing, but sharing one’s bed with half the bugs on Scona was just as bad and rather more immediate. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You’re being extremely kind.’

‘That’s all right,’ Gorgas replied, meticulously sprinkling cinnamon powder into his cup from a small pointed spoon. ‘Sadly I’m in no position to say that any friend of my brother’s is a friend of mine, though not from any lack of goodwill on my part. How’s the fire doing? Are you warm enough?’

‘I’m fine, honestly,’ Alexius answered. Just fine, he added to himself. And thank you for not pointing out that I keep shivering, because it’d be embarrassing to have to explain that these shivers have nothing at all to do with how cold it is. ‘Please excuse me if this is a rude question,’ he went on, ‘but haven’t you put on a little weight since I saw you last?’

Gorgas pulled a mock scowl. ‘You’re a horribly perceptive man, Patriarch,’ he sighed. ‘The truth is, I’m getting to the age when men start to slow down and thicken out. I’m told the condition is incurable. You, on the other hand, are obviously pickled in wisdom and likely to keep good almost indefinitely. They do say scholars only come in two sizes, short and round or long and thin, and the latter category’s like the strips of dried beef you take on long journeys.’

Alexius smiled from the neck up. ‘Your sister’s just taken me on a long journey,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I do hope she doesn’t mean to eat me.’

‘Not in the sense you mean,’ Gorgas replied, straight-faced. Then he leant forward, resting the points of his elbows on his knees, his hands cupped under his chin. This man has the biggest hands I’ve ever seen, Alexius noticed. ‘If you want to know why you’re here, my guess is that those two merchant friends of yours – Venart and something or other, I forget the girl’s name – have been dining out on stories of their friend the great wizard, and my sister’s heard about it. She’s very fond of collecting things she believes may come in useful at an unspecified future date, and I imagine you fall into that category.’

Alexius’ expression stayed fixed. ‘But I’m not a wizard,’ he said. ‘There’s no such thing as wizards. I’m sure a – a businesswoman like your sister must know-’

Gorgas shrugged. ‘Niessa knows all sorts of obscure things,’ he said. ‘Quite possibly – and no offence intended – she knows rather more about what you are and what you aren’t than you do. Or maybe she just wants someone who’s widely believed to be a wizard, which is probably every bit as useful as the real thing, looked at from the practical point of view. In any event,’ he added, rubbing his broad cheeks with his fingertips, ‘if I know Niessa the worst she’ll do to you is keep you hanging around and maybe be a few weeks late paying your expenses. After all, she’s a banker, not a wicked queen.’

Alexius nodded. ‘Thank you for the reassurance,’ he said. ‘I’ll admit I was worried. But tell me, I’m never ashamed to admit my ignorance: I really know next to nothing about Scona and this Bank of yours. Your sister said something about being at war. I didn’t realise that banks fought wars.’

Gorgas leant back and folded his hands behind his head. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is by way of being a very long story. I’ll be happy to tell it to you now, but it’ll keep till morning if you’d rather.’

‘Now will do fine,’ Alexius replied. ‘If it’s no trouble.’

‘A pleasure.’ Gorgas smiled. ‘But first, my guess is that you’d be very interested indeed to know if I’ve got any news of my brother, but you didn’t like to ask, in case – well. Am I right?’

Alexius dipped his head. ‘Understandably enough, I think. But yes, I’d dearly love to know what’s become of him. I only knew him for a short time, but-’ Alexius hesitated, then closed his mouth. Gorgas nodded.

‘Quite so,’ he said. ‘Well, you’ll be pleased to hear that my brother’s very much alive, disgustingly healthy and, as far as I can tell, as happy as a lamb in his new profession, which is making bows, of all things.’

‘Making bows?’ Alexius repeated.

‘Making bows. You know, as in bows and arrows. Apparently he’s very good at it and earning a comfortable living, up to his ankles in shavings and his wrists in glue, in the mountains here on Scona and ostentatiously having nothing to do with his sister or myself. I expect he’d like to see you, though, so I’ll see about having a message sent to him. Or better still, perhaps you’d best write him a letter. Otherwise he might assume a message from me is some kind of game and refuse to hear it.’

‘Thank you,’ Alexius said. ‘If you don’t mind doing that, I’d be very grateful.’

‘My pleasure. Now, I was about to start the history lesson. A drop more wine before class? Good idea, I think I’ll join you. Now then. I think the best place to start would be the beginning.’

In the beginning (according to Gorgas Loredan) there was a large triangular spit of land jutting into the sea. The distance across the base of the triangle, which was reasonably flat, is ten days’ ride; but that’s virtually the only flat land on the peninsular; the rest of it’s taken up with mountains of varying degrees of bleakness, and nobody in their right mind would want to live there if they didn’t have to. Unfortunately, however, the ancestors of the people who now occupy the Shastel peninsular didn’t have the choice. They were thrown out of their own country by some wild and woolly tribe or other – second cousins of your own plainsmen, so I believe – and settled in the mountains because horsemen couldn’t go there. By the time the horsemen had gone away, they’d been there over a century, and so they stayed.

