The Belly of the Bow

CHAPTER EIGHT

Family, muttered Gorgas Loredan to himself. Family’s what life’s all about, but at times it can be bloody aggravating. He wriggled his shoulder blades against the back of the hard stone bench and sighed.

The door opened and a clerk came out, the tip of his nose just visible over the pile of brass document tubes cradled in his arms. ‘Hey, you,’ Gorgas called out. ‘What exactly is she doing in there?’

The clerk stopped and turned towards him. ‘The Director’s in a meeting,’ said a thin, harassed voice from behind the stack of tubes. ‘She’ll let you know when she’s finished.’

‘Marvellous,’ Gorgas replied. ‘I come charging back from Penna because she’s got to see me urgently, life or death, and here I am taking root in the outer office as if I was some punter overdue on his payments. I’m supposed to be running a war-’

The clerk didn’t say anything, just left, and after a minute or so Gorgas calmed down. He might be angry with his sister, but that was no reason to go bawling out clerks, something he wouldn’t have done if his back didn’t ache and his boots weren’t still sodden wet from fording a river in spate. He shook his head sadly at his own loss of control, then stretched out with his feet propped up on the far arm of the bench, stuffed his rolled-up coat under his head, and tried to relax. Apart from anything else, it didn’t pay to take an attitude in with you when you had a meeting with Niessa Loredan, no matter who you were.

He tried to turn his thoughts back to the camp outside Penna. By rights he should be using this valuable and unexpected free time to analyse the situation and plot his next moves in quiet and peace, without the endless distractions of leadership and administration; but for him, it never quite worked like that. He couldn’t play chess, either. An abstract, two-dimensional view of the battlefield, with painted wooden blocks representing the various friendly and enemy units, contour lines for hills, green hatched squares for woods and grey ones for houses, emptied his mind in seconds, making him feel as if he was being asked to play a game whose rules he didn’t know; unlike his sister who, he suspected, saw the whole world as a chequer-board, used both for playing chess and calculating with counters. She would have made a fine general, he’d always assumed, except that he somehow couldn’t see her in the grey mud of a battlefield, stepping over dead men and huddling under the canopy of a burnt-out wagon for a little shelter from the rain to read despatches and scribble orders. No; as far as he was concerned, theirs was a good division of labour, given that in Niessa’s view, military involvement of any sort was evidence that she hadn’t handled things as well as she should have done. She despised fighting, and undoubtedly that coloured her opinion of him. But then, as far as she was concerned, hadn’t he always been a necessary, and now indispensable, evil?

The door opened, and instinctively Gorgas swung his legs off the bench and sat up straight, just as he’d done as a boy when his mother came into the room and caught him sprawling on the furniture. The two men who came out he recognised as Shastel diplomats, not the residents who lived on Scona but an actual delegation from the mainland. They looked as tired as he felt, and their coats and trousers were almost as damp and muddy – new proposals hastily despatched, no wonder she’d kept him waiting.

A clerk led them out, and a moment later Niessa appeared at the door and beckoned to him.

‘What was all that about?’ he asked.

Niessa smiled faintly, and quite suddenly her face changed, from the strong, confident expression he’d immediately recognised as her negotiations mask into a portrait of a middle-aged women with a headache who’s had quite enough for one day. Years ago, Gorgas remembered his grandmother telling them stories about the Nixies, who had the ability to change their shape and become whatever animal, bird or human they wanted to; Niessa had something of that ability, to such an extent that even after knowing her all his life, he’d still be hard put to it to describe her accurately if he was looking for her in a crowd.

‘Don’t ask me,’ she said. ‘It’s something to do with Foundation politics; and I’ve got so many of the faction bigwigs on the payroll that I’m practically running the place, and still I haven’t a clue what goes on there. Come in,’ she added, as if noticing his wet boots and grubby hands for the first time. ‘I think we could both do with cider toddy and pancakes.’

Gorgas suppressed a smile. His sister handled stress by eating and forcing food on others; good starchy peasant food and lots of it, with a hot drink to wash it down. He’d watched her grimly working her way through a stack of death warrants once, pen in one hand and a folded-over pancake in the other, and a little napkin tucked in her sleeve to make sure she didn’t get pan-grease on the parchment. He followed her into her office and slumped in the visitor’s chair while she rang for the clerk and gave him the catering order.

