The Proof House

CHAPTER ONE

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Bardas Loredan was in the new spur when the main gallery caved in. He heard the squeal of straining timbers, a volley of cracks and snaps, a blunt thump that knocked him off his knees into the loose clay, and then nothing at all.

He lay still and listened. If the spur was going to cave in as well, it might not happen immediately. It all depended on whether the arch at the junction of the gallery and the spur had survived. If it hadn’t, the load of the spur roof would have nothing to support it except force of habit and the plank struts that lined the walls; it might come down all at once, or it might think about it, slowly and painfully calculating the stresses and forces like a backward schoolboy and finally coming to the conclusion that it had no right to be there. If that was how it was going to be, the first sign would be the harassed groaning of the timbers, a few handfuls of soil dropping down as the roof-boards bowed under the weight and opened up the cracks between them. It was, of course, academic; with the gallery blocked behind him and a solid wall of clay in front, he had nowhere to go in any event. Unless someone managed to dig through the obstruction in the gallery, reprop, cart out the spoil and find the mouth of the spur before the good air ran out, he was as good as buried.

It’s customary to die first; but in your case, we’ve made an exception.

For the first time in months he was aware of the darkness. After three years in the saps, the endless maze of tunnels dug by besiegers and besieged under the walls of the city of Ap’ Escatoy, he could go weeks at a time without seeing a light and not realise it; it was only in moments of cold terror like this that the instinctive need to see reasserted itself.

You want light? Tough. His hands were full of loose, crumbled clay; he could feel it against his cheek, cold and dead, and the texture disgusted him. Curious; three years in the mines and he could still feel that strongly about something. He could have sworn he’d grown out of that sort of thing.

Well; no going back. At a guess, he had enough air for the best part of a shift, something of a mixed blessing under the circumstances. Men who’d long since lost the capacity to fear anything else were still terrified of death by suffocation in the aftermath of a cave-in. No going back, and staying put was a mug’s game. The only option he could think of was to go forward, in the fatuous hope that the enemy sap they’d been trying to break through into was close enough that he’d be able to reach it (alone, single-handed) before the air ran out.

Put another way, the choice was: dig or stay put. After a moment’s thought, Loredan decided to dig. If nothing else, it’d help use the air up more quickly and get it all over and done with.

It hadn’t taken the Great King’s sappers long to realise that the seam of heavy clay that lay under Ap’ Escatoy was more than they could handle with ordinary tools and techniques. They’d broken their hearts and blunted their spades at the seam for three or so months when an old man had wandered across from the supply train and told them what they should be doing. He explained that before the war he’d been a clay-kicker, a specialist in cutting tunnels through clay-beds. He’d spent thirty years helping to dig the sewers of Ap’ Mese (sacked and razed to the ground in six days by the Great King’s army in the first year of the war) and what he didn’t know about making holes in the ground wasn’t worth spit.

To dig in clay, he told them, you need a stout, square wooden post, something like a farm gatepost, with a ledge dowelled to it about six inches from the base. You wedge this post (called a cross in the trade) diagonally-backwards between the roof and the floor of the tunnel, with the base a foot from the clay-face; then you perch your bum on the ledge, flatten your back against the post and use your feet and legs to kick the spade into the clay. Once the blade’s gone in, a sharp upwards jerk with the knees ought to free a spit of solid clay; you pull it out and dump it for the scavengers behind you to clear away with a long-shafted hook and carry to the spoil-dolly, a little flat cart on wheels with ropes and pulleys fore and aft that whisks the clay out into the main gallery, where it’s loaded on to the dog-carts that trundle up to the lift and back all day long. Behind the kickers and the scavengers come the chippies, the carpenters who cut and fit the boards that line the floor, walls and roof of the sap. Except for sawing the boards, every part of the job has to be done in pitch darkness, because even a closed lantern would be enough to set off the pockets of explosive trench-vapour that are all too common in the mines.

Bardas Loredan was too tall to be a good kicker. His knees were almost round his chin as he drew his legs back to punch against the crossbar of the spade. It was a job for short, squat men built like barrels, not long, lean ex-fencers. Unfortunately, if he didn’t do the job, nobody else would. He steadied the spade, lightly pressing the point of the broad leaf-shaped blade against the wall in front of him, and stamped hard, so that the impact jarred his bones from his ankles to his neck.

