The Last Witness

by K. J. Parker

  He made this noise. It was a big, cold laugh. “You didn’t know?”

  “No. I—” I ran out of words and just stood there.

  “Ah.” He nodded slightly. “Interesting. She assumed you’d guessed and run out on her because of it. Well, it killed her. It took a long time. They gave her poppy extract, but the pain was—” He stopped and shrugged. “You killed my daughter.”

  This tactical part of my mind—I wonder, do other people have the same thing, or is it just me? If it’s just me, is it somehow connected with the special thing I do? I’ve often wondered. In any event, at that moment it was busy again. It was telling me: his wife, her mother, died five years ago, and he has no close family; I could wipe her out of his memory and spare him the pain, it was the least I could do. But that wouldn’t work. He was a man in public office, with about a million acquaintances, all of them properly sympathetic. It wouldn’t really help matters if I got him a reputation for having been driven insane by grief.

  “I was going to kill you,” he said. He was looking straight at me, the way an arrow looks at a target. “But I think I’ll let you live. It’d be crueller.”

  He was right about that. Being dead is bad enough. Being dead and still having to walk around and eat is so much worse.

  * * *

  Hence the sudden and immediate twist of pain when I heard that nail-on-stone noise. No bad thing, really; it prevented me from ignoring the sound or mistaking it for something else. Saved my life, actually. Now there’s irony.

  My tactical planner was giving me instructions; get down, keep still, make yourself small. I had no weapon and chances were the owner of the hobnailed boot was a much better fighter than me, but I had the advantage of the dark; I knew where he was, but he didn’t know where I was. He was, of course, between me and the door. I’ve been in worse situations.

  Then I had a stroke of luck. He uncovered his dark lantern. He saw me and I saw him.

  I went in through the side of his head like a slingstone. As I’d assumed, the old man had sent him; my reluctance and intention to retire had made me an unacceptable risk, no longer outweighed by my potential usefulness. Fine. I wiped that; then, in an access of spite of which I am not proud, I wiped a whole lot more—his name, most of his past, more or less everything in easy reach. When I came out of his head, he was standing there looking stupid. There was a hay rake leaning up against the wall. I grabbed it and broke it over his head. I felt sorry for him, and ashamed of myself.

  He’d dropped the lantern, but it hadn’t gone out; a lit lantern on the floor of a hay barn is nobody’s friend. I grabbed it, and then it did go out. I went to the door and threw it away. One down.

  I stood in the doorway and tried to be sensible. Defeating one hired man wasn’t victory in any meaningful sense. If the old man had decided it was time for me to die, I could defeat a thousand of his footsoldiers in tense little duels and still be no safer. My own stupid fault. By buying a house and putting down roots, I’d made myself an easy target—one of the very few stupid things I’d never done before. I don’t know. Maybe there’s a secret part of me that won’t be satisfied until I’ve completed the set.

  Time to go. As I walked quietly up to the road, I cursed myself for cashing that two-hundred-angel draft. It’d be suicide to go anywhere near the Social and Beneficent, or even to write a draft; they’d track me down and that’d be that. My only hope lay in anonymity and distance.

  I started walking. About a week later, I stopped and asked where I was. They looked at me as if I were crazy and said, Scheria. Just my luck.

  * * *

  Don’t get me wrong. There are worse places than Scheria. Four of them, at least.

  I never had the time or the energy to learn a musical instrument; but I had the unhappy privilege of attending the great Clamanzi in his last illness, which was horribly exacerbated by memories of how badly he’d treated his wife. The poor man only had days to live, and it was certain he’d never play the flute again. It wasn’t really stealing, more a case of rescuing a glorious thing and keeping it safe.

  Partly out of respect, I’d never even picked up a flute since that day; but it was all there, in my head. My tactical adviser suggested that the old man’s people wouldn’t be looking for a travelling musician. And, whatever their other faults as a nation, the Scherians are fond of music.