‘What they said,’ she continued, as she settled herself into her chair, ‘was that in return for us releasing Juifrez Bovert and the other lot you’ve got tied up at – what’s the name of the place?’

‘Penna.’

‘That’s it, Penna. If we let them go, they’ll formally recognise the existence of the Bank as a sovereign entity-’

‘That’s big of them,’ Gorgas interrupted. ‘They’re doing that already.’

‘-And officially allow the hectemores to remortgage with us,’ Niessa went on, ‘provided that we pay them commission on the remortgage advances, withdraw all our advisers on the mainland and restrict our activities to a strictly defined area.’ She sighed, and let her weight go forward on her elbows. ‘Well? What do you reckon to that?’

Gorgas thought for a moment. ‘Basically, it’s too good to be true,’ he said. ‘It’d be like surrendering their whole client base to us without a struggle. And the conditions are meaningless, because we both know we won’t honour them. I mean, we can’t.’

Niessa nodded thoughtfully. ‘It’s a faction thing,’ she said. ‘Faction B gets Chapter to agree to a military adventure that goes wrong. Faction A makes Faction B look bad by blowing the military situation up out of all proportion and then saying that only desperate measures will save them from the consequence of Faction B’s blunder. Then, as soon as Faction A’s got the upper hand, they tear up the accords and launch their own adventure, hoping that they’ll pull it off. That’s the really annoying thing about these people,’ she added, a harsh and asymmetric scowl suddenly creasing her face, ‘they make us fight a war, but winning or losing it isn’t what they’re interested in, the war’s just another arena where the factions can beat up on each other. How in the gods’ names am I meant to plan a war when I don’t know what the other side wants out of it?’

Gorgas grinned. ‘It’s just as well that they always lose,’ he said.

‘That’s beside the point,’ Niessa answered angrily. ‘They can afford to keep fighting and lose. We can’t afford to keep fighting and win. Every time we smash up one of their expeditions, it costs me money and people I can’t afford. How can I run a business that way? It’s not as if I can gather up all the dead halberdiers and sell them. And I can’t settle it, because the only way it’ll ever settle is if we go away and never come back.’

‘Or if we take Shastel,’ Gorgas interrupted quietly. ‘Ever thought of that?’

Niessa gave him a contemptuous look. ‘Don’t be stupid, Gorgas. Who do you think we are, the City? We’ve got hundreds of men, they’ve got thousands. The only reason we’re still here is because they don’t like getting in boats. And,’ she added bitterly, ‘because the war’s so useful to them. We’re a godsend to the factions. Besides,’ she said, in a colder, harder voice, ‘I can’t afford the war as it is now, let alone going on the offensive. A victory like that would ruin us.’

Gorgas smiled pleasantly. ‘It doesn’t have to be expensive,’ he murmured. ‘Perimadeia didn’t cost us a quarter.’

‘That was different,’ Niessa replied. ‘That was a wonderful stroke of luck. As far as I know, there’s no horde of savages planning to sweep down out of the mountains and besiege Shastel. Which is one thing we can be thankful for,’ she added.

‘All right,’ Gorgas said. ‘But let’s look at what we have got. We’ve got a fat, lazy standing army run by a bunch of idiots who spend their lives reading books and playing politics. We’ve got thousands of peasants who pay for all this fun, and who’re never going to do anything about it because they simply haven’t got the imagination. And right now, we’ve got at least one faction, probably two, in pretty desperate trouble because of sixty or so halberdiers cooped up in a village surrounded by our troops. Does that suggest anything to you?’

Niessa shrugged. ‘You’re saying we should deal directly with the factions who sent the raiding party, agree to let them go on favourable terms in exchange for some real concessions. That puts them in the ascendant, the infighting steps up a gear or two and we’re controlling the winning party.’ She shook her head. ‘Won’t work. As soon as they’ve got what they want, they won’t owe us anything. It’ll be business as usual within a month.’