Of course, the kicker isn’t expected to work alone; the back-breaking chore of hauling out the chunks of compacted clay as the kicker boots them off the spade falls to the scavenger with his hook. But Loredan’s scavenger was somewhere back down the tunnel under a few hundred tons of cave-in and therefore excused duty, even in the Great King’s army; which meant that after every three or four spits he had to wriggle off the cross, drop forward on to his knees and scrabble the spoil away behind him with his feet, like a rabbit digging in a flower-bed.

Give it up, Bardas, give it away. Quit burrowing like a mole and suffocate with dignity. It was all pretty ludicrous, really. He was a leathery little chick desperately trying to peck his way out of a marble-shelled egg. He was the prince of tightwads, baron marshal of cheapskates (every man his own gravedigger; why waste money on exorbitant sextons’ fees when you can do it yourself?). He was the littlest ever worm in the biggest ever oak-apple. He was a dead man, still kicking.

Suddenly, the feel changed. Instead of the solid slice, a bit like a butcher’s cleaver in a stringy old carcass, it was hammering into resistance, as it might be the compacted clay of a tunnel wall. More of the jar and shock was coming back up his ankles and shins than before. It was different, and anything different was hopeful. He bent his knees till he felt them brush the corners of his mouth, and kicked. Something was about to give; something had given way rather than hold still and be cut. Not bothering to clear away he carried on kicking, obstructed by the prised-out spoil but too preoccupied to spare the time to do the job properly (that’s so like you, Bardas; be the death of you, one day) until a ferocious stomp of his heels drove the spade forward into nothing, and he was jolted forwards painfully on to the base of his spine.

Through, by the gods. I’ve found the damn sap. That’s handy. There was no light, needless to say, but the change in the smell of the air was extraordinary. Coriander; the tunnel he’d broken into reeked of coriander. Cautiously he wiggled his left foot into the breach he’d opened with the spade until he felt the flat of a board against the sole of his boot. He couldn’t help grinning; what if he kicked this board away, and it brought the roof down on him? Die like that, you’d wet yourself laughing.

Coriander; because the enemy’s bakers seasoned their bread with coriander, while the Great King’s bread was made with garlic salt and rosemary. In the wet air of the mines, you could smell coriander or garlic on a man’s breath fifty yards away; it was the only way to know he was there and which side he was on. Coriander, and pepper-sausage for the officers, smells death and danger. Rosemary and garlic are for home, rescue or the relief shift crawling up the spur towards you. Loredan pressed his boot flat against the board and exerted slow, even force, until he felt the nails draw out of the battens. Through, but into coriander. One damn thing after another.

Shuffling along on his arse, feeling his way with his heels, he edged through the breach in the wall until he came up against floorboards. One hell of a racket; but maybe it wouldn’t matter. It hadn’t occurred to him before now to wonder why the gallery had caved in; galleries cave in, it happens. But sometimes they cave in because the enemy undermines them, digging a spur of their own directly underneath and cutting out a chamber, called a camouflet, where they pile up barrels and jars of fat and rancid tallow, all hot, combustible stuff. As the fire burns it dries out the roof of the camouflet, the clay shrinks and suddenly there’s an unsupported hole in the gallery floor into which the whole gallery tries to pour itself, like water draining from a sink. The gallery caves in. Job done.

Well, then; if the enemy, coriander, is off down some spur of its own, it’s less likely to be tramping up and down its native gallery. A man, garlic, might slip through a breach in the wall and go unnoticed for quite some way before some bugger bumps into him and cuts his throat.

‘Gods know.’ (Voices coming, coriander; two men in a hurry, knees and palms bumping over the floorboards.) ‘Maybe we’re so close to their gallery that our wall’s subsiding into the hole. In which case we’ll get the whole bloody lot round our ears if we don’t get it shored quick.’

Bardas Loredan felt himself nodding in agreement; here was a man who knew his mines all right, the sort of man you’d want on your shift, except that he was the enemy. Two of them, and still coming on; hadn’t they got noses, he wondered, and then remembered that his shift hadn’t eaten for two days, what with one thing and all. No bread, no garlic, no smell to give you away. Stop eating and live for ever.

‘It’s a bugger, whatever it is,’ said the voice that went with the other pair of knees. Bardas felt in the top of his boot for the hilt of his knife; if the first one really was scent-blind, he’d have him, definitely. It’d be the second who’d have Bardas. Sacrifice your knight to take his rook; no fun at all if you’re the knight. But: the hell with it. It’s every soldier’s duty to seek out and destroy the enemy. So, let’s do that, then.

