The Proof House

CHAPTER TWO

‘… Glorious bloody genuine hero of the war. Dug the bugger out like a truffle, we did. Thought he was one of them till someone noticed the boots.’

Bardas Loredan opened his eyes, and the light hit him. He closed them again, but not quickly enough. The pain and fear made him cry out.

‘He’s coming round, look,’ said a voice from the light. Unbelievable, that living things could survive in that scorching, agonising glare; couldn’t be real, had to be a hallucination. ‘Absolutely fucking amazing. No way he should have survived that, should have been killed instantly.’

Shows how much you know; can’t kill a man who’s dead and buried. He tried to move, but his body was all pain. The light was burning its way through his eyelids.

‘Sarge? Sarge, can you hear me?’ The voice was vaguely familiar, which was odd. What were those funny little lizard things that lived in fire? Salamanders. Where on earth would he know a salamander from, and why would it be calling him Sarge?

‘It’s quite normal,’ another voice said. ‘He’s just had a city fall on his head, it’s hardly surprising he’s feeling a bit groggy.’ That voice was familiar, as well. Two salamanders.

Alexius? Alexius, is that you? Stop playing silly buggers and put that fucking light out.

‘Sarge? Here, he’s coming round, look. Who the hell’s Alexius?’

Who are you? I can’t see you so you must be real. Did I kill you just now, in the gallery?

‘Dear gods,’ said yet another salamander, ‘he’s well away. Crazy as a barrelful of ferrets.’

‘Like I said, he just had Ap’ Escatoy land on his nut, what do you expect? He’ll be right as rain in a day or two.’

There was no getting away from it, he was going to have to open his eyes sooner or later. The light was seeping in under his eyelids anyhow, getting into his brain. Did I die and turn into a salamander too, Alexius? You should have warned me. He opened his eyes.

‘Who the hell are you?’ he asked, blinking.

All he could make out at first was a shape: a big brown oval, looming over him. This is how humans must look to a carp in a fish-pond. No wonder the buggers swim away.

‘Sarge?’ said the oval. ‘It’s me, Malicho. Corporal Malicho, you remember?’

Loredan shook his head; painful operation. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘You don’t look anything like him.’

‘It’s me, Sarge, straight up. Here, Dollus, tell him it’s me.’

There was another oval, on the edge of the salamander pool. ‘Think about it, Malicho. He’s never seen you before. Never seen any of us, come to that. And we’d never seen him before now, if you think about it.’

‘Then how do we know it really is him?’ someone else asked. ‘Maybe he really is one of them. Hey, don’t look at me like that, I’m just saying it’s possible.’

‘It’s him,’ said the salamander Malicho, firmly. ‘I’d know that voice anywhere. Sarge, wake up. It’s all right, it’s us. It’s seventh shift, what’s left of us. You’re going to be all right. We dug you out after the camouflet went up. The war’s over. We won.’

The strain of keeping his eyelids open was unbearable; he could feel the muscles tearing like cloth. ‘We won?’

‘That’s right. We brought down the bastion, the gate fell in, we stormed the city. We won.’

‘Oh.’ What war would that be? I don’t remember anything about any war. ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘Well done.’

‘He hasn’t got the faintest idea what you’re talking about,’ a salamander said. ‘Come on, Malicho, let the poor bugger get some rest.’

The legate could recognise cinnamon, and cloves, of course; a trace of ginger, oil of violets, the tiniest savour of jasmine. The one special ingredient eluded him, however. It was infuriating.

‘The family,’ the colonel was saying, ‘is quite well known, apparently. There was a sister who ran the bank on Scona-’

‘Scona.’ The legate carefully put down the tiny silver cup. ‘I think I’ve heard that name somewhere. Wasn’t there a war?’

‘Very small-scale,’ the colonel replied. ‘But it caused a brief flutter on the exchanges. There’s also a brother who’s some sort of minor warlord in a place called Mesoge. And of course, our man was in charge of the last defence of Perimadeia.’

‘Really.’ Honeysuckle? No, it was a different sort of sweetness; not as dry. ‘Quite an illustrious family, then.’

‘Actually, no,’ the colonel replied, smiling. ‘Their father was a tenant farmer somewhere. But that’s all by the by. A remarkable man, for an outsider. We should do something for him. The army would like it.’

The legate inclined his head slightly. ‘I’ll have to think about that,’ he said. ‘The line between rewarding merit and fostering the cult of personality is painfully thin in these cases. As a matter of policy -’ (Honey; it was honey flavoured with something. No wonder it was so elusive.) ‘- as a matter of policy,’ he repeated, ‘nowadays we prefer to put the accent on team effort and group achievement; and from what I gather, that would be entirely appropriate in this case.’

The colonel nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘To a certain extent, that’s precisely what we should be doing. But Sergeant Loredan has already become something of a legend in the army. If we don’t recognise him officially, it may prove counterproductive to recognise the unit as a whole. The soldiers are very loyal to their own; that’s what gives them their edge, of course.’

‘Indeed.’ The legate didn’t frown, but he didn’t much like what he was hearing. Nevertheless, it was a minor issue. ‘Well,’ he said, lifting the cup again, ‘I don’t suppose it’ll hurt if we give this man his moment of glory. A laurel crown, I suggest, and a prominent place in the triumph, if he’s going to be up to it. And then a promotion.’

