The Last Witness

by K. J. Parker

  “It hurts,” I replied. “But they don’t necessarily realise it’s me doing it. They may think it’s a heart attack, or something like that.”

  “So it hurts a lot.”

  “Yes.”

  Pause for mature consideration. Then I screamed, because someone was holding a red-hot iron to the back of my neck. “As bad as that?”

  It took me a moment to catch my breath. “Different sort of pain, I think,” I said. “But purely in terms of quantity, about that, yes.”

  “Mphm.” I heard movement behind me, and the cherry-red end of an iron rod appeared in front of my eyes. “Can you make it a bit less painful, if you really try hard?”

  “No,” I said. From a slight intake of breath, I guessed I’d said the wrong thing. “Of course, I can remove the memory of the pain. That’s easy.”

  (A slight overstatement; like saying the sea is a bit damp. But I can do that, yes.)

  “Ah.” He liked me again. The red-hot iron went away, though probably only as far as a charcoal brazier. “So you can do it to someone and he won’t know about it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Splendid.” Slight pause. “Now, I’m going to ask you that again, and this time, if you were lying, tell the truth. You can do it to someone and he won’t know?”

  “Yes. You have my word.”

  I’d said something funny. “Fair enough,” said the voice. “The word of a gentleman is always good enough for me. Now, then. You work for—” And he mentioned two names. They weren’t the names I knew the old man and his son by, but I’d done a little research. “Yes,” I said, and braced myself for another touch of the hot iron.

  “Relax,” the voice said. “I’m not going to ask you to betray confidences, I know you wouldn’t do that.” Pause. “Not for some time, and by then you’d be no good for anything. But I am going to ask you to do something that isn’t in the best interests of your employers. I’m going to ask you to bleach something out of their minds. Would that be awkward for you, ethically speaking?”

  Believe it or not, I did actually think about it before answering. Not for terribly long. “No,” I said, “that wouldn’t be a problem.” Silence; so I expanded a little. “My duty to my client is not to divulge things he doesn’t want known. That’s it, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Particularly if he never knows about it.”

  “Particularly, yes.”

  The voice laughed gently. “Because if nobody knows about it, it never happened. Splendid. I believe your usual charge is a thousand angels.”

  Wonderful, what people believe. But I have nothing against good honest faith. We could do with more of it in this world. “That’s right, yes.”

  “Two thousand angels, since there are two of them, father and son.”

  I was beginning to warm to him. “That’s right, yes.”

  “The rest of you, out.” Shuffling noises. The man in front of me stood up and walked away. A door closed. “Now I’m going to tell you what I need you to remove. I know I can trust your discretion, because you’re a gentleman. Listen carefully.”

  * * *

  Burns on the back of the neck are no fun at all; every time you turn your head, you stretch them, and it hurts. Something to remember him by.

  Still; two thousand angels. I lay awake (on my face; I can only get to sleep lying on my side) all that night thinking of what I could do with two thousand angels. Buy a large farm, fully stocked, and hire a good bailiff. Or invest in shipping, which is going to be the next big thing, or copper mines in Scheria (or maybe not; too much of a gamble for my taste). Give up work for good. Get rich. Become a god.

  Two days to go before I next saw the old man and his son; in the meanwhile, I had a piffling little job to get out of the way. Two hundred angels practically for nothing.

  He was an inoffensive old boy, well into his eighties, living in a smart house overlooking the bay—he’d been a ship’s captain, and he liked to see the sails in the harbour. His servant brought me green tea in a little porcelain bowl, and some wafer-thin biscuits that tasted of honey and cinnamon. I sat on a big carved rosewood chair made for someone twice my size. It was all very civilized.

  He told me about his son; a good boy, very clever, took after his mother. My client had just bought his own ship, after a lifetime of hard work and being careful with money. Naturally, he wanted his son to come and work with him, but the boy had set his heart on being a musician. He could play the flute very well (but all technique and no feeling). It was what his mother would have wanted, he kept on saying. My client was heartbroken, because the whole idea of the ship was so he could pass it on to his son and heir. There were harsh words, and the boy slammed out of the house. He got a job playing the flute in a teahouse down by the docks; and there he died, on account of slow reflexes when the furniture started to fly. I think about him every day, the old man said, and it’s killing me.

