by Iain Banks
Nolieti turned round when he heard us approach. "About fucking time," he spat, fixing his stare on first me, then the Doctor and then Unoure (who, I noticed, as the Doctor stuffed her kerchief back into a pocket in her jacket, was making a show of folding the black blindfold he had been told to use on her).
"My fault," the Doctor said in a matter-of-fact manner, stepping past Nolieti. She bent down at the man's rear. She grimaced, nose wrinkling, then came to the side of the apparatus and with one hand on the iron hoops of the framechair brought it squeaking and complaining round until the man was in a more conventional sitting position. The fellow looked in a terrible state. His face was grey, his skin was burned in places, and his mouth and jaw had collapsed. Little rivulets of blood had dried under each of his ears. The Doctor put her hand through the iron hoops and tried to open one of the man's eyes. He made a terrible, low groaning sound. There was a sort of sucking, tearing noise and the man gave a plaintive moan like a kind of distant scream before settling into a ragged, rhythmic, bubbling noise that might have been breathing.
The Doctor bent forward to peer into the man's face and I heard her give a small gasp.
Nolieti snorted. "Looking for these?" he asked the Doctor, and flourished a small bowl at her.
The Doctor barely glanced at the bowl, but smiled thinly at the torturer. She rotated the iron chair to its previous position and went back to look at the caged man's rear. She pulled away some blood-soaked rags and gave another grimace. I thanked the gods that he was pointing away from me and prayed that whatever the Doctor might have to do would not require my assistance.
"What seems to be the problem?" the Doctor asked Nolieti, who seemed momentarily nonplussed.
"Well," the chief torturer said after a pause. "He won't stop bleeding out his arse, will he?"
The Doctor nodded. "You must have let your pokers get too cold," she said casually, squatting and opening her bag and laying it by the side of the stone drain-tray.
Nolieti went to the Doctor's side and bent down over her. "How it happened isn't any of your fucking business, woman," he said into her ear. "Your business is to get this fucker well enough to be questioned so he can tell us what the King needs to know."
"Does the King know?" the Doctor asked, looking up, an expression of innocent interest on her face. "Did he order this? Does he even know of the existence of this unfortunate? Or was it guard commander Adlain who thought the Kingdom would fall unless this poor devil suffered?"
Nolieti stood up. "None of that is your business," he said sullenly. "Just do your job and get out." He bent down again and stuck his mouth by her ear. "And never you mind the King or the guard commander. I'm king down here, and I say you'd best attend to your own business and leave me to mine."
"But it is my business," the Doctor said evenly, ignoring the threatening bulk of the man poised over her. "If I know what was done to him, and how it was done, I might be better able to treat him."
"Oh, I could show you, Doctor," the chief torturer said, looking up at his assistant and winking. "And we have special treats we save just for the ladies, don't we, Unoure?"
"Well, we haven't time to flirt," the Doctor said with a steely smile. "Just tell me what you did to this poor wretch."
Nolieti's eyes narrowed. He stood up and withdrew a poker from the brazier in a cloud of sparks. Its yellowglowing tip was broad, like the blade of a small flat spade. "Latterly, we did him with this," Nolieti said with a smile, his face lit by the soft yellow-orange glow.
The Doctor looked at the poker, then at the torturer. She squatted and touched something at the encaged man's rear.
"Was he bleeding badly?" she asked.
"Like a man pissing," the chief torturer said, winking at his assistant again. Unoure, quickly nodded and laughed.
"Better leave this in, then," the Doctor muttered. She rose. "I'm sure it's good you enjoy your job so, chief torturer," she said. "However, I think you've killed this one."
"You're the doctor, you heal him!" Nolieti said, stepping back towards her, brandishing the orange-red poker. I do not think he intended to threaten the Doctor, but I saw her right hand begin to drop towards the boot where her old dagger was sheathed.
She looked up at the torturer, past the glowing metal rod. "I'll give him something that might revive him, but he may well have given you all he ever will. Don't blame me if he dies."