He let the first voice go by, and when the second voice was almost past him, he reached out carefully with his left hand, hoping for a chin or a jaw. Of course, this was the bit he was good at. His fingertips brushed against a man’s beard, long enough for him to wind his fingers into and get a good grip. Before the man had a chance to make a sound, Bardas had stabbed up into the triangular cavity at the junction of neck and collar-bone, where death can come in quicker and quieter than anywhere else. The fashion in the mines was for short knives (short knives, short men, short spades, short lives; you got nothing for tall down the mines). He was in and out so smoothly that there was a fair chance the other man hadn’t even noticed.

Nevertheless; ‘Thank you,’ Bardas muttered as he twisted the knife to free the blade. It was an unbreakable rule of the mines that you thanked the man who died in your place, when one or the other of you had to go. By speaking aloud he’d announced his presence in unmistakable terms, but he still had the advantage. The man, coriander, in front of him hadn’t a hope of turning round in the cramped shaft of the gallery, which meant that his options were to hold still and try to kick backwards with his heels like a mule, or to rapid-crawl on his hands and knees like a little child scurrying under a table, in the hope of finding a spur to crawl down before his enemy realised he’d gone. Then it’d be the other way round, of course; no fun, so let’s not allow that to happen.

With a soft grunt of revulsion Bardas Loredan crawled over the body of the man, coriander, he’d just killed, feeling the palms of his hands and the caps of his knees digging into the soft flesh of the dead man’s belly and cheeks. He sniffed like a polecat to get a fix on his quarry, heard the scrape of a wooden clog-sole on a stone – almost close enough but not quite – so he hopped along, hands outstretched, shoving himself forward with his legs like a rabbit until he knew his face was within a few inches of the other man’s heels. The spring, when he made it, was more froglike than feline; he landed heavily, jarring his elbows on the man’s shoulder-blades. Afterwards, he thanked him.

Now what? Of course, he hadn’t a clue where he was. In his own tunnels he could find his way easily enough; in his mind’s eye he had a picture of a whole honeycomb of galleries, shafts and spurs he’d never actually seen but knew intimately nonetheless. He didn’t even have to count the movements of his knees as he crawled forward to know where the spur gates were, or where the spur ended and the gallery began. He simply knew where they were, like a juggler with his eyes shut. But in these mines, coriander, he had no idea. The darkness here was genuinely dark to him, and he felt the lowness of the roof and the narrowness of the space between the walls as if it was his first day out of the light.

Common sense, common sense. If this is a gallery (too wide and high to be a spur), chances are it runs to the face from the lift-shaft – which begged the questions: which way is which, and which way did he actually want to go? Avoiding the enemy was definitely a priority, but not if it meant heading deeper and further into exclusively hostile ground. To the best of his knowledge, the only interface between his tunnels, garlic, and the enemy’s was the hole he’d just wriggled through, so no way back. Forward – either direction – would sooner or later bring him up against an enemy camp or working shift, and even he couldn’t kill them all.

It’s customary to die first… If only he could smell fresh air, he’d know which end was the lift-shaft; but he couldn’t, only a stale, lingering flavour of coriander and the heavy scent of the dead men’s blood on his clothes and hands. If he didn’t do something soon, fear would catch up with him and he’d be paralysed – he’d come across men, coriander, in that state before now, crouched against a wall with their hands over their ears, unable to move. Left, then; he’d go left, because if he was still in his own tunnels he’d go right to get to the lift-shaft. Totally flawed logic, but he couldn’t hear anybody objecting. Exactly why he should want to make for the lift he didn’t know. Just supposing he was able to creep into one of the spoil-baskets and get lifted up out of the mines without anybody noticing, once he reached the surface he’d be inside the enemy city, a dirty, bloody man marinaded in the wrong herbs and spices. But if he went the other way, to the face – where would the face be, now? Presumably, at the end of the spur where they’d laid their camouflet. Effectively, he’d have gone round in a circle, but there might be a chance of breaking through, if (say) the spur, coriander, ran closely parallel with the gallery, garlic, to any extent. Even if that worked out, of course, there was the intriguing risk that he’d come though into his native gallery at some point after the cave-in, where he’d be just as trapped as he’d been in the spur. Only one way to find out. He’d go right, and see what happened.