The colonel acknowledged the suitability of the suggestion. A promotion meant a transfer, a transfer would take him away from the soldiers who’d chosen him as their immediate object of loyalty. ‘Citizenship?’ he asked. ‘Or perhaps not. There are precedents, of course.’

‘I shall have to refer that back to the provincial office,’ the legate said. ‘A precedent isn’t the same thing as a rule, or even a custom of the service. Just because something’s acknowledged to have happened once doesn’t necessarily mean it has to happen again.’

The colonel didn’t say anything, but he let the issue lie between them. The legate had his political masters, but he had an army to motivate. And after all, he had just taken Ap’ Escatoy.

‘Forgive me,’ said the legate suddenly, ‘but I really do have to know. Is it the honey?’

The colonel smiled. ‘How extremely perceptive,’ he said. ‘Yes, indeed; it’s quite rare, a speciality of this region. At least, it’s not from here, they import it from away up in the north, but this is the only known outlet for it. It’s the heather.’

‘Heather,’ the legate repeated, as if the colonel had suddenly started talking about sea-serpents.

‘The bees feed on heather,’ the colonel explained, ‘and that’s what gives the honey its distinctive flavour. On its own it’s nothing special, but suitably blended, the effect is rather fine, don’t you think?’

Heather honey, said the legate to himself, whatever next? It was almost worth a concession on the citizenship issue; but the provincial office wasn’t that decadent. Not yet. ‘Your sergeant,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Probationary citizenship, conditional on length of service. I’d say that strikes the proper balance between recognition and incentive, don’t you?’

The colonel smiled. ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘I’m sure it’ll do wonders for morale.’ He lifted the silver-gilt jug and refilled the legate’s cup. ‘It’s very important, I’ve always found, to make sure victory doesn’t get out of hand.’

The merchants of the Island reacted to the news of the fall of Ap’ Escatoy, after three years of siege and attrition, with characteristic speed and decisiveness. They immediately raised the price of raisins (by a quarter a bushel), saffron (by six quarters an ounce), indigo, cinnamon and white lead. As a result, the markets steadied before they had a chance to go into free-fall, and the base lending rate of the Shastel Bank actually ended the day up half a per cent. More people made money than lost it, and by close of trading it was safe to say that no lasting harm had been done.

‘Still,’ said Venart Auzeil, pouring himself another cup of strong wine, ‘I don’t mind admitting I was worried there for a while. We were dreadfully exposed. I suppose we should all be grateful it wasn’t a lot worse.’

‘It’ll get worse,’ muttered Eseutz Mesatges, wiping her lips on her wrist. The new look for lady merchants (basically the year before last’s Warrior-Princess look, but with less gold and more leather) suited her very well, but there wasn’t an obvious place for a handkerchief. ‘There’s absolutely no reason to believe they’re going to stop there. Not unless somebody makes them,’ she added firmly. ‘They’re a damned nuisance, and something’s got to be done. And I don’t know what you’re grinning about, Hido. If the Imperial Army decides to go up the coast instead of down like everybody’s assuming, you won’t be able to give away those pepper concessions we’re always hearing so much about.’

Venart frowned. ‘That’s not likely, though, is it? I mean, surely the whole object of the exercise is to secure their western frontier. If they go north instead of south, they’ll be extending it, not consolidating.’

‘Gods, Ven, you’re so bloody naive,’ Eseutz said impatiently. ‘Securing frontiers my arse; this is crude old-fashioned expansionism, as anybody with half a brain could have told you three years ago. No, we should have stopped them at Ap’ Escatoy; dammit, we should have stopped them before that even, at Ap’ Ecy or before they even crossed the border. The further they get the harder it’s going to be, and that’s just a plain fact.’

Hido Glaia yawned and helped himself to another handful of olives. ‘If you’ll just listen,’ he said, ‘you’ll find I’m not disagreeing with you. I think they’re worse than a pest, they’re a serious danger, and thank the gods we live on an island. The comic part is you thinking we could do anything about it.’ He opened his mouth and picked out an olive stone. ‘Now possibly us, and Shastel, and Gorgas Loredan’s merry band of cut-throats down in the Mesoge, and King Temrai’s people – if anybody should be worried right now, it’s them; if I was the provincial office, I know what’d be at the top of my shopping list – if all of us got together, pulled our fingers out, really got behind Ap’ Seny and told them, that’s it, no further-’ He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Well, it could go either way, depending on what other calls the provincial office’s got on its resources right now (and that’s something we just don’t know, though we should, and it’s a scandal we don’t). But face facts, it ain’t going to happen. No, the best thing we can do is start talking very sweetly to the provincials about non-aggression pacts and tariffs and possibly preferred-carrier status. They aren’t savages, you know. If we could learn to love the plainspeople, we can get along just fine with these bastards.’

Venart’s sister Vetriz, who’d been lying back on her couch pretending to be bored, sat up. ‘You can’t be serious about that, Hido,’ she said. ‘Us, get into bed with the plainspeople? After what they did to the City?’

Hido grinned. ‘We trade with them. You trade with them. Even the Shastel Bank does business with them, and gods know, if anybody’s got the right to bear a grudge, it’s her.’ He leaned forward and scratched the arch of his foot. ‘Where is Athli, by the way? I thought she’d be here.’

