The Belly of the Bow

CHAPTER THREE

From her window on the fifteenth floor of the east wing of the Citadel of Mount Shastel, on a clear day, Machaera could see across the lagoon to the small, rocky island of Scona. It wasn’t an impressive sight. At best, she could make out a brown hump on the skyline with no particular features, and when the sky was grey and grainy with snow-clouds there was nothing to see except a slight variation in colour and texture. But she often sat for hours at a time at her window, looking out and wondering why the Scona people hated her, and her family, and the wonderful Foundation she had worked all her life to belong to.

This afternoon there was a slight flurry of snow on the sea and the island was indistinguishable from the slate-coloured water of the lagoon, which made it hard for her to focus her thoughts and send them there. She sat with her elbows on the stone window ledge and let her eyelids droop; she’d be able to see better with her eyes closed (there was a paradox for Doctor Nila’s collection) and her mind open. A little snow drifted in through the open window and flecked her face with moisture, like tears.

As a lifelong student of the Principle, Machaera had been taught various techniques for focusing her mind. Most of them were more tricks than anything else, ways of fooling herself into believing that she was in a heightened state of awareness and thereby more closely attuned to the Principle than usual; she found them annoying, because surely it was stupid to try and trick oneself. But there was one, a simple mental exercise, that she did sometimes find useful. It was basically just a way of clearing her mind of irrelevant thoughts, a room-tidying procedure, mental housework, but the fact that it was prosaic didn’t make it any less effective.

She screwed her eyes shut, as if forcing her eyelids together could some how wring out the recollection of what she’d been looking at and make them lightproof, then allowed the muscles of her face to relax. That part of the exercise alone always made her feel more at ease, less concerned with success or failure. She took a couple of deep breaths and began the job of locating the various parts of her body and relaxing them. After a few minutes she yawned, which was a sign that she was doing the exercise properly.

One by one she examined the thoughts and memories she found cluttering up the floor of her mind. She imagined that she was in a library, and that the floor and tables were covered with books, left open and abandoned. She imagined herself picking up each book in turn, dusting it off, winding it tightly and sliding it into its tube, slotting it back into its proper place on the shelf. Here, for example, was the book of trivial distractions, containing such things as the pair of sandals that had to be collected from the cobbler, the raw patch of skin on her elbow where she’d grazed it on the chipped rim of the well, the slight headache that always bothered her when there was snow in the air. All those she solemnly rolled up and filed away, then turned to the book of intrusive preoccupations-

(Choose a place at random and read before rolling it up: the war, the enemy; why must there be a war now, in my lifetime? Why now, it isn’t fair; I have so much to do, so much to learn, I’m only young for such a short time, why must the war descend on me like an obnoxious relative who comes visiting when you want to be alone and refuses to leave? So many things impractical, impossible because of the war – the chance to travel, to visit great libraries in other cities, to learn; Mazeus on active service, instead of here, to talk to and listen to when there’s something I’ve read or thought of that has to be discussed; roll up this book, it’s fatally distracting.)

One by one she rolled them up and put them back, even the bewitchingly tempting book of speculations, in which was written all her thoughts on theories and interpretations, everything she wanted the truth to be (that one especially; roll it up and put it on the top shelf) until the desk was clear and her mind was ready to receive a new book. She visualised it, lying on the polished wood in front of her. She imagined the burnished brass tube with the label pasted on it; pushing her first and middle fingers into the top and opening them, pulling back to slide out the rolled-up book, taking the slender wooden batten to which the top edge of the roll was pasted in one hand, easing back the rest of the roll with the other, nudging across her heavy wooden ruler to stop it coiling back, reading the first section, which was always the same-

The one Principle that pervades all things – the concept is nebulous and vague enough to deter all but the most determined. Sometimes the thread is so wide and clear that it seems mundane and obvious, therefore not worthy of study. At other times, the stream dwindles down into so slight a trickle that it appears to be a figment of the imagination, something one deludes oneself into perceiving because one desires it so urgently. Between the general and trite, the doubtful and the self-made evidence, there is a dangerous temptation to steer a middle course, to assume that the truth must be the average of the available alternatives; which is like trying to write history by taking a vote from a convention of historians, assuming that the majority opinion must be the truth. But in the pursuit of the Principle, there is no place for common sense, belief or democracy. The Principle cannot be amended or simplified or improved. The Principle is that which it is.

Dry, uncompromising words that all students were required to know by heart; not something to believe, since belief presupposes scope for doubt – rather something to accept, in the same way one accepts the fact of death, which does not need to be believed in. So much for the preface; she pictured herself bobbing an awkward curtsey before a stone image standing in front of an archway, waiting uncomfortably for a moment before being allowed to proceed.

And then she was through the gate and into the open air, with no roof or walls crowding around her; she always pictured the contemplation of the Principle as a garden (how foreigners laugh at the Shastel people for their obsession with little patches of organised nature, regimented grass and troops of well-drilled flowers that stand to attention and present petals at the word of command!) where she was free to sit or walk, to work for the benefit of the garden or to cut whatever she wanted without fear of spoiling the display. Sometimes she came here to weed out errors and false conclusions, to dig and mulch and flick out stones, to mow and prune and break off the dead heads of redundant enquiries. At other times she came with a basket over her arm to gather what she wanted and take it home, although it wasn’t quite as straightforward as that – the garden gave her what it wanted her to have…

She opened her eyes and saw a workshop. It reminded her of the cooper’s yard where her father used to work, because she could see a long bench with a heavy wooden vice clamped to it, and on the wall hung familiar-looking tools, the drawknife and the spokeshave and the boxwood plane, the H-framed bowsaw, the heavy rasp and the wooden blocks inset with pads of sandstone, the bundle of horsetail rushes, the chisels, the gouges, the hickory mallet and the small copper hammer. The floor was carpeted with curled white shavings, and on the crossbeams that braced the rafters of the roof rested billets of rough-sawn green timber, adding the sweet smell of sap to the more delicate scent of newly sawn cedarwood. Light slanted into the shop through an open shutter, and fell across the back of a man crouched over a billet clamped in the vice, which he was working down with a large block plane, his arms and shoulders moving with an oarsman’s rhythm. She could only see the back of his head; but the old man who was sitting just outside the light was facing her, although the shadows masked his features.

