by K. J. Parker
Musen thought about that for a moment. “You never said you’re a commissioner.”
“You didn’t ask.” Axeo wiped rain off his forehead. “Corason isn’t so bad once you get to know him. He’s always worse when he’s feeling the cold. Unfortunately for ordinary mortals like us, he feels the cold at any temperature lower than the melting point of copper.”
Musen’s lip twitched. “I bet he hates it at Mere Barton.”
“Oh, he does. In fact, there’s a theory going the rounds that that’s why they chose it as the site for Central. Not the main reason, of course.”
“The good reason?”
“One of the three. It helped sway my vote, I have to confess.”
Whenever they stopped where there were people, Axeo or Corason seemed to know somebody to ask; the reply was always the same. Nothing had happened. Senza was still sitting under the walls of Rasch. Nothing was going in or out, but he seemed to be making no effort to prosecute the siege; no mining operations, no diverting of watercourses, no bombardment. Neither were the Western forces making any attempt to relieve the city, or even to gather a force large enough to stand a chance of doing so. In fact, it was almost as if the war had come to an end; the refugees on the outer edges of Senza’s wake were starting to creep back to their homes, in some cases bringing their flocks and herds with them, and a few brave souls were out in the fields, ploughing for the spring wheat. There had been something of a washing of the spears at the Imperial court at Iden Astea, following some undisclosed lapse in security; various well-known heads were rotting quietly on spikes outside the main gate and there were new men in charge of the guards and the city patrols. Also, the garrison had nearly doubled, and they were building a wall all round the lake, a monstrous undertaking which the military regarded as pointless and the local civilians had to pay for.
“Can either of you two remember who Beloisa belongs to these days?” Corason called back, as they climbed over a ridge and saw the sea. “Last I heard it was the West, but I may have missed something.”
“I haven’t heard anything since Senza burned it out and sabotaged the mine workings,” Axeo replied, unwinding his scarf and stuffing it in his pocket. The sun was out for the first time in days. “I sort of gathered it was a ruin and nobody wanted it.”
“There’s ships in the bay,” Corason pointed out.
Axeo shook his head. “Could be pirates.”
“Then we’re in luck,” Corason said. “Probably friends of yours.”
Musen stood up in his stirrups to look, but couldn’t see anything. “It’s possible,” Axeo said. “Though I’m a bit out of touch. Still, it’s worth a try.” He nudged his horse into a brisk canter, as Corason yelled after him, “I was joking.”
Musen started to follow; Corason reached out and grabbed his bridle. “Just a moment,” he said. “I want to talk to you.”
“All right.”
Corason pushed back his hood. “About Axeo,” he said. “I’ve known him a long time. That.” He levelled his riding crop at Musen’s ribs. “He do that to you?”
“No.”
“No,” Corason said, “and I don’t suppose he crushed your hand, either.” He let go of the reins. “My old mother had a cat,” he went on. “Vicious bloody thing, scratch half your face off soon as look at you. It used to sink its teeth in my hand and not let go, I could lift it off the ground and it’d hang by its teeth. I told her, that thing’s got to go, it’s evil. And do you know what she told me? She said, it means she likes you. It’s her way of showing affection.” He sniffed, then stifled a sneeze. “You wouldn’t be the first tall, muscular young man Axeo’s taken a liking to. They tend to come to a bad end, I have to say; mostly alone, in a room bolted on the inside. We don’t say suicide, because suicide is a mortal sin, but there’s been some really freaky accidents over the years.” He wiped his nose on his wrist. “The other nasty thing my mother’s cat did, it played with mice. Got really upset when they broke and stopped working, and she had to get off her fat arse and catch another one.”
Musen looked at him. “He thinks you’re his friend.”
“I am.” Corason smiled. “No angel myself, as it happens. It’s as much for his sake as yours. A true friend helps you stay out of trouble. Watch yourself, that’s all.” Then he gave his horse a savage kick and followed down over the hill.
