by Iain Banks
"Cuskery?"
"Yes, do you know of it?"
"Sort of. It's a port, isn't it?"
"Port, city-state, Sea Company sanctuary, lair of sea monsters if you believe some people… but the point is, it's about the furthest north people come in any numbers from the Southern lands, and they supposedly have quite a number of embassies and legations there."
"Yes?"
"Well, apparently one of Duke Walen's men has been sent to Cuskery to look for somebody from Drezen."
"From Drezen!" I said, then lowered my voice as Jollisce frowned and looked about us, over the sleeping bodies of the great animals. "But… why?"
"I can't imagine," Jollisce said.
"How long does it take to get to Cuskery?"
"It takes nearly a year to get there. The journey is somewhat quicker coming back, they say." He shrugged. "The winds."
"That's a long way to send somebody," I said, wondering.
"I know," Jollisce said. He sucked on his pipe. "My man assumed it was some trade thing. You know, people are always expecting to make their fortunes from spices or potions or new fruits or something, if they can get stuff past the Sea Companies and avoid the storms, but, well, my master came by some information that indicated Walen's fellow was looking for just one person."
"Oh."
"Hmm." Jollisce stood and faced the Xamis-set, his face made ruddy by the glow of flame-coloured cloud in the west. "Good sunset," he said, drawing deep on his pipe.
"Very," I agreed, not really looking.
"Best ones were just around the time the Empire fell, of course. Didn't you think?"
"Hmm? Oh yes, naturally."
"Providence's recompense for the sky falling in on us," Jollisce mused, frowning into the bowl of his pipe.
"Hmm. Yes." Who to tell? I thought. Who to tell…
Master, the Doctor attended the King in his tent each day during the Circuition from Haspide to Yvenir because our monarch was afflicted with an aching back.
The Doctor sat on the side of the bed King Quience lay upon. "If it's really that sore, sir, you should rest it, -she told him.
"Rest?" the King said, turning over on to his front. "How can I rest? This is the Circuition, you idiot. If I rest so does everybody else, and then by the time we get to the Summer Palace it'll be time to come back again."
"Well," the Doctor said, pulling the King's shift up out of his riding breeches to expose his broad, muscled back. "You might lie on your back in a carriage, sir."
"That would hurt too," he said into his pillow.
"It might hurt a little, sir, but it would quickly become better. Sitting on a mount will only make it worse."
"Those carts, they sway all over the place and the wheels bang down into holes and ruts. These roads are much worse than they were last year, I'm sure. Wiester?"
"Sir?" the fat chamberlain said, quickly stepping out of the shadows to the King's side.
"Have somebody find out whose responsibility this bit of road is. Are the appropriate taxes being collected? If they are, are they being spent on it and if not where are they going?"
"At once, sir." Wiester bustled off, leaving the tent.
"You can't trust Dukes to levy taxes properly, Vosill," the King sighed. "At any rate, you can't trust their tax collectors. They have too damn much authority. Far too many tax collectors have bought themselves baronies for my liking."
"Indeed, Sir," the Doctor said.
"Yes. I've been thinking I might set up some sort of more… town- or city-sized, umm…"
"Authority, Sir?"
"Yes. Yes, authority. A council of responsible citizens. Perhaps just to oversee the roads and city walls and so on, at first. Things they might care about more than Dukes, who only bother about their own houses and how much game is in their parks."
"I'm sure that's a very good idea, sir."
"Yes, I'm sure it is too." The King looked round at the Doctor. "You have them, don't you?"
"Councils, Sir?"
"Yes. I'm sure you've mentioned them. Probably comparing our own backward arrangements unfavourably, I don't doubt."
"Would I do that, sir?"
"Oh, I think you would, Vosill."
"Our arrangements do seem to produce comfortable roads, I would certainly claim that."
"But then," the King said glumly, "if I take power from the barons, they'll get upset."
"Well, make them all arch-Dukes, sir, or give them some other awards."
The King thought about this. "What other awards?"
"I don't know, sir. You might invent some."