‘And then what happened?’ he said.

The other man stopped working and straightened his back with a little grunt of discomfort. ‘Oh, it was all anticlimax after that,’ he said. ‘It turned out that my confounded sister had sent the ship to pick me up – if I’d known that, I’d have taken my chances swimming. But I didn’t, and they delivered me here like a parcel, FOB as per the bill of lading, and I was marched up the hill to pay my respects and be properly grateful.’ The man picked up his plane and fiddled with the set of the blade for a few moments. ‘Kept me hanging about in her damned waiting room for best part of an hour, which didn’t improve my attitude.’

‘And were you?’ the old man asked. ‘Properly grateful, I mean.’

‘I don’t think our old friend the City Prefect would have approved of my manners,’ the craftsman replied. ‘I can’t say that I behaved terribly well. And no, I wasn’t. On the other hand, I did manage to get out of there without hitting anybody, which was probably just as well. There as an awful lot of professional muscle lounging about in there along with the pen-pushers. I have the feeling that if I’d lost my temper, I’d have left there in a sack.’

‘It didn’t strike me as a particularly friendly place,’ the old man said. ‘So then what did you do?’

‘I wandered down to the harbour, that place where everybody takes their evening stroll, and sold my mailshirt. Got a reasonable price for it, too; enough to buy some tools and have enough left over for the makings of a fine hangover the next morning, which was when I started walking. When I got tired, I stopped, and here I am.’

The old man nodded and lifted a wooden cup to his lips. When he put it down again, the craftsman topped it up from a tall terracotta tub that stood on the floor in a pail of water to keep it cool. ‘And the boy,’ the old man went on. ‘What about him?’

The craftsman laughed. ‘I’ll be honest with you,’ he said, ‘once we’d reached Scona and I’d made my duty-call on my sister, I’d more or less forgotten about him. Pets, waifs and strays, charity cases – I’ve never had much time for that sort of thing. I’d gladly dump my loose change in some poor devil’s hat if I felt sorry for him, but my rule was always that charity ended at home, and if a stray dog follows me in the street, it’s asking for trouble. No, I reckoned I’d done enough for the kid pulling him out of the bonfire, and the rest was up to him.’ He sighed. ‘No such luck.’

‘No?’

He shook his head. ‘He turned up one morning looking all lost and sorry for himself, and as luck would have it I was trying to put in a gatepost, which is an awkward job to do single-handed; so without thinking I said, “Grab hold of that,” and he held the post while I knocked it in, and then he held the crowbar while I dug the hole for the other post, and then he helped me get the lintel up and held one end while I closed up the dovetails. And then, when the job was done and I realised he’d been helping me and never said a word except, “Like this?” and, “Where d’you want this to go?” I hadn’t got the heart to tell him to get lost, so he’s been here ever since. I’m teaching him the trade, and on balance he’s more help than hindrance. It’s funny, though,’ the craftsman went on with a chuckle. ‘When I’m trying to teach him something and for some reason he just can’t or won’t get it, and I stop and listen to myself, all patient and reasonable to start with and finally losing my temper and bawling the poor kid out – it’s like I’m the kid and I’m listening to my father, back in the long barn at home. And that makes me stop shouting, at any rate. I remember it all too well myself.’

‘Ah,’ the old man said with a grin. ‘The son you never had, then.’

‘Never had and never wanted,’ the craftsman replied with a grunt. ‘Company doesn’t bother me, but it’s never been something I need, the way some people can’t live without it. And give the lad his due, he works hard and tries his best, even if he does chatter away all the time. The hell with it, I’m not complaining.’

‘I can see that,’ the old man said with a smile. ‘If you ask me, you’re beginning to mellow.’

‘I’d rather call it seasoning, like that wood up there. Which is just a way of saying I’m beginning to act my age. One thing about killing people for a living, it kept me from getting middle-aged. This is a different way of life entirely.’

‘Better?’

The craftsman gave that some serious thought before answering. ‘It’s bloody hard work,’ he replied. ‘But yes, much better. I wouldn’t go back now, not if they made me the Emperor and gave me the whole upper city to live in. It’s possible that this is what I’ve always wanted to do; in which case, I must remember to buy young Temrai a large drink next time I see him.’

The old man laughed. ‘I’m sure he had your well-being at heart all along,’ he said.

‘What’s a burnt city among friends so long as you’re happy? Quite.’ The craftsman lifted the plane and slid it across the face of the billet, producing a clean slicing noise. ‘I tend not to think about that side of things very much,’ he said. ‘It’s amazing how much better life can be if you manage to lay off the thinking.’

The old man drank some more, put the cup down and covered it with his hat to stop the sawdust getting in it. ‘Business is good?’ he asked.

‘Can’t complain,’ the craftsman replied. ‘It’s quite remarkable how little these people know about bow-making. I could get technical and bore you rigid, but that’d be unkind, so let’s just say that for a nation who’re supposed to depend for their survival on their skill as archers, the people of Scona don’t know spit about the tools of their trade. The idea that there’s more to a bow than a bent stick and some string has come to them like some divine revelation. In fact,’ he added, stopping to wipe his forehead on his arm, ‘business is a bit too good, as you’d be able to work out for yourself if you took a walk around here looking for a reasonably straight ash tree. Which you won’t,’ he added, ‘because they’re all up there.’ He pointed up at the billets stacked between the rafters. ‘That lot won’t keep me going for very long,’ he continued, ‘and I’ve got an order for six dozen sinew-backed recurves for the military that I’d loose sleep over if I stopped to think about it. If ever you meet anybody whose doctor’s ordered him six weeks of total and utter boredom, send him to me and I’ll put him on carding sinew.’