Eseutz scowled. ‘Oh, she’s off being terribly high-powered somewhere. I don’t know; she runs that office like she owns the whole damn bank.’

‘Eseutz tried to get a loan to take up those spice options,’ Hido explained, ‘and Athli turned her down flat, bless her. I could have told you if you’d asked me,’ he went on, treating Eseutz to a warm, patronising smile. ‘Athli may dress like an Islander and talk like an Islander, she’s got a better nose for a deal than most of us who were born and bred here, but when it comes to lending money, she’s Perimadeian to her socks and always will be.’

Eseutz sniffed and reached across the table for the wine jug. ‘It’s all your fault for bringing her here in the first place,’ she told Vetriz. ‘Well, the hell with that. You can tell her I got my loan, and at only one per cent over base.’

‘You had to put your ship up as security,’ Hido pointed out. ‘Definitely rather you than me. I think Athli was doing you a favour, personally. Who the hell’s going to want to pay your prices for peppers and cinnamon once the provincial office starts dumping the stuff on the spot market at half what you’re paying for it now?’

Eseutz growled and banged the jug down. ‘If that’s your attitude,’ she said, ‘you might as well start memorising the names of the Great bloody Kings right now, so you can reel them off to impress the provincial when he comes stomping in here with a garrison.’

Hido dipped his head. ‘It might be a sensible precaution, at that,’ he said. ‘If we’re going to have to do business with these people, as seems increasingly likely, it might be sensible to learn how to crawl to their officials.’

When the evening was over and their guests had gone home, Vetriz kicked off her shoes and poured herself the last of the wine. ‘I can’t figure those two out,’ she said. ‘Are they or aren’t they?’

Her brother shrugged. ‘Both,’ he replied. ‘Which is odd, I’ll grant you. I mean, it’s obvious what he sees in her but not the other way round. Not in a million years.’

Vetriz raised an eyebrow. ‘Funny,’ she said, ‘I’d have said it was the other way round. Oh, well, I suppose that means they were made for each other after all. In which case, I can’t help wondering why they spend so much of their time trying to do each other down in business.’

Venart yawned. ‘Their way of expressing affection, I suppose,’ he said. ‘But what she was saying about the Empire, it makes sense, you know, in a way. Mind you, so does what Hido said. This Ap’ Escatoy thing’s really brought it home.’

‘If you say so,’ Vetriz replied, slowly getting up. ‘I’m going to bed while I can still move.’

‘All right.’ Venart hesitated for a moment, then continued, ‘When I was down at the Nails this afternoon, I did hear one thing about Ap’ Escatoy.’

‘Hm? Tell me in the morning.’

Venart shook his head. ‘Really,’ he said, ‘I should have mentioned it earlier, except of course it’s just a rumour, and I haven’t the faintest idea where it comes from or if there’s anything to it. I was waiting to see if Hido or Eseutz had come across it too, but apparently not.’

Vetriz yawned. ‘Oh, for pity’s sake, Ven,’ she said. ‘Stop hamming it up and tell me.’

‘All right.’ Venart looked away slightly. ‘What it is, someone was talking about the end of the siege, how it actually happened, and he said the man who finally broke through in the mines and brought down the wall was called Bardas Loredan.’

Vetriz didn’t turn round. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘That’s interesting.’

‘I thought you should know,’ Venart said. ‘Well, there it is. Like I said, there’s absolutely no confirmation or anything like that, just a rumour.’

‘Of course,’ Vetriz replied. ‘Well, I’m off to bed. Good night.’

After that snippet of information it was inevitable that her dreams should return to the mines – she knew every inch of them by now, so that her knees and the palms of her hands ached at the thought of them – and the darkness and the stale air and the smell of clay and herbs. Once again she was crawling blind towards the source of the noise, the indecipherable confusion of steel and voices; this time she hoped she’d be able to pick out one voice among them, but that was completely unrealistic. Perhaps what she’d learned explained why she had to keep coming back here, but nothing else made sense. It was just a dream where she crawled along tunnels in the dark, and sometimes the roof caved in on her and sometimes it didn’t. Maybe she’d been right the first time, and it really was divine retribution for eating blue cheese just before going to sleep.

But this time she called out his name; though whether she was telling him she was coming to help him or asking to be rescued herself, she wasn’t quite sure. All night she slithered and stomped and crawled her way through the galleries and spurs of her dream, sometimes having to squeeze past and crawl over men who’d been dead a long time, sometimes people she’d known all her life, sometimes people she recognised for the first time; but the noise never got any closer and the voices stayed confused. She woke up sweating, the bedclothes twisted round her, the pillow on the floor where she’d thrown it after thanking it for its forbearance.

When Temrai opened his eyes, the light appalled him.

He shook his head like a wet dog, as if trying to get the dream out of his mind. Beside him, Tilden grunted and turned over, pulling the covers off his toes. She could sleep through anything, even the stifled yell he’d woken up with. If Tilden dreamed strange and terrible dreams, they were of casseroles spoiled by overcooking, or long-awaited tapestries which, when they finally arrived, didn’t go with the cushions after all. The thought made him smile, in spite of himself.

He sighed and sat up, carefully shifting his weight so as not to disturb her. In fact, the light was nothing more than a gentle smear of moonshine leaking through the smoke-hole; remarkable that it could have seemed so unbearably bright a moment ago.

