The Proof House

CHAPTER NINE

In the courtyard below the prefect’s office, a madman was reciting scripture. The words were right, as accurate as any scholar could wish, but the madman was howling them at the top of his voice, as if uttering curses. The prefect frowned, disturbed by the inconsistency; here was everything that was beautiful and good, unmarred by error or omission, and yet it was utterly wrong.

The district administrator paused in the middle of his summary, aware that his superior wasn’t paying attention. Being slightly deaf, he hadn’t found the distant noise intrusive, but now he could hear it too. The two men looked at each other.

‘Shall I send the clerk for the guard?’ the administrator asked.

The prefect shook his head. ‘He isn’t doing anything wrong,’ he replied.

The administrator raised an eyebrow. ‘Disturbing the peace,’ he said. ‘Loitering with intent. Blasphemy-’

‘I didn’t say he wasn’t breaking any laws,’ the prefect replied with a smile. ‘But it’s every man’s duty to preach the scriptures. It’s just a pity that he’s choosing to do it at the top of his voice.’

(But it wasn’t that, of course; it was the tone of voice that was so disturbing, the savage anger with which the fellow was reciting those calm, measured, impersonal statements of doctrine, those elegantly balanced maxims, so perfectly phrased that not one single word could be replaced by a synonym without radically altering the sense. It was like listening to a wolf howling Substantialist poetry.)

‘Sooner or later,’ the prefect went on, ‘someone else will call the guard, the wretched creature will be taken away and we’ll have some peace again. Until then, I shall pretend I can’t hear it. I’m sorry, you were saying-’

The administrator nodded. ‘The proposed alliance,’ he went on, ‘is of course out of the question; this man Gorgas Loredan is nothing but an adventurer, a small-scale warlord who’s set himself up in a backwater and is desperately trying to enlist powerful friends against the day when his subjects get tired of him and throw him out. Doing anything that would appear to recognise his regime would reflect very badly on us. Quite simply, we don’t do business with that class of person.’

‘Agreed,’ replied the prefect, trying to concentrate. ‘But there’s more to it, I can tell.’

The administrator nodded wearily. ‘Unfortunately,’ he went on, ‘the confounded man has had a quite extraordinary stroke of good luck. Two days ago, the small port that lies on his border – Tornoys, it’s called – was raided by a pirate ship. One ship, fifty or so men; they were after the dispatch clipper from Ap’ Escatoy, which they’d been stalking all the way up the coast until it was driven into Tornoys by a sudden storm on the previous day. They followed it in, got badly knocked about by the storm themselves, and spent the night riding it out before coming into harbour just after dawn. Now I’m not sure what happened after that, but Gorgas Loredan and his men arrived before they could do anything about the clipper and engaged them in battle; half of the pirates were killed, and Gorgas has the survivors locked up in a barn somewhere. He’s also holding on to the clipper, though he hasn’t given any reasons.’

The prefect was scowling. ‘It’s Hain Partek, isn’t it?’ he said.

The administrator nodded. ‘And Gorgas knows precisely who it is he’s got hold of,’ he went on. ‘Well, he’d have to be singularly ill-informed not to; after all, we’ve been offering large sums of money for him and posting his description up all over the province these past ten years; and of course it’s wonderful news that he’s been caught, I suppose. I just wish, though, that it had been somebody else and not this Gorgas person.’

‘Quite.’ The prefect leaned back in his chair. ‘Had we told him we weren’t interested in his alliance?’

‘Unfortunately, yes,’ the administrator said, picking up a small ivory figure from the desk, examining it briefly and putting it back. ‘The timing couldn’t have been worse. As soon as he got our response, he sat down and fired off a reply; most extraordinary letter I’ve read in a long time, a thoroughly bizarre mixture of obsequiousness and threats – you ought to read it yourself, if only for the entertainment value. My assessor reckons he’s off his head, and after reading this letter I’m inclined to agree with him. Apparently, when the letter telling him we didn’t want the alliance reached him, he was in a farmyard splitting wood.’

‘Splitting wood,’ the prefect repeated. ‘Why?’

‘I get the impression he likes splitting wood. Not per se; he enjoys making believe he’s a farmer. He comes from a farming family, apparently, though he had to leave home in something of a hurry. So far, the only possible explanation I’ve heard for what he’s done in the Mesoge is that it was the only way he could ever go home.’

‘He does sound deranged, I’ll admit.’ The prefect made a slight gesture with his hands. ‘Insanity isn’t necessarily an obstacle to success in his line of work, though,’ he observed. ‘Frequently, in fact, it’s an asset, if properly used. Has he said what he wants from us yet?’

The administrator shook his head. ‘All we’ve had is a terse little note saying he’s got Partek in custody and would like us to send someone to discuss matters with him. I imagine he’d far rather we made the opening bid; which is reasonable enough, I suppose, from his point of view. I mean, all he knows is what we’ve said openly, he’s got no way of knowing how important to us Partek really is.’ The administrator hesitated for a moment, and then went on. ‘To be honest,’ he said, ‘I’m not entirely sure myself. What’s the official line on that these days?’

The prefect sighed. ‘He’s important enough,’ he said. ‘Not as important as he was five years ago, but he’s still a damned nuisance; not because of anything he’s done or anything he’s capable of doing, it’s more the fact that he’s still out there, and we haven’t been able to do a damn thing about it.’ He frowned, and scratched his ear. ‘It’s amusing, really; the less he actually achieves, the more his legend grows. In some parts of the south-eastern region, they’re firmly convinced he’s in control of the western peninsula and he’s raising an army to march on the Homeland. No, we need to be able to point to his head nailed to a door in Ap’ Silas; if we could do that, it’d be a good day’s work.’

‘Which means,’ said the administrator, ‘we have to give Gorgas Loredan what he asks for?’

‘Not necessarily.’ The prefect paused for a moment. He couldn’t hear the madman any more; someone must have come and dealt with him. ‘There’s no reason why we should necessarily replace a big problem with a smaller one. Now then,’ he went on, ‘if I remember correctly, this Gorgas Loredan’s the brother of our own Bardas Loredan.’

‘The hero,’ replied the administrator with a grin. ‘That’s right. Extraordinary family; if only the Mesoge produced more men like that, it might be – well, interesting to have an alliance with them. They’re both barking mad, of course, but you can’t help but admire their vitality.’