Yes, they were pirates, and, yes, Axeo knew them; or at least they knew Axeo, and welcomed him with open arms. It turned out he’d done a favour for a son-in-law’s uncle at some point in his career, which was the sort of thing they took very seriously. A trip across the bay? No problem. No payment required. They were going that way anyhow.
Musen rather liked the pirates. They reminded him of home – not necessarily a good thing; but there was a sort of naïve cheerfulness in the way they did their work, everyone knowing exactly what he had to do without being told, everyone an expert in his own limited field of endeavour, that put him in mind of days and nights with the shepherds on the high summer pastures. They were mostly young, invariably cheerful and friendly, not sullen or scornful around strangers like so many people, and the way they left their personal possessions lying about suggested a strong feeling of community and mutual trust. Under other circumstances he’d have seriously considered asking if he could join them, and it was a pity they cut throats for a living.
Their ship was smaller than the one he’d been on the first time he crossed from Beloisa, but it wasn’t nearly so crowded, and it didn’t wallow about in the same horrible, terrifying way. He spent the first day cautiously sitting still, but after that he had no trouble at all. Unlike the sailors on the other ship, the pirates seemed capable of working round him as he walked about, so he wasn’t forever conscious of being under people’s feet. Corason spent most of his time huddled in his blankets in the galley, where there was a small charcoal stove, and Axeo and the captain were apparently inseparable; Musen realised how much he’d missed being on his own and made the most of it. Nice to have friendly people around him, of course, but nice also that they kept it down to a smile and a wave as they got on with their work. He didn’t think any of them were craftsmen, though he made no effort to find out. But one of them had a pack of cards, the ordinary lime-board sort with brightly coloured pictures. Musen put it back where he’d found it, identified the owner and offered him forty stuivers for it, so that he could use it openly rather than have to hide away in the scuppers with the rats.
“You tell fortunes, then?” one of the pirates asked him, as he sat turning the cards over one day.
“I can do,” Musen replied.
The pirate was one of the older men, in his mid-thirties, a short, lean man with long white-blond hair in braids. “How much?”
“No charge,” Musen said. “When are you off duty?”
The pirate sat down beside him. “Now’s as good a time as any,” he said. “Sure you don’t want paying?”
“I don’t really hold with using the cards to make money,” Musen said. “It’s like pimping for your sister.”
The pirate thought that was hilarious. “Never had to bother,” he said, “my sister’s got a much better head for business than me. Right, what do we do?”
Musen collected up the cards, shuffled them quickly, handed them to the pirate and told him to shuffle them again. “Now lay out nine cards face down,” he said, “going from right to left.”
“I thought they were meant to be face up.”
“Not the way I do it,” Musen said gravely. “There’s all sorts of different ways you can do it, but this is the only one that works. Now, starting from the left, turn them face up.”
Poverty. Four of Spears. Four of Stars, reversed. The Thief, reversed. Musen shivered. The Scholar. Nine of Wheels. Hope, reversed. The Angel, reversed. The Cherry Tree.
“It’s like this,” Musen said, and his mouth was dry. “You’re going to have six months of sheer misery and lose everything, and then you’re going to die. Sorry.”
The pirate was staring at him. Musen forced a grin. “Only kidding,” he said. “Right, Poverty. Poverty doesn’t actually mean poverty, it means a change in your fortunes. Four of Spears is someone you’re going to meet, or someone you know already who’s going to make a difference to you. In this case, he’s a sort of big, noisy know-it-all who’ll probably make trouble for you, but the card’s not reversed so it’ll be fine. Four of Stars is another man you’ll have dealings with; he’s a tricky one, a good friend and a bad enemy; again, not reversed, so it’ll be all right. The Thief means you’re going to do something clever; reversed means it’ll be bad news, but not necessarily for you. The Scholar, that generally means money, nice things, good stuff generally. Nine of Wheels—” He paused. He was running out of ways of twisting the meanings while still not actually lying.
“That’s another important bloke I meet, right?”
“You’re getting the hang of this,” Musen said. “Nine of Wheels is someone really important – at least, important to you. Could be the captain of this ship, could be the emperor, could be the girl you fall in love with. Actually, following on from the Scholar, it could well be something like that.”
