by Iain Banks
"Providence, twice."
8. THE BODYGUARD
"Am I so trusted now?
"Or I am. Probably because I am regarded as being beyond the interest of any but the most desperate of men. Or because the General does not intend to visit me again and so-"
"Careful!"
DeWar grabbed at Perrund's arm just as she was about to step from the street-side into the path of a ten-team of mounts hauling a war carriage. He pulled her back towards him as first the panting, sweat-lathered team and then the great swaying bulk of the cannon-wagon itself raced past, shaking the cobblestones beneath their feet. A smell of sweat and oil rolled over them. He felt her draw away from it all, pressing her back against his chest. Behind him, the stone counter of a butcher's shop dug into his back. The noise of the wagon's man-high wheels resounded between the cracked, uneven walls of the two- and three-storey buildings leaning over the street.
On top of the huge black gun carriage a bombardier uniformed in the colours of Duke Ralboute stood lashing wildly at the mounts. The wagon was followed by two smaller carriages full of men and wooden cases. These in turn were trailed by a ragged pack of shouting children. The wagons thundered through the open gates set within the inner city's walls and disappeared from view. People on the street who had shrunk back from the speeding vehicles flowed back into the thoroughfare again, muttering and shaking their heads.
DeWar let Perrund go and she turned to him. He realised with a flush of embarrassment that in his instinctive reaction to the danger he had taken hold of her by the withered arm. The memory of its touch, through the sleeve of her gown, the sling and the fold of her cloak, seemed imprinted in the bones of his hand as something thin, fragile and childlike.
"I'm sorry," he said, blurting the words.
She was still very close to him. She stepped away, smiling uncertainly. The hood of her cloak had fallen, revealing her lace-veiled face and her golden hair, which was gathered inside a black net. She drew the hood back up. "Oh, DeWar," she chided. "You save somebody's life and then you apologise. You really are — oh, I don't know," she said, readjusting the hood. DeWar had time to be surprised. He had never known the lady Perrund lost for words. The hood she was struggling with fell back again, caught by a gust of wind. "Damn thing," she said, taking hold of it with her good arm and pulling it back once more. He had started to put his hand up, to help her with the hood, but now had to let his hand fall back. "There," she said. "That's better. Here. I'll take your arm. Now, let us walk."
DeWar checked the street and then they crossed it, carefully avoiding the small piles of animal dung. A warm wind blew up between the buildings, lifting whirls of straw from the cobblestones. Perrund held DeWar's arm with her good hand, her forearm laid lightly on his. In DeWar's other hand he held a cane basket she had asked him to carry for her when they'd left the palace. "Obviously I am not fit to be let out by myself," she told him. "I have spent far too long in rooms and courtyards, and on terraces and lawns. Everywhere, in fact, where there is no traffic any larger or more threatening than a eunuch with an urgently needed tray of scented waters."
"I didn't hurt you, did I?" DeWar asked, glancing at her.
`No, but if you had I think I might still count it better than being mangled beneath the iron wheels of a piece of siege artillery proceeding at a charge. Where do you think they are going in such a hurry?"
"Well, they won't go anywhere very far at that rate. The mounts already looked half exhausted and that was before they'd left the city. I imagine that was a show for the locals. But they will be heading for Ladenscion eventually, I imagine."
"Is the war begun, then?"
"What war, my lady?"
"The war against the troublesome barons of Ladenscion, DeWar. I am not an idiot."
DeWar sighed and looked around, checking that nobody in the street was paying them too close attention. "It is not officially begun yet," he said, putting his lips close to the hood of her cloak — she turned towards him and he smelled her perfume, sweet and musky — "but I think one might safely say it is inevitable."
"How far away is Ladenscion?" she asked. They ducked under displays of fruit hanging outside a grocer's.
"About twenty days" ride to the border hills."
"Will the Protector have to go himself?"
"I really couldn't say."