Now, it’s in the way of things that some people do better in life than others, and after a few generations there were a few families who’d done well, and a great many more who hadn’t, and there’s nothing unusual in that. What made the settlers in Shastel different was the fact that over the years they’d become – what’s the word I’m looking for? Not superstitious. Religious, perhaps? No, that’s got the wrong associations. Pious, maybe, or at least they were all very moral people, terribly concerned about right and wrong and thinking deep thoughts about spiritual matters when they weren’t killing themselves trying to scratch a living. In any event, those families who’d become better off than their fellows came together and decided that it wasn’t right that they should have more than they needed while others didn’t have enough; not only was it rather terrible and wicked, it also offended against what their philosophy saw as the fundamental principle of balance and equilibrium – I don’t know why I’m telling you this, because of course you know all about it. Isn’t that where your own system of philosophy originated, and the study of the Principle? Anyway, that’s all rather above my head. The upshot as far as this story’s concerned was that they decided to pool all their surplus resources and endow a great and good Foundation, which was to last for all time and devote itself to the two things they held to be most worthwhile: helping the poor and working out a coherent code of morality and ethics.

This Foundation was given the name of the Grand Foundation of Charity and Contemplation, and its development and management were entrusted in perpetuity to the twenty leading families of Shastel. They built a magnificent place called the Hospital in the valley at the foot of Mount Shastel itself; it was big enough to house up to five thousand needy people and five thousand scholars, and it was open to everybody. People who couldn’t make a living, or who wanted to devote their lives to philosophy and learning, could just turn up at the gates and have board and lodgings for as long as they wanted, with nothing to pay and no obligations.

(‘It sounds like a good idea,’ Alexius murmured.

‘It was a splendid idea,’ Gorgas replied. ‘They always are.’)

Anyway (Gorgas continued) the Foundation’s endowments flourished, and the noble houses carried on adding to them, and soon there were no more poor and destitute families to be taken in and looked after; but the ones who were already there were starting to get restive, cooped up in the Hospital with nobody but the scholars to talk to. They said they were very grateful for everything the Foundation had done for them, but they didn’t want charity, they wanted the chance to work and make something of themselves, and everyone agreed that that sounded like a very good idea, too.

So the Foundation decided that the best thing would be to lend the poor people enough supplies and equipment to allow them to go back outside the walls and support themselves. It was generally agreed that if a family was given enough food to last them five years, and the basic tools and equipment, it was perfectly possible for them to turn the wilderness into good, productive farmland, by building terraces, clearing forests, draining marshes and diverting rivers. That was how the peninsula had been settled in the first place, with hope and goodwill and a great deal of hard work. That sounded like a perfectly splendid idea, and so that’s what they did. The Foundation became a bank and lent the pioneers everything they needed – it couldn’t be an outright gift, everybody agreed, because if they gave away their endowment to this generation of the poor, who would provide for the next generation, and the one after that? – and the loans were secured on the allotments of land that the pioneers were given.

Of course, it was understood from the outset that it would be a very long time before they’d be able to pay back the capital of the loans, but that was fine, nobody was in a hurry provided that the Foundation still got enough resources to continue its work in both its fields of endeavour, charity and contemplation. So it was decided that repayment of the capital would be postponed indefinitely, and all the pioneers would be expected to pay would be interest; and to make it fairer still, the interest wouldn’t be calculated in the normal way, as a percentage of the capital, because that might prove more than the pioneers could afford. Instead it was agreed that after the first five years, by which time the land ought to be ready and in production, they should pay back a set proportion of everything they produced – so much grain, so much wine and wool and what have you. In the end they settled on a seventh part, because it seemed reasonable to expect surpluses of that order from half-decently run holdings. And everybody concerned felt that that was an extremely good idea; quite possibly the best yet.

(Gorgas Loredan paused and took a long drink; then he wiped his mouth and continued.)

A hundred years later, of course, the full extent of the disaster was obvious to everyone. Three generations had gone by and none of the pioneer families had even made a start on paying back the capital; the one-seventh share they had to pay the Foundation Bank exactly cancelled out their surpluses, and no matter how hard they worked they were still stuck at subsistence level with no prospect of ever being able to improve their position. Meanwhile, there was a constant stream of produce flowing in through the gates of the Hospital which couldn’t just be left to moulder away in the jar; it had to be lent out to the poor, or else the whole charter of the Foundation would become meaningless. So lend it out they did; and anyone who didn’t want a loan was reasoned with until he did, because the books had to balance and the good works had to be done. And what with the new loans and the general effect all this was having on the people who weren’t debtors to the Foundation, who had to buy their seed corn in bad years out of their own pockets and pay for their own ploughs and do their ditching and terracing at their own expense, it wasn’t long before the Foundation Bank had mortgage stones in nearly every boundary wall in the peninsular, and more and more funds coming in each year to be invested in charity, or else.