"Yes, I might," the King said. "But then, if I go giving power to the peasants or the tradespeople and so on, they'll only want more."
The Doctor continued to massage the King's back. "We do say that prevention is better than cure, sir," she told him. "The time to look after the body is before there is anything wrong with it. The time to rest is before you feel too tired to do anything else, and the time to eat is before hunger consumes you.
The King frowned as the Doctor's hands moved over his body. "How I wish it was all so easy." he said with a sigh. "I think the body must be a simple thing in comparison to a state if it can be maintained on the basis of such platitudes."
The Doctor, I thought, looked a little hurt by this. "Then I am glad that my concern is for the health of your body, sir, not that of your country."
"I am my country," the King said sternly, though with an expression which belied his tone.
"Then be glad, sir, that your kingdom is in a better state than its king, who will not lie in a carriage like a sensible monarch would."
"Don't treat me like a child, Vosill!" the King said loudly, twisting round towards her. "Ow!" he said, grimacing, and collapsed back again. "What you don't realise, Vosill," he said, through gritted teeth, "being a woman, I suppose, is that in a carriage you have less room for manoeuvre. They take up the whole road, you see? A man on a mount, why, he can negotiate his way around all the irregularities on the road surface."
"I see, sir. Nevertheless, it is a fact that you are spending the whole day in the saddle, bouncing up and down and compressing the small pads between your vertebrae and forcing them into the nerve. That's what is making your spine hurt. Lying in a carriage, almost no matter how much it shakes and bounces, will certainly be better for you."
"Look, Vosill," the King said in an exasperated tone, levering himself up on one elbow and looking round at the Doctor. "How do you think it would look if the King took to a pleasuring couch and laid amongst the perfumed pillows of a ladies" carriage like some porcelainarsed concubine? What sort of monarch could do that? Eh? Don't be ridiculous." He laid carefully back on his front again.
"I take it your father never did such a thing, sir.,
"No, he… the King began, then looked suspiciously back at the Doctor before continuing. "No, he didn't. Of course not. He rode. And I will ride. I shall ride and make my back sore because that's what's expected of me. You shall make my back better because that's what's expected of you. Now, do your job, Doctor, and stop this damned prattling. Providence preserve me from the wittering of women! Aow! Will you be careful!"
"I have to find out where it hurts, sir."
"Well, you've found it! Now do what you're supposed to do, which is make it stop hurting. Wiester? Wiested"
Another servant came forward. "He's just stepped out, sir."
"Music," the King said. "I want music. Fetch the musicians."
"Sir." The servant turned to go.
The King snapped his fingers, bringing the servant back.
"Sir?"
"And wine."
"Sir."
"What a beautiful sunset, don't you think, Oelph?"
"Yes, mistress. Providence's recompense for the sky falling in upon us," I said, recalling Jollisce's phrase (I was sure it was one he'd heard from somebody else anyway).
"I suppose it's something," the Doctor agreed.
We were sitt
ing on the broad front bench of the covered wagon which had become our home. I had been counting. I had slept in the carriage for eleven of the last sixteen days
(the other five I had been billeted with the other senior pages and apprentices in buildings in one of the towns we had camped within) and I would probably sleep in it again for another seven days out of the next ten, until we reached the city of Lep-Skatacheis, where we would stop for half a moon. Thereafter the wagon would be my home for eighteen days out of twenty-one until we reached Yvenage. Perhaps nineteen out of twenty-two if we encountered difficulties on the hill roads and were delayed.
The Doctor looked away from the sunset, gazing up the road, which was lined with tall trees standing in sandy earth on both sides. An orange-brown haze hung in the air above the swaying tops of the grander carriages ahead. "Are we nearly there yet?"
"Very nearly, mistress. This is the longest day's travel on either leg. The scouts should be in sight of the camp ground and the forward party ought to have the tents erected and the field kitchens set up. It is a long draw, but they say the way to look at it is as saving a day."
