The Last Witness

by K. J. Parker

  He thought, though not for very long. “You wouldn’t consider—”

  “No. I’m definite on that. I don’t tell.”

  He shrugged. “Before you go, do me a favour and make me forget you told me that, because it’s my duty as a Counsellor to go to my colleagues and inform them that you have vital information that could win us the war, and all they have to do is torture you till you spit it out.” He frowned. “You can really do that? That’s amazing.”

  For a moment I didn’t know what to say. “Thanks,” I said. “But the point remains. As soon as they see me, they’ll hit the roof. They’ll assume—”

  Suddenly he grinned. “Yes,” he said. “Won’t they just.” He leaned forward and gave me a slap on the back that loosened three teeth. “How does it feel to be a secret weapon?”

  It goes to show how stress mucks up your intellect; I hadn’t seen it in that light before. “All right,” I conceded. “But the moment that old devil sets eyes on me, my life won’t be worth spit.”

  “We’ll protect you.” He nodded several times; habit of his. “Oh, you bet we will.” He stopped and shook himself like a wet dog; I saw he was sweating, but he was better now. “Right,” he said, “that’s that dealt with. Onwards. I was thinking, we start off with the Nicephorus quartet in C.”

  * * *

  I went home—I had a nice place, opposite the Power and Glory Stairs—bolted the door, shuttered the windows, and lit the lamp. The first thing I saw was this mirror.

  I bought it for half an angel, and I got a bargain; a genuine silver-backed glass mirror, Mezentine, about three hundred years old, there’s only five or six in all of Scheria. The man who sold it to me grinned; present for the wife? Daughter? Girlfriend? I just smiled at him. I bought a mirror—the best that money could buy—to remind myself of something.

  It was not long after she died, and I was called out to a surgeon, a household name. I can’t tell you what it was about; not relevant. But in his house he had a mirror, a cheap brass-plate job, entirely out of place in his sumptuously decorated home. He saw me looking at it and told me the story; how, when he was a young Army sawbones, he got caught up in some actual fighting and took an arrow in the gut. He knew that unless he got the loathsome thing out quick, he’d be dead; also that there was nobody competent to do the job within thirty miles. So he set up that mirror where he could see it clearly, and operated on himself. He nearly killed himself, and he was sick as a dog for a month, but he survived, and had kept the mirror ever since, to remind himself that he was a genius for whom anything was possible.

  And that, of course, set me thinking.

  I was in the money at that time, so I bought myself a mirror; silver-backed glass, Mezentine, about three hundred years old, I paid twenty angels for it at an auction. I hired a carpenter to build a special cradle for it, so it could be swivelled about and adjusted to exactly the angle I wanted. Then, one night, I barred all the doors and windows and lit a hundred oil lamps—I wanted to be able to see what I was doing. I had no idea if what I planned on doing was possible—just like my client the surgeon, I guess; as with him, though, it was a matter of life and death, because I knew I couldn’t carry on much longer, not with those memories inside my head.

  I fiddled with the mirror until I had a clear view of the side of my own head. Then I stared, really hard; and I was in.

  Exactly the same usual thing; a library, with shelves of scrolls. I knew, as I always do, which one to reach for. I picked it out, unrolled it. The page was blank.

  Two days later, I sold the mirror. I got thirty angels for it, from a collector. Born lucky, I guess.

  * * *

  My friend the director and I eventually compromised on the Procopius concerto and the overture to The Triumph of Compassion (the Euxinus arrangement, not the Theodotus). I cancelled all my engagements for a week, and practiced till I could barely stand up. Not that I needed to, but it helped me feel like I was doing something. I’m guessing that, to this day, there’s a company of the Third Lancers who cover their ears and whimper every time the band strikes up the Triumph overture; the poor devils ordered to guard me night and day must’ve heard the wretched thing a couple of hundred times.

  (In case you’re wondering, I didn’t wipe my friend’s memory after all; he got squeamish. He said he’d rather change his mind than have someone change it for him. I was mildly offended, but made nothing of it. I figure a friend has the right to offend you at least once.)

  The concert was held in the auditorium of the Silver Star Temple, my second favourite after the Imperial; I wondered why, since it seats less than a thousand, until I remembered that at the Silver Star, there’s an underground passage from the green room straight to the stage; the performers are out of sight of the audience until the screens actually come down. At the Imperial, you walk down the main aisle, and a man with a knife who didn’t care about his future could have a go at you, and there’d be nobody to stop him. The choice of venue was considerate, but mildly terrifying; but the acoustic at the Silver Star is just right for the Procopius, especially the slow second movement.

  The other thing about the stage at the Silver Star is that you’re quite high up; which means you’re on a dead level sight line with the best seats in the house (six rows from the front)—you can see them and they can see you. I remember peering out into the sea of faces just before I took my stand. I found them quite easily: the old man and his son. They were talking to each other, heads turned, not looking at the stage. Then, as I lifted the flute to my lips, the old man looked up and saw me, and he went white as a sheet. Then it was my cue, six bars in, and I forgot about everything else and started to play.