"Oh, but I will," Nolieti said quietly, thrusting the poker back into the brazier. Cinders splashed to the flag stones. "You make sure he lives, woman. You make sure he's fit to talk or the King'll hear you couldn't do your job."
"The King will hear anyway, no doubt," the Doctor said, smiling at me. I smiled nervously back. "And guard commander Adlain, too," she added, "perhaps from me." She swung the man in the cage-chair back upright and opened a vial in her bag, wiped a wooden spatula round the inside of the vial and then, opening the bloody mess that was the man's mouth, applied some of the ointment to his gums. He moaned again.
The Doctor stood watching him for a moment, then stepped to the brazier and put the spatula into it. The wood flamed and spluttered. She looked at her hands, then at Nolieti. "Do you have any water down here? I mean clean water."
The chief torturer nodded at Unoure, who disappeared into the shadows for a while before bringing a bowl which the Doctor washed her hands in. She was wiping them clean on the kerchief which had been her blindfold when the man in the chair cage gave a terrible screech of agony, shook violently for a few moments, then stiffened suddenly and finally went limp. The Doctor stepped towards him and went to put her hand to his neck but she was knocked aside by Nolieti, who gave an angry, anguished shout of his own and reached through the iron hoops to place his finger on the pulse-point on the neck which the Doctor has taught me is the best place to test the beat of a man's vitality.
The chief torturer stood there, quivering, while his assistant gazed on with an expression of apprehension and terror. The Doctor's look was one of grimly contemptuous amusement. Then Nolieti spun round and stabbed a finger at her. "You!" he hissed at her. "You killed him. You didn't want him to live!"
The Doctor looked unconcerned, and continued drying her hands (though it seemed to me that they were both already dry, and shaking). "I am sworn to save life, chief torturer, not to take it," she said reasonably. "I leave that to others."
"What was in that stuff?" the chief torturer said, quickly squatting to wrench open the Doctor's bag. He pulled out the open vial she had taken the ointment from and brandished it in her face. "This. What is it?"
"A stimulant," she said, and dipped a finger into the vial, displaying a small fold of the soft brown gel on her finger tip so that it glinted in the light of the brazier. "Would you like to try it?" She moved the finger towards Nolieti's mouth.
The chief torturer grabbed her hand in one of his and forced the finger back, towards her own lips. "No. You do it. Do what you did to him."
The Doctor shook her hand free of Nolieti's and calmly put her finger to her mouth, spreading the brown paste along her top gum. "The taste is bitter-sweet," she said in the same tone she uses when she is teaching me. "The effects last between two and three bells and usually have no side effects, though in a body seriously weakened and in shock, fits are likely and death is a remote possibility." She licked her finger. "Children in particular suffer severe side effects with almost no restorative function and it is never recommended for them. The gel is made from the berries of a biennial plant which grows on isolated peninsulae on islands in the very north of Drezen. It is quite precious, and more usually applied in a solution, in which form, too, it is most stable and long-lasting. I have used it to treat the King on occasion and he regards it as one of my more efficacious prescriptions. There is not much left now and I would have preferred not to waste it on either those who are going to die anyway, or on myself, but you did insist. I am sure the King will not mind." (I have to report, Master, that as far as I am aware, the Doctor has never used this
particular gel — of which she has several jars — on the King, and I am not sure she had ever used it to treat any patient.) The Doctor closed her mouth and I could see her wipe her tongue round her top gum. Then she smiled. "Are you sure you won't try some?"
Nolieti said nothing for a moment, his broad, dark face moving as though he was chewing on his tongue.
"Get this Drezen witch out of here," he said eventually to Unoure, and then turned away to stamp on the brazier's foot-bellows. The brazier hissed and glowed yellow, showering sparks up into its sooty chimney. Nolieti glanced at the dead man in the cage-chair. "Then take this bastard to the acid bath," he barked.
We were at the door when the chief torturer, still working the foot-bellows with a regular, thrusting stroke, called out, "Doctor?"