Gorgas shook his head. ‘You’re missing the point,’ he said. ‘What if we executed all the prisoners, publicly and with maximum prejudice, so as to do as much damage as possible to the factions that sent them? You know, bodies on gibbets and the heads of two Poor-family members on spikes on the Strangers’ Quay, where everybody can see them. Those factions’ll be so desperate they won’t know what to do, they’ll be finished. That’s when we start negotiations: you open the gates to us one dark and stormy night, we’ll sort out your enemies and hand you back your precious Foundation to play with however you want to, just so long as we can post a discreet and well-behaved garrison where it’ll be on hand to look after you – your benefit as much as ours, we’ll say. And of course, they can pay for it, too; quietly and via the second set of books. And that way everybody wins, or thinks they do.’ He paused and tried to read his sister’s face. ‘What do you reckon?’

The door opened and a clerk brought in a tray with the cider and pancakes. ‘About time,’ Niessa said. ‘All right, put them down on the table.’ She stood up and started spooning honey over the pancakes and folding them neatly. The clerk left quickly.

‘Well?’ Gorgas said.

‘Supposing we try it,’ his sister replied, ‘and it doesn’t work. They kill or capture our soldiers, our factions are condemned as traitors and they immediately mount a proper invasion. They could hire ships from the Island or the pirates – they could have done it years ago, but they don’t want to, like I just told you. That’d be the end of everything, finish.’

‘True,’ Gorgas conceded. ‘But I wasn’t planning on losing.’

‘All right,’ Niessa replied with her mouth full. ‘Suppose it works. And, for a while, we have a garrison in Shastel and tell them how to run their country. What for? How’s that supposed to help us? It’s bad enough having to govern this island without taking over the running of a full-sized country.’

‘And their revenues,’ Gorgas pointed out.

Niessa shook her head. ‘Hopeless,’ she said. ‘You may not know this, but taxes aren’t for the government to spend as they please, they’ve got to pay for running the country; which is what you have to put up with if you’re a government. We aren’t a government, we’re a business, and you’d do well to remember that. Oh, sure enough, we could skim off ten, even fifteen per cent of the gross, but I doubt if we’d break even. No, what you’re suggesting would have us bankrupt inside a year.’ She swallowed her mouthful and drank some cider, which burnt her tongue. ‘If you want to be a king, Gorgas, you go and find yourself somewhere you can amuse yourself at your own expense. You’re letting the Perimadeia business go to your head, that’s your trouble. Sacking cities is a rich man’s hobby. I suggest you remember your station in life and act accordingly.’

Gorgas nodded slowly. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said. ‘So, you didn’t drag me back here to ask my advice. What do you want?’

‘It’s Bardas,’ she replied, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. ‘You obviously haven’t thought of this, but if I was in their position, I know exactly what I’d do. I’d send twenty men – good men, professionals – to bundle him onto a boat and take him to Shastel, trade him for the hostages. So; I want him brought back here where we can look after him, like we should have done in the first place. I didn’t send you to the City to indulge your taste for damaging things so he could go mooning about in the hills playing bows and arrows. He’s our brother and he’s a security risk, and it’s high time we sorted things out. I’ve got that priest friend of his here, so that ought to be all right. All I need is for you to do as you’re told for once and get him here. Do you think you can manage that, or would you rather I sent someone else?’

Gorgas looked at her for a long time, then chuckled insultingly. ‘Mother Hen,’ he said. ‘You can’t resist being mother, can you?’

For a moment he thought he might have gone too far; not that he’d have cared particularly much if he had, at that precise moment. But Niessa just looked at him. ‘That reminds me,’ she said. ‘You told me you’d deal with that stupid daughter of mine, and you haven’t. Gorgas, it’s embarrassing, having my only child locked up in the city jail. I know she’s difficult, but you’ll just have to make an effort. You can go and see her before you go back to your war.’

The boy put down the drawknife and watched.

Bardas Loredan was working a bow on the tiller. He’d made quite a sophisticated tillering bench: a three-foot section of oak gatepost bolted to a heavy sawhorse, with a winch on one end and a slot cut in the other for the bow-handle, with clamps to hold it firm. The body of the oak post was polished smooth and precisely calibrated in half-inches.

‘You’d do well to watch,’ Loredan said without looking up. ‘This is the only skilful part in the whole process; the rest is just basic carpentry, with some black magic thrown in to impress the customers.’

The boy sat down on a log and folded his arms. ‘I’m watching,’ he said.

‘Right.’ Loredan unwound the winch. ‘You start off with the roughed-out stave, which is just a slice of tree cut down to look like a bow, but it goes without saying, that doesn’t mean a thing. I mean, sitting there in an apron with the drawknife by your side and sawdust in your hair, you look like you know what you’re doing.’