"DeWar," she said softly, with what sounded like disappointment.
He sighed and looked around again. "I shouldn't think so," he said. "He has much to do here, and there are more than enough generals for the job. It… it shouldn't take too long."
"You sound unconvinced."
"Do I?" They stopped at a side street to let a small herd of hauls pass, heading for the auction grounds. "I seem to be in a minority of one in thinking the war… suspicious.,
"Suspicious?" Perrund sounded amused.
"The barons" complaints and their stubbornness, their refusal to negotiate, seem disproportionate."
"You think they're inviting war for its own sake?"
"Yes. Well, not just for its own sake. Only a madman would do that. But for some further reason than the desire to assert their independence from Tassasen."
"But what else could their motive be?"
"It is not their motive that troubles me."
"Then whose?"
"Someone behind them."
"They are being encouraged to make war?"
"It feels so to me, but I am just a bodyguard. The Protector is cloistered with his generals now and believes he needs neither my presence nor my opinion."
"And I am grateful for your company. But I had formed the impression the Protector valued your counsel."
"It is most valued when it most closely accords with his own view."
"DeWar, you are not jealous, are you?" She stopped and turned to him. He looked into her face, shaded and half hidden by the hood of the cloak and the thin veil. Her skin seemed to glow in that darkness like a hoard of gold at the back of a cave.
"Maybe I am," he admitted, with a bashful grin. "Or perhaps I am once again exercising my duties in areas which are inappropriate."
"As in our game."
"As in our game."
They turned together and walked on. She took his arm again. "Well then, who do you think might be behind the vexatious barons?"
"Kizitz, Breistler, Velfasse. Any one or combination of our three claimant Emperors. Kizitz will make mischief wherever he can. Breistler has a claim to part of Ladenscion itself and might seek to offer his forces as compromise occupants to keep the barons" and our armies apart. Velfasse has his eye on our eastern provinces. Drawing our forces to the west might be a feint. Faross would like the Thrown Isles back, and may have a similar strategy. Then there's Haspidus."
"Haspidus?" she said. "I thought King Quience supported UrLeyn."
"It may suit him to be seen to support UrLeyn for now. But Haspidus lies behind — beyond — Ladenscion. It would be easier for Quience to provide the barons with materiel than anybody else."
"And you think Quience opposes the Protector out of Regal principle? Because UrLeyn dared to kill a king?"
"Quience knew the old king. He and Beddun were as close to being friends as two kings can be, so there might be something of the personal in his animosity. But even without that, Quience is no fool, and he has no pressing problems to occupy him at the moment. He has the luxury of time to think long, and the brains to know that UrLeyn's example cannot go unopposed for ever if he wishes to pass on the crown to his heirs."
"But Quience has no children yet, does he?"
"None that are regarded as mattering, and he has yet to decide who to marry, but even if he was concerned only for his own reign, he might still want to see the Protectorate fail."
"Dear me. I had no idea we were quite so surrounded by enemies."
"I'm afraid we are, my lady."
"Ah. Here we are."
The old stone-built building across the crowded street from them was the
paupers" hospital. It was here Perrund had wanted to come with her basket of foods and medicines. "My old home," she said, staring over the heads of the people. A small troop of colourfully dressed soldiers appeared round a corner and came marching down the street, attended by a boy drummer at their head, tearful women to each side and capering children behind. Everybody turned to look except Perrund. Her gaze remained fixed on the worn, stained stones of the old hospital across the street.
DeWar looked this way and that. "Have you been back since?" he asked.
"No. But I have kept in touch. I have sent them some little things in the past. I thought it would be amusing to deliver them myself this time. Oh. What are those?" The troop of soldiers was passing in front of them. The soldiers wore bright red and yellow uniforms and polished metal hats. Each carried a long wood-mounted metal tube slung slanted across their shoulders and waving in the air above their gleaming helmets.
"Musketeers, my lady," DeWar told her. "And that is Duke Simalg's banner at their head."