The old man smiled. ‘That’s a very good sign,’ he said. ‘You must be doing well if you’re grumbling like that. You sound like a farmer complaining of too much rain.’

‘I think they call it reverting to type. There now,’ he said, putting the plane to one side and picking up a pair of calipers, ‘that’s not looking too bad. Let’s see whether we’ve got that…’ he stood up and turned, and just as Machaera was about to see his face, she lifted her head and blinked, and saw Scona across the lagoon, and herring-gulls circling in the snowy air, and a single ship with a blue sail dragging itself across the wind into the arms of Scona harbour.

Now what was all that about? She tried to imagine the library table again, but when she found the image in her mind, all she could see was an untidy heap of brass tubes, some empty, some with the ends of badly rolled books squashed into them. She shut her eyes and did her best to think, but a savage headache had taken hold about an inch behind her eyes, and thinking was like trying to see through thick fog and driving rain. Which of them was I supposed to see? The old man or the man he was talking to? She made an effort to force the pictures back into her mind, but there weren’t enough of them left to get a grip on. Rationalising, it ought to be the old man. When she’d looked into his eyes, it was as if she’d recognised something there; it was like looking at your friend’s grandfather and saying to yourself, Ah, yes, that’s where the nose comes from. She guessed that what she’d seen was some kind of mark or scar left behind after looking at the Principle, just as she’d been doing, the same kind of flare or burn as if she’d looked too long at the sun and it had left a permanent mark visible whenever she closed her eyes. But he hadn’t said anything; he’d just sat there asking questions, so surely it was the other one who was important, the one she’d been given this special privilege of seeing. But he was just some kind of artisan, a worker in wood like her father. How could anything concerning a man like that be of any relevance to the Principle, or the survival of Shastel and the Foundation? A great warrior might just possibly have some significance; conceivably a mighty engineer, destined to design some fabulous new engine of war that could overthrow the enemy at a stroke. But a tradesman – a small-time tradesman, one who was struggling to meet an order for six dozen (six dozen, that’s five twelves are sixty plus twelve makes seventy-two) seventy-two bows – why, the Foundation’s arsenal probably made that many in a single day. If she didn’t know better, she’d be tempted to think that the Principle was making fun of her.

Remember, Doctor Gannadius had told them last year, just before the written exam, don’t look for what you want to see, or you think you should see, or even what you expect to see. Don’t look for anything. Look at what’s there, and mark it well. What you see is always the truth; the distortions and errors come afterwards, when you think about what you’ve seen.

She frowned. Nobody in the whole world knew more about the Principle than Doctor Gannadius; after all, he was the last surviving member of the Foundation of Perimadeia, designated to succeed the old Patriarch if only the City hadn’t fallen. The mere fact of his coming to Shastel had done more for the morale of the Foundation than a hundred victories against the enemy could have achieved. It was Doctor Gannadius, after all, who’d recognised her special gifts and brought her here to the Cloister, among the top ten per cent of the novices, and taught her the very technique she’d just been using. In which case, she realised, the sensible thing would be to stop trying to puzzle it out for herself – all she’d do would be to muddy the image in her mind and corrupt it – and take it to him for interpretation, so that he could make proper use of this important piece of intelligence, maybe something so important it could win them the war…

And maybe that was going a bit too far. The whole point was, she didn’t know. For all she knew, embedded in the conversation somewhere was some tiny detail that gave the key to understanding some major intelligence issue – invasion plans, a fatal problem with material procurement, an opportunity to recruit a spy who would come across with the vital secret of something or other she simply couldn’t imagine. But wasn’t history crammed with recorded instances of morsels of apparent trivia, overheard in dockside caverns or mumbled by lovers in their sleep, that had resulted in the fall of great empires and the deaths of untold thousands? One thing was for sure; if she kept it to herself and tried to figure it out all on her own, the momentous turning point in history could be the failure of Shastel to pick up on the vital clue that might just have saved them from the deadly and hitherto unforseen danger… She jumped up, slammed the shutters closed and had to make a great effort to stop herself running along the corridor and down the spiral staircase to Doctor Gannadius’ office; which, when she reached it, turned out to be empty.

‘Apparently,’ muttered the sergeant, ‘she’s the Director’s niece.’

The corporal stooped and took another peep through the hole in the door. ‘I heard tell she was her daughter,’ he replied.

‘You don’t want to go hearing things like that,’ the sergeant said. ‘Stunts your growth, listening to that kind of talk.’ He drew his hand across his throat. ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘she’s some sort of family, which means she’s none of our business. Just watch her when you take in her food. She can only scratch left-handed, but she knows how to kick.’

The corporal nodded gravely. True, the girl in the cell didn’t look like she was capable of hurting anybody, not with that mangled hand; it was as much as she could do to get the food into her mouth and change her clothes. But it was different when she started cursing and screaming; having to listen to that was enough to sour a man’s beer, even through two inches of oak door, and there wasn’t much anyone dared do to shut her up, what with her being some kind of family of the Director’s. You never knew whether she’d be out the next day and sitting behind a desk in an office putting her seal to transfer orders that’d send a poor soldier to his death. Best to be on the safe side, and keep well clear.

‘Makes you wonder, though,’ the sergeant said. ‘Carved up like that and shoved away in a cell, and she’s one of them. Gods only know what they do to their enemies.’