‘I can,’ the prefect said, ‘when it causes me difficulties. Let’s see, then. We need Bardas Loredan to be the figurehead against the plainspeople, so presumably we can’t play rough with Gorgas Loredan, for fear of offending him-’

‘I don’t know about that,’ the administrator interrupted. ‘By all accounts, Bardas hates Gorgas like poison – there’s a really wonderful backstory to all that, by the way, remind me to tell you about it when we’ve got five minutes – so I wouldn’t worry too much about that. But Gorgas, apparently, dotes on Bardas-’

The prefect held up his hands. ‘This is all a bit much,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, please go on. I just find all this a trifle bewildering, that’s all.’

‘So do I,’ the administrator replied with a smile. ‘But you must admit, it’s rather more intriguing than the quarterly establishment returns.’

The heavy clouds that had been masking the sun lifted, and a blinding beam of amber sunlight dazzled the prefect for a moment. He shifted his chair a little to avoid it. ‘At my time of life I can manage quite well without being intrigued, so long as I don’t have to deal with messy little people living in obscure places,’ he said grimly. ‘On the other hand,’ he went on, lightening up a little, ‘I must confess, Bardas Loredan was something of a collector’s item. He obviously didn’t have a clue who he was talking to, which was really quite refreshing. Anyway, where were we?’

The prefect leaned back, his fingertips pressed against his lips. ‘We need Bardas because of Temrai, and now Gorgas has got Partek; but we don’t want to be seen to be friends with Gorgas, and Bardas won’t mind if we aren’t friends with Gorgas… What was that you said about the clipper?’ he added, leaning forward again. ‘He’s detaining it, you say?’

The administrator, who had been studying the floral designs carved along the edge of the desk, nodded. ‘And that’s awkward too,’ he said. ‘You see, there’s quite a lot in dispatches about the Temrai business; all the paperwork for the ships we’ve been chartering, letters of credit, signed agreements, draft schedules – put them together and you’d have a fairly clear picture of what we’re proposing to do, provided you had the wits to understand it all.’

‘Which Gorgas clearly does, even if they’re addled,’ the prefect said. ‘That’s awkward. I was considering rattling a sabre at him for detaining our ship, perhaps frightening him into giving us Partek that way. But that would only draw his attention to what he’s got hold of.’

The administrator pursed his lips. ‘I’d tend to look at it the other way round,’ he said. ‘How would it look to you if you were illegally detaining the provincial office’s dispatches courier, and they didn’t make an almighty fuss about it? In fact, I suspect that’s precisely why he’s doing it, to see how we react. Otherwise, he’s got no possible motive for pulling our tails in this way.’

‘That’s a very good point,’ the prefect conceded. ‘Oh, damn the man, he’s giving me a headache. At this precise moment, I think I could easily do without the vitality of the Loredan brothers, thank you very much.’

‘Ah.’ The administrator smiled. ‘That’s where we might be able to do something. I’m thinking about the Loredan sister.’

The prefect turned his head sharply. ‘Do you know, I’d forgotten all about her. Niessa Loredan, who ran the bank on Scona that so annoyed our friends in the Shastel Order.’

‘That’s the one,’ the administrator said. ‘Currently enjoying our hospitality, of course.’

‘That’s right. Now then, how do the brothers stand as far as she’s concerned? They either love her or hate her, I’m sure, but which is it?’

The administrator folded his hands neatly in his lap. ‘Gorgas loves her, I think,’ he said, ‘although she did rather leave him in the lurch at the fall of Scona when she skipped off with all the money and left him to do all the fighting. But I don’t think Gorgas holds that against her; he’s very forgiving when it comes to family.’

The prefect raised an eyebrow but didn’t take the point. ‘And Bardas? He loves her too?’

‘I don’t think so,’ the administrator replied. ‘I don’t think he hates her, either. But her daughter has made a public vow to kill him, if that has any bearing on matters.’

‘Oh, for pity’s sake.’ The prefect shook his head. ‘Never mind, I expect it’s all in the files somewhere. In fact, I must have read about it all before I interviewed the man. So, I take it you’ve got something in mind.’

Beautiful, though rare, are the smiles of the Children of Heaven. ‘Not really,’ the administrator said. ‘Little more than a notion that she might come in handy, if the situation looks like getting out of hand. But it’d be as well to secure her – both of them, actually, the daughter as well as the mother. We’ll hold them as illegal aliens and leave it at that for now.’

The prefect stood up and walked to the window, under which grew a fine old fig tree. From the window he could almost but not quite reach the topmost fig. ‘For now, I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘getting hold of Partek must have priority. If I lose him now, I’ll have some difficult questions to answer. Do what you can; obviously I’d prefer to avoid any kind of alliance with that man, but I’m sure you can find some form of words that’ll satisfy him and not commit us to anything. Next priority is the Perimadeia business, though it’s not in the same league as Partek, so be a bit careful where Bardas Loredan is concerned. Otherwise, I’m quite happy for you to use your own judgement.’ He turned away from the window, so that his face was in shadow, and frowned. ‘There’s always a danger when we start looking at these sort of people on an individual level of losing our sense of proportion. Aside from Partek, none of the individuals here is even remotely significant at a policy level. It’s only when we come down to strategic – lower than that, even; tactical – that they begin to look important.’ He shrugged and sat down on the corner of his desk. ‘I mean to say,’ he went on, ‘if you come to the conclusion that the best way to get hold of Partek is to take two divisions and some of these ships we’ve been chartering and annex the Mesoge, then by all means do it. I’m not suggesting you should,’ he added, before the administrator could say anything, ‘I’m just pointing out the need to focus on journey’s end, not the scenery along the way. The same goes for Shastel, or any of these petty little kingdoms. If they’ve got to go, they’ve got to go. All we’re concerned about is cost-efficiency and economy of effort.’

The administrator stood up to leave. ‘A valid point,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring in Partek, have no fears on that score. But you won’t object if I try to do it neatly and elegantly, will you? After all,’ he added with a grin, ‘it doesn’t take much imagination to send in an army. It’s sending in an army under budget that gets you noticed by the provincial office.’