"Ah. These are the musket guns. I have heard about them."
DeWar watched the troop pass with a troubled, distracted look. "UrLeyn won't have them in the palace," he said eventually. "They can be useful on the battlefield."
The sound of the beating drum faded. The street filled again with its ordinary commerce. A gap opened in the traffic of carts and carriages between them and the hospital, and DeWar thought they would take advantage of it, but Perrund lingered on the pavement, her hand clutching at his forearm while she stared at the ornate and time-stained stonework of the ancient building.
DeWar cleared his throat. "Will there be anybody there from when you were?"
"The present matron was a nurse when I was here. It's her I've corresponded with. - Still she did not move.
"Were you here long?"
"Only ten days or so. It was only five years ago, but it seems much longer." She kept staring at the building.
DeWar was not sure what to say. "It must have been a difficult time."
From what he had succeeded in teasing from her over the past few years, DeWar knew that Perrund had been brought here suffering from a terrible fever. She and eight of her sisters, brothers and cousins had been refugees from the war of succession during which UrLeyn had taken control of Tassasen following the fall of the Empire. Travelling from the southlands where the fighting had been worst, they had made for Crough, along with a large part of the rest of the population of Tassasen's south. The family had been traders in a market town, but most of them had been killed by the King's forces when they had taken the town from UrLeyn's troops. The General's men had retaken it, with UrLeyn at their head, but by then Perrund and her few remaining relatives were on the road for the capital.
They had all contracted some form of plague on the journey and only a hefty bribe had got them through the city gates at all. The least sick of them had driven their wagon to one of the old royal parks where refugees could camp and the last of their money had paid for a doctor and medicines. Most of them had died then. Perrund had been found a place in the paupers" hospital. She had come close to death but then recovered. When she had gone in search of the rest of her family her quest had ended at the lime pits beyond the city walls where people had been buried hundreds at a time.
She had thought of killing herself then, but was afraid to, and besides considered that as Providence had seen fit to have her recover from the plague, perhaps she was not meant to die quite yet. There was, anyway, a general feeling that the worst of times might be over. The war had ended, the plague had all but disappeared and order had returned to Crough and was returning to the rest of Tassasen.
Perrund had helped out at the hospital, sleeping on the floor of one of the great open wards where people wept and shouted and moaned throughout the day and night. She had begged for food in the street and she had turned down many an offer that would have let her buy food and comfort with her sex, but then a eunuch of the palace harem — UrLeyn's, now that the old King was dead — had visited the hospital. The doctor who had found Perrund a place in the hospital had told a friend at court that she was a great beauty, and — once she had been persuaded to clean her face and put on a dress — the eunuch had thought her suitable.
So she was recruited to the languid opulence of the harem, and became a frequent choice of the Protector. What would have seemed like a restrictive kind of luxury, even a sort of well-furnished prison to the young woman she had been a year earlier, when she and her family were living together and peaceably in their prosperous little market town, she saw instead, after the war and everything that had come with it, as a blessed sanctuary.
Then had come the day when UrLeyn and various of his court favourites, including some of his concubines, were to be painted by a famous artist. The artist brought with him a new assistant who turned out to have a mission of rather more serious intent than simply helping to fix UrLeyn's and the others" likenesses in paint, and only Perrund throwing herself between his knife and UrLeyn had saved the Protector's life.
"Shall we?" DeWar asked, when Perrund still had not moved from the pavement.
She looked at him as though she had forgotten he was there, then she smiled from the depths of the hood. "Yes," she said. "Yes, let's."
She held his arm tightly as they crossed the street.
"Tell me more about Lavishia."
"Where? Oh, Lavishia. Let me think. Well now, in Lavishia everybody is able to fly."
"Like birds? Lattens asked.
"Just like birds," DeWar confirmed. "They can leap from cliffs and tall buildings — of which there are a great many in Lavishia — or they can just run along the street and jump into the air and soar away up into the sky."