Methodically, like a conscientious witness in front of the examining magistrate, he recalled the dream. He’d been in darkness, in some cave or tunnel underground; he’d been scrabbling frantically along, trying to get away from something, or someone, either the roof caving in or a man with a knife, and most of the time it had been both together. When his pursuer had caught up with him, and he’d felt a hand gathering his hair and pulling his head back to expose his throat to the cutting edge, he’d heard a voice thanking him, and another saying that the dead man was Sergeant Bardas Loredan, sacker of cities, bringer-down of walls, responsible for the deaths of thousands -

– Which was all wrong, of course. He, King Temrai the Great, was the sacker of cities and slayer of thousands; he was the one who’d brought down the walls of Perimadeia, after first burning to death all the thousands and hundreds of thousands of people trapped in there when he burst in. The wise and expensive Shastel doctor he’d sent for when the dreams he’d had since the fall of the City made him dangerously ill had told him that it was all perfectly natural, that it was hardly surprising that in his dreams he should put himself in the place of one of the people he’d burned to death; somehow, the wise and expensive doctor had left him with the impression that it was so normal as to be positively good for him, like drinking plenty of milk and taking regular exercise. He wondered what he’d have made of this new development; the caves, the man with the knife who was Bardas Loredan, the sacker of cities. He could work some of it out for himself; his guilt and self-loathing had made him identify himself with the most frightening and destructive man he’d ever encountered, so that in his mind he’d become Loredan, the ultimate degradation. No need to spend good money to be told that.

He yawned. Absolutely no chance of getting back to sleep; what he really wanted was company. Gently he slid off the bed, feeling with his toes for his soft felt shoes, pulled on his coat and crept out of the tent.

Who would be awake at this time of night? Well, the sentries, for a start (or else they were all in trouble) and the duty officer and the duty officer’s friend – there was a specific military technical term, but he hadn’t a clue what it was; basically, the job consisted of staying up all night playing draughts with the duty officer to keep him from falling asleep. Fairly soon the bakers would be up and about, starting off the next day’s bread. Almost certainly, somewhere in the camp, there’d be a bunch of young fools who’d stayed up all night drinking, and here and there a few men unable to sleep for worrying about whether they were going to die in the battle tomorrow. Quite likely he wasn’t the only man in twenty thousand who’d been turfed out of bed by a bad dream. A short walk through the streets of the camp would find him someone to talk to.

He yawned again. It was a warm night, with a smell of rain. To his surprise, he realised he was feeling hungry. What he really needed, in fact, wasn’t human companionship or someone to pour out his troubles to. What he really needed was a couple of white-flour pancakes smothered in sour cream and honey, preferably with a sprinkling of redcurrants and nutmeg. For a king spontaneously accorded the epithet Great by a devotedly loyal nation, that oughtn’t to be too much to ask.

He also had the advantage of inside knowledge. The best pancakes in the world, he happened to know, were made by Dondai the fletcher, a spry, toothless old man who spent his life pulling carefully selected feathers out of the wings of the increasingly resentful geese that formed the supplementary fletchings reserve. That was all he did. Someone else sorted the feathers into left side and right side; someone else again split them down the pith, trimmed them to shape and delivered them to the workers who actually served them to the arrowshafts with thin threads of waste sinew. When he wasn’t pulling feathers, though, Dondai made an awe-some pancake; and, being too old to need much sleep, there was a good chance he’d be awake right now.

Dondai’s tent wasn’t exactly hard to find, even in the middle of the night; all you had to do was follow the smell and sound of geese. Sure enough, at the entrance to the goose pen there was a small fire, beside which a man sat, with a furious goose struggling in his large, capable hands. The man had his back to Temrai, and it was only after he’d tapped him on the shoulder and the man had turned round that he realised it wasn’t the man he’d been looking for.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I was looking for Dondai.’

The man looked at him, frowning slightly.

‘Dondai the fletcher,’ Temrai repeated. ‘Is he asleep?’

‘You could say that,’ the man replied. ‘He died three days ago.’

‘Oh.’ For some reason Temrai was shocked, out of all proportion. True, he’d been eating Dondai’s white-flour pancakes since he was a boy, but that was all the old man had meant to him, a sure hand with a pottery bowl and a flat iron pan. ‘I’m so sorry.’

The man shrugged. ‘He was eighty-four,’ he replied. ‘When people get that old, they tend to die. It’s not as if it’s unfair or anything. I’m his nephew, by the way, Dassascai. You were a friend of his, then?’

‘An acquaintance,’ Temrai replied. ‘You haven’t been in the army long, have you?’

‘I’m not in the army,’ Dassascai replied. ‘Until recently, I had a stall in Ap’ Escatoy market, selling fish. Lived there most of my life, in fact.’

‘Really?’ Temrai said. ‘It must have been terrible, these last few years.’

Dassascai shook his head. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘It was a port, remember, and the provincial office couldn’t spare any ships. There were never any shortages, people were spending money; it was a good war as wars go.’

Temrai nodded slowly. ‘So what happened to you?’ he asked. ‘I’d sort of gathered that not many people made it out alive.’