The pirate was frowning. “The next one’s upside down. That means it’s bad, right.”
“Not always. It just means the opposite of what it means when it’s the right way up. Now Hope’s another tricky one, it can be the good news that keeps you going when you’re right down, or it could be the crazy notion that gets you in all sorts of trouble. Reversed – I really couldn’t say, until a bit more of this stuff’s actually happened. Sorry to be vague, but there it is. Now, the Angel reversed, that can actually be quite good. Like, if I was reading for you and you were in the condemned cell, the Angel reversed would mean you’d get a reprieve at the last minute.”
“Well, that’s a comfort,” the pirate said, frowning. “How about the last one? At least it’s the right way up.”
“Oh, that.” Musen shrugged. “That means the end of the world.”
The pirate didn’t like that. “Oh, marvellous.”
Musen laughed, and it came out sounding convincing. “Well, that can mean all sorts of things. In your line of work, it could mean a long journey – that’s what the card stands for; there’s supposed to be a cherry tree growing at the very edge of the world, and when you see it, it means you can’t go any further. Or it could mean the end of your old life and a new one about to start; like if you got married, or suddenly came into money.”
“Or it could mean I’m going to die.”
“Yes, it could. Or someone else is going to die, possibly your worst enemy. Or it could mean the end of the war.” He gathered the cards up in a fast, slick movement and put them back on top of the pack. “You’ve got to take all the cards together,” he said. “And I’d say, that’s a pretty good spread.”
The pirate looked at him. “You would?”
“Oh, yes.” Musen nodded confidently. “I can’t be definite about details, mind, but broadly speaking, I’d guess it’s something like, you get one or maybe two new crew members, you have a big score, you all decide to break up the crew and retire, there’s a bit of aggravation about dividing up the money but it comes out all right in the end, and you go off with a nice stake and maybe just possibly the girl of your dreams. But that last bit’s just a guess,” he added with a grin. “I’m not guaranteeing that.”
The pirate looked as though the noose had just been lifted off his neck and he’d been told it was all an unfortunate mix-up. “I’ll settle for that, thanks very much. If I get the money, I don’t suppose the girl’ll be a problem. Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” Musen said, tucking the pack away. “Only, do me a favour, will you? Don’t go telling everyone I do fortunes. I don’t mind occasionally, but—”
“Sure.” The pirate looked puzzled, but smiled. “You don’t want the whole crew hassling you for readings all the time, I can see that. Hope I didn’t—”
“No, that’s fine,” Musen said brightly, hoping the man would go away; which he did, which was just as well. Once he’d gone, Musen took the pack out again and put it down in front of him on the deck. Served him right, he told himself, for telling fortunes. You ask a question, you’re at grave risk of getting an answer, and if you do, you’ve got nobody to blame but yourself.
He shuffled the pack, to clear it, then went through picking out the picture cards, which he then put in order, starting with the Crown Prince and ending with the Cherry Tree. Then he went through the homily of the City, starting with the prince in exile, ending with the avenging armies seeing the tree that marked the end of the world and turning back. He wasn’t sure it was the right homily for the circumstances; it reminded him of the war (there was a homily for that, too, but they didn’t teach it at Beal Defoir; you had to have a lot of seniority to learn it, and he’d even heard that it needed the special pack, with the extra cards) and he wanted to forget about that, because of Rasch Cuiber and the silver pack that was less than thirty yards away from him, and which he was having to try very hard not to think about, all the time. So he shuffled and sorted the pack again, and started over with the Faithful Son (“Once there was a merchant’s son who was sent on a long journey …”); first with the cards orthodox, for the happy story, and then with them reversed, for the sad one. Then he shuffled the picture cards and cut, which got him the Angel; so he laid them out again and told the stories, orthodox and reversed, from the Angel’s point of view, reflecting at each stage on what he would have done in her position, and what that told him about himself. Then he laid them out in order descending, starting with the Cherry Tree and ending with the Crown Prince, and said the homily of the Leper, orthodox; at the end of the world there grows a magic cherry tree, and all who touch its leaves are cured of their diseases. He got as far as the Thief; and then the cook rang the galley bell, and it was time for lunch.