  Well, I thought, what do you expect? Serves you right for meddling with love. You’ll get no sympathy from me. But he’d been very polite and given me a nice cup of tea, and two hundred angels was two hundred angels more than I had in the world, and I am, after all, a professional. “How can I help?” I asked.

  “I want to forget him,” he said. “I want to forget he was ever born.”

  I got up. I think I said thank you for the tea. I told him, sorry, I can’t help you, I’m really sorry and I wish there was something I can do, but I can’t. He accepted it quietly, like the prisoner who’s pleaded guilty. Because he was such a nice old fellow, I tried really hard to keep the loathing off my face, at least until the door closed behind me.

  * * *

  (Sometimes I wonder, what if none of this is really me? What if—for an obscene amount of money—I was at some point hired to take over someone’s entire life, from birth, every memory, the lot; and what if every memory I think is mine is really that other man’s, a complete and coherent narrative, utterly vivid and real in my head, perfect and irrefutably valid, subject to corroboration and proof from external sources, except that it actually happened to somebody else? I guess it’s one of those fantasies you spin to keep yourself going; like, my parents aren’t really my parents, really I’m the son of a duke, stolen from his cot by tinkers, and one day my real father will turn up and claim me, and take me back to my real life, the one I should have had all along?)

  * * *

  On my way to meet the old man and his son, I ran into someone I knew.

  By the time I saw him, it was too late for evasive action. I looked round to see if there was anyone to hear if I yelled for help—no such luck; I was taking my usual shortcut through the Caulkers’ Yards. Maximum privacy. Serves me right for being too lazy to walk down Crowngate.

  He smiled at me. “Been looking for you,” he said.

  Too big to fight, too nimble to evade. “I’ve got your money,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “You haven’t.”

  “I’ll have it for you by tonight, that’s a promise.”

  “Two angels sixteen,” he said. “I want it now.”

  “Be reasonable,” I started to say, but then he kicked me in the groin and I fell down. I twisted as I went down and landed on my shoulder, absorbing most of the impact in muscle. After a while, it becomes second nature.

  “But it’s all right,” he said, and kicked me in the ribs. “I’m patient, I can wait.” Another kick. His heart wasn’t in it, though, I could tell. “Here, tonight, fourth watch. Three angels.”

  Of course. Interest on two angels sixteen. He’s not very good at basic arithmetic, but he doesn’t need to be. “No problem,” I whispered. “I’ll be here.”

  “You’d better be.” He gave me a look of infinite contempt. “It’s so easy for you rich bastards, never had to do a day’s work in your lives. Plenty more where that came from. You think you’re so much better. You make me sick.” A third kick, for luck; this time with feeling. “And don’t ever borrow money from me again.”

 
I waited till he’d gone, and picked myself up slowly. It took a while. To be fair to myself, I’d only borrowed from him because he’d just won everything I had, well, everything I had left. Over the years he’s had enough money out of me to pay the revenues for Moesia province, including the charcoal levy. But he dresses like trash and lives in a coal cellar. Beats me what he spends it all on.

  Fortunately he’d done no irreparable visible damage. I dusted myself off and limped the rest of the way as quickly as I could manage. I’m proud to say I was on time for my appointment, in spite of everything.

  * * *

  My victim was a fine-looking man, about forty years old, tall and broad-shouldered, with a farmer’s tan. He was reclining on a couch, with a silver goblet at his elbow and a plate of those minced-up fish nibbles in wafer-thin crispy pastry shells. He didn’t stand up when I entered the room, but there was a sort of involuntary movement which told me he’d considered it before deciding it wouldn’t be appropriate.

  The young man was wearing one of those fashionable silk robes; it was far too big for him and, in a moment of inspiration, I realised it was one of his father’s hand-me-downs. The old man was wearing quilted wool (in summer, dear God) with frayed cuffs and elbows. The rich, bless them.

  “This is the man I was telling you about,” the old man said. “It won’t take two minutes, and it doesn’t hurt.”

  My victim frowned beautifully. “And he won’t remember anything?”