She turned to look at hire as Unoure opened the door and fished the black blindfold from his apron. "Yes, chief torturer?" she said.
He looked round at us, smiling as he continued to fire the brazier. "You'll be here again, Drezen woman," he said softly to her. His eyes glittered in the yellow brazier light. "And next time you won't be able to walk out."
The Doctor held his gaze for a good while, until she looked down and shrugged. "Or you will appear in my surgery," she told him, looking up. "And may be assured of my best attention."
The chief torturer turned away and spat into the brazier, his foot stamping on the bellows and breathing life into that instrument of death as we were ushered out of the low door by the assistant Unoure.
Two hundred heartbeats later we were met at the tall iron doors which led into the rest of the palace by a footman of the royal chamber.
"It's my back again, Vosill," the King said, turning on to his front on the wide, canopied bed while the Doctor rolled up first her own sleeves and then the King's tunic top and shift. And we were in the principal bed-chamber of King Quience's private apartments, deep within the innermost quadrangle of Efernze, the winter palace of Haspide, capital of Haspidus!
This has become such a regular haunt of mine, indeed such a regular place of work, that I confess I am inclined to forget that I am honoured indeed to be present. When I stop to consider the matter though, I think, Great Gods, I — an orphan of a disgraced family — am in the presence of our beloved King! And regularly, and intimately!
At such moments, Master, I thank you in my soul with all the vigour that is mine to command, for I know that it was only your kindness, wisdom and compassion that put me in such an exalted position and entrusted me with such an important mission. Be assured that I shall continue to try with all my might to be worthy of that trust, and fulfil that task.
Wiester, the King's chamberlain, had let us into the apartments. "Will that be all, sir?" he asked, bending and hunching over as well as his ample frame would allow.
"Yes. That's all for now. Go."
The Doctor sat on the side of the King's bed and kneaded his shoulders and back with her strong, capable fingers. She had me hold a small jar of rich-smelling unguent which she dipped her fingers into every now and again, spreading the ointment across the King's broad, hairy back and working it into his pale gold skin with her fingers and palms.
As I sat there, with the Doctor's medicine bag open at my side, I noticed that the jar of brown gel which she had used to treat the wretch in the hidden chamber was still lying opened on one of the bag's ingeniously fashioned internal shelves. I went to stick my own finger into the jar. The Doctor saw what I was doing and quickly took hold of my hand and pulled it away from the jar and said quietly, "I wouldn't, Oelph, if I were you. Just put the top back on carefully."
"What's that, Vosill?" the King asked.
"Nothing, sir," the Doctor said, replacing her hands on the King's back and leaning forward on to him.
"Ouch," the King said.
"Mostly muscular tension," the Doctor said softly, flicking her head so that her hair, which had partly fallen across her face, was sent spilling back over her shoulder.
"My father never had to suffer so," the King said morosely into his gold-threaded pillow, his voice made deeper by the thickness and weight of fabric and feathers.
The Doctor smiled quickly at me. "What, sir," she said. "You mean he never had to suffer my clumsy ministrations?"
"No," the King said, groaning. "You know what I mean, Vosill. This back. He never had to suffer this back. Or my leg cramps, or my headaches, or my constipation, or any of these aches and pains." He was silent a moment as the Doctor pushed and pressed at his skin. "Father never had to suffer anything. He never-"
"— had a day's illness in his life," the Doctor said, in chorus with the King.
The King laughed. The Doctor smiled at me again. I held the jar of ointment, inexpressibly happy for just that moment, until the King sighed and said, 'Ah, such sweet torture, Vosill."
Whereupon the Doctor paused in her rocking, kneading motion, and a look of bitterness, even contempt, passed briefly over her face.
2. THE BODYGUARD
This is the story of the man known as DeWar, who was principal bodyguard to General UrLeyn, Prime Protector of the Tassasen Protectorate, for the years 1218 to 1221, Imperial. Most of my tale takes place in the palace of Vorifyr, in Crough, the ancient capital city of Tassasen, during that fateful year of 1221.