  I’m ashamed to say, I stole the flute. I heard its music as I was walking down a village street. Pretty tune, I thought; then it stopped, and maybe its beauty reminded me of Clamanzi, I don’t know. I waited; it started again, and I traced it to a house in the corner of a little square. I went away and came back after dark. The blind man I mentioned just now helped me find the flute—it had been left lying around on the kitchen table, some people are just so careless. My flute now.

  To practice, I walked up into the hills. As well as the flute, I’d found a new loaf on that kitchen table, and there are plenty of sweet-water springs draining off the peat. I allowed myself three days to learn the flute. Took me about half an hour, in the event. The rest of the time I took to eat that loaf, I just enjoyed myself, playing music.

  I say myself; I can’t really claim any credit. I’m the first to admit, I don’t have an artistic bone in my body. So please don’t make the mistake of thinking that listening to me was like listening to Clamanzi. I had the fingering, the breath control, the education, the technique—but no passion, no soul. Correction: I had my soul, which is a pretty inferior example of the type and certainly not something you’d want to listen to. No angel; I think we’ve established that. But I could pipe a tune, as well as most and better than some, and a piper can always earn a few stuivers in Scheria. Not that there’s much in those parts you’d want to spend it on.

  The hell with it; I walked to the next town, sat down in front of the mercantile, and started to play. Not even a hat at my feet—I didn’t actually possess a hat—just music, for its own sake. To begin with, people were reluctant, because there was no obvious place to drop their coins. But once two or three stuivers were gathered together in a little cluster that ceased to be a problem. The store owner came out and I thought he was going to move me on; instead, he brought me out a bowl of tea and a loaf of bread, quietly so as not to disturb me. I only stopped when my lips got sore, by which time the pile of coins was too big to hold comfortably in one hand. Best part of a quarter angel; more than a skilled man earns in a week.

  I slept, by invitation, in the storekeeper’s comfortable hayloft, and started playing again as soon as it was light. It helped that I can remember every tune I ever heard. On the third day it rained; but that wasn’t a problem, because the local lord-of-the-manor sent a cart for me. He had guests for dinner, and if I wasn’t busy . . . A month later, I’d moved to Cerauno, which is the third largest city in Scheria, and was playing indoors, to people who’d come specially to hear me, and who handed in their coins at the door rather than dropping them on the ground. Three months later, I was rich. Again.

  I seem to have this knack of hauling myself up by my bootstraps, usually when my mind is on other things.

  * * *

  Practically every night in Cerauno I dreamed about the skinny girl. Sometimes she was in the dark looking for me, with a knife; sometimes I met her in the street or beside the river. Sometimes she had a knife, other times it would be a rope or an axe. The one constant was that she wanted to kill me.

  I heard the news of the coup back home from the ambassador himself, no less, at a reception. He confessed that he was terrified at the thought of being recalled, since he was clearly identified with the old regime. I asked him who was behind it all; he looked round to make sure nobody was listening, and whispered a few names. Two of them (father and son) I recognised.

  I reminded myself that I was a professional, and my clients’ secrets were sacrosanct, even if the clients in question had sent assassins to murder me. If I were you, I told the ambassador, I’d stay here where it’s safe. Those clowns won’t l
ast long, sooner or later they’ll cut each others’ throats and everything will go back to normal. Don’t go back, whatever you do. He gave me a sad smile. My wife and daughter are still there, he said, in the City.

  I thought about that while pretending to sip my tea, though the bowl was empty. If he refused to go back, they’d kill his family. If he went back, they’d kill him and his family as well, because now they were in power they could afford to be particular about loose ends. I know; it was only my opinion, and what do I know about high-level politics? But I’d come to like the ambassador; he’d fallen asleep in the front row of one of my recitals, on a night when I was particularly uninspired—he clearly had taste, and I like that in a man.

  He turned away to grab one of those rice-cakes-filled-with-pureed-seaweed that the Scherians fondly imagine are edible. I stared at the side of his head, and then he turned back. He was frowning.

  Tell me, ambassador, I said. Are you married?

  He looked at me as if I’d just asked him for the square root of seven. No, he said.