‘It’s one of those moments, isn’t it?’ said a voice beside him.

He knew perfectly well that the voice wasn’t really there. It hadn’t been there for years.

‘You tell me,’ he replied, keeping his own voice down to a soft whisper. ‘You’re supposed to be the expert.’

‘So people keep telling me,’ the voice replied ruefully. ‘I’ve always maintained that I’m like a man who’s just bought an expensive new machine; I know how to use it but I haven’t a clue how it works.’

‘Well,’ Loredan replied distractedly, ‘you know more about it than I do, anyway.’

The voice sighed. It wasn’t a real voice; it was make-believe, like the imaginary friends of children. ‘I think it’s one of those moments,’ it repeated. ‘A fateful choice, a cusp – is that the right word? I’ve been talking about cusps for thirty years and I don’t actually know what a cusp is – a cusp in the flow, a crossroads. Apparently the Principle simply can’t function without them.’

‘All right,’ Loredan muttered, squeezing himself through a tight spot where a side-panel had come adrift, ‘it’s a cusp. Do whatever it is you do. And if it’s all the same to you, I’ll just carry on with what I’m doing.’

‘You always were sceptical,’ said the voice. ‘I can’t say I blame you. There’s a lot of it I have trouble believing in myself, and I wrote the book.’

Loredan sighed. ‘You were rather less irritating when you were real,’ he said.

‘Sorry.’

Everbody heard imaginary voices after a while. Some people heard them as dwarves and gnomes, kindly creatures that warned about vapour-pockets and cave-ins. Others heard them as dead family or friends, while bad men heard them as the people they’d murdered or raped or mutilated. Some people put out bowls of bread and milk for them, as children do for hedgehogs. Others sang to drown the voices out, or yelled at them till they went away; others talked to them for hours, finding that it helped pass the time. Everybody knew they weren’t really there; but in the mines, where it’s always dark and everybody, real or not, is nothing but a disembodied voice, people learn not to be quite so dogmatic about what’s actually there and what isn’t. For better or worse, Bardas Loredan heard his voice as Alexius, the former Patriarch of Perimadeia, who he’d known for a short while years ago and who was now quite probably dead. Except here, of course, where the living are buried and the dead live on bread and milk, like invalids.

‘If I were you,’ Alexius said, ‘I’d go left.’

‘I was just about to,’ Bardas replied.

‘Oh. That’s all right, then.’

He went left. The gallery was narrower here, the floorboards rougher, not yet polished by the passage of gloved hands and copped knees. It was hot, which suggested there might be vapour.

‘Not that I’m aware of,’ Alexius said.

‘Good. I’ve got enough to contend with as it is.’

‘But unless I’m very much mistaken,’ the Patriarch went on, ‘there’s someone up ahead of you, about seventy-five yards – sorry I can’t be more exact, but of course I can’t see a damned thing. I believe he’s stopped and he’s fixing something; a board that’s come loose, probably.’

‘All right, thanks. Which way’s he facing?’

‘No idea, I’m afraid.’

‘Not to worry. Is he a cusp too?’

‘That I can’t tell you. He might be a cusp, or he might be purely serendipitous.’

‘Right.’

He slowed down, carefully shifting his weight with each knee-stride forward so as to make no sound at all. He smelt of blood, of course, and probably sweat, too. The man smelt of pepper and coriander.

‘That’s it, you’ve got him. Now do be careful.’

Bardas didn’t answer, not this close. Where were you just now, when I could have done with someone to talk to? He could hear the man’s breathing now, and the very faint creak of the leather cops on his knees as he worked.

‘He’s got his back to you.’

I know. Now please go away, I’m busy. He moved closer (couldn’t be more than a yard now) and reached towards the top of his boot for his knife-hilt. Sometimes the blade made a very slight hissing noise as it rubbed along the cloth of his breeches. Fortunately, not this time.

Afterwards, he thanked him-

‘Why do you do that?’ Alexius asked, puzzled. ‘I’ll be straight with you, I find it rather morbid.’

‘Do you?’ Loredan shrugged (pointless gesture in the dark, where not even people who weren’t there could see him do it). ‘Personally, I think it’s a nice tradition.’

‘A nice tradition,’ Alexius repeated. ‘Like blackberry-picking or hanging bunches of primroses over the door at Spring Festival.’

‘Yes,’ Loredan said firmly. ‘Like putting out saucers of milk for the likes of you.’