‘This is appalling,’ muttered Eseutz Mesatges, easing her shoulder-strap where it was biting into the side of her neck. ‘All these people wanting to buy, and nothing to sell to them.’

Another quiet day on the Span. Usually it took half an hour to thread one’s way the hundred or so yards across the bridge; today it had taken a few minutes. Hido Glaia, desperate for three bales of green velvet to make up an order he’d assured the customer he’d dispatched a week ago, nodded sadly. ‘If this incredible opportunity of a lifetime goes on much longer,’ he said, ‘it’ll ruin us all. That’s if we don’t all die of boredom first.’ He picked up a sample of cloth, the same piece he’d examined and rejected yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. It was the only green velvet on the Island. ‘I’ll be so desperate I’ll come back for this tomorrow,’ he said, ‘and by then someone’ll have bought it. Come on, let’s have a drink. Assuming there’s still some booze left on this miserable rock.’

In the Golden Palace, they found Venart Auzeil and Tamin Votz, sitting gloomily over a half-empty jug. As soon as they walked in, Venart looked up hopefully.

‘Hido,’ he said, ‘my axe-handles. Have you got them for me?’

Hido pulled out a chair and sat in it, stifling a yawn. ‘Oh, come on,’ he said, ‘what do you take me for, the tooth fairy? Or do you think I was down on the beach at first light, whittling them out of driftwood?’

‘I take it that means you haven’t,’ Venart replied miserably. ‘Which means I’ve now got to go to the Doce brothers and try and explain to them-’

‘That my ship and your ship and everybody else’s ship is tied up at the quay,’ Hido interrupted, ‘along with all of theirs. I think they probably already know. Relax, Ven, the Doce boys know the score, you’re all right. You’re not the one with a ferocious Colleon fabrics cartel breathing down your neck and threatening you with penalty clauses. Talking of which,’ he added, ‘you wouldn’t happen to have such a thing as three bales of green velvet, Island standard fine?’

Venart frowned. ‘Not me, no,’ he said, ‘but you might try talking to Triz. I know she bought a whole load of stuff a few months back – you know, when they sold up Remvaut Jors. I have an idea there was some green velvet in with it, though whether-’

‘God bless you,’ Hido said, jumping up. ‘You wouldn’t happen to know how much she paid for it, would you?’

‘Hido! She’s my sister!’

‘Can’t blame a man for trying. Thank you.’

He bustled away. Eseutz emptied his cup into hers. ‘Well, you never know,’ she explained, as Venart looked at her. ‘They may be rationing the stuff tomorrow, if things go on like this.’

Tamin Votz laughed. ‘What I don’t understand is,’ he said, ‘I know why none of our ships are coming in or out, but why aren’t any foreign ships coming here? Do you think the Empire’s chartered them too?’

‘It’s possible,’ Venart said. ‘Well, it is,’ he added defensively as Eseutz giggled. ‘Gods alone know how big this army of theirs is going to be, and it goes without saying they’ve got the money.’

‘Really?’ Tamin Votz smiled as he emptied the last few drops from the jug into his cup. ‘You know, the thing that’s come out of all this that I find most interesting is how little we actually know about the Empire. Oh, we think we know, but that’s not the same thing at all. It’s like looking at the sky. I mean, we all see it every day, it’s just there. But we don’t know how it works, or what it’s really for, or even what it actually is. Same with the Empire, if you ask me.’

Eseutz had found a discarded bowl of olives on a neighbouring table. ‘I was reading a book,’ she said with her mouth full, ‘and it said the sky’s really just this enormous piece of blue cloth, and the stars are little holes where the light comes through. And the rain, too, although that bit strikes me as rather far-fetched. Because if that was the case, every time it rains you’d expect there to be dirty great big puddles right under the Pole Star. I wonder if anybody’s actually checked to see if they line up. The rain, I mean, and the stars.’

Tamin raised an eyebrow. ‘I didn’t know you read books, Eseutz,’ he said. ‘Come wrapped round something, did it?’

‘Oh, very funny,’ Eseutz replied, spitting out an olive stone. ‘I’ll have you know I’ve got a whole box of books in my warehouse. This big, it is. And even now I can’t shift them,’ she added wistfully. ‘Hey, Ven, I don’t suppose you’d be interested-’

‘No.’ Venart swirled the last of his wine round the bottom of his cup. ‘But I suppose you’re right,’ he went on. ‘No, not you, him. About the Empire. I haven’t got a clue how big it is. I just know it’s – well, big.’

‘It’s that all right,’ Tamin said. ‘Too big, if you ask me. I’ve been hearing stories about a civil war, even.’

‘Really?’ Eseutz lifted her head. ‘Oh, wait. Do you mean the Partek rumours? Because I happen to know for a fact…’

Tamin shook his head. ‘I mean a real civil war,’ he said, ‘not just random acts of meaningless violence by a bunch of pirates. No, this is supposed to be a show-down between the Imperial family and some warlord or other, far away to the south-east. The whole thing’s probably been exaggerated way out of proportion, but I do believe there’s at least a small grain of truth in it. And that’s my point, you see,’ he went on. ‘I simply don’t know how these things work. If there’s a civil war, a real one, will they suddenly put everything else on hold and hurry back home to take part? Or do things like that happen every day?’

Venart shrugged. ‘Does it matter?’ he asked. ‘One thing we can all be sure of, the Empire’s never bothered us. And I don’t believe it ever will.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Tamin enquired. ‘What makes you so sure?’

‘Well,’ Venart said, ‘for one thing they don’t have a fleet, and this is an island after all. Or had you always assumed we were on a mountaintop and it’d been raining a lot?’

‘They do have a fleet, though,’ Eseutz put in. ‘Ours.’

‘All right, but they’re hardly likely to use our own fleet against us.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. More to the point, they don’t need a fleet to use against us if ours is out of the running.’

‘And how are they going to get here without any ships? Walk?’ Venart shook his head. ‘The point is, I can’t see the Empire ever attacking us. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not how they go about things.’

‘As far as you know. And, as I think we’ve all agreed, we know spit about the Empire.’

Venart sighed patiently. ‘They’re only interested in securing their borders,’ he said. ‘We’re in the middle of the sea. End of story.’