‘That’s quite right,’ Dassascai said. ‘Fortunately, I wasn’t there when it happened; I was on my way here, to see my uncle like a good nephew and then on to the Island to buy salt cod. In fact, I left two days before it happened, so you can see I’m a very lucky boy. Except,’ he added with a sour grin, ‘that I never take my wife and family with me on business trips. Plus, there’s the small matter of a lifetime’s accumulated property, though you aren’t really supposed to mention that in the same breath as family. But the truth is, I know which I miss more.’

Temrai sat down on the ground, keeping the fire between them. ‘So what are you going to do? Follow in your uncle’s footsteps?’

‘Pulling wing-feathers out of live geese for the rest of my life? Hardly.’ Dassascai stood up, a furiously struggling goose hanging upside down by its legs in one hand, a small bunch of feathers in the other. ‘For one thing, goose down makes me sneeze. For another, they stink. I’m doing this now because if I don’t work, I don’t eat. But something else’ll come along, and when it does I’ll be on my way.’

‘Fair enough,’ Temrai said. ‘Any idea what form this something might take? In my line of work I occasionally come across good opportunities that need good people; I could keep my eyes open for you.’

Dassascai looked at him through the flames. ‘And your line of work is?’

‘Administration, mostly,’ Temrai replied. ‘And I hang about at staff meetings. That sort of thing.’

‘A man of power and influence,’ Dassascai replied. ‘Well, I’d better tell you what I’m good at. I can buy, and I can sell; I’m used to travelling, I can bargain, usually get a good deal. My mother used to say I’ve got an honest face. That’s about it.’

Temrai smiled. ‘You’d probably have made a good Perimadeian,’ he said. ‘Or an Islander. How did you come to be in Ap’ Escatoy, anyhow?’

Dassascai made a sudden swoop and stood up again, cramping another struggling goose to his chest. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, sitting down. ‘When I was a kid I fell out with my father about something or other. He got angry, I walked away and kept going. Some time later I found myself in Ap’ Escatoy, hiding behind a row of barrels with a basket of stolen crayfish. Next thing I knew, I’d sold the crayfish and bought some more at the wharf. After that it was all reassuringly boring for a while. I like life better when it’s boring.’

Temrai rubbed the tip of his nose with his knuckle. ‘Do you?’ he said.

‘You don’t, obviously.’

‘I’m very hard to bore,’ Temrai answered. ‘Nearly everything interests me. For instance, I’d find building up a fishmonger’s business from scratch very interesting indeed.’

Dassascai shook his head. ‘Don’t be so sure,’ he said. ‘You stand behind a trestle in the market all day, wondering how the hell you’re going to shift the stock before it starts to smell if nobody ever stops and buys anything. You do this for most of the day, even on days when you sell out. Your feet hurt. You stare at the faces of dead fish and they stare back at you. Ten years later, you rent a covered stall with a torn awning. Five years after that, you worry about how much money your wife’s spending on carpets, and try and figure out how exactly the hired help’s ripping you off without it showing up in the accounts. Five years after that -’ he lifted his head and smiled ‘- some bastard saps the walls of your city and you get another job plucking geese. The boring bits were the best, no doubt about it.’

Temrai stood up. ‘I think you may well be right,’ he said. ‘If I hear of anything really dull, I’ll let you know.’

‘Thanks,’ Dassascai replied. ‘I’d like that.’

When he got back to his tent, Temrai found Bossocai the engineer and Albocai the captain of the reserves waiting for him, sitting on little folding stools just outside the flap. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘have you been waiting long?’

‘No, not at all,’ replied Albocai, who was a rotten liar.

‘I’ve just been talking to a most interesting spy,’ Temrai went on, pushing open the flap and waving them through into the tent. ‘Keep your voices down, by the way, my wife’s still asleep.’

‘How do you know he was a spy?’ Bossocai asked.

Temrai grinned. ‘If he’d had SPY tattooed on his forehead it couldn’t have been any plainer,’ he replied. ‘He was a nice man. I knew his uncle for years.’

Albocai frowned. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we’d better have him arrested. What’s his name?’

‘No need for that,’ Temrai replied. ‘It’s not as if we’ve got any secrets worth stealing. In fact,’ he continued, with a smile the other two couldn’t understand, ‘being a spy in our camp must be the most boring job on earth, so that’s all right. I’m not sure who he’s spying for, but my guess is that he’s been sent by the provincial office. That’s interesting, don’t you think?’

‘I think you’re either wrong or taking this far too lightly,’ Albocai said. ‘Are you sure he’s a spy?’

Temrai nodded. ‘When a man passes himself off as the nephew of a man I’ve known all my life and who never had a brother or a sister, let alone a nephew, and sits there knowing perfectly well who I am while pretending he doesn’t know me, and then, in a not-so-roundabout way, asks me to employ him as a spy, I draw the logical conclusion. That reminds me – Albocai, I want you to find out what happened to a man called Dondai-’

‘The goose-plucker? He died.’

‘Ah, right. Find out more about it, would you? If he was murdered, you can have your spy with my blessing, and the next time I see him I’ll expect him to be in several pieces. Anyway, that’s enough about that. What can I do for you?’

‘Well,’ said the engineer, and launched into a detailed technical enquiry about torsion-engine rope settings, a subject about which Temrai knew more than anybody else in the army; after he’d got his answer, Albocai chivvied him about finalising the order of battle for the reserve light infantry. When they’d both gone, Temrai looked at the bed and yawned; he felt sleepy, and it was far too late now to go to bed. He picked up his quiver, sat down on the clothes-press and began whetting the blades of his arrowheads on a leather strop.