The boy didn’t bother to rise to that one. Loredan brushed a few shavings off the tiller-post and went on. ‘Tillering,’ he said, ‘is the art of teaching a bow to bend. The difference between a stick and a bow is, if you bend a stick it either breaks or distorts and stays bent. You bend a bow, it flexes and then reverts to its own proper shape, and with enough power to drive an arrow through sixteen-gauge steel two hundred yards away. Big difference?’

‘Big difference.’

‘I’m glad you’re following.’ He started to wind up the winch handle. ‘Now, to tiller a bow you loop a string nice and loose round both ends of your whittled stick, and you draw it up on the winch, bending the bow just half an inch or an inch at a time, and gently let it go, then again and again – fifty times per inch, minimum. Seventy-five’s better. That way it learns to bend; the outside, what we call the back, learns to stretch, and the inside, the belly, learns to be compressed; and it’s the combination of that stretching and compression that creates the power. Try and bend a stave into a semicircle, and you’ll get two bits of broken stick; the stretch will tear the fibres in the back apart, and the compression will crush and rupture the wood of the belly. Bend a bow, a thousand-times-flexed stick, and you get a weapon that can kill any living thing in the world.’ He grinned, and wiped his forehead. ‘Little bits of torture, over and over again, and just when the wood thinks it can’t take any more you draw it back an extra half-inch, increasing the tension and the compression; and the bow finds it can take it after all, and now it’s that little bit stronger and more powerful, until suddenly you realise you’re there and you can draw the bow the length of the arrow. That’s tillering.’

‘Little bits of torture,’ the boy repeated. ‘That’s a funny way of putting it.’

Loredan shrugged. ‘That’s what you’re doing,’ he said. ‘You’re teaching the bow to be unnatural, after all. Its nature is to break, or give up and take a set; but you’ve got to teach it, by stretching and crushing, to do something it would never have been able to do if it’d just been left to stand around in one place and grow leaves.’ He grinned. ‘Someone once told me to think of it as driving the bow mad; torturing it, he said – I guess that’s where I got the word from – so as to make it violent; not passive, not weak, not natural, but full of violence.’ He carried on turning the winch, slowly drawing up the bow, unwinding, letting it relax, like a patient executioner with a man on the rack. ‘Sounded pretty melodramatic to me when I was your age, but there’s a sort of point there, I think.’

‘So you keep winding it up and winding it out again,’ the boy said. ‘Is that it?’

Loredan shook his head. ‘Rather more to it than that,’ he said. ‘When you’re making a bow, you want it to bend evenly in both limbs, not just at the tips but all the way down, in proportion, so when you draw it the bow comes compass.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Depends,’ Loredan said. ‘Some bows should be a perfect semicircle when you draw them; others want to be more square, so that the wood a foot up from the handle on both limbs scarcely bends at all. So, when you’re tillering you keep an eye on the curve, and if one limb bends less than the other you scrape a little wood away in the right place until it matches the other limb. That’s the difficult part.’

‘Ah,’ the boy said, and for about an hour he sat and watched as Loredan worked, turning and relaxing the winch over and over again, occasionally stopping, locking the winch and leaning over the bow to scrape off a few shavings with a sharp knife held at a right angle to the wood. As he watched, he could see what Loredan had been talking about; at some point the stick had stopped being a stick and had become something quite different.

‘Of course,’ Loredan went on, his eyes fixed on his work, ‘there comes a point when it won’t bend any further, it’ll just snap; and just before that point, it’s finished and ready to shoot. Ironic, I guess; when it’s at its most fragile, where just that bit more tension and compression will break it in half, that’s when it’s at its most powerful, when it can reach furthest and hardest. That’s the time when the fibres in the belly are crushed up so tight they simply won’t go any further; we call that stacking. Generally the back will stretch further than the belly will compress, because we glue hide or sinew to the back to keep it together. In the very finest bows, we glue horn on the belly, because that’ll take more compression before it collapses.’ He rested for a moment and straightened his back. ‘That’s why the best bows are made out of bits of dead animal,’ he said. ‘Animals bend and squash much better than trees. When they’re dead, of course.’

Well, quite, he thought suddenly. And we’re the back and the belly of the bow. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘you come and take a turn on the winch. I want to study the profile.’