‘Maybe you’re right,’ Tamin said. ‘I just feel we ought to know more about them, that’s all. For example, the amount of business we do with them is pretty well negligible – and that does concern us all right. We could be missing out on some amazing opportunities.’

Venart scratched his ear. ‘My guess is, they don’t need anything we sell. They can get everything they want from inside the Empire. And I’m not sure I’d be all that keen to trade with them anyway. I don’t know what it is, but they give me the creeps.’

‘Ah,’ Tamin said, ‘that’s more like it. We don’t do business with them because we’re afraid of them. Or we just don’t like them, whatever. That’s a pretty juvenile attitude for a trading nation, don’t you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ Venart replied. ‘Maybe it’s just me. But they’re so big, and-’

‘Scary?’

Venart nodded. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘scary, yes. I feel on edge dealing with them. I can’t help it, it’s just the way I feel.’

‘Because you don’t know about them,’ Tamin said, smiling. ‘I’m sure if you understood them better, you wouldn’t be so apprehensive.’

‘Quite,’ muttered Eseutz. ‘I bet they’re really sweet once you get to know them.’

Gannadius?

Gannadius sat up. It was dark; he was faintly aware of Theudas, stirring in his sleep in the bed next to him. Someone had called his name.

Gannadius. It’s me.

‘Oh,’ he said aloud; then he closed his eyes.

He was back in the City (oh, not again), in the ropewalks this time; on either side of the enormously wide street, houses and warehouses were burning, brightly enough for him to be able to see as if it was daylight. He was standing in the middle of the road, which was fortunate; all the fighting and killing was taking place on the edges, under the eaves of the burning buildings.

‘Sorry,’ Alexius was saying. ‘I don’t like it here much, either; it’s just where I happened to be.’

Gannadius shivered; he couldn’t feel the heat from the fire all around him, although he knew he ought to. ‘Charming place you’ve got here,’ he said. ‘Actually, I haven’t been here before, I don’t think. And I’ve been to most parts of the Fall at one time or another.’

Alexius pointed, though Gannadius couldn’t quite make out what he was supposed to be looking at. ‘Over there,’ Alexius was saying. ‘See that man there, the plainsman with the long hair? Any moment now the roof of that shed’s going to slide off, and he’ll be trapped under it and killed. That’s the point of all this, why it’s important. There it goes, look,’ he added, as a small building collapsed in a shower of sparks, and someone Gannadius couldn’t see screamed. ‘It took me ages to work out what was important about this, but finally I tracked it down. If he’d lived, he’d have taken part in an archery contest; he’d have shot an arrow that bounced off the edge of the target frame – real million-to-one stuff – and hit Temrai’s wife in the eye. Well, not his wife then, and she never would have been his wife; instead he’d have married someone else, and things would have been a whole lot different.’

‘I see,’ Gannadius said, inaccurately. ‘And that’s what you wanted to tell me, was it?’

Alexius shook his head. ‘Good gods, no. Like I said, this is just where I’ve been spending time lately. No, it’s much more important – for you, that is. I need to warn you-’

‘Excuse me,’ Gannadius said. He’d just noticed that he’d trodden on a dying man. He knew, of course, that there was nothing he could do to help, since all this had already happened and besides, he wasn’t really there. But it went against the grain just to walk on.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, kneeling down, but the man didn’t show any signs of having heard him. His wounds were spectacular – a deep slicing cut running diagonally from the junction of the neck and shoulders, following the line of the collar-bone, and a massive stab-wound, as broad as Gannadius’ hand, just under the arch of the ribs.

‘Halberd wounds,’ Alexius remarked, above him and out of sight.

‘Halberds? I didn’t know the plainsmen used them.’

‘They don’t,’ Alexius replied; and when Gannadius looked up, he realised that he wasn’t in Perimadeia any more. ‘Scona?’ he asked.

‘That’s right,’ Alexius confirmed. ‘What you’re seeing is the sack of Scona by the Shastel Order.’

Gannadius frowned. Behind him, though he couldn’t see it, all the warehouses that lined the Strangers’ Quay were on fire, and people were fighting each other to get to the head of the line to board ships that had already left, and been sunk in the harbour by the catapults mounted on the decks of the Shastel barges. ‘But that never happened,’ he said.

‘Strictly speaking, you’re right,’ Alexius said. ‘Bardas Loredan prevented it; he put Gorgas out of action, making him give up the war, so there never was a siege, or a sack. Nevertheless, this is here. Ask your friend there if you don’t believe me.’

‘You’re saying that this is what should have happened. ’

‘Good gods, no. You’ve been reading too much Tryphaenus. I never could see any sense in dragging value judgements into the study of the Principle. It’s like saying the sun rises in the east because it’s a better neighbourhood. All I’m saying is, this happened too. In a sense.’

Gannadius stood up. ‘You’ve lost me,’ he said. ‘And please, don’t try to explain. My thirst for pure knowledge isn’t what it was, I’m afraid. What were you about to say? About a warning?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Alexius pointed. ‘There, look.’

Somehow, while Gannadius wasn’t looking, Scona had gone. Instead, they were standing in the middle of what Gannadius assumed was a plains encampment; a large one, with tents and temporary stockades all around them in every direction. Someone was attacking it; many of the tents were on fire, and there were horsemen riding up and down between the rows, setting light to the waxed felt or hacking at random at the people trying to slip past. Directly ahead, Gannadius saw a wagon. The felt cover had almost burned away, leaving the hoops sticking up like ribs, and underneath it, Gannadius could see the face of a boy peeping out between the spokes of the offside front wheel at a horseman, who was looking back at him. Because of the angle, and because the horseman’s visor was down, Gannadius couldn’t see his face…

‘Who’s that?’ he asked, redundantly.

‘Guess.’

‘I see,’ Gannadius said. A man was trying to sneak past the horseman, squeezing himself against the side of a row of barrels. The horseman caught sight of him and leaned forward in the saddle, bending from the waist. His blow landed on the flat top of the man’s head. ‘So this is how it all started, I suppose.’

Alexius smiled. ‘There’s more to it than that, I’m afraid. You’re assuming that this is one of Maxen’s pre-emptive raids against the tribes, the one in which young Temrai saw his family killed. Yes?’