Back at the goose pen, meanwhile, Dassascai the spy was plucking feathers and going over in his mind the first contact he’d made with the man he’d been sent to kill.

‘Watch out,’ the boy said. ‘Go careful, or you’ll-’

Too late. Gannadius tripped over the fallen branch and fell forwards into mud; nasty, thick mud under a thin layer of leaf-mould. He felt his legs sink in, right up to the knees, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to free them but he tried anyway. All he succeeded in doing was to pull his foot out of his boot. The feel of the mud on his bare foot was disgusting.

(Just a minute, he thought.)

‘Hang on,’ the boy said behind him. ‘Don’t thrash about, you’ll just make it worse.’

The boy grabbed him under the arms and lifted. He angled his other foot so as not to lose that boot as well.

(Oh hell, I remember this. And I don’t think I’m going to like…)

‘There you are,’ the boy said. He could turn his head now; he was looking at a young man, no more than eighteen but enormously tall and broad across the shoulders, with a broad, stupid-looking face, wispy white-blond hair already beginning to recede, a small, flat nose, pale-blue eyes. ‘You really should look where you’re going,’ he said. ‘Come on, it’s time we weren’t here.’

Gannadius opened his mouth, but his voice didn’t work. He stooped down and tugged at his boot till it came free. It was full of mud and water. The boy had started lumbering off through the undergrowth (a dense forest overgrown with brambles and squelching wet underfoot; yes, definitely the same place) and he had to hurry to keep up. By following the boy exactly and walking where he’d trampled a path, he was able to pick his way through the tangle.

‘I don’t like the look of this, Uncle Theudas,’ the boy said; and a moment later, men appeared out of the mess of briars and bracken, stumbling and struggling, wallowing in the mud and ripping their coats and trousers on the thorns. It would’ve been hilariously funny to watch, but for the fact that in spite of their difficulties they were clearly set on killing him and the boy and, unlike the two of them, they were in armour and carrying weapons.

‘Damn,’ his nephew said, ducking under a wildly swishing halberd. He straightened up, took the halberd away from the man who’d been using it and smashed him in the face with the butt end of the shaft. Another attacker was struggling towards him, his boots so loaded with mud that he could only just waddle. He was holding a big pole-axe, but as he swung it, he caught the head in a clump of briars, and before he could get it free Theudas Junior stabbed him in the stomach with his newly acquired halberd; his opponent wobbled, let go of the pole-axe and waved his arms frantically for balance, then collapsed backwards, his feet now firmly stuck, just as Gannadius’ had been, and lay helplessly on his back in the slimy mud, dying. ‘Come on,’ the boy said, leaning back and grabbing Gannadius’ wrist while fending off a blow from a bill-hook with the halberd, gripped one-handed near the socket. ‘Gods damn it, if you weren’t my uncle I’d leave you behind.’

(And that’s all I can remember. Damn.)

‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ Gannadius panted. ‘Wait for me, for pity’s sake.’

‘Oh, for-’ Theudas Junior reached out over Gannadius’ head to crush someone’s skull with the halberd. ‘I’m beginning to wish I’d stayed at home.’

There were four soldiers left; they were hanging back (for some unaccountable reason). ‘Don’t just stand there,’ his nephew said irritably, ‘get going. I’ll hold them off.’

Yes, but go where? I’m lost. Gannadius dragged his heavy legs up out of the sticky mud and plunged forward, his head down. Behind him he could hear the crash of steel weapons. Absolutely no point escaping from the soldiers if all I’m going to do is drown in the swamp. He considered looking back, but decided not to; too depressing, probably. Not long afterwards he tripped over his feet and landed on his face in the mud. He stayed put, too exhausted even to try to stand up.

‘Uncle.’ Obviously that tone of voice ran in the family; he could remember his mother using it for the I-thought-I-told-you-to-pod-those-beans admonitory speeches. ‘Uncle, you aren’t helping. Get up, for gods’ sakes.’

‘I can’t. Stuck.’

‘All right.’ Gannadius felt a hand attach itself to his wrist; then some dangerously powerful force was trying to pull his arm off his body, and making a pretty good job of it. Fortunately, the mud gave way before his sinews and tendons did, and another hand jerked him up on to his feet. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ Gannadius replied. ‘Sorry.’

‘Come on. Try to keep up.’

So much, Gannadius reflected bitterly, for blockade-running. So much for slipping unobtrusively through the line in the night and the fog, when they least expected it. Fine in theory, but the Imperial admiral’s not a complete fool. If he keeps his ships close in on dark, foggy nights, it’s for a reason, maybe something to do with the fact that anybody stupid enough to try to thread his way through the submerged rocks of the straits would be asking for trouble.

‘Are they still following us?’

‘No idea,’ the boy replied. ‘More fool them if they are. Watch your feet, it’s a bit sticky.’

And now here he was, a man of his age, scrambling about in a swamp in enemy territory, with half the provincial’s army after his blood. Anybody with half a brain would have stayed on the Island, if necessary got a job and settled down to wait until Shastel and the provincial office had resolved their differences and stopped playing soldiers all over the eastern seaboard.

‘We’ll stop here,’ Theudas Junior said, ‘give you a chance to catch your breath.’