Away down the passage a key scraped in a lock; someone was giving orders. The sergeant twisted the cover back over the peephole and gestured to the corporal to get back to his station quickly. When the newcomers reached the end of the line of cells, the sergeant stood to attention, saluted and crunched the heels of his boots down with parade-ground precision. The newcomers didn’t notice.

‘She’s in here,’ said a captain of the guard, a rare and exotic creature to find in the cellars. ‘We’ve kept her apart from the other prisoners, just as you said.’

The other visitor, a big bald man in a dark non-regulation coat, grunted. ‘She’s not a prisoner, she’s a detainee. You want to learn the difference. Right, open it up. I’ll bang on the door when I’m done.’

The sergeant jumped forward like the automaton in a mechanical clock and turned the key; then he stood well back from the door, as if there was a risk of infection. The captain gave him a sour look and sat down in his chair.

‘Uncle Gorgas,’ the girl said.

‘Don’t start, Iseutz,’ Gorgas Loredan sighed. He slumped down on the bed and slouched forward, his elbows on his knees.

‘You look worn out,’ Iseutz went on, sitting on the floor beside him. He moved a few inches away.

‘I’m tired,’ Gorgas said. ‘And I’m not in a very good mood. And as far as I’m concerned, you can damn well stay here until you learn how to behave yourself. But your mother-’ Iseutz made a hissing noise, like an angry cat. Gorgas sighed. ‘Your mother,’ he repeated, ‘keeps insisting that I reason with you. Which is all very well for her to say,’ he added, ‘since she doesn’t have to come down here to this shithole and put up with your performances. Obviously she believes I’ve got nothing better to occupy my time with.’

‘Well,’ muttered Iseutz. ‘And have you?’

Gorgas scowled at her. ‘I’ve got plenty that needs doing, thank you very much,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a wife and children I don’t see for weeks at a time. I’ve got a sister who treats me like an errand boy, I’ve got a brother up in the hills making grand gestures at me, and in my spare time I’ve got a war to run. And of course I’ve got you. Gods, it must be wonderful to have a really dull, boring life. I’d love to be bored just once, just to say I’ve tried it.’

Iseutz looked at him. ‘Save it,’ she said. ‘In fact, why don’t you just go away? You’re wasting your precious time here.’

Gorgas yawned and stretched out on the bed, his fingers laced behind his head. ‘Other people,’ he said, ‘have nieces who’re pleased to see them. Favourite nieces they spoil with little presents, who ask to stay up late when their uncles come to dinner.’

‘Other people don’t murder their brothers,’ Iseutz replied sweetly. ‘You could have had lots of nieces if you hadn’t killed off most of your family.’

Gorgas breathed out heavily through his nose. ‘Very true,’ he said. ‘Although as a matter of cold fact, I’ve never murdered any of my brothers, just my father and my brother-in-law. As it is, I have to make the best of what I’ve got. For gods’ sakes, what’s the point of doing this to yourself? Aren’t there enough martyrs in this family already?’

Iseutz smiled at him. ‘You should know, Uncle Gorgas. And please don’t say I’m doing this to myself. I didn’t exactly drag myself down here and turn the key, you know.’

‘And you know you could be out of here in two minutes flat, if only you’d give up this ridiculous posturing. If there’s one thing that’s the curse of this family, it’s melodrama.’

She studied him, her head slightly on one side. ‘Are you sure about that, Uncle?’ she said. ‘I always thought the curse on this family was you.’

Gorgas sighed. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll say it again. When I was young I did some terrible things, and so did your mother. We behaved appallingly. We were bad. But now we’re different, we’re trying to make up for what we did. We’re trying to help a whole lot of people who’ve had a really bad deal, and we’re trying really hard to make it up to the rest of the family. And before you start again, please remember that you’re the one who’s sworn to kill your Uncle Bardas, and he’s probably the only half-decent one out of the whole lot of us.’

‘Half decent?’ Iseutz squawked. ‘He made his living killing people. People he didn’t even know.’

‘True,’ Gorgas replied. ‘But compared with the rest of us…’

The girl was about to reply; then suddenly she giggled. ‘You know,’ she said, resting her elbows on the foot of the bed, ‘when you come to think of it, we’re a pretty sick bunch. I think that’s probably why I hate Mother more than you or even Uncle Bardas. At least you two are just murderers. What I can’t forgive her for is making me the way I am.’

‘Oh, please yourself,’ Gorgas grunted, sliding off the bed and standing up. ‘Maybe you’re right, at that. But that’s not the way I see things; I don’t believe in this idea that evil people are evil and can’t ever be anything else. I mean, do you confine that to individuals, or does it go for whole nations as well? Just because our ancestors massacred some other city or tribe a thousand years ago, does that mean we’re going to carry on being bastards for the rest of time? There wouldn’t be anybody left. And think about it: doesn’t it work both ways? Take Temrai and the plainsmen. They sacked the City and killed all the people; all right, they’re evil, they’re bastards. But they did it because the City people used to go around killing them-’

‘My Uncle Bardas used to go around killing them.’

For the first time, there was something in Gorgas’ expression that suggested he might be getting angry. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and he also saved your life. He spared your life when you were trying to kill him, and then he got you out of the City when he should have been thinking about himself. And you still say no, he’s got to die. All right, so if you’d killed him, what’d that have made you?’

She thought for a moment. ‘A chip off the old block, presumably.’ She held up her truncated hand. ‘Look at me, for pity’s sake. I’m as bad as the rest of you, and I’m incompetent. I’m a murderer who can’t even get the job done. You’ve no idea how proud it makes me feel, knowing I’m useless as well as rotten.’

Gorgas reached out and banged twice on the door with his fist. ‘Melodrama,’ he repeated. ‘High tragedy. Family curses, poisoned blood and the downfall of the gods. Give me a shout when you’ve had enough and maybe I’ll show you round the real world some time. In the meantime you can stay here and write your lines. I’ll just make sure that nobody else gets to hear them.’