The bow was just reaching that stage he’d mentioned, the point where it stopped being an abused piece of lumber and became a weapon. Loredan watched as the two limbs, upper and lower, bent together to the same profile under the same stress, creeping nearer and nearer to the moment where mechanical advantage became breaking strain. Vital that the two limbs be as like each other as possible, as similar as two brothers, both experiencing the same force applied equally to each of them, both withstanding the same stretching and crushing in the same way, storing the torture and turning it into violence, as the bee turns pollen into honey.

‘That’s looking pretty good,’ he said.

‘Are you going to stick anything on the back of this one?’ the boy asked. Loredan shook his head. ‘This is just a piece of junk for the military,’ he replied. ‘Self ash – that means it’s made out of one piece of ash wood, and it’s a flatbow, which means it’s just cut straight, rectangular section, with no recurves. Good enough for government work, no point in making it any better.’

‘A recurve’s where you heat it, isn’t it?’ the boy said.

‘That’s right. you steam it till the wood softens, and it takes a permanent curve, away from the string.’ Loredan yawned. ‘All that does is increase the amount of tension you’re putting the wood under, and that makes it more efficient. The best bows, sinew-backed and horn-bellied, are so heavily recurved that when they’re unstrung they’re like horseshoes, and when you string and bend them they pretty well turn inside out.’

‘I see,’ the boy said. ‘Did you ever make any like that?’

Loredan nodded. ‘I made a real beauty once, long ago. It pulled close on a hundred pounds, but it shot like it was twice as strong. And you’d never be able to pull it far enough to break it; it’d just keep on bending and bending. I’ve never made one that good since,’ he added. ‘Pity, really.’

‘Have you still got it?’

‘No, I made it for my brother. When I tried to make a better one for myself it just snapped, and I’d run out of that particular grade of horn, so I stopped bothering. Not that it matters. I make good bows but I’m only a fair-average shot, while my brother’s a high-class archer. Now then, where are we? Another two inches and we’re there.’

When the tillering was finished, Loredan fitted the bow with a proper three-ply hemp string of the right length, and they went out into the yard to shoot it in. The boy dived into the woodshed and came out staggering under the weight of the heavy straw target boss, which he hung by a chain from a spike driven into the lowest branch of the apple tree beside the well. He got out of the way and Loredan, standing twenty yards or so back, drew and loosed in one steady movement. The arrowhead, a slim bodkinhead shaped like a narrow leaf, passed through the straw as if it was nothing but a patch of low cloud up in the hills, ripping the fletching feathers off until only the end of the nock was visible in the straw.

‘Not bad,’ Loredan said. ‘It kicks a bit in the handle, but I can’t help that. After I’ve shot it in we’ll slap some beeswax on it and call it done.’

He paced out fifty yards and shot the rest of the dozen arrows, ending up with a group about eighteen inches wide, about a foot low and a foot to the left of the middle of the target. His next group was fairly central but more open, and the third dozen was distinctly ragged, with two arrows missing the outer painted ring and only just clipping the outer edge of the straw.

‘Can I have a go?’ the boy asked.

Loredan shook his head. ‘This is an eighty-five-pound bow,’ he said, ‘you’d do yourself an injury trying to draw it. And even this is on the light side for a military bow. Fetch the arrows for me while I go back to seventy-five.’

At seventy-five yards the group was fuzzy verging on non-existent, and one arrow missed the target completely and went sailing through the branches of the tree and over the hedge into the orchard. Loredan swore.

‘We’d better go and find that one,’ he said, stepping between the bow and the string and bending the bow against his knee until he could slip the loop off the top nock. ‘Let’s just see how much of a set this thing’s taken.’ He laid the bow on the ground and stepped back. ‘Half an inch,’ he said, ‘could be worse.’ The boy looked again, and this time noticed that the bow was no longer straight; it had followed the string just a little. ‘That’ll be more like three-quarters of an inch by the time it’s properly shot in,’ Loredan said, ‘which’ll bring the weight down to nearer eighty. Nothing you can do about that.’

They found the lost arrow about a hundred yards down the orchard; it had hit a tree and splintered. Loredan studied the break for a moment, decided that it was beyond repair and flexed it over his thumbs against the break, snapping off the head. ‘Job for you tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Drill the broken shaft out of the socket and salvage the flights and the nock. I’ll get the beeswax and the oil, you get the stove lit, we’ll put a couple of coats of wax on the bow and it can cure overnight.’