  I smiled at him. If I were you, I said, I’d stay here in Scheria where it’s safe. He nodded. I might just do that, he said.

  As soon as I could, I left the reception, went home to my comfortable lodgings in fashionable Peace Square, and was violently sick. I can only assume it was the pureed seaweed.

  * * *

  I’d been in Scheria for about six months when I started hearing rumours. News from the Old Country was hard to come by; my only reliable source was my friend the ambassador (Scheria didn’t recognise the new regime, so he stayed on; he was invited to receptions, but had to borrow money to live on) and all he knew came from refugees and exiles. Apart from what he told me, I heard the usual wild and improbable stuff, a mixture of impossible atrocity stories and political gossip, scurrilous in tone and often biologically impossible. But just occasionally I heard something that rang true. For instance: I heard that the society charlatan who used to claim he could read minds had mysteriously disappeared just before the coup, but lately there was a new mind-reader who’d taken over his old practice; she was in favour with the regime, who made no secret of her supposed powers. They used her for interrogations and to administer a particularly terrifying form of punishment—artificially induced amnesia. The victim, so the rumour went, was left with no memories whatsoever, not even his name. It was the proverbial fate worse than death, and apparently the new government kept her extremely busy. Her? Oh, yes, my informants assured me, this mind-reader’s a woman, actually just a young girl, but nasty as a sackful of adders. Also, they’ve put a price on the old mind-reader’s head; ten thousand angels dead, twenty-five thousand if they get him alive. Of course, it’s all nonsense, but—

  And my mother used to tell me I’d never amount to anything. Twenty-five thousand angels. It’s enough to make your head spin. No human being could conceivably be worth that. It made me wish I still had a family, so I could turn myself in and make them all rich.

  * * *

  I remember the first time I saw her.

  I remember it two ways; in one version, I’m sitting on a low wall, talking to my best friend. The other way, I’m standing; apart from that, it’s the same, up to the point where I say, “I think I know her brother,” in a soft whisper. From then on, the two versions diverge.

  In one version, I just stand there, bashful and hopeless. In the other, I go up to her, introduce myself. She gives me that look nice girls are supposed to give to importunate strangers. Then I ask if her brother is so-and-so, who was at the Studium at such-and-such a time. Why, yes, she says, and smiles, and he’s mentioned you.

  In the other version, I reflect bitterly on my lack of education, which meant I’d never been at some fancy school with the brothers of pretty girls. Meanwhile I watch my best friend exercise his legendary charm, and think; oh well.

  Footnotes: at this time, I’d been in the City for just under a year. I’d started exercising my talent in a controlled and profitable manner; I was making a lot of money, and spending it on playing the part of an affluent merchant’s son—no attempt to hide the taint of trade, but a surprising number of genuine young noblemen are happy to associate with parvenus, if they’re witty and presentable and prepared to buy the drinks and pay for the damage. Nobody asked me searching questions about my antecedents, because it was assumed they couldn’t possibly be more disgraceful than a rich wine-merchant for a father. My friend had recently left the military academy and was loosely associated with a good regiment (but not in such a way as to cut unduly into his free time).

  She had a friend, who I didn’t like much. The four of us went to various social events. It wasn’t a happy time for me.

  * * *

  The news that I’d been supplanted in my profession didn’t bother me much, per se; I had no intention of resuming my practice if I could possibly avoid it. I much preferred flute-playing, and Scheria was starting to grow on me, like some sort of lichen. It was my supplanter herself who bothered me; that and the price on my head. If I was safe anywhere, it was Scheria—war hadn’t been formally declared, but the border was closed, and one of my compatriots would’ve been noticed and dealt with very quickly; the Scherians are good at that sort of thing. Even so, twenty-five thousand angels has a sort of inner momentum that tends to transcend politics. One thing was certain. I didn’t dare go back and investigate this woman, even if I’d wanted to.