The key turned in the lock and he barged the door open, pushing the sergeant out of the way. The door rolled shut and the key turned again.

‘All right,’ Gorgas said, ‘get me out of here. And for pity’s sake get that cell cleaned up. I wouldn’t keep a pig in that state. I don’t care how it got that way, but there’s no excuse for not clearing up a mess.’

He felt better as soon as he was above ground again, and by the time he was clear of the guard house and out into the fresh air of the courtyard, the feelings of frustration and anger were back to manageable levels, which was just as well. Gorgas Loredan had built his life around the principle that positive thinking gets things done; he found monolithic negatives impossible to understand and therefore hard to deal with, and so he’d always managed to find a way to go round the immovable object. One of his favourite stories was about two generals in command of an army who found themselves faced with the prospect of laying siege to an impregnable city. As they sat in their tent, staring wretchedly at the massive walls before them, the old general sighed and declared, ‘We’ll never find a way of taking that city.’ The younger general smiled at him and said, ‘In that case, we’d better find a way of not having to take that city.’ Whereupon he explained how it might be possible to lead the army round another way, bypassing the city entirely, and fall upon the enemy’s unprotected homeland, thereby winning the war and rendering the insurmountable obstacle irrelevant. For the moment, he couldn’t yet see how to apply this lesson to dealing with his intransigent niece, or his equally intransigent brother; but he knew there must be a way, simply because there always is.

Another gift that had helped him greatly over the years was the ability to put a difficult problem out of his mind entirely, leaving him free to tackle something he could manage. Solving the soluble problem, he’d generally found, often gave him the confidence and the sheer momentum to overwhelm the apparently insoluble one. Fortunately, the next job on his list was eminently soluble, and he found that he was looking forward to it.

He walked briskly down the hill to the Quay and took the boat to the small island at the mouth of the harbour where the refugees from Shastel were housed in a large sprawl of wood and canvas structures, a sort of hybrid of huts and tents, while they were waiting to be permanently resettled. To someone without Gorgas’ attitude to problem-solving, the Camp would have been a depressing place, full of uncomfortable reminders of failure. Here, after all, was the place where people ended up when the Bank had failed to make good its promise to protect them from the vindictiveness of the Foundation. The families crowded in here had all seen their houses burnt down, their cattle driven off, their crops trampled; by definition, they were here because they had nowhere else to go, and the people who’d said it was all going to be all right had let them down and were now faced with the burden of looking after them and finding them somewhere else to live and work.

To Gorgas Loredan, however, they were the answer to a prayer. At first he’d looked here for recruits for his army, because at first that was what he needed most; but there were women and children and old men here too, and they constituted a resource that it would be wasteful to neglect; almost as bad as leaving a good field fallow for want of a bucket of seedcorn and the effort of ploughing. He’d taken charge of the running of the Camp, made an inventory of what was available, and worked out the best way to make use of what he’d got.

Thanks to his imagination and hard work, the Camp was now an inspiring place to visit. As he walked through the gates (permanently open, now that there was no need to keep starving malcontents penned up out of harm’s way) he passed the training ground on the left, where his hand-picked corps of instructors were turning the adult males into an efficient and disciplined force of archers, and carried on down the narrow lane that ran between the long sheds where the women and children were employed making the things the Bank so badly needed. Each shed housed a different manufacture. First he passed the door of the clothing shop, where they produced uniforms and boots for the army, all to the best specifications. Next to that was the mailshirt factory, where several hundred women sat on benches at long tables twisting together the thousands of steel rings that went to make up each issue-pattern mailshirt; each worker was equipped with two pairs of pliers to grip and twist the rings, which were brought to them by the ten thousand in closely woven wicker baskets by porters who spent all day going backwards and forwards between this shed and the wire foundry, where a hundred anvils were grouped in a circle around one enormous central furnace; at each anvil, one worker hammered and drew the red-hot billets of steel into wire, while another wound the wire around a mandrel before slitting the coil down its length to produce another bucketful of rings.

Next to the foundry was the fletching shed, where he had four hundred women and children occupied sorting feathers by sizes, splitting them down the middle with sharp knives and peeling them apart, trimming them and serving them to the finished arrowshafts with sinew dipped in glue. The shafts themselves were produced in the next shed down the row, where the workers sat in front of table with three-foot-long grooves scored into them; in these grooves they laid the dogwood and river-cane shoots the arrows were made from, planing each surface flat and then turning them a few degrees until eventually they were left with a perfectly round, straight shaft, each one of uniform length and diameter. All told, there were sixty sheds in the Camp, each one producing the Bank’s entire requirement of some essential military commodity, and all at a fraction of what it would have cost to buy them on the open market. As for the workers, they were fed, clothed and occupied instead of aimless and starving. It was, Gorgas couldn’t help feeling, a remarkable achievement; and all the result of looking at a problem and seeing an opportunity.

His business today was with the superintendent of the nock factory. Each arrow was fitted with a bone nock, which was carved to shape, drilled at one end to accept the shaft and sawn at the other to fit the string. The problem he was here to deal with concerned the supply of bone. The raw materials came from the slaughterhouse on the other side of the island; the slaughtermen stripped the bones out of the carcasses, bleached them and loaded them on carts (six carts a day, every day, were needed to satisfy the demand from the factory); when they arrived here, they were sorted by type and size and passed on to the sawbenches where they were cut to size, and the stench of sawn bone could be smelt right across the Camp. The last few consignments had apparently not been satisfactorily cleaned. The superintendent of the factory had registered an official complaint with the slaughtermaster, who had taken offence and filed a counter-complaint about erratic collections by the factory carters and a number of other issues about the work of the factory which were really none of his concern. Neither official was now on speaking terms with the other, deliveries to the factory were down to a mere trickle, and production was almost at a standstill, which in turn affected production in four other sheds. As Gorgas saw it, it was another example of attitude and melodrama making a mess of things; the difference was that this mess was going to be cleared up, or he’d know the reason why.