Gannadius nodded. ‘Isn’t that him under the cart?’ he said.

‘Of course. But,’ Alexius went on, ‘this is also what’s going to happen. Observe the armour and kit the horsemen are wearing.’›

Gannadius looked annoyed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I’m not what you’d call a military buff. What’s so special about the armour?’

‘It means they’re Imperial heavy cavalry,’ Alexius said. ‘What you’re watching is the annexation of what used to be Perimadeia by the provincial office. And yes, the man on the horse over there is Bardas Loredan; and yes, the boy under the cart is King Temrai. Of course, boy is stretching it a bit now, he must be twenty-four or five by now; but he looks young for his age, especially when he’s terrified. And the cart helps, too, putting him in shadow.’

Gannadius looked round again. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘if that’s so, how come I can’t see the City? Or the ruins, at least.’

Alexius smiled. ‘King Temrai decided it would be suicide to stay put and fight the Empire,’ he said, ‘particularly when he heard who was nominally in charge of the army. If they want Perimadeia, he said, they can have it; he ordered his people to pack up their things and led them back to the plains, where they’d come from. But the provincial office wasn’t impressed. If they can go away, they argued, they can also come back. Best to deal with them now. So they sent Bardas and the army out into the plains, relying on Bardas’ local knowledge and long experience. Sure enough, he led them to where he reckoned the tribes would set up camp as soon as they felt they were out of danger and could relax. There was a bloody massacre – exhibit one – and thousands of the plainspeople were killed. Thousands weren’t, however. So Bardas spent the rest of his life hunting them, until he died of pneumonia and his second in command – a man called Theudas Morosin, if that rings any bells with you – led the army home. By then, the Empire had rebuilt Perimadeia, and Morosin settled down there, although he didn’t have much of a life, poor fellow. Then one day the tribes suddenly appeared on the border, led by a strong young king who’d been no more than a boy on the day Bardas burned the camp and killed his family. He knew there’d never be peace so long as the City stood. Fortuitously he was some kind of military genius; Theudas Morosin, hastily recalled and put in charge of the defences, did an outstanding job in the face of feckless-ness and apathy unusual even by Imperial standards, but the City fell, and Theudas was one of only a handful of survivors…’

Gannadius was clapping his hands, slowly. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘A splendidly neat and well-crafted piece of work. I don’t believe a word of it.’

‘You don’t?’ Alexius raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, come on, Gannadius, since when were you so critical? Look.’ He pointed, and Gannadius was back where he’d started, in the burning ropewalks of Perimadeia; only this time he could see himself, a very old man with a dazed, sleepy expression on his face, being hustled down the street by-

‘Theudas Morosin,’ he said, in the tone of voice of a conjuror’s stooge who’s just had a bunch of roses pulled out of his ear. ‘And yes, I’ll grant you, he looks just like Bardas in all that gear.’

‘It’s even the same sword,’ Alexius said. ‘The Guelan broadsword Gorgas gave Bardas the day before the sack. Bardas gave it to Athli Zeuxis to keep for him. Athli gave it to Theudas when Bardas died. Here it is again – they really made them to last in those days. It’s that kind of attention to detail that really impresses people.’

Gannadius closed his eyes; which was a mistake, because now he was in the mines under Ap’ Escatoy, undoubtedly his least favourite hallucination of all-

‘Not a hallucination,’ Alexius corrected him. ‘Not an optical illusion, trick done with mirrors, anything like that, as you know perfectly well. Whatever you see is real; the only thing here that isn’t real is you.’

Gannadius opened his mouth to object, then hesitated for a moment. ‘That sack of Scona we saw,’ he said. ‘That’s in the future too, isn’t it?’

‘Ah!’ Alexius beamed. ‘Eventually, after all this time, you’ve got there. I knew you would. Exactly so; it hasn’t happened yet. Just because you haven’t read the last page of a book, it doesn’t follow that the story hasn’t been written.’

‘Actually,’ Gannadius confessed, ‘I always read the ending first. I find it helps me to appreciate the nuances. You’re saying that just because none of this has happened here yet, it’s already happened -’ He paused, frowning. ‘Somewhere else?’

Alexius leaned his back against the panel wall of the gallery. He smelt of coriander. ‘Now you’re getting somewhere,’ he said. ‘Now, at long last, you’re beginning to see how simple the Principle really is. I can’t really blame you for not understanding before, I suppose. It’s taken me this long to work it out for myself, and you simply won’t believe the trouble I’ve had to go to… You remember how we used to speculate whether we could find a way to use the Principle to see into the future? We should have realised, only we were too criminally stupid to understand the painfully obvious – we can see the future because it’s all already happened.’

‘You’ve lost me again,’ said Gannadius sadly.

‘Oh, for pity’s sake.’ Gannadius could feel the whole gallery shaking, and the air was thick with loosened dust. ‘We can watch Theudas killing the tribes because we can watch Bardas doing the exact same thing. We can watch the fall of Imperial Perimadeia because we’ve already seen Perimadeia fall. We can see everything that way, because it’s all the same event. We can even see our own deaths, if we’re that morbidly inclined. Of course, it’s customary to die first…’

The roof collapsed, filling the gallery with dirt. It was like being inside an hourglass as it’s turned upside down. Gannadius choked, felt a timber crash into the side of his head and opened his eyes.

‘Uncle?’

‘Theudas,’ he said. ‘What’s going on? Where are we?’

‘You were having a nightmare,’ Theudas said, bringing the lamp close. ‘It’s all right. We’re with the plainspeople, remember? Temrai’s summoned us, and he’s going to send us home.’

Gannadius sat up, shaking his head. ‘He was wrong,’ he said. ‘You can change it, if you find the right place and sort of push. We did it ourselves, with Bardas and that girl.’ He looked up at Theudas’ face, as if examining whether it was genuine. ‘Coriander,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t that mean the enemy?’

Theudas put down the lamp. ‘Stay still,’ he said, ‘I’m going to see if I can find that lady doctor. You’ll be just fine, you’ll see.’

Gannadius sighed. He’d woken up with a splitting headache. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘it was just some leftovers from the dream I was having, I haven’t gone mad. Sorry, did I frighten you?’