  I cleared my throat, but the old man answered for me. “He remembers all right,” he said, “but he won’t say anything. And besides, look at him. Who’d believe him?”

  Uncalled for; I was wearing my good shirt, which fortunately hadn’t come to harm to anything like the same extent as I had. “I take my clients’ confidences very seriously,” I said. I don’t think anybody heard me.

  “Up to you,” my victim said. “It’s your risk, after all.”

  The young man pulled a miserable face, which got him a scowl from his father. “We might as well get on with it,” the old man said.

  My victim shrugged. “What do I do?”

  “Nothing,” the old man said. “Just sit there.”

  I knew exactly what to look for, so it was a nice, easy job, in and out; I confess, my mind wasn’t really on it, preoccupied as I was with the job I had to do on the old man and his son immediately afterwards, which would be much harder. I remembered to wipe the memory of the pain I’d caused him—he actually yelled out loud, with his eyes shut—and then straight on to do the old man and his son, while he was recovering from the shock.

  * * *

  By now you should have a pretty good idea of how I operate, so I won’t bore you with a blow-by-blow; we can get a bit ahead of ourselves, to the point where I was shown out into the street (not the same one I’d come in by; the servants’ entrance opened onto the stable yard, which led to a long mews, which opened into a winding high-walled alley that led eventually to Haymarket). I was in a pretty good mood. I’d done a pretty spectacularly impressive job on the old man and his son, professionally speaking, one of the highlights of my career so far—if my profession had learned journals and more than one practitioner, I could have written it up in a paper and been invited to speak at seminars. I’d got out of there in one piece. And I had money. I had a draft on the Diocesan Loan from the old man, and an escrow note from my other customer which I was now clear to cash in; a vast amount of money, enough for a new beginning, a clean slate, the wherewithal to be born again, washed in the blood of the Invincible Sun. It made me smile to think I’d been beaten up only an hour earlier for a tenth of one per cent of what I now possessed. If there’d been a puddle in the alley, I’d have walked on its surface without wetting my boots.

  It was bleachingly hot in Haymarket, with the sunlight reflected off the broad white marble frontages. I walked up as far as the Stooping Victory, turned left into Palace Yard, called in at the Diocesan Loan, who settled my note without giving any indication that I was visible. Then down the steps opposite the Mercury Fountain to the Stamnite Brotherhood, who confirmed that the escrow on my note had been lifted and paid me out in twenty-angel pieces, fresh from the Mint, the edges of the flans still slightly sharp. Two doors down from the Stamnites is the Social and Benificent Order, the only bank in the Capital I’d trust as far as I could sneeze them. I paid in the lot, less five angels. And if I write a note on any of it in the next ten days, I told them, don’t honour it, tear it up. Yes, sir, as though I’d made a perfectly reasonable request. Not their place to understand, just to do as they’re told; the proper attitude of acolytes towards gods, after all.

  (Bear in mind what I told you earlier, about my amazing strength of mind. The point being, it was just before noon by this stage, when the Sun is nearing His highest point, and my strength was therefore as the strength of ten. Where I usually go wrong is getting paid in the evening.)

  The rest of the day—the rest of my life—was my own. I wandered down to the Old Market, sat at a table under a plane tree outside one of those high-class teashops and ordered green tea and a honeycake. I needed to sit down; the implications of what I’d just done—the proper word, actually, would be “achieved”—were only just starting to percolate through. I’d been paid for a big job, got my hands on enough money, and instead of rushing out and gambling the lot away as quickly as I could, I’d put it away safe in a bank, with measures in place to stop me getting at it. I’d done it quickly and without thinking, the way an experienced killer does a murder. That’s the key, where irrevocable actions are concerned. Don’t stop to think about it until it’s done and too late.

  They brought me my tea. When I tried to pay, they looked at me; sorry, we don’t have change for a five-angel. I remembered I was a god. Send someone to the moneychangers, I said. It’s fine, I’m not in a hurry.