As it turned out, the mere announcement that Gorgas Loredan was on his way to sort things out had had a remarkable effect on the officials concerned; they’d had a very productive meeting and dealt with all the outstanding issues, and three enormous cartloads of immaculately bleached bones were even now trundling their way down the narrow backstreets from the slaughterhouse to the Camp, while both parties were unreservedly withdrawing their complaints and thanking each other, with an almost frantic display of mutual goodwill, for their co-operation. Gorgas was extremely pleased, congratulated everyone for doing a splendid job, and took the opportunity to make an unscheduled tour of inspection; very much an unexpected honour, as the superintendent hastily admitted.

‘There’s still going to be a shortfall, though,’ Gorgas said, as he walked between the rows of benches. On either side of him sat twenty or so children, each one diligently filing slots in half-finished nocks. ‘Can’t we do something about the lighting in here, by the way? It’s a bit dark for fine work.’

The superintendent snapped at his secretary to make a note – Investigate ways to improve lighting in shed. The secretary scribbled hastily, the waxed tablet braced against the spread palm of his left hand – you could tell a scribe by the calluses on his fingertips and the way he sat flexing his fingers when he wasn’t writing.

‘I suppose we’ll have to make up the difference from civilian contractors,’ Gorgas went on. ‘Place an order with the usual suppliers and have the invoices sent through to my office. I’ll deal with them myself.’ He didn’t need to look round to know what kind of expression was on the superintendent’s face; an outside order was one of the few opportunities he got to make a few quarters on the side, provided that the invoices could be processed in-house. The stipulation was intended as a reprimand, and the way it was made constituted a strong hint that the superintendent had got off lightly. ‘And if you get any more problems with supply, just let me know instead of going through channels. After all, we’re all on the same side.’

The superintendent thanked him politely for his help, and Gorgas urged him to think nothing of it. ‘Actually,’ he added, turning round and facing the man, ‘there was just one thing. When you do the requisitions, would you mind placing an order for – what, twelve dozen? Yes, call it that – with a man called Bardas Loredan. He lives up in the hills; one of my people can tell you where to find him. He’s my brother.’

The superintendent nodded twice, and relayed the order to his secretary, who’d already written it down. ‘Of course,’ He said. ‘No trouble at all. Shall I add him to the usual list of suppliers?’

Gorgas thought for a moment. ‘Better have a look at the quality of his work first,’ he replied. ‘It’s all very well helping out family now and again, but we aren’t doing this for the good of our souls. I expect they’ll be all right, though; he’s a good worker.’

If the superintendent was curious to know why a brother of the Chief Executive (and also, by implication, of the Director herself) made his living working with his hands up in the hill country, he certainly didn’t show it. It wasn’t all that long ago that the superintendent had arrived on Scona in a small leaky boat from Shastel with nothing more than a coat and a pair of shoes. As far as he was concerned, the Chief Executive stood fair and square at the centre of his universe; it was Gorgas Loredan who’d personally signed the deed that allowed him to pay off his debt to the Foundation, and when he’d stumbled off the boat onto the Dock, one of Gorgas’ clerks had been there to meet him and his family and take them out of the mob of refugees being herded into the Camp. Instead, they’d gone up the hill and been greeted by Gorgas himself in his own private office, where he’d been told there was a good job waiting for him if he wanted it. He had no idea why he’d been chosen, or what might one day be expected of him in return; all he could think of was that he’d been one of the Chief’s own personal clients, and that when he’d been burnt out, the Chief somehow felt responsible for not preventing it. But the reason didn’t matter; what mattered was that he spent his days in an office at a desk, while men every bit as good as him, or better, coughed up their lungs in the dust and stench of the sawbenches.

‘Right,’ Gorgas said. ‘I think we’re all sorted out here. If there’s any other problems, you know where I am.’ He paused for a moment, looking out over the rows of workbenches, listening to the scritching of blades and files on bone coming from every side. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘this is all looking very good. You’ve done a fine job.’

‘Thank you,’ the superintendent said.

‘Let us consider,’ Gannadius said, ‘the two Opposites that combine to make up this thing we call the Principle. Let’s call them’ – he paused for effect – ‘let’s call them The Same, and Different. About The Same, there is nothing to be said; it’s always the same, it has only one nature. It can’t be changed, or improved, or made worse. You may find it hard to imagine this Opposite; think of a granite cliff, and sooner or later you’ll imagine the sea grinding it down, or men quarrying it and hauling it away in carts. You could try to imagine death, I suppose, but death is only one stage in a cycle. If a thing is dead now, it must once have been alive. The Same is very hard to imagine; so you must take it on trust and think of it largely as what it is, an Opposite.’

He paused again and looked round the hall, pleased to see that he could still grab the attention of a hundred or so young people with something he knew was as trite as sunrise. ‘Now consider Different,’ he went on. ‘Different is easy. Different is so easy that it’s easy to let yourself believe that Different is somehow more important, more real than The Same. That would be very foolish, because The Same is the world, but Different is the Principle. Does that make any sort of sense? Or am I going too fast?’

Rhetorical pause, Needless to say, none of them understood; not yet. ‘Let me refine that a little,’ he said. ‘I want you to consider the concept of Product. Take heat, for example. Heat is the Product of fuel and fire. Take a tree and burn it; the fire turns the wood to ash and smoke. It’s easy to see Different in that, because where there was once a tree there’s now only charcoal and a smell of burning – there has been an act of Difference. But look again, and try and see the operation of the other Opposite. Has the tree disappeared? No, it’s still there, in the ash and the smoke and the heat of the fire. In other words, there has also been an act of Sameness, but achieved through the agency of Product. The Same and Different have collided, have been at war, Different has come and gone, The Same remains behind in the Product of the act – which in the case of burning a tree is ash and smoke and heat.