I have chosen to tell the story after the fashion of the Jeritic fabulists, that is in the form of a Closed Chronicle, in which — if one is inclined to believe such information of consequence — one has to guess. the identity of the person telling the tale. My motive in doing so is to present the reader with a chance to choose whether to believe or disbelieve what I have to say about the events of that time — the broad facts of which are of course well known, even notorious, throughout the civilised world purely on the evidence of whether the story "rings true" for them or not, and without the prejudice which might result from knowing the identity of the narrator closing the mind of the reader to the truth I wish to present.
And it is time the truth was finally told. I have read, I think, all the various accounts of what happened in Tassasen during that momentous time, and the most significant difference between those reports seems to be the degree to which they depart most outrageously from what actually happened. There was one travesty of a version in particular which determined me to tell the true story of the time. It took the form of a play and claimed to tell my own tale, yet its ending could scarcely have been wider of the mark. The reader need only accept that I am who I am for its nonsensicality to be obvious.
I say this is DeWar's story, and yet I freely admit that it is not the whole of his story. It is only part, and arguably only a small part, measured solely in years. There was a part before, too, but history allows only the haziest notion of what that earlier past was like.
So, this is the truth as I experienced it, or as it was told to me by those I trusted.
Truth, I have learned, differs for everybody. Just as no two people ever see a rainbow in exactly the same place — and yet both most certainly see it, while the person seemingly standing right underneath it does not see it at all — so truth is a question of where one stands, and the direction one is looking in at the time.
Of course, the reader may choose to differ from me in this belief, and is welcome to do so.
"DeWar? Is that you?" The Prime Protector, First General and Grand Aedile of the Protectorate of Tassasen, General UrLeyn, shaded his eyes from the glare of a fan-shaped plaster-and-gem window above the hall's polished jet floor. It was midday, with Xamis and Seigen both shining brightly in a clear sky outside.
"Sir," DeWar said, stepping from the shadows at the edge of the room, where the maps were kept in a great wooden lattice. He bowed to the Protector and set a map on the table in front of him. "I think this is the map you might need."
DeWar: a tall, muscular man in early middle-age, darkhaired, dark-skinned and dark-browed, with deep, hooded eyes and a watchful, brooding look about him that quite suited his profession, which he once describ
ed as assassinating assassins. He seemed both relaxed and yet tensed, like an animal perpetually hunkered back ready to pounce, yet perfectly capable of remaining in that coiled position for as long as it might take for its prey to come into range and let drop its guard.
He was dressed, as ever, in black. His boots, hose, tunic and short jacket were all as dark as an eclipse-night. A narrow, sheathed sword hung from his right hip, a long dagger from his left.
"You fetch maps for my generals now, DeWar?" UrLeyn asked, amused. The General of generals of Tassasen, the commoner who commanded nobles, was a relatively small man who by dint of the bustling, busy force of his character made almost everybody feel that they were no taller than he. His hair was brindled, grey and thinning but his eyes were bright. People generally called his gaze "piercing'. He was dressed in the trousers and long jacket he had made the fashion amongst many of his fellow generals and large sections of the Tassasem trading classes.
"When my general sends me away from him, sir, yes," DeWar replied. "I try to do whatever I can to help. And such actions help prevent me dwelling on the risks my lord might be exposing himself to when he has me leave his side." DeWar tossed the map on to the table, where it unrolled.
"The borders… Ladenscion," UrLeyn breathed, patting the soft surface of the old map, then looking up at DeWar with a mischievous expression. "My dear DeWar, the greatest danger I expose myself to on such occasions is probably a dose of something unpleasant from some lass newly brought in, or possibly a slap for suggesting something my more demure concubines find excessively rude." The General grinned, hitching up the belt round his modest pot-belly. "Or a scratched back or bitten ear, if I'm lucky, eh?"
"The General puts us younger men to shame in many ways," DeWar murmured, smoothing out the parchment map. "But it is not unknown for assassins to have less respect for the privacy of a great leader's harem than, say, his chief bodyguard."