  While I was waiting for my change, I tried hard to think seriously about the morning’s momentous events. But I couldn’t; not deliberately, like that. Instead, my mind skidded off and started to wander, and I thought about the good-looking man, my willing victim. Now here’s a thing about what I do. I don’t peek. Really. Why the hell should I want to take on more memories than I have to? But it’s a bit like lawyers. Apparently, when they enter a room where there are documents, they automatically read them, quickly, at a glance, upside down even; it’s second nature, they can’t help it, and it’s amazing how much they can read of a document just by looking at it. Same, I think, with me. I don’t deliberately browse the other memories. I just glance, while looking for the one I’m after. But even a glance takes in a lot. Like those freaks or geniuses or whatever (actually, I’m one of them) who can see a painting, say, for a fraction of a second out of the corner of their eyes, and a week later describe the whole scene to you in precise detail.

  The point being, as I sat in my shady seat drinking my delicious tea, I could recall with total clarity some of the glimpses I’d taken of the good-looking man’s memory. It was probably because I was in a hurry and preoccupied; I hadn’t made a conscious effort not to. The closest thing—I’m no great shakes at explaining, you can tell—would be getting through brambles. If you’re patient and careful, you pick your way, carefully lifting the flailing tendrils out of the way, tenderly disengaging the ones that hook into you, and you come out unscathed. If you just bustle through, you get scratched to hell and your coat’s covered in leaves and bits of briar.

  There was a memory that just seemed to leap out and flood my mind. I was a soldier, and I was in a trench. I could smell the clay, which was wet and sticky underfoot. We were trying to climb out of the trench, but the sides were too steep and the clay was too hard to get a toehold in. I was shouting, because I was the officer and we were supposed to be attacking; I really didn’t want anything to do with it, because I was terrified and worn out, and as far as I could see the job was impossible; but I was yelling, Come on, you bone-idle, chickenshit sons of bitches (and my fingers were clawing at the clay, bu
t I couldn’t get a grip); the men were scrambling, jumping—frantic, as if my shouting were wild dogs snapping at their legs, as if they were desperately trying to run away, not charge into battle; and the more they tried, the more I had to try too. I remember I got my left foot braced on a small chunk of stone sticking out of the trench wall; I put my weight on it and boosted myself up, clawed for a handhold, couldn’t find one; my foot was slipping off the stone, which was tapered, not the right shape; it came off like a cam completing its stroke, and I slithered three feet down the trench wall, with my face in the clay, there was blood in my mouth and my lower lip was hard as a rock, I was sure I must’ve ripped my nose and chin off. I landed on my right ankle, badly; felt it turn over under my full weight, and something gave, and it hurt so much I screamed. I tried to stand up, but my leg just folded; and someone behind me used my head as a stepping-stone—the hobnails on his soles getting traction on my scalp—and flung himself at the lip of the trench; I saw him hanging by his fingertips, dragging himself up until his chin was over the top; and then he dropped back, a dead weight, and landed on my outstretched leg, and there was a crack as the bone broke; and there was an arrow in his forehead, clean through the bone, just above the left eyebrow.

  I must’ve passed out at that point, because the memory ended abruptly. Thank you so much for that, I thought. Just what I needed.

  Describing it like I’ve just done makes it sound like I lived through it all, half an hour or a quarter of an hour or however long it took. Not so. All over and done with in the time it takes to touch a tea-bowl to your lower lip. I put down the bowl and frowned. Sudden unsolicited episodes of memory aren’t exactly uncommon—well, you do it all the time, don’t you?—and I’ve learned to take them in my stride, as far as that’s possible. But there was something else about that one, quite apart from its rather grisly subject matter. The grisliness was neither here nor there. I’ve got far worse stuff than that stowed away in my head. Rather, it was a sort of familiarity—no, wrong word, hopelessly wrong, giving you entirely the wrong idea, I’m so useless with language. All my memories are familiar, of course they are. You know that thing they call déjà vu? Like that, always. But this one—it’s like that time (can’t remember if it was me or someone else) when I walked into the house of someone I’d never met before, and there on the table was a candlestick, and I was absolutely certain I’d seen it before. I picked it up (my host gave me a funny look, but I didn’t care) and examined it, looking for details of decoration and design; I very nearly said to him, you bastard, you stole my candlestick. But before I did that, I remembered that the one I had back home, sitting on the upturned water barrel that serves me as a table, was one of a pair; the one I was looking at was my candlestick’s twin, hence the familiarity.