‘Please, don’t trouble yourself on my account. If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s soggy bread in sour milk.’

‘Well, you wouldn’t have us waste the good stuff, would you?’

He crawled over the dead man; still no clue what it was he’d been doing there, so quiet and meticulous. Unimportant. Couldn’t be much further now and he’d be at the face.

(‘Then how come,’ he’d asked once, ‘if you’re wholly imaginary, you keep telling me things I don’t know, like the enemy’s up ahead or vapour-pockets? And you’re nearly always right, too.’

Alexius had thought for a moment. ‘Possibly,’ he’d said, ‘you’re unconsciously picking up clues that are so slight your mind can’t take notice of them in the usual way – tiny noises you don’t know you’ve heard, just the faintest taste of a smell, that sort of thing – so it invents me out of thin air as a way of getting the information to you.’

‘Possible, I suppose,’ he’d replied. ‘But wouldn’t it be easier just to admit that you exist?’

‘Maybe,’ Alexius had replied. ‘But just because a thing’s more likely doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true.’)

Sometimes he tried to picture it all in his mind; where he was in real terms, in relation to the city and the Great King’s camp and the river and the estuary. He still believed in them, just about, though at times his faith was sorely tried. Maybe it would help if he left them the occasional bowl of milk.

He could hear digging; four, possibly five distinct noises. He could smell coriander, and sweat, and steel, freshly cut clay, a very faint trace of vapour, not enough to be dangerous; leather and wet cloth and urine, and the blood on his own hands and knees. For some reason he was having difficulty estimating the range – it could well be because he was near the face, where the solid wall of clay ahead soaked up the sound, or perhaps the roof was higher than usual, creating a slight echo. Five men digging, so there’d be a scavenger to each man, and at least two chippies – but he couldn’t hear scavengers’ hooks or carpentry tools, implying that they’d only just started work, and if that was the case, pretty soon a man would come up the gallery with the rope to pull the spoil-dolly. He listened, but Alexius wasn’t there (typical; but everybody knew you couldn’t rely on the voices). Trying not to worry, he felt the side-walls carefully for a spur, a lay-by, a point where the gallery widened enough for him to tuck in out of the way and let the rope-bearer go by – or failing that, somewhere he could turn round and go back. If the worst came to the worst he’d have to crawl backwards, but that was very much a last resort, since there was always a risk of meeting someone, coriander, coming the other way.

As luck would have it there was a wide place, where they’d had to cut through a rock when they’d built the gallery. The carpenters hadn’t bothered to board over what was left of the rock, and the cutters had split it so deeply with their fire and vinegar that there was a crack wide enough for him to squeeze into, if he wasn’t too fussy about breathing.

He didn’t have to wait long; he heard the rope scuffling along behind the man, and not long after that he could smell him. He let the man go a little way, and afterwards he thanked him; if anyone came down the gallery, they’d blunder into him and make a noise, enough to give notice. It was a friendly thing to do, and in the mines you had to take friends where you found them.

Four men digging, two scavengers, one carpenter; he could hear the hooks and one saw. Short-handed, obviously; overstretched, not enough experienced men to go round. It was a common problem, garlic and coriander. The carpenter was furthest back; he’d warn his friends when the sound of his saw stopped before time, but the scavengers couldn’t turn round – he’d have them easily enough. The problem would be the kickers, who’d use their crosses to swing round.

He’d forgotten about the spoil-dolly; only remembered it when he put his hand on it (he’d been following the rope, so there was no excuse). It was hard, slow work climbing over it, and for a moment he was tempted by the thought of lying flat on it and pulling himself towards the face by hauling on the aft rope; but the sound of the wheels would be their friend, not his, whereas if he left it there it would be another sentry for him.

With forefinger and thumb only, he drew out his knife. It was the only material object he thought of as his own, and he’d never seen it. He felt with his fingertips for the slight grooves he’d scored into the wooden grip so that he’d know he was holding it right, and closed his hand around it. Three men to kill, then four more; then he’d have the place to himself.

In the mines, of course, all advantages create risk; anything that can help is dangerous. The thick pads of felt he wore on his knees and the soles of his boots muffled the sound of his movement with almost total efficiency, as the carpenter discovered the hard, sharp way, but they robbed him of most of his sense of touch; he couldn’t feel where the ground changed, where the boards ended and the loose clay spoil began.