  Clamanzi was at the top of his form that day. Actually, I don’t rate the Triumph overture all that much—melodrama—but the Procopius is one of the supreme achievements of the human race (so very strange, that a really nasty piece of work like Procopius could have produced something so sublime) and I defy anybody who claims to be any better than an animal not to be completely carried away by it. I wasn’t really aware of anything else until I’d played that last long string of dying thirds. Then, when the music stopped, in the split second of dead silence you always get before the applause starts, I sort of woke up and looked down at the audience. I was looking for the old man and his son, but my attention was distracted. I saw another familiar face, in the row above them.

  Familiar in more than one sense . . .

  Familiar, because I’d seen her before; once in the flesh, more times than I could count in dreams. But also familiar, because for the first time I realised who she reminded me of. It was the way she was sitting, the angle of her face, slightly away, chin slightly lifted. Nobody could ever call the skinny girl a beauty, but at that angle the resemblance was unmistakable.

  * * *

  I can’t remember how I got off the stage or back to the green room, but I remember sitting in a corner refusing tea and wine, and my friend the director bounding up to me like a friendly dog and yapping at me—wonderful, amazing, all the superlatives, except that he actually meant them; and especially the Triumph, my God, I never realised a human being could play like that. I frowned at him. I couldn’t remember having played the Triumph overture—the Procopius, yes, but everything after that was just a blur. I muttered something or other and told him I’d like to be left in peace, please. He wasn’t offended. Of course, he said, and made sure nobody spoke to me.

  She was here; well, why was I surprised? Naturally, the enemy would bring their secret weapon. I had enough confidence in the Scherian authorities to assume that they knew what she could do and had taken the necessary measures to make sure she didn’t do it to anybody who mattered—except that I’d been up there on stage, with her staring at me. A moment of panic; then I was able to reassure myself. I could remember every memory I’d acquired during my time with the old man and his son—

  Presumably. But how the hell would I know?

  No; be logical. I could re
member things that would get their necks stretched in two minutes flat; therefore, she hadn’t been at me. Quick mental geometry; how far was the stage from the eighth row of the auditorium? I didn’t actually know; and for me, distance isn’t really a problem, I can see through a man’s head at any distance where I can clearly make out his face. But maybe the girl had problems with distance, maybe she was short-sighted. She had that slight squint, which would fit. And her mother . . .

  I caught myself thinking that before I realised the implications; her mother was short-sighted too, when I knew her, twenty years ago.

  Except that I’d met her mother, whom I’d never seen before (and I never forget a face); and the other woman had died twenty years ago, in childbirth.

  I remember, I was alone in the green room by that stage, though presumably there was a half-company of guards outside in the corridor. I closed my eyes and tried to think. But my father and mother never showed any signs, perish the thought.

  And then I reflected; be all that as it may, the reason she’s here is to hurt you, of that you can be certain. And that takes priority over all other considerations. Doesn’t it?

  About twenty. Any age between nineteen and twenty-three. I’ve always been hopeless at guessing women’s ages.

  * * *

  I slept badly—nightmares—and awoke to find that I’d been awarded an extra thousand angels, the Order of the Headless Spear, and full Scherian citizenship by a grateful Council. Well, I thought, that’s nice.

  My friend the director was in meetings all morning, but he made time to come and see me.

  “That girl,” I said, before he could sit down. “The one with the delegation. Have you any idea who she is?”

  He nodded grimly. “We objected,” he said, “but they insisted. It was a deal-breaker. But she’s not allowed in to any of the sessions.”

  “She’s here to kill me,” I said.

  He blinked. I could tell he believed me. “She couldn’t get past the guards,” he said.

  I sighed. “You don’t understand how it works,” I told him. “She could get past an army. And you’d have fifty thousand soldiers who couldn’t remember their own names.”

  He hadn’t thought of that. “What can we do?”

  I shrugged. “No idea,” I said.

  He frowned. Then he looked up. “We can poison her,” he said.

  He wasn’t joking. “You can’t.” I’d spoken very quickly. “You’d start a war.”

  “There’s poisons and poisons,” he replied, and I felt cold all over. “All right, maybe not kill her. But a really bad stomach upset—”

  In spite of everything I couldn’t help laughing, at the thought of it.

  “Trust me,” he went on, “I’ve had a dicky tummy for years, while it’s happening you simply can’t think about anything else. A really bad dose of the shits will neutralise any power on Earth. We’ve got a man at Intelligence who specialises in that sort of thing. Leave it with me, it’ll be just fine.”