Cautiously, as if afraid of an ambush, Theudas came back. ‘It was another one of those dreams, was it?’ he said. ‘I thought the silverwort tea had sorted them out.’

‘Not really,’ Gannadius said. ‘But it tasted so disgusting I stopped telling you about them, so you wouldn’t make me drink it any more.’ He breathed out and lay back on the bed. ‘Now that I think of it, I seem to remember reading somewhere that silverwort’s a slow poison. Well, it’s bad for you, at any rate. Does things to your kidneys.’

Theudas scowled. ‘Go back to sleep,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a long day tomorrow, and you need your rest. In fact, I’m going to have a word with the drover; you can’t be expected to rattle along in a cart all day at your age.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t fret about it.’ Gannadius smiled bleakly. ‘I happen to know that I survived to a ripe old age, all my hair fell out and half my teeth as well. So did you; survive, I mean. Probably you died of pneumonia, but don’t hold me to that; I’m extrapolating from associated data.’

‘Uncle-’

‘I know, I’m talking crazy again. I’ll stop.’ Gannadius yawned conscientiously and turned over, his eyes still open. ‘Put out the lamp,’ he said, ‘I promise I’ll try to get some sleep.’

Theudas sighed. ‘I worry about you, I really do,’ he said.

‘So do I,’ Gannadius answered, trying to sound drowsy. ‘So do I.’

‘You’re cured then, are you?’

Bardas smiled. ‘Apparently,’ he replied. ‘At least, I’m no crazier than I was to start with. Also, I was making the infirmary look untidy, so they threw me out.’

Anax, the ancient Son of Heaven who ran the proof house, nodded sagely. ‘It’s not the sort of place you’d want to hang about in,’ he said. ‘What they’re best at is sawing off limbs – they make a wonderfully neat job of it, probably because the surgeon used to be the foreman of the joinery shop, until he got too much seniority and had to be promoted. You should see some of the false legs he’s fitted; they turn them out of whalebone on the big pole lathe they’ve got down there. Works of art, some of them.’

‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ Bardas replied.

While Bardas packed his few belongings into a kitbag, Anax sat perched on the end of the bed, reminding Bardas of a pixie in a story he’d heard when he was very young. To the best of his recollection, the pixie occupied its time by making marvellously detailed and complicated lifesize mechanical dolls that were well nigh indistinguishable from real boys and girls, and substituting them for the children he stole from poor families in the dead of night. The story had horrified him so much that he hadn’t slept for weeks afterwards, and (rather illogically) had got into the habit of tapping his arms and legs to make sure they weren’t made of metal.

‘So you’re off, then,’ Anax said, after he’d been silent for a while.

‘Apparently,’ Bardas replied. ‘It’s a shame, really. I was getting used to being here.’

Anax smiled. ‘Getting used to,’ he said. ‘That’s about the furthest anyone could ever go, unless of course they happened to love bashing sheet metal with hammers. Don’t laugh, some people do. Bollo here, for instance; don’t you, Bollo?’

Anax’s enormous young assistant pulled a face. Bardas laughed.

‘Don’t let him fool you,’ Anax went on. ‘Secretly he loves his work. When he was a child, he was always getting yelled at for breaking things – and something that size in a small peasant cottage is bound to break something every now and again, it’s inevitable. Here, he can break things all day long and get paid money for it.’ Anax looked down at his fingers, then up again. ‘If you’re going to the wars, what are you going to do for equipment? You don’t seem to have much kit of your own.’

Bardas shrugged. ‘They’ll issue me with some, I suppose,’ he replied. ‘At least, I assume-’

‘Seems a bit long-winded,’ Anax interruped. ‘After all, we make the stuff here. Why take pot luck with some provincial quartermaster’s clerk when you can have the pick of the production run? Better still,’ he added, hopping down from the bed, ‘you could have some made bespoke. At least that way you’d know it was proof.’

‘I haven’t really given it much thought,’ Bardas replied, holding a shirt against his chest to fold it. ‘From what they’ve told me, my main function’s going to be to stand up on a high point where Temrai can see me and look terrifying. Which’ll suit me fine,’ he added. ‘Gods know, I’m in no hurry to get involved in any fighting.’

Anax sighed. ‘He hasn’t given it much thought,’ he repeated. ‘Deputy inspector of the proof house, or whatever he calls himself, and he’s prepared to make do with any old piece of junk off the shelves in the QM stores. We can’t have that, can we, Bollo? Imagine how it’d reflect on us if he got himself killed, or lost an arm. Some people just don’t think, is their trouble.’

‘All right,’ Bardas replied, smiling. ‘You choose some for me, then I’ll know who to blame.’

‘We’ll do better than that,’ Anax replied. ‘We’ll make it for you, ourselves.’

Bardas raised an eyebrow. ‘I thought you only smashed it up,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know you could make the stuff too.’

Anax made a show of looking affronted. ‘Do you mind?’ he said. ‘I was a tin-basher for twenty years.’

‘Until you got too much seniority and they had to promote you?’

Anax slapped him on the back. ‘It’s a pity, you know,’ he said. ‘The man’s just starting to get the hang of how this place works, and he’s getting posted. It’s a waste, if you ask me.’

Before Bardas could object, Anax had marched out of the room. He walked so fast that Bardas had trouble keeping up with him, especially in the maze of corridors and galleries under the main shop, which was where he was headed. Bollo lumbered along some way behind; he wasn’t built for speed or agility, and he knew the way already.

‘Good,’ Anax said, peering in through a doorway, ‘nobody’s found it yet. One of these days I’ll come down here and it’ll be full of equipment and people working, and that’ll be my private workshop gone. Where’s Bollo with the lamp? We need to get a fire going so we can see what we’re about.’

When there was light, Bardas was able to look round. In the middle of the floor stood an anvil, the full-sized three-hundredweight type, bolted to a massive section of oak beam to dampen the shock of the blows. Next to it on the beam was a swage block, a large square of heavy duty iron into which were cut holes and grooves and cups of various sizes and profiles, half-round and square and three-square; into these recesses the sheet metal could be hammered, to mould a variety of shapes, such as flutes and raised edges. At the end of the beam a cup-shaped hole had been chiselled out, about half a thumb’s length deep at its deepest point (it was shaped rather like a scallop shell, sloping gently at one end, steeply at the other). Bardas noticed that the fibres of the wood had been hammered smooth, hard and shiny.