  * * *

  Instead, I played the flute. I’m not sure what got into me. Maybe it was the worry and the stress, or perhaps it was just Clamanzi getting used to my mouth and fingers. I got better and better. It helped that I was encouraged to tackle a wider repertoire—the great Scherian classics, Gorgias, Procopius, Cordusa; you can’t put an infinite amount of soul into the folk tunes I’d picked up back home, but if you put together Clamanzi’s technique and Procopius’s flute sonatas, there’s a sort of alchemical reaction that refuses to be confined by the spiritual poverty of the intermediary, even when he’s me. Also, people who know about music say that the great performer draws on his experience, which is just another word for memories; of those I had plenty. Even the greatest virtuoso—even Clamanzi—can only draw on his own experience, which limits him. Unless he happens to have a head stuffed full of other people’s lives, sorrows, joys, wickedness, weakness, and misery. I reached a point where I could let the music and the memories talk to each other. A hundred strangers provided the soul, Clamanzi operated the keys, I stood there while it happened, bowed when it was over, and took the money. I remember one reception, where I’d played for a bunch of ambassadors and ministers. Some fool came up to me, an old man, he looked like he’d been crying. He told me he’d heard the great Clamanzi play that sonata twenty years ago and had avoided hearing it since, because he was afraid to spoil the memory; but I had been better than Clamanzi, I’d found new depths, new resonances—

  I’m afraid I was quite rude to him.

  * * *

  There was one piece I flatly refused to play; Chirophon’s Lyrical Dances, which was what the band played at a dance we all went to, around the time my best friend’s regiment was posted south. It was while they were playing the second movement and the four of us were sitting it out on the veranda that I realised how much she loved him. I remember there was a beautiful glass decanter on the table; I looked at it and saw that if I broke it on the side of the table, I could cut his throat with the sharp edge of the neck before he had a chance to defend himself. I reached for it, my fingertips registered the smooth, cold surface; and I realised that there was a better way. Which is how I come to have his memories of her as well as my own. On the way back from the dance I stole them all; and the next day his regiment marched for the southern frontier. A month later he wrote to me; he was getting love letters from some female he’d never heard of—hot stuff, he said, you had to wear gloves to read them. He thought it was a huge joke, and should he write back? Write care of me, I replied; I’ll deliver the letter and take a loo
k at her for you. I don’t know if he ever got that, because he was killed very soon afterwards.

  * * *

  The politics took a turn for the worse; enough to scare the Scherians into peace talks. A high-level delegation from the new regime would visit Scheria in the hope of preventing further escalation, and all that sort of thing. Naturally, there would be events, receptions. Naturally, I would be hired to play for them.

  I got as far as packing a bag. Two bags, five—I realised I had far too much stuff I couldn’t bear to be parted from, which was another way of saying that this time, I wasn’t prepared to run away.

  * * *

  So I did the next best thing. I went to see my friend the director of the Conservatory—in Scheria, the country’s top musician is an ex efficio member of the Council of State, can you believe that? He was pleased to see me, sent for tea and honeycakes. “You saved me a job,” he said. “I need to talk to you about the gala recital for the peace delegation.”

  I gave him a weak grin. “It’s sort of about that,” I said. “I can’t do it.”

  He looked at me as though I’d just cut off his fingers. “Not funny,” he said. I took a deep breath. “There are some things about me that maybe you ought to know,” I told him.

  And I explained. The story of my life. He sat perfectly still until I’d finished, and for a moment or so after that. Then he said, “But you haven’t actually done anything wrong in Scheria.”

  I frowned. “Not yet.”

  “Don’t mess with me,” he snapped. “Since you got here, you’ve been a blameless, productive member of society. Yes? I need you to tell me the truth.”

  I nodded. “Apart from lying about who I am.”

  “That’s not a crime,” he said quickly, “unless you’re on oath. So, the plain fact is, in Scheria you’re clean.”

  I nodded. “Like that matters,” I said. “Weren’t you listening? As far as this delegation’s concerned, I’m an enemy of the State. Also, I have information about two of the delegates that would kill them very dead if it ever got loose. Think about that.”