Ahead of us on the road were the grand carriages and covered wagons of the royal household. Immediately in front of us were two hauls, their broad shoulders and rumps swaying from side to side. The Doctor had refused a driver. She wanted to take the whip herself (though she used it little). This meant that we had to feed and care for the beasts ourselves each evening. I did not appreciate this, though my fellow pages and apprentices certainly did. So far the Doctor had taken on a much higher proportion of this menial work than I'd expected, but I resented doing any of it at all, and found it hard to believe that she could not see she was exposing both of us to ridicule by taking on such a degrading task.
She was looking at the sunset again. The light caught the edge of her cheek, outlining it in a colour like that of red gold. Her hair, falling loose across her shoulders, was glossily radiant with highlights like spun ruby.
"Were you still in Drezen when the rocks fell from the sky, mistress?"
"Hmm? Oh. Yes. I didn't leave until about two years later." She seemed lost in thought, and her expression suddenly melancholy.
"Did you come by way of Cuskery, by any chance, mistress?"
"Why, Yes, Oelph, I did," the Doctor said, her expression lightening as she turned to me. "You've heard of it?"
"Vaguely," I said. My mouth had gone quite dry while I wondered whether to say anything about what I had heard from Walen's page and Jollisce. "Umm, is it far from there to here?"
"The voyage is a good half a year," the Doctor said, nodding. She smiled up at the sky. "A very hot place, lush and steamy and full of ruined temples and various odd animals that have the run of the place because they are held to be sacred by some ancient sect or another. The air is saturated with the smell of spices, and when I was there there was a full night, when Xamis and Seigen had both long set, almost together, and Gidulph, Jairly and Foy were in the day sky, and Iparine was eclipsed by the world itself and for a bell or so there was only the starlight to shine on the sea and the city, and the animals all howled into the darkness and the waves I could hear from my room sounded very loud, though it was not really dark, just silver. People stood in the streets, very quiet, looking at the stars, as though relieved to find their existence was not a myth. I wasn't in the street just then, I was.. I'd met a terribly nice Sea Company captain that day. Very handsome," she said, and sighed.
In that instant she was like a young girl (and I a jealous youth).
"Did your ship go straight from there to here?"
"Oh no, there were four voyages after Cuskery: to Alyle on the Sea Company barquentine Face of fairly," she said, and smiled broadly, staring ahead. "Then from there to Fuollah on a trireme, of all things… a Farossi vessel, exImperial navy, then overland to Osk, and from there to Illerne by an argosy out of Xinkspar, finally to Haspide on a galliot of the Mifeli clan traders."
"It all sounds most romantic, mistress."
She gave what looked like a sad smile. "It was not without its privations and indignities on occasion," she said, tapping at the top of her hoot, "and once or twice this old dagger was drawn, but yes, looking back, it was. Very romantic." She took a deep breath and let it out, then swivelled and looked up into the skies, shading her eyes from Seigen.
"fairly has not yet risen, mistress," I said quietly, and was surprised at the coldness I felt. She looked at me oddly.
Some sense returned to me. No matter that since my fever in the palace, when she had said that we ought to be friends, she was still my mistress and I was still her servant as well as her apprentice. And as well as a mistress, I had a Master. Probably nothing I could find out from the Doctor would be new to him, for he had many sources, but I could not be sure, and so I supposed I had an obligation to him to find out all I could from her, in case some small piece of it might prove useful.
"Was that — I mean taking the Mifeli clan ship from Illerne to Haspide — how you came to be employed by the Mifelis?"
"No, that was just coincidence. I helped around the seamen's infirmary for a while after I first landed before one of the younger Mifelis needed treatment on a homebound ship — it had signalled ahead to the Sentry Isles. The Mifelis" own doctor then suffered terribly from seasickness and would not go out on the cutter to meet the galleon. I was recommended to Prelis Mifeli by the infirmary's head surgeon, so I went instead. The boy lived, the ship came in and I was made the Mifeli head-family doctor right there on the docks. Old man Mifeli doesn't waste time making decisions."
"And their old doctor?"