"Do they have wings??
"They do have wings but they are invisible wings."
"Can they fly to the suns?"
"Not on their own. To fly to the suns they have to use ships. Ships with invisible sails."
"Don't they burn in the heat of the suns??
"Not the sails, they're invisible and the heat goes straight through them. But the wooden hulls scorch and blacken and burst into flame if they go too close, of course."
"How far is it to the suns?"
"I don't know, but people say that they are different distances away, and some clever people claim that they are both very far away indeed."
"These would be the same clever people called mathematicians who tell us the world is a ball, and not flat," Perrund said.
"They would," DeWar confirmed.
A travelling troupe of shadow players had come to court. They had set up in the palace's theatre, whose plaster windows had shutters which could be closed against the light. They had stretched a white sheet very tightly across a wooden frame whose lower edge was just above head height. Below the frame hung a black cloth. The white screen was lit from behind by a single strong lamp set some distance back. Two men and two women manipulated the two-dimensional puppets and their accompanying shadow-scenery, using thin sticks to make the characters" limbs and bodies swivel. Effects like waterfalls and flames were achieved using thin strips of dark paper and bellows to make them flutter. Using a variety of voices, the players told ancient stories of kings and queens, heroes and villains, fidelity and betrayal and love and hate.
It was the interval now. DeWar had been round the back of the screen to make sure that the two guards he had stationed there were still awake, and they were. The shadow players had objected at first, but he had insisted the guards stay there. UrLeyn was sitting in the middle of the small auditorium, a perfect and stationary target for somebody behind the screen with a cross bow. UrLeyn, Perrund and everybody else who had heard about the two guards behind the screen thought DeWar was once again taking his duties far too seriously, but he could not have sat there and watched the show comfortably with nobody he trusted behind the screen. He had stationed guards by the window shutters too, with instructions to open them promptly if the lantern behind the scree
n went out.
These precautions taken, he had been able to watch the shadow players" performance — from the seat immediately behind UrLeyn — with a degree of equanimity, and when Lattens had clambered over the seat in front and come and sat on his lap demanding to know more about Lavishia he had felt sufficiently relaxed to be happy to oblige. Perrund, sitting one seat along from UrLeyn, had turned round to ask her question about mathematicians. She watched DeWar and Lattens with an amused, indulgent expression.
"Can they fly under the water, too?" Lattens asked. He wriggled off DeWar's lap and stood in front of him, an intent look on his face. He was dressed like a little soldier, with a wooden sword at his side in a decorated scabbard.
"They certainly can. They are very good at holding their breath and can do it for days at a time."
"And can they fly through mountains?"
"Only through tunnels, but they have lots of tunnels. Of course, some of the mountains are hollow. And others are full of treasure."
"Are there wizards and enchanted swords?"
"Yes, enchanted swords by the cistern-full, and lots of wizards. Though they tend to be a trifle arrogant."
"And are there giants and monsters?"
"Plenty of both, though they are all very nice giants and extremely helpful monsters."
"How boring," Perrund murmured, reaching out her good hand and patting down some of Lattens" more wayward curls.
UrLeyn turned round in his seat, eyes twinkling. He drank from a glass of wine then said, "What's this, DeWar? Are you filling my boy's head with nonsense?"
"There would be a wonder," said BiLeth, from a couple of seats away. The tall foreign minister looked bored with the proceedings.
"I'm afraid I am, sir," DeWar admitted to UrLeyn, ignoring BiLeth. "I'm telling him about kind giants and pleasant monsters, when everybody knows that giants are cruel and monsters are terrifying."
"Preposterous," BiLeth said.
"What's that?" RuLeuin asked, also turning round. UrLeyn's brother sat beside him on the other side from Perrund. He was one of the few generals who had not been sent off to Ladenscion. "Monsters? We have seen monsters on the screen, haven't we, Lattens?"