‘Thank you,’ Gannadius replied, with feeling. ‘Are you sure it’s safe?’

‘How the hell would I know? I’ve never been here before in my life.’

Gannadius rested his back against the trunk of a tree and slid down on to his backside. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But you seem to be quite at home doing this sort of thing.’

The boy shrugged. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I’m just making it up as I go along.’

‘Fine. And here I was, assuming this was all stuff you’d learned from Bardas Loredan.’

‘Not really.’ The boy smiled. ‘We did get in some bother with some soldiers once, but we just hid till they went away.’ He looked at the halberd in his hand, then put it down. ‘I don’t know, maybe I take after my father. You told me he’s a pirate.’

‘Was,’ Gannadius said, ‘not any more. He’s a respectable freighter captain now.’

‘I’ll believe that when I see it,’ the boy replied. ‘Which reminds me. I don’t suppose Director Zeuxis is going to be all that thrilled when we tell her we sank one of her ships.’

Gannadius couldn’t help smiling, picturing the scene. ‘It wasn’t a very big one,’ he replied. ‘And besides, Athli’s got so many of the wretched things these days, I don’t suppose she’ll miss one. And it wasn’t us who ran the blasted thing on the rocks, it was that so-called captain of hers. I see us as very much the victims in all of this.’

The boy nodded, apparently reassured. ‘So,’ he said, ‘now what do we do?’

Gannadius frowned. ‘I thought you were the natural-born leader,’ he said.

‘Yes, but you’re the wizard. Conjure up a magic carpet and get us out of here.’

‘If only.’ Gannadius sighed. ‘Doesn’t work like that.’

‘Doesn’t work at all if you ask me.’

‘You’re entitled to your opinion,’ Gannadius said wearily. ‘But no, you’re quite right. I can’t conjure up magic carpets or flatten the enemy with a fireball or turn them all into newts. A great pity, but there it is.’

The boy shrugged. ‘All right then,’ he said, ‘we’ll walk. It can’t be that far to Ap’ Amodi.’

‘Actually,’ Gannadius said, ‘Ap’ Amodi’s in the other direction. I may not be a wizard, but I can read a map. Inasmuch as we’re headed anywhere, we’re heading straight for Ap’ Escatoy, and I respectfully suggest we don’t want to go there.’

‘Ap’ Escatoy,’ the boy repeated. ‘Isn’t that where-?’

‘Exactly. Like I said, not a place we really want to intrude on.’

The boy rubbed his chin with a muddy hand. ‘But what if Bardas really is there? He’ll look after us, I know he will. We’ll be all right.’

Gannadius sighed. ‘I wouldn’t bank on it if I were you. Even if we were able to get to him before we were captured, or if we were able to get a message to him, there’s no reason to believe he’d be able to do anything for us. There’s no reason to believe he’s an officer or anything.’

The boy gave him a rebellious stare. ‘Bardas wouldn’t let anything happen to us,’ he said. ‘Not if he knew we were in trouble.’

‘Maybe not. But there’s ever such a lot of ways we could die without his knowing a thing about it. I say we find a way of doubling back and heading up the coast, towards Ap’ Amodi. Not too far up, mind, or we’ll find ourselves in Perimadeia.’

The boy nodded. ‘And you know the way, do you?’

Gannadius shook his head. ‘I’ve got a vague mental picture of the map I looked at, and that’s it. Don’t ask me about distances, either. We could be a day away, or three weeks.’

‘Oh.’ The boy suddenly looked very young and frightened, something which Gannadius found extremely disconcerting. ‘And there’s nothing you can do? I mean, with your… powers?’

Gannadius smiled. ‘Nothing at all, sorry.’

‘Not much good for anything, are they?’

‘No, not really.’

The boy stood up. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘If they were following us, they’d have caught us by now. Which way? In general terms,’ he added.

Gannadius thought for a moment. ‘In general terms,’ he said, ‘I’d say north-east, which ought to be over there. Unless there’s a mountain or a river or something in the way. Cartography’s not exactly a precise science in Shastel.’

The boy studied the undergrowth for a moment, then took a mighty swing at the dense brambles with the halberd. ‘Oh, well,’ he said, as he jerked the snagged blade loose again. ‘Better make a start, I suppose.’ He swung again, then gave up. ‘Let’s go back the way we came, see if we can pick up that path we were following.’

‘All right,’ Gannadius said. ‘What if we run into more soldiers?’

‘Then we’re stuffed,’ the boy replied. ‘But there’s no earthly way we’re going to get through this. It’d take twenty men a week just to get as far as that tall tree over there.’

Gannadius sighed, and followed. Alexius, he thought, where the hell are you when I need you? Can’t you find me, tell me what to do? But of course, it didn’t work like that, as he knew perfectly well. He could speculate all he liked about why, three years earlier, he’d seen that short, rather ludicrous battle in the mud-patch in some sort of random, Principle-induced vision. The fact was that the Principle wasn’t a tool, something you could use. It was something that happened to you, like bad luck or rain. He trudged forward, fitting his feet into the boy’s deep footprints. Too old for this. And at this rate, unlikely to get any older.

‘The path should be here somewhere.’ The boy’s voice, bouncing him out of his enclosed train of thought. ‘We must have missed it.’