"Pensioned off." She shrugged.
I watched the rear end of the two hauls for a while. One of them shat copiously. The steaming shit disappeared under our wagon, but not before wreathing us in its vapours.
"Dear me, what an awful smell," the Doctor said. I bit my tongue. This was one of the reasons that people who were in a position to do so usually kept as much distance between themselves and beasts of burden as they could.
"Mistress, may I ask you a question?"
She hesitated for a moment. "You have been asking me various questions already, Oelph," she said, and graced me with a sly, amused look. "I take it you mean may you ask me a question that may be impertinent?"
"Umm…,
"Ask away, young Oelph. I can always pretend I didn't hear you."
"I was just wondering, mistress," I said, feeling most awkward, and very warm all of a sudden, "why you left Drezen?"
"Ah," she said, and taking up the whip waggled it over the yokes of the two hauls, barely tickling their necks with the end of it. She looked briefly at me. "Partly the urge to have an adventure, Oelph. just the desire to go somewhere nobody I knew had been before. And partly… partly to get away, to forget somebody." She smiled brightly, dazzlingly at me for a moment before looking away up the road again. "I had an unhappy love affair, Oelph. And I am stubborn. And proud. Having made up my mind to leave and having announced that I would travel to the other ends of the world, I could not — I would not — back down. And so I hurt myself twice, once by falling for the wrong person, and then a second time by being too obstinate — even in a more temperate mood — to retreat from a commitment made in a fury of injured pride."
"Was this the person who gave you the dagger, mistress?" I asked, already hating and envying the man.
"No," she said, with a sort of snorting laugh which I thought was most unladylike. "I had been wounded by him quite enough without carrying such a token of his." She gazed down at the dagger, sheathed as usual in the top of her right boot. "The dagger was a gift from… the state. Some of the decoration on the dagger was given to me by another friend. One I used to have terrible arguments with. A double-edged gift."
"What was it you argued about, mistress?"
"Lots of things, or lots of aspects of the same thing. Whether the might beyond might had a right to impose its values on others." She looked at my puzzled expr
ession and laughed. "We argued about here, for one thing."
"Here, mistress?" I asked, looking around.
"About-" She seemed to catch herself, then said, "About Haspide, the Empire. About this whole other hemisphere." She shrugged. "I won't bore you with the details. In the end I left and he stayed, though I did hear later that he too sailed away, some time after I did."
"Do you regret coming here now, mistress?"
"No," she said, smiling. "For most of the voyage to Cuskery I did… but the equator signalled a change, as they say it often does, and since then, no. I still miss my family and friends, but I am not sorry now that I made the decision."
"Do you think you will ever go back, mistress?"
"I have no idea, Oelph." Her expression was troubled and hopeful at once. Then she produced another smile for me. "I am the doctor to the King, after all. I would consider that I have not done my job properly if he would let me leave. I may be forced to look after him until he's an old man, or until he grows displeased with me because I grow whiskers on my lips and my hair thins on my head and my breath smells, and he has my head chopped off because I interrupt him once too often. Then you might have to become his doctor."
"Oh, mistress," was all I could say.
"I don't know, Oelph," she confided in me. "I'm not so sure about making plans. I'll wait and see which way fate takes me. If Providence, or whatever we wish to call it, has me stay, then I'll stay. If it somehow calls me back to Drezen, I'll go." She dipped her head towards me and with what she probably thought was a conspiratorial look said, "Who knows, my destiny might lead me back through Equatorial Cuskery. I might get to see my handsome Sea Company captain again." She winked at me.
"Was the land of Drezen much affected by the rocks from the sky, mistress?" I asked.
She did not seem to heed my tone, which I had worried might seem excessively frosty. "More than here in Haspidus," she said. "But much less than the Inlands of the Empire. One city on a far northern island was washed almost entirely away by a wave, killing ten or more thousand people, and some ships were lost, and of course the crop yields all over were down for a couple of growing seasons; so the farmers moaned, but then the farmers always do. No, we escaped relatively lightly."