For some reason, the pirates didn’t want to bring their ship into the main harbour and tie up among the naval galleys and the revenue sloops, so they dropped anchor off a secluded cove, in the middle of the night, and rowed them ashore in a little boat. It struck Musen as a ludicrously dangerous enterprise, but apparently the pirates had had a certain degree of practice.
“You’ll have to hoof it into town from here,” said the pirate captain, who’d come along to wish Axeo Godspeed. “Just climb up to the top and follow your nose across the downs till you get there. The inn’s called the Diligence, just keep kicking the door till they answer. Say I sent you, they’ll see you right.”
Needless to say they did no such thing, but the innkeeper saw them right anyway, as soon as Corason flashed a handful of silver fifty stuivers under his nose. Nothing was too much trouble, apparently, not even for strangers who walked in over the fields in the dead of night.
In the morning, Corason asked if he could buy three horses. The innkeeper didn’t laugh, because that would’ve been rude; instead, he hazarded a guess that they might just possibly find something at the Wheel Star, where from time to time they sold off pit ponies that were too old and feeble to pull a cart; but that was thirty miles away in the other direction, so maybe the gentlemen might prefer to wait for the stage.
While Corason conducted the negotiations, Axeo had wandered off; he came back with the news that there were four very fine geldings in the stable – remounts for the Imperial couriers, in all probability, but the emperor already had far more horses than was good for him, as witness the appalling mischief Senza was getting up to with all that cavalry, whereas three good horses and a fourth to carry a few supplies would get them to Choris quickly and in relative comfort. “Now if only,” Axeo said, looking straight past Musen as if he wasn’t there, “we knew a good horse thief—”
Musen was rather inclined to resent being given the job, since stealing horses doesn’t call for a skilled and talented thief, just a dishonest groom. Walk across the yard, look round to see nobody’s watching, go inside,
saddles and bridles, lead the horses out into the yard and ride like hell; where’s the technique or the finesse in that?
At least once they’d got clean away there was no danger of being pursued; not when they’d stolen the only four horses in the county.
They had to get rid of them, of course, before they reached the main road, where horses with the Imperial brand but ridden by obvious civilians might excite comment. They tied them to a rail outside a farmhouse, then trudged up a long hill to the road, four miles shy of a way station, where they caught the stage. But they’d cut off forty miles and saved a day and a half. The stage was due into the suburbs of Choris by nightfall. The journey was nearly over.
“Of course, you’ve been here before,” Corason said as they stood in the queue for the checkpoint outside the South Gate. “I keep forgetting that. For Axeo and me, of course, this is practically home from home. I suggest we spend this morning catching up on the news, meet up again at midday and decide on what we’re going to do. Axeo?”
“Fine,” Axeo replied. He seemed preoccupied. “The usual place?”
“If it’s still there,” Corason said. “It’s been five years since I was in Choris. If not, I’ll see you outside the Prefecture. That’ll still be there, you can be sure.”
The news was, there was no news. Senza was still languidly besieging Rasch, the Western army was still lurking in funk holes, nobody knew what was going on and everybody had a theory. Musen and Axeo heard this about a dozen times in various different tea houses, taverns and barbers’ shops, then headed into town to find Corason.
Musen was disconcerted, to say the least, when he saw the sign over the tea-house door.
“What, the Cherry Tree? Been here for ever.” Axeo sat down at a table in front of the main door and put his feet up on an empty chair. “Everyone who comes to Choris has to visit this place, it’s the law.” He yawned. “Can’t say I see much to it myself, but I like a bit more atmosphere, if you know what I mean.”
The sign was a painting, in rather fine style, though the paint was beginning to flake. Musen thought it was almost obscene, that particular picture, the size of a gate, stuck up in the air for everyone to see. A bored looking girl in a long yellow silk gown brought them tea and a plate of honeycakes. They were ever so slightly stale.