He located the first scavenger by the end of the shaft of his hook; as the man pulled back, the shaft rammed Loredan squarely in the chest. The man knew there was something wrong by the feel, but there wasn’t time for him to do anything about it. The technique was always the same: left hand over the subject’s mouth, to stop him making a noise and to pull the head up, exposing the pit where the throat meets the collar-bone, the quickest and surest place for an incision. When it was done and he’d mouthed his silent thanks, he drew the dead body carefully back and laid it on the ground like a newly pressed gown.

The second scavenger was aware of a change, but he only realised that what he’d noticed was a silence where there should have been the sound of a hook dragging clay a moment before Loredan found him. It was long enough for him to drop his hook and reach for his own knife, and quite by chance he drew the blade across the side of Loredan’s left hand, cutting a thin, deep slice. He died before he’d had a chance to interpret the meaning of the feeling of slight resistance, and Loredan caught the knife before it had a chance to fall on the ground and raise the alarm.

‘Moaz? Moaz, you bastard, why’ve you stopped?’ One of the kickers, shouting nervously back as he wriggled round the side of his cross. Nuisance, Loredan thought; that’ll make him hard to find. Still, he won’t find me so easily either, and I have the advantage.

He moved the knife to his left hand, the one that was bleeding. A drop of his blood falling on a man’s neck as he was reaching out for his mouth and chin wouldn’t be his friend, it could mean a quick, instinctive shy away, a missed grab, a mistake which could not be rectified later (as the stallholders in Perimadeia market used to say, before the city fell and they were all killed). It was a disadvantage; he didn’t have the same feel in his right hand. Another variable to factor into the calculation, as if it wasn’t complicated enough already.

‘There’s some bastard down here,’ a voice said. ‘Moaz? Levka? Say something, for gods’ sakes.’

Loredan frowned. The voice was an advantage, because it gave him a precise position, but if he went straight towards it he’d be at a disadvantage, because the man would be expecting him to come from the front. If he tried to go round the side, though, there was a fair chance he’d bump into one of the other crosses, or come up against a pile of spoil that would get in his way and be an enemy. If he wanted the voice to be his friend, he’d have to try another approach.

‘Help,’ he said.

Silence. Then, ‘Moaz? Is that you?’

Loredan made a groaning noise; it was quite a work of art. ‘Stay there,’ the voice said, ‘I’m coming. Did you get him?’

The voice came to him, making a lot of noise. He felt splayed fingers on his face, made the necessary calculations and stabbed upwards. No doubt about it, he had a feel for this sort of work.

‘Thank you,’ he said aloud, then rolled sideways until he was tight against the wall.

‘What the hell’s going on back there?’ demanded another voice. ‘Moaz? Yan? Oh, fuck it, someone go for a light.’

‘Hold on,’ said another voice, ‘I’ve got my box.’

Loredan heard a soft scrape, consistent with the lid of a tinder-box being drawn back. That wouldn’t be good at all.

‘Wait,’ he called out; then he made his best guess and jumped, pushing off from the wall with his legs like a swimmer. It was a good guess; his outstretched right hand brushed against an ear. Where there’s an ear there’s generally a throat, and so it was in this case.

A good guess but a bad move, albeit forced on him by circumstances. As he pulled out his knife he felt a blow diagonally across his back, enough to jolt his breath, and a small sharp pain on the left side of his collar-bone where the knife nicked it. Quickly he caught hold of the hand with the knife in it; assuming the man was right-handed, that gave him a good fix. He followed it up. Five down.

Number six died trying to squeeze past him in the narrow neck of the tunnel. Number seven died facing the wrong way, having lost track of Bardas’ movements without realising it.

Job done.

Job done, and nothing left to do. When he tried a few kicks at the face it felt depressingly solid; even if the main gallery (garlic) really did run parallel to this sap, the dividing wall between them was apparently too thick for him to break through. He lay back on the cross and let his shoulders droop, wondering how he was going to explain to the men he’d just killed that it had all been a waste of time.

‘That’s all right,’ they said (with his eyes closed he was able to see them for the first time). ‘You weren’t to know.’

‘It’s good of you to see it that way,’ he replied.

‘You were giving it your best shot,’ they told him. ‘When it comes down to it, that’s all a man can do. You can’t be blamed for that.’

They were smiling at him. ‘I was just trying to stay alive,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’

‘We understand,’ they said. ‘We’d have done the same if we’d been in your shoes.’