‘Dishing stump,’ Anax explained. ‘For dishing and hollowing. And that’s the folder,’ he went on, pointing to a contraption mounted on a stout workbench at the far end of the room, ‘and next to that’s the rollers and the shear. All there is to it, really. Now then, let’s see what we’ve got behind here.’ He knelt down and reached behind the work-bench. ‘Unless somebody’s been in here and found it, we should have – yes, here we are.’ He hauled out a sheet of steel, dull brown under an even layer of rust. ‘I put this aside – what, fifteen years ago it must be, just in case I ever wanted to make some good stuff. I watched it being drawn down out of a single bloom of proper Colleon iron – lovely clean material, not full of bits of grit and rubbish like the garbage we use for work. There’s half a hundredweight here, plenty to be going on with if we cut neatly.’ He bit his lip, then went on, ‘You know, this probably sounds silly to you, but I knew when I saw it that I’d find a use for it some day.’

Bardas felt vaguely uneasy about this. ‘Are you sure you can spare it?’ he asked. ‘I mean, if it’s such good material-’

‘That’s all right,’ Anax replied with a slightly cockeyed grin. ‘So long as it’s going to someone who’ll make proper use of it.’

‘I’m not sure I like the sound of that,’ Bardas said.

From a shallow box in the corner Anax produced a set of patterns cut out of thin wood. ‘Breastplate,’ he said, handing up the largest of them. ‘Backplate, gorget, vambraces, helmet panel, cheekpieces, neckguard – damn it to hell, where’s the neckguard? Ah, got it. All seems to be here; cuisses, greaves, cops, rerebraces – are we going to bother with sabatons? No, I don’t think so, you’ll hardly be able to move as it is. Taces?’

‘What’s a tace?’ Bardas asked.

‘All right, no taces. That’ll do. Bollo, get the sheet up on the bench so I can start marking out.’

Carefully, while Bollo held the sheet still, Anax drew round the patterns with chalk. ‘It’s just as well for you that you’re a decent height,’ he said. ‘I cut these patterns for us – the Sons of Heaven, I mean. Most of you outlanders are funny little short people.’

‘Like you,’ Bardas pointed out.

‘Precisely,’ Anax agreed. ‘But then, I’m different. Luckily for you. All you’d ever get free from the rest of us’d be your three days’ rations. Keep the damn sheet still, Bollo, you’re wobbling it about.’

It took a long time to mark the patterns out, and longer still to cut out the sections on the shear. Bollo cut the straight lines, pulling down the long lever effortlessly, his mind obviously elsewhere; Anax cut the curves, something which Bardas would have sworn was impossible to do, since the shear was nothing more than a giant version of a pair of snips, one jaw bolted to the bench, the other fitted with a three-foot handle. ‘You’re worried,’ Anax said between grunts of effort, ‘that I can cut this stuff like paper. You think it must be too thin to be any good. Well, all I can say to you is, have faith.’

‘I wasn’t worried, actually,’ Bardas said, but Anax didn’t seem to have heard, because he went on, ‘The point is, steel is wonderful stuff. I can cut it and bend it and shape it like it was parchment or clay; and then when I’ve finished with it, Bollo and his biggest big hammer won’t be able to make so much as a dent in it. And you know what the secret is? Stress,’ he went on, before Bardas could answer. ‘A bit of stress, a bit of tension, maybe just a little torture even, and suddenly you’ve got good armour, the genuine proof. Ouch,’ he added, as he cut his finger on a sharp sliver of swarf. ‘Serves me right, I wasn’t thinking about what I’m doing.’ A drop of blood plopped like a single raindrop on to the surface of the section he was cutting out and stood proud, like the head of a rivet.

‘Stress,’ Anax repeated, putting a steel plate into the folder. It was an odd-looking thing – two square frames, like window-sashes, one fixed, the other pivoting at right angles. Anax trapped the plate between the two frames and pushed down on the pivoting arm, neatly folding the plate down the middle like a sheet of card. Next he transferred it into the roller, which reminded Bardas of the big iron mangle they used in the laundry round the corner from his apartment in the island-block in Perimadeia. Anax adjusted a setscrew to allow a little play between the rollers, then turned the handle with a sharp, jerking motion and the sheet fed through, coming out the other side with a pronounced curve; the right-angled edge that the folder had put in had become an arched rib, running up the centre-line of the sheet. ‘Stress,’ Anax said again. ‘This bit here,’ he went on, running a finger along the rib, ‘is stressed outwards, like an arch; bash on it from the outside and you’ll have a devil of a job to move it. So it becomes your first line of defence, see; it follows the line of your leg-bone up the piece, and no matter how hard you get clobbered, that force won’t come through and smash your leg. You’ll thank me for that when someone feints high and then sweeps low across your shins.’

Bardas smiled politely. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘That’s a leg-guard, is it?’

‘Greave,’ Anax corrected him, ‘don’t show your ignorance. It covers you from the knee down to the ankle.’ He was holding the piece up between his hands, squeezing the edges gently together, lifting it up so he could see along it, pulling it apart a little, repeating the process. ‘Just adjusting it to fit,’ he went on, ‘not too tight and not too loose. It doesn’t look it, but you’re watching pure skill here.’

‘I’m sure,’ Bardas said.

When he was finally satisfied (Bardas couldn’t tell the difference from when he’d started) Anax went over to the anvil and picked up a hide mallet. Propping the piece at an angle against the horn, he tapped and pecked at the edge, raising and curling it around the radius to form a lip. The hand holding the mallet rose and fell in a quick, impersonal rhythm; with the other hand he fed the piece along, making sure that the blows fell evenly spaced. ‘More stress,’ he explained, a little breathlessly. ‘Once the lip’s curled, you can’t just go bending it between your hands like I’ve just been doing; it’s stiff and inflexible, like provincial office regulations. There,’ he added, as he finished drawing the lip round, ‘we’ll call that done and do another one, while we still remember how. Planishing can wait till we’ve finished.