The boy noticed the beginnings of a big purple bruise on the inside of Loredan’s left arm, three inches or so above the wrist; he also had a raw patch on his left forefinger, where the fletchings had ridden over it as the arrow was released, ripping the skin. Loredan didn’t seem to have noticed; he ignored the marks the way a woman takes no notice of the scratches left by her cat’s ever-open claws, and if challenged replies that it’s just the cat’s way of being friendly. If I become a master bowyer I suppose I’ll end up all scraped and battered too, he reflected.

They finished the bow with hot wax mixed with a little oil, wrapped the handle in cord and hung it horizontally on a rack to dry; then the boy went back to slicing the bark off a rough stave with the drawknife, and Loredan started roughing out another billet. Neither of them spoke for about an hour, until the boy had finished the stave he was working on and brought the drawknife over to be sharpened.

‘Does it ever bother you,’ he asked, ‘making weapons that people kill each other with?’

Loredan shook his head. ‘Not in the least,’ he said. ‘Compared with what I used to do for a living, it’s blissfully innocent. And what I used to do never really bothered me all that much, or at least not in that way. Most of the time I was too busy worrying about whether I’d be alive at the end of the next fight.’

‘And before that,’ the boy persisted. ‘When you were in the army. Did it bother you then?’

‘Sometimes. But not very often, for the same reason.’ He picked up the drawknife and tested the edge on the ball of his thumb. ‘And every time, it bothered me a little less. Besides, it isn’t really like that in the army. Most of it’s very, very boring; boredom enlivened by rare interludes of extreme terror. But the more you do something, the easier it gets, and the easier it becomes to do something a little bit worse – it’s gradual, you see, half an inch at a time, and you don’t realise it’s happening to you until it’s done and you reach the point where quite suddenly you can’t go any further without snapping.’

‘Uncle Gorgas, what a surprise. I thought you weren’t going to bother with me any more.’

Gorgas sat down on the bed and tried to keep from gagging. He’d been in some foul places in his time, but the smell here was unbearable. ‘I never said that,’ he replied. ‘Or if I did, it was only because you’d annoyed me and made me lose my temper. Do you like living like this, by the way?’

Iseutz smiled. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘I think it’s disgusting. Don’t you?’

Gorgas sighed. ‘I’m going to tell the warders to get this place cleaned up, whether you like it or not. It can’t be healthy, for one thing.’

‘But Uncle,’ she replied with a hurt note in her voice, ‘that’s why I want it like this. So I can catch some horrible disease and die, and then I’ll be out of the way. You see? I’m just trying to be nice.’

Gorgas held up his hand. ‘Not today,’ he said, ‘I’m not in the mood. I’ve been chasing Shastel halberdiers up and down the mountains, I’ve had your mother on at me, I can’t remember offhand the last time I had any sleep, and as soon as I’m through here I’ve got to go back to the mountains to collect your uncle Bardas and bring him back here, whether he likes it or not. So don’t start, all right?’

‘Or?’ Iseutz sat down on the floor opposite him and studied him. ‘Or what? Come on, let’s have the threat.’

‘Just – don’t start.’ Gorgas closed his eyes and breathed out deeply through his nose. ‘Another little job your mother gave me was to deal with you. You’re an embarrassment to her, apparently. As is your uncle. And I’m not sure she approves of me, either.’

‘Oh? Why not?’

‘She reckons I’m not businesslike enough.’

The girl nodded. ‘She’s right,’ she said. ‘You don’t know when to cut your losses. You throw good money after bad, or good time at any rate. You can’t see when the game’s not worth the candle. You-’

Gorgas opened his eyes. ‘All right, that’ll do,’ he sighed. ‘You’ve made your point. Actually, I don’t mind you saying that. It’s just another way of saying that I don’t give up on things that matter to me.’

She looked at him, her head slightly on one side. ‘That’s true,’ she said. ‘Oh, I don’t know about the things-that-matter-to-you part, because I don’t know what you mean by “things that matter”. But it’s true, you don’t give up easily.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I’m not sure I meant it nicely. And you certainly don’t let little things like guilt or ordinary common decency stand in your way, I’ll say that for you.’