That was when the first debtors’ revolt broke out, and the Foundation couldn’t understand it. So they asked their scholars and moral philosophers, who’d had plenty of time to think about these things and came back with the reply that human nature is basically rotten, being prey to ingratitude and envy and sheer abstract malice, and the more you help people, the more resentful and ungrateful they get. And when that happens, the philosophers said, all you can do is treat them as you’d treat spoilt and spiteful children, and give them a good thrashing for their own good. Otherwise, they argued, the Foundation would be failing in its quasi-parental duty towards the people it had adopted, and for whose welfare it was entirely responsible.

Now the debtors (by this time they’d started being known as heptemores, which is the word for ‘seventh-parters’ in the old language) had plenty of men and idealism, but no weapons or resources to sustain a war; and when they showed up outside the Hospital gates they found that the Foundation, which by this state was calling itself the Grand Foundation of Poverty and Learning, or the Grand Foundation for short – although people always seem to refer to it as the Foundation – had somehow come by a pretty substantial supply of weaponry and the like; it turned out that the upper echelons of scholars had suspected for some time that this sort of thing might happen and had been getting ready. They’d bought or made large stocks of weapons and armour – ever such a lot of armour, all to improved and scientific designs – and it turned out that they’d been drilling the Poor (that’s the people who still lived in the Hospital, five thousand families) into a kind of standing army. So when the heptemores refused to disband and go quietly home, they were able to give them a very substantial thrashing and do them a world of good; according to the best sources, about a thousand killed and three thousand more wounded or taken prisoner, while the Foundation’s losses were negligible. It seems like you can’t keep a good idea down, at least not once it’s started to take hold.

After that, of course, things had to change a little. The old Hospital was pulled down and the stones put towards building a huge castle right up on the top of Mount Shastel, big enough for a garrison of ten thousand men and the treasury of the Foundation; and since works of that kind do tend to cost a lot of money, they had to increase the share they took from a seventh to a sixth, and the debtors stopped being known as heptemores and became the hectemores, which means ‘sixth-parters’ and is really rather easier to say. Of course, these measures did solve the problem of what to do with the surplus income in future years, once the castle was paid for, because instead of being obliged to find poor and needy people to lend it to, they now had a standing army to feed, pay and quarter, as a legitimate expense of the Foundation incurred in carrying out its work. For a long time, in fact, it was undoubtedly the finest army in the world; the best trained, the best equipped, made up of people brought up from childhood to be soldiers for the Foundation. Until, that is (and here Gorgas’ face creased into a big, fierce grin) my sister came to Scona and changed all that.

Alexius sat up, startled.

‘Your sister?’ he queried.

‘My sister,’ Gorgas replied. ‘All on her own, to begin with; and then I joined her, and we carried on from there. But she was the one who started it all; credit where credit’s due.’

‘I see,’ Alexius said. ‘And what did she do?’

‘Simple.’ Gorgas stifled a yawn. ‘She founded another bank.’

‘Another bank?’

Gorgas nodded. ‘The Loredan Bank, which she established here on Scona fifteen years ago, when this was an uninhabited island with only the ruins of the farmsteads the Foundation had cleared out after a minor revolt. Actually, she was clever; she bought the island from the Foundation, and a trading franchise which she never intended to operate. But it gave her a reason for being here while she was setting up the Bank and starting to put out feelers among the hectemores, planting the idea in their heads. Then, when the time came, she anticipated the Foundation’s first strike and formed a business alliance with some long-term trading associates who also conveniently happened to be pirates: safe haven on Scona in return for stopping the Foundation from crossing the straits. They did a wonderful job, proper warships against the barges and tenders which were all the Foundation had available; I believe about seven hundred of Shastel’s finest went to the bottom that day, heavy armour and all. They’ve never tried it since, and as soon as Niessa had put together her own army she soon got rid of the pirates-’

‘Your sister has an army?’ Alexius asked mildly.

‘Yes indeed. Well,’ Gorgas said, ‘I’m in charge of it; that’s mostly what I do. But it’s her army, just as it’s her Bank. Let’s say it’s all in the family.

Alexius took a deep breath and let it go. ‘So what exactly did she do? I mean, how does this Bank of yours work?’

‘It’s all very straightforward,’ Gorgas replied. ‘The hectemores borrow from us to pay off the capital of their loans to the Foundation. Then they pay us. But we only take a seventh, just like in the original deal. And we don’t throw our weight about quite so much as they do, in the parts of Shastel we now run. Of course,’ he went on, ‘the Foundation doesn’t just sit there and take it; when a family remortgages, they send a raiding party to burn down the house and kill the people. And we send a raiding party to stop them; or, if we don’t happen to get there in time, to stop them doing it again. We’re very popular with the hectemores, of course; and we’re gradually opening up more and more territory where they can join us if they want to. They always do. You might say,’ he added with a wry grin, ‘that we’re a benevolent institution, just like the Foundation used to be.’

‘I see,’ Alexius said. ‘It sounds like a good idea.’

‘Oh, quite,’ said Gorgas Loredan. ‘It always does.’