‘Quite likely,’ Gannadius replied miserably. ‘It’s getting too dark for this. I say we stop here and wait till morning.’

‘All right.’ The boy flopped down where he stood, dropping the halberd in the mud. ‘I’m hungry,’ he said.

‘Tough. If you want, you can go and see if you can kill something. If there’s anything to kill in this horrible swamp except soldiers, which I doubt.’

The boy shook his head. ‘Haven’t seen any sign of anything,’ he replied.

‘Then we’ll just have to make do without, and try not to think about it.’

‘All right.’

A few minutes later the boy was fast asleep. Gannadius closed his eyes, but it didn’t do him any good, not for a long time. When at last he did fall asleep, he had the dream again, and that was worse.

Gannadius?

He was in the dream: burning thatch, falling timbers whipping up clouds of sparks as they crashed to the ground, smoke and confused shouts. ‘Alexius?’ he asked. ‘What are you doing here?’

There he was, standing in front of him. I don’t know. I haven’t been here for a long time. Where are you?

‘I was hoping you could tell me,’ Gannadius replied. ‘What can you see?’

Well, this, Alexius replied. The Fall of Perimadeia. What did you want me to see?

Gannadius frowned. ‘My nephew and I are lost in a swamp somewhere between Ap’ Escatoy and Ap’ Amodi. I was hoping you could tell me what to do.’

Sorry. Alexius shrugged. Did you say Ap’ Escatoy? That’s curious. That’s where I keep going lately.

‘Fascinating. I look forward to reading your monograph on the subject. Can’t you make an effort and see if you can find out where we are? It’d be a tremendous help, you know.’

I really wish I could help, but you know how it is. Just out of interest, what are you doing in a swamp in the disputed territories, anyway? Last I heard, you had a nice, comfortable job in Shastel.

Around him, Perimadeia continued to burn. Gannadius tried not to watch. ‘I hope I still do,’ he said, ‘though if I don’t get back there soon they’ll assume I’m dead and give it to somebody else. No, I went to the Island to see my nephew.’

Your nephew – oh, yes, I remember. The boy Bardas Loredan rescued from the City and took with him to Scona. Now that’s a curious thing, as well.

‘Quite,’ Gannadius said, with a hint of impatience. ‘The idea was, Athli Zeuxis – you remember her?’

Of course. Bardas’ clerk. She’s a merchant on the Island now, isn’t she?

‘That’s right. Anyway, she brought the boy with her to the Island when Bardas went through that bad patch a few years ago, around the time she got the Island franchise for the Shastel Bank. Well, she’s done very well for herself since then, to the extent that she needs to open a corresponding office back at head-quarters, on Shastel; and she thought it’d be a good idea all round if young Theudas-’

Your nephew.

‘That’s right. Named after me in fact-’

Your original name was Theudas?

‘Yes. Theudas Morosin.’

Good gods We’ve known each other all these years and I never knew that. Sorry, please go on.

‘Athli thought it’d be a good idea,’ Gannadius continued patiently, ‘if young Theudas spent some time in Shastel with her agent there, setting up the office, learning the trade, and spending some time with me, of course, since I’m practically his only living relative – apart from his father, of course, but he’s disappeared again, and he never was any sort of father to the boy.’

It sounds like a splendid idea. What went wrong?

Gannadius sighed. ‘It was just my luck,’ he said. ‘A day or so after we left the Island, Shastel picked a fight with the provincial office over some wretched little island or other – really, it’s all to do with this Ap’ Escatoy business; obviously Shastel is scared stiff about what’s going to happen next – and now the provincial fleet’s blockading the Straits of Escati. If we’d had any sense we’d have turned back and gone the long way round – they haven’t closed that off, as far as I know – or at the very least we could have sat tight in Ap’ Amodi until the sabres stopped rattling. But no, we had to be clever and run the blockade. And instead, we ran on to the rocks, and then we ran into a patrol, and here we are. In a swamp.’

I see. What rotten luck. I really do wish I could help.

‘So do I,’ Gannadius said. ‘But you can’t, so that’s that. Anyway, how are you keeping? All well with you?’

The figure of Alexius (not really him, of course; not in any comprehensible sense, though of course he was there) shrugged its thin shoulders. Not so bad. A dying spearman staggered toward him; he stepped sideways to let him through. I haven’t been sleeping at all well, though. Bad dreams, you know.

‘You as well? This one?’

Not lately; in fact, not since the last time I saw you here. No, I fancy I’ve been dreaming the siege of Ap’ Escatoy. The Loredan connection, I suppose, though I can’t remember having seen him. Just a lot of very unpleasant dark tunnels, with the roof caving in and people fighting in the darkness. Now the siege is over, perhaps they’ll stop.

‘Let’s hope so,’ Gannadius said, trying to sound properly sympathetic. ‘I’m glad to say I haven’t-’

‘Uncle?’

Gannadius opened his eyes. ‘What? Oh, it’s you.’

The boy looked at him. ‘You were talking to somebody, ’ he said.

‘Was I?’ Gannadius looked vague. ‘I must have been dreaming. Um, what was I saying?’

The boy smiled. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ he said. ‘You were mumbling, and I think it was some other language. Do you do that a lot? Talk in your sleep, I mean.’

Gannadius frowned. ‘I have no idea,’ he said. ‘You see, even if I do, I’m asleep and don’t know I’m doing it.’