Loredan shooed them away, knowing perfectly well that they weren’t real but not saying so out loud for fear of hurting their feelings. As soon as he’d seen their faces, he’d known they were just some fantasy, a projection of his own thoughts. Anything you could see with your own two eyes in the mines didn’t exist, by definition.

‘Including me?’

‘Including you, Alexius. But you’re old enough and ugly enough to be told these things.’

‘Oh. Well, I won’t bother you any more, then. Thanks for the bread and milk.’

‘You’re welcome. And you don’t bother me. I’m glad of the company.’

Alexius smiled. ‘You know, that reminds me of one of my tutors, back when I was a very young student. He used to go around all day muttering to himself, and one day the others dared me to ask him about it. So I did. “Why do you talk to yourself?” I asked. “Because it’s the only way I’ll get a sensible conversation around here,” he replied. A good answer, I always thought.’

Loredan shook his head. ‘Donnish wit,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I wonder if that’s all you academic types do all day, lurk about trying to lure each other into carefully planned verbal ambushes. Odd way for grown men to behave, if you ask me.’

Alexius nodded. ‘Almost as odd as crawling about in narrow dark tunnels,’ he replied. ‘But not quite.’

‘Alexius.’

‘Hm?’

Loredan opened his eyes. ‘Is there any way I can get out of here? Or am I through this time?’

He couldn’t see Alexius any more, but the voice was clear and distinct. ‘Not you as well,’ he said. ‘I’ve spent my life explaining this. I’m a scientist, not a fortune-teller. I have no idea.’

‘You know,’ Loredan said, ‘you don’t sound at all like the Alexius I used to know. You sound younger.’

‘It’s one of the nice things about being imaginary, I can be whatever age I like. I’ve decided to be forty-seven. I enjoyed forty-seven best.’

Loredan nodded. ‘I’ve always had this theory,’ he said, ‘that we’re all born with a certain optimum age, the age we’re really meant to be, and once we reach it we stick there, in our minds, where it counts. Personally I’ve always been twenty-five. I was good at being twenty-five.’

Alexius sighed. ‘Just as well that you found your true age while you had enough time to enjoy it, then,’ he said. ‘If it’d been forty-seven you’d have been out of luck, because I’m afraid you’ll never get there.’

‘Ah,’ Loredan said. ‘I’m forty-four.’

‘No you’re not. Forty-six. You’ve lost count.’

‘Really?’ Loredan shrugged. ‘Been down here too long, I guess. And now I suppose I’m going to stay down here for good.’

‘It saves your friends the cost and trauma of burying you.’

‘True. I’d hoped I wouldn’t get buried until I was dead.’

‘Admittedly, it’s customary to die first. In your case, however, they seem to have made an exception.’

‘I think I’d like to go to sleep now,’ Loredan said, yawning pointedly. ‘I haven’t been sleeping well lately.’

‘As you wish.’

He closed his eyes again. How can a man die better, he thought, than in peace and tranquillity, with all his friends around him? Here they all were, come to see him off (or to welcome him in, depending on how you looked at it); rows and rows of them, filling the benches in the public gallery, spilling out on to the edges of the courtroom floor itself, while Bardas Loredan chose a sword from the bag his clerk was offering him. He didn’t need to look up in order to know who his opponent was going to be.

‘Gorgas,’ he said, with a stiff nod.

‘Hello,’ his brother replied. ‘It’s been a long time.’

‘Over three years,’ Loredan replied. ‘You haven’t changed, though.’

‘That’s kind of you, but I expect I have really. Even less on top, a little more around the middle. It’s all this good, starchy food I’m getting in the Mesoge. I’d forgotten how much I like it.’

Gorgas lifted his sword, a long, slender Habresche, worth a lot of money. Bardas discovered that he’d selected the Guelan, his favourite sword for lawsuits, which he’d broken some years ago in this very court. It too was old, rare and quite collectible, though not nearly as valuable as a late-series Habresche.

‘Are you sure we’ve got to do this?’ Gorgas asked plaintively. ‘I’m certain that if only we sat down together and talked things through-’

Bardas grinned. ‘Scared, are you?’

‘Of course.’ Gorgas nodded gravely. ‘I’m absolutely terrified I might hurt you. For two pins I’d drop this ridiculous sword and let you kill me. Only you wouldn’t do that, would you?’

‘Kill an unarmed man who’s kneeling at my feet? Not normally. But in your case I’ll make an exception.’