‘That’s a very simple example, of course, but it might help you to see that Different might not be as important as you thought it was. It might even occur to you to ask yourselves if The Same is always the same, and Different is always different. Confused? Try it again, now that you’re a little bit better educated. Every time you burn a tree, you get ash, smoke and heat; you get the same difference, the difference is always the same. Now you might ask yourselves, is there really such a thing as Different, or is it just The Same in some other configuration, the tree becoming ash in the same way as life becomes death or night becomes day? Can you burn a tree and get flowers and milk? Now that would be Different.’

Sure enough, every single face in the hall was a study in bewilderment; mostly, he knew, they were frantically trying to work out whether Doctor Gannadius was immensely wise or a raving lunatic. Very good.

‘Now then,’ he resumed, ‘by the looks of you, you’ve all had about as much education as you can take for one day, so I’ll leave you with one last subject for your consideration. Let’s assume that The Same is always the same, and Different is always different; the key to this riddle must be something to do with the nature of this elusive third factor, Product. Where there’s a Product, there must be a Process. In our example with the tree, the Process is burning. We’ve seen that Product can be both an act of difference and an act of sameness. The ash and smoke and heat are different from the tree, but they’re still the tree, they’re the Product of the Process of burning. This may lead you to believe that it’s the Process that makes the difference, except that the Product of the burning Process is always the same. So now, instead of just two incomprehensible abstracts, we have four. Are they really all the same? Or are they different? I’d like you to think about that before we meet again; and if by then any of you can answer the riddle, please feel free to come up here and take over the class; provided, of course, that you can prove you understand it by burning a tree and producing flowers and milk.’ He paused and grinned. ‘Dismissed.’

As he walked back to his lodgings, he felt a little guilty, as if he’d been doing something dishonest; as if he’d sought to convince his audience of some abstruse point of philosophy by pulling a rabbit out of his hat, and had succeeded. I’m trying to make it sound like magic, he confessed to himself, which it isn’t, of course. It’s just that occasionally, if things go wrong, it can do the same things as magic. And that’s like saying that a sack of flour is a sword, because if it falls on you out of a high loft it can kill you. He wondered why he was worrying about it. Perhaps the guilt came from trying to make the subject sound interesting, which was certainly an act of deception.

‘Doctor Gannadius!’ That voice. Oh, hell!

‘It’s Machaera, isn’t it?’ he said as he turned, trying his unsuccessful best to look frail and confused. ‘Ah, yes, of course it is. How can I help you?’

The dreadful child was beaming at him, her small oval face a study in humility and devotion. Idiotic, he said to himself as he resisted the urge to shudder. The child’s got twenty times more ability than I’ll ever have, she really is a magician. Which is why she should be killed immediately, for the public good.

‘Could you possibly spare me just a few minutes?’ she was saying – she was skipping backwards so as to be able to face him and keep up with him at the same time. He really didn’t want to stop and get bogged down in theoretical debate in the middle of the courtyard; the girl might be a natural genius, but she was simply too young to be able to grasp even the most basic implications of the word rheumatism. Escape, he knew, was impossible, but back in his lodgings he would at least be able to sit down. There was even a possibility of getting rid of her by feigning sleep.

‘Certainly, certainly,’ Gannadius replied. ‘Follow me.’ Not for the first time he envied his old friend and colleague Alexius his years and infirmities, for which people were always so ready to make allowances. Gannadius was that much younger and obviously spry, and so not entitled to mercy. ‘I mustn’t be too long, though,’ he added in forlorn hope. ‘Paperwork to catch up with, that sort of thing.’

The girl Machaera was getting better, give her her due; she didn’t start up until after he’d sat down and kicked off one boot.

‘I thought what you said in the lecture was fascinating,’ she was saying. ‘And so true. Except,’ she went on, with a little glint of far-away in her eyes, ‘I always seem to think of it as a massive great tree fallen and lying endways, and if you find a crack and hammer in a wedge, it suddenly splits open, just like that.’

‘Sorry,’ Gannadius interrupted. ‘Think of what?’

‘Sorry?’

‘What is it,’ Gannadius said carefully, ‘that you always seem to think of as a log?’

‘What? Oh I see. Well, Sameness, I suppose. Or whatever the Principle isn’t – I’m a bit muddled about that bit. But the Principle’s like the wedge; you find the crack and the rest of it’s so easy. What’s the proper technical term? Mechanical advantage, that’s it.’

Oh, so that’s how it’s done. Assuming you can spot the crack, I suppose. ‘You could put it like that,’ he replied guardedly. ‘In fact, it’s not a bad comparison. But surely that’s a bit far removed from what the lecture was about.’

The girl looked puzzled. ‘Oh, surely not,’ she said. ‘Surely the whole point is that the Principle is what you use to turn The Same into Different. When it doesn’t want to, I mean.’

You may well be right; how the hell would I know, though? ‘In a sense,’ he replied. ‘Though that’s over-simplifying things rather, if you don’t mind my saying so.’ He devoutly, earnestly wished she’d go away, this little cute-faced bubble of a creature who talked so blithely about using the Principle; it was like listening to a mouse chattering on about harnessing a team of cats to a cheese-wagon, except for the horrible knowledge that she could do it. Break the world in half? he could imagine her saying. Oh, that’s easy. You just press here, and then put your thumbnail here, like this…

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m gushing again, aren’t I? And running before I can walk. You see, I’d never thought of it in those terms before, but it’s so obviously the right way of seeing it – well, of course, you know that,’ she added, with a self-deprecating little grin. ‘No, what I really wanted to do was tell you about this projection I did, using that special formula you taught me.’