Gorgas yawned. ‘You know, this is the first real chance I’ve had to relax since that damned raiding party landed. I could probably get to like it in here; no hassles, no worries, nobody depending on me for anything. Perhaps next time Niessa tells me to do something, I’ll just refuse. If you take away the smell and the filth, it’s not a bad little place you’ve got here. Better than a muddy ditch under a wall, anyway.’

‘My heart bleeds,’ said Iseutz. ‘And you’re changing the subject.’

‘So what? You were insulting me.’

She shook her head. ‘No, I was trying to understand you. I want to understand you, you see. If I can understand you, and my mother, and the rest of the family, it might give me some clues about how I managed to turn out such a mess.’

Gorgas nodded. ‘That’s possible,’ he said. ‘So, what’s your point?’

‘Well.’ Iseutz thought for a moment. ‘Let’s see, we were talking about not knowing when to quit. Now then, I’d say that a man who’s killed his father and brother-in-law and tried to kill his sister and his brother because he was afraid of what they’d do to him if they realised he’d arranged for someone to rape his sister – I haven’t left anything out, have I? Only it’s quite a lot to have to remember.’

‘Go on,’ Gorgas said.

‘You’d have thought a man like that would give up on his family; you know, he’d come to the conclusion that probably the survivors wouldn’t want to have very much to do with him any more, and so he’d just go away and do something else. But not you. Not Gorgas Loredan. You brush all that stuff magnificently away. Stop cribbing, you say, you’re still on your feet, aren’t you? Let’s be friends.’ She grinned. ‘You know, in spite of everything, I can’t help admiring that.’

‘Like I said,’ Gorgas replied, looking away, ‘I don’t give up easily when it comes to things that matter to me. Like family. I keep going, I don’t listen till I’m hearing the answer I want to hear. You see, I’ve proved that people can change, and they can forgive, too. Look at your mother and me. And if we can do it, so can you. For pity’s sake, you’ve only got one life. Why ruin it over something you can’t do anything about?’

‘Ah.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m like you, you see, persistent. When it comes to things that matter to me. Like killing Uncle Bardas. When it really matters to you, there’s nothing you can’t do something about.’

A mouse poked its head out from a crack between two stones in the wall, looked round and scuttled across the floor. With a quick, fluent movement Gorgas pulled his purse from his coat pocket and threw it hard, hitting the mouse’s head and killing it instantly. The girl glowered at him.

‘What did you do that for?’ she demanded.

Gorgas shrugged. ‘It was a mouse,’ he said. ‘What about it?’

‘You don’t kill things for no reason,’ the girl replied angrily. ‘You don’t kill things just because of what they are. You just don’t.’

‘That’s nice coming from you. You want to kill your own uncle.’

‘Yes,’ Iseutz replied, ‘for a reason.’ She got onto her hands and knees, crawled across the floor and picked the mouse up by its tail. ‘A very good reason. Just killing things because they’re there is a waste.’

Gorgas pulled a face. ‘Big deal,’ he said. ‘So it’s a waste of mice. There isn’t exactly a shortage.’

‘It’s a waste of life,’ she replied. ‘That’s bad. I was starting to think I understood you, but maybe I got you wrong.’ She dangled the mouse above her head, reached up with her mouth, chewed off its head and swallowed it. ‘Killing for food is all right,’ she said.

Gorgas looked away. ‘You’re disgusting,’ he said. ‘You sit there talking like a rational person, and then you do something like that.’

‘Look who’s talking,’ she replied. ‘You’re the one that killed it. What’s more disgusting, killing or eating?’

Gorgas swallowed a couple of times; he badly wanted to be sick, but didn’t allow himself the luxury. ‘So when you kill Bardas, you’re going to eat him, right?’ he said. ‘And what about the skin and the bones? You aren’t going to waste those, surely? What are you going to make out of them?’

Iseutz considered for a moment. ‘That’s a good point,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to give it careful thought. Of course,’ she added, ‘I’m not particularly good with my hands these days, but I might be able to manage something.’ She held up the mouse again, but before she could eat any more, Gorgas jumped to his feet and slapped it out of her hand. She spat at him and recoiled, like a cat that’s had its kill taken away.

‘You’re disgusting,’ Gorgas repeated. ‘You must take after your father.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ she answered sweetly. ‘He died before I was born, remember?’