Their sword blades met, as Gorgas lunged and Bardas parried, high right, forehand. ‘I knew you’d meet that easily enough,’ Gorgas was saying. ‘If I’d thought you couldn’t handle it, I’d never have made the stroke.’

‘Don’t patronise me, Gorgas,’ Bardas warned. ‘I’m a whole lot better at this than you are.’

‘Of course you are, Bardas. I have complete confidence in your abilities. We wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t.’

Bardas riposted, turning his wrist so as to lunge low, but Gorgas made the parry in plenty of time. His handspeed had never been this good.

‘I’ve been practising,’ he said.

‘Obviously,’ Bardas replied. He watched the blade come on as Gorgas lunged back, read the feint early and compensated, drawing his parry wide to cover the full zone of possibilities. Once he’d made the parry, he stepped across and back with his right foot to change the angle and flicked a short, powerful lunge at his brother’s face. Gorgas only just parried in time, and the needle-sharp point of the Guelan nipped a small, thin cut just above Gorgas’ ear.

‘Very stylish,’ Gorgas said. ‘You’re seeing it well today. By the way, did I tell you, Niessa died? My daughter Niessa, I mean, not our Niessa.’

‘I never met her,’ Bardas replied. ‘Only her brother.’

‘Pneumonia, of all things,’ Gorgas said. ‘She was only nine, poor little devil.’

‘Did no one ever tell you it’s bad form to talk while you’re fencing?’

Gorgas disengaged and swished a diritto at the side of Bardas’ head. Bardas took a standing jump backwards to get out of the way. ‘Relax,’ Gorgas was saying, ‘this isn’t real, you’re imagining the whole thing.’

‘That’s no excuse for boorishness. If you’re going to fight in my imagination, you’ll abide by the house rules.’

‘You were always a terror for making the rules up as you went along,’ Gorgas said with a sigh. He was clear for a counterthrust to the groin; if he’d made it, Bardas would have had terrible trouble stopping it. But he held back, giving Bardas the time he needed to adjust his guard. ‘It’s just like when we were kids,’ Gorgas went on. ‘The moment you realised you were losing, suddenly there’d be this brand-new rule.’

‘That’s not true,’ Bardas protested. ‘I may have made the odd professional foul, but I never ever cheated. More hassle than it’s worth, trying to get one past you. The tiniest least thing and you’d go running off to Father sobbing, “It’s not fair, it’s not fair.” And he’d always take your side against me.’

‘You think so? I reckoned it was generally the other way round.’

Gorgas lunged. It was a short, quick lunge, opportunist, made en passant as he recovered from the last parry. There wouldn’t have been anything Bardas could have done about it under any circumstances. He felt -

– He felt a slight vibration running through the cross, and opened his eyes sharply. Someone coming up the gallery, moving fast. Damn, he thought. However ready you think you are, it isn’t something you could ever prepare for.

He fished in the top of his boot for his knife, but it wasn’t there. He smiled. Three years in the mines and he’d never lost a knife before. Coincidence? And the rest.

He closed his eyes and concentrated. Whoever they were, they were making good speed up the gallery, trundling along on hands and knees as if they were in some sort of bizarre novelty race. It occurred to him that if they were coming up the tunnel simply in order to kill him, they were going about it in a decidedly clumsy way. No cavalry charges in the mines; if the job’s done properly, the first the dead man knows about it is the gratitude of his killer. Now then; if they weren’t coming for him, why would they be coming this way at all? If they were this shift’s relief, they wouldn’t be racing up the line as fast as they could go. Maybe, then, they weren’t hurrying towards him but away from something else – such as a raiding party, or a cave-in about to happen.

Be that as it may; they were on their way here, and when they found him they’d kill him. He felt for the nearest of his seven dead friends, found the man’s knife and took it for himself. Under normal circumstances, robbing the dead was slightly bad manners, but in this case he was confident they’d see their way to making an exception.

‘Look out!’ someone yelled – it was either Alexius or one of the seven dead men, he couldn’t tell which – just as the whole gallery jolted, as if it had been dropped. Dust filled his nose and mouth, as a second tremor jostled him on to his knees, and a third brought the roof down on top of him.

Camouflet, someone said. Big, big camouflet. We’ve undermined their gallery, hooray!

‘Wonderful,’ Bardas said aloud, and the falling dirt filled the space like an hourglass.