Blood and thunder, not another one. It’s a miracle we’re all still alive. ‘You’ve managed another projection?’ was what he actually said. ‘That’s really very – well, I’m impressed. Was it-?’

She smiled at him. ‘Why don’t I just show you?’ she said.

– And, before he could say anything, suddenly he was standing beside her in a workshop of some sort, next to a long bench with a heavy wooden vice clamped to it, and lots of peculiar-looking tools hanging on the walls (except that, because she was there too, he realised that at least for the time being he knew that that was a drawknife and that was an adze and that was a boxwood plane, and those green twiggy things were horsetail rushes, which are rough and abrasive enough to be used for smoothing toolmarks out of wood). Light slanted into the shop through an open shutter and fell across the back of a man crouching over the bench – dear gods, that’s Colonel Bardas Loredan, the fencer-at-law – and an old man sitting talking to him, who turned out to be someone he knew very well indeed.

‘Alexius?’ he said.

The Patriarch looked up and saw him. ‘Excuse me a moment,’ he said to Loredan, who nodded and carried on with his work. ‘Hello, Gannadius,’ he went on. ‘I was thinking about you only the other day. I didn’t even know if you were alive.’

‘Me neither. I mean,’ Gannadius corrected, ‘I didn’t know if you were alive. I’d heard a few rumours, but nothing I was prepared to believe. Dear gods, but it’s good to see you again.’

Alexius smiled warmly. ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘Though the circumstances-’

‘I know,’ Gannadius agreed hastily. ‘Hardly ideal. Look, I’m sorry if this is an idiotic question, but when is this? Are we in the present, or is this the future, or what?’

Alexius thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think this is for a while yet; I mean, I haven’t been to see Bardas yet in real life, I haven’t even found out properly where he lives, just something vague about “in the mountains”, which could mean anything. I think this must be the future.’

‘I see,’ Gannadius said. ‘Well, in a way that’s reassuring. At least it suggests we’re going to have one. Are you well?’

Alexius nodded. ‘I believe so. It seems that discomfort and uncertainty and being chivvied about tend to agree with me, rather more so than comfort and tranquillity. I’d say I felt ten years younger if I knew when this is meant to be. And you?’

‘Oh, well, not so bad. Average, I suppose. Except, of course,’ he added, ‘for this problem I’ve got.’

‘Oh, yes? What’s that?’

Hellfire, he doesn’t realise. ‘Well,’ Gannadius said edgily, ‘it’s not the sort of thing I like to talk about with, er, this young lady present. Another time, perhaps.’

‘What? Oh, right, yes. We’ll have to try and make sure it’s after this one, then. Otherwise I won’t have a clue what you’re talking about.’

‘Alexius!’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be flippant, it’s just – well, it’s all a bit ridiculous, isn’t it? Normal people write letters. I’m sorry; I’d better-’

– And Gannadius’ hands closed around the arms of his chair. His head felt as if someone had taken it for a fencepost and nailed a rail to it. ‘I say,’ he muttered, ‘that was really rather good. Did you, er, work out how to do that all by yourself?’

Machaera nodded happily. ‘It just sort of came to me,’ she said. ‘Only I got it wrong, of course,’ she added, suddenly remembering, and her face fell. ‘Perhaps it was because you were there this time-’

‘I see,’ Gannadius said, managing to keep his voice calm at least. ‘So the first time, the words were different.’

‘It was that old man and the other one talking,’ Machaera said, and she briefly summarised the conversation. ‘Sorry, does that mean I’ve – well, changed something?’

‘Nothing important, I’m sure,’ replied Gannadius, who was sure of no such thing. ‘That man I was talking to is called Alexius; he was my friend and superior back in Perimadeia. He was the Patriarch of the Foundation there.’ The girl looked suitably awed. ‘And,’ he went on without knowing why, ‘also probably the greatest authority in the world on, um, projections. We did a lot of research into the subject together.’

(And nearly got ourselves killed, and maybe actually caused the fall of the City in some ghastly way we don’t understand, and did who knows what other damage…)

‘That’s wonderful,’ the girl said. ‘Oh, do you think he’d mind terribly if I – well, talked to him? Myself, I mean. Just to ask him a few questions?’

Gannadius felt as if he’d just been kicked in the stomach. ‘Perhaps it’d be better if you didn’t,’ he managed to say. ‘He’s, well, a very private sort of man, and-’

‘Of course. I shouldn’t have suggested it.’ The girl looked down at her shoes. ‘I’m afraid I get a bit carried away sometimes,’ she added. ‘That’s very wrong, isn’t it?’

‘Let’s just say these things ought to be treated with respect,’ Gannadius heard himself saying. ‘And caution, too, of course. I don’t want to alarm you in any way, naturally, but it can be – well, I’ll be absolutely straight with you, it can be rather dangerous. Bad for you, I mean. If you go too fast without knowing the proper procedures and everything.’

‘I see,’ the girl said. ‘Oh, I’m really sorry. I just don’t think, that’s my trouble.’

Gannadius took a deep breath. Was that a tiny glimmer of light he could see, he wondered? Or just a hole in the sky through which Disaster was about to come cascading down? ‘It’s all right, really,’ he said. ‘And you’re making satisfactory progress. Very satisfactory progress. But since you are so far advanced, maybe you really ought to stop doing projections on your own for a while. What do you think?’

‘Oh, absolutely,’ Machaera replied quickly; she looked like a child who’s just been told her favourite toy’s about to be taken away, and then hears the merciful word unless. ‘Obviously, the last thing I want to be is irresponsible. I wonder – would you mind helping me? Being there when I do projections, I mean? If it’s no trouble, of course. If it’s any trouble-’

Gannadius smiled thinly. ‘That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?’ he said.