‘Hollowing, now.’ Anax was making cops, the cup-shaped pieces that covered the knees and elbows. ‘Hollowing’s where you really put in the stress.’ He was standing in front of the dishing stump, holding the truncated-diamond-shaped section over the scooped-out hole at an angle so that the middle of the plate was directly above the deepest part. ‘But you’ve got to understand stress really well to do this,’ he went on, ‘or you’ll ruin everything.’ With the edge of the mallet-head he started to peck at the plate, pinching it between the mallet and the wood. ‘Bash it too hard in the middle and you’ll make it thin, you’ll squeeze the metal out of it, like wringing out a wet cloth. Bad stress, that; too much, too soon. So instead you come at it gently, starting on the edge of where you want the hollow to be, and you work in from the edge to the centre – that way, you’re squeezing thickness out of the sides into the top of the dome, where you need it most.’

He stopped, wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist and grinned. ‘Sneaky, I call it,’ he said. ‘But nobody ever said this business was fair.’ His right hand rose and fell quickly and precisely, so that the hammer dropped in its own weight and bounced itself back up off the metal – minimal effort, the effect being achieved by accuracy and persistence, the sheer number of precisely aimed blows. ‘As well as stress,’ he went on, ‘there’s compression, you’re crushing the inside up tighter than the outside, making more stress; and stress is strength, to all intents and purposes. It’s what we call work-hardening, and it’s a wonderful thing, except when you overdo it. You want to remember that, my friend; stress on the inside is strength on the outside, and hardness comes from getting bashed a lot. Understand that, and you’re pretty much there.’

The orange light of the fire rolled in the steel-burnished brightness of the plate, like the last of the wine in the bottom of a silver cup. ‘I think I see what you’re getting at,’ Bardas replied. ‘But doesn’t bashing it sometimes make it weak?’

‘Ah.’ Anax nodded his head. ‘That’s something different. That’s fatigue. That’s when you’ve stressed it so many times that it can’t take any more. Bad stress. Or there’s brittle; brittle is when you make it so hard it’s got no give. You make something too hard and when you drop it, the damn thing shatters like glass. Very bad stress. You don’t want to worry about that; we take stuff like that out in proof. That’s what proof’s for.’

When he’d finished, the piece of sheet had gone from flat to perfectly domed, without any flat spots or wrinkles. ‘Got to be smooth,’ he said. ‘Unless you get it smooth, you’ll have weak spots. That’s why you’ve got to bash every last bit the same.’ He held the cop up, to see if any flaws caught the light. ‘Bashing gives shape,’ he said. ‘Shape is strength, too. Look; that’s the shape it wants to be. The God of our forefathers could jump up and down on that all day in heavy boots and he’d never so much as mark it.’

Bollo was feeding the biggest section through the rollers, applying so much force that the handle flexed. ‘Memory,’ Anax went on, ‘that’s how you achieve stress. Give the metal a memory, a shape it’ll return to when something tries to distort it; then, when it flexes, it’ll try to get back to that shape, which is what gives it the strength to resist. Memory is stress, stress is strength. It really is remarkably straightforward once you understand the basics.’

‘The Sons of Heaven,’ Bardas asked, as Anax carefully bent a curve into the breastplate blank, holding it by the edges and pressing down the middle on to the horn of the anvil. Bollo had already folded in a ridge up the middle line and rolled it into its basic shape; Anax was adjusting it, a series of careful, controlled distortions. ‘I’ll be straight with you, I’ve never really managed to figure them out. You don’t mind me asking, do you?’

Anax looked up at him and flashed him a rather terrifying smile; a controlled baring of the teeth. ‘You’re asking me,’ he said. ‘I suppose that’s a compliment, by your standards. You said to yourself, the Sons of Heaven are bastards, but he’s not like them, he’s almost normal.’ Anax applied pressure and the metal obeyed him. ‘Which only goes to show, you don’t know spit about the Sons of Heaven. Nobody knows anything about us,’ he said, pressing a little more, ‘except us; and we’re not telling.’

‘I see,’ Bardas replied. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be offensive.’

‘Nothing offensive about ignorance,’ Anax replied pleasantly. ‘Not to an enlightened mind, that is; and we’re enlightened, you see, that’s what gives us our edge. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll give you a few hints. Armour for the soul, that’s what inside information is.’

‘Thank you,’ said Bardas gravely.

‘The Sons of Heaven -’ Anax was hammering a lip around the edges of the breastplate; he raised his voice a little and Bardas could hear him clearly, in spite of the shrill, crisp noise of the mallet ‘- well, the Sons of Heaven are this.’ He stopped the mallet halfway down in its descent and held it still for a moment. ‘And you’re this,’ he added, nodding at the plate. ‘Or you’re the Sons of Heaven, and this breastplate is you. Has it ever occurred to you that everything in the world might possibly have a meaning? Well, I’m not saying that’s so, that’d be a really stupid generalisation. But if it’s true, in whole or in part, then the Sons of Heaven are the meaning, or at least they’re what everything is about. We’re the axle,’ he went on, turning the metal a little, ‘and everything else is the wheel. Basically, the whole world’s here for our benefit, to make it easier for us to do our job.’

‘I see,’ Bardas said. ‘And what would that be?’

Anax smiled. ‘Perfection,’ he said. ‘We perfect. We make everything we touch perfect. Well,’ he admitted, shifting his grip slightly on the mallet handle, ‘that’s the theory. In practice, we also smash up a lot of things and do a great deal of damage. Do you see what I’m getting at, or do you want me to explain a bit more?’

‘I think I get the idea,’ Bardas said. ‘You’re proof.’

Anax stopped what he was doing and grinned broadly. ‘Bless the man, he has been listening all this time. That’s right, we’re proof. We perfect by testing to the point of destruction. What passes proof, we add to our collection; what fails, we junk. Like absolutely everything, it’s totally simple once you start thinking about it the right way.’

After the armour had been shaped and planished, Anax punched holes for the rivets, cut the straps and fitted the buckles, put all the parts together. ‘There you are,’ he said eventually. ‘You can try it on now, if you like.’

It was, of course, a perfect fit. It covered Bardas like a second skin; the strength on the outside, the stress inside. ‘What about proof?’ Bardas asked with a smile.

‘Proof?’ Anax pulled a face. ‘Huh. What do you think you’re for?’