  * * *

  He dosed the lot of them, for good measure. My guess is, he dressed it up in a dish of the notorious Scherian pork terrine, a national delicacy that’ll do for anybody who hasn’t been brought up on it since childhood. The rest of the delegation was up and about after a day or so. The girl (my friend reported cheerfully) had taken it particularly hard, probably because she was so thin and delicate, and would be confined to the shithouse for at least a week.

  Woe to the conquered, I thought. Less extreme than killing her, as effective, considerably less humane.

  * * *

  Except that it did kill her. The delegation withdrew from the negotiations for a whole day without any explanation, then announced that one of their advisers, a young woman, had contracted food poisoning and sadly passed away. It would have been her wish, they said, that the negotiations proceed; and so they proceeded.

  There was a bleak little funeral, which I insisted on attending, though I had no right to do so—except, possibly, that the body they were burying was my daughter, and of course I couldn’t tell anyone that. My daughter, killed on my orders, for the single reason that she took after her father. Possibly. No way of proving it, naturally. And that which can’t be proven can’t be regarded as true.

  But I saw them set up a long wooden box on a trestle, stack logs all round it, splash around some oil and apply fire. There was that unmistakable roast-pork smell, which they try and mask with scenty stuff, but it never really works. The old man and his son were there, of course. They kept looking at me. It occurred to me, later, that I could’ve wiped their heads there and then, and been rid of them. Later. At the time, I was preoccupied with other things.

  * * *

  They postponed the war, bless them; it would happen one day, inevitably as the leaves fall from the trees, but it wouldn’t be soon. There was another concert, followed by a reception. I stood in a corner, trying to be invisible. Sure enough, the old man and his son headed straight for me.

  You haven’t told anyone. It was a statement of fact, which I confirmed. I pointed out that they’d sent men to kill me, driven me from my own country, and put a fortune on my head. They acknowledged as much, and warned me to keep my mouth shut and never, ever go home. They managed to make me feel as if it were all my fault. But they didn’t mention the skinny girl, and neither did I.

  The head of the delegation, who was also the provisional head of the provisional government (call him the provisional dictator) made a point of congratulating me on my performance and issuing a standing invitation to perform in the City, any time I felt like it. Clearly the old man and his son were as good at keeping secrets as me.

  Then they went home; and I was mortally afraid that I’d lose my guards—they were picked men from the Prefect’s Battalion, and there were probably other things they should have been doing. But my friend the director made out a case for me being a national treasure—I was eligible, apparently, now I was a citizen—which entitled me to maximum security, in case I was stolen, defaced, vandalised, or damaged. He made loads of jokes about it afterwards, which I managed to take in good part. I went back to work, to full houses and embarrassing applause; I didn’t mind. I was playing better than ever, and enjoying every minute of it. As for money—I can honestly say I lost interest in it, the way fish aren’t particularly interested in the sea.

  I moved; from the centre of town out to the northern suburbs, where you could look out of your window and see meadows and woods. I never had time to do more than look at them. On the rare occasions when I was at home, I was totally occupied in learning and practising new pieces, or rehearsing with orchestras in the massive barn I’d had built in the grounds. People talked about me; they found it strange that I never did anything besides work, no time for pleasures, no wine, no women. I never tried to explain to anyone, understandably enough.

  * * *

  It was late one night. I’d been up since dawn, going through a new concerto I’d commissioned from a promising young composer. A wonderful thing; the more I played it, the more I found in it, and it struck me that if I hadn’t existed, if I’d never been born and never lived a life that brought me to that place at that time in exactly that way, it might never have been written. The young man, almost obscenely talented, was only interested in the money, which he said he needed really badly, for his sister’s dowry or his mother’s operation, or whatever. I paid him double, because the concerto was so good, even though I knew the money would shorten his life (which it did; dead of liver failure at age twenty-six) and cheat the world of what he might have written. What can you do?

  I’d reached the point where I couldn’t play any more, so I packed up my flute and locked it away, made myself a last bowl of tea, and shuffled off to bed. I fell asleep straight away, and slipped into one of the old nightmares. Disappointing, because I hadn’t been getting them since the delegation went home. I woke up in a sweat, and saw that the lamp was lit, and there was someone in the room with me.

  S
he was eating an apple. I saw the lamplight reflected in her eyes. “Hello,” she said.

  I found it hard to breathe. “Are you going to kill me?” I asked.

  “Silly,” she said. “You’d be dead already.”

  I tried to sit up, but she frowned at me, so I stayed where I was. “You know who I am,” she said.

  “Yes,” I replied. “I—” Words are useless. “I helped you once.”

  That made her laugh. She put down the apple on the bed, by my feet. “So I’m told,” she said. “But I don’t believe it. You’re my father.”

  I nodded. “I guessed,” I said.

  “Because I have the same talent as you.” She picked something up off the bed. It was a knife. One of mine, actually.

  “How did you get past the guards?”

  She smiled. “I feel sorry for them,” she said. “But I guess they signed on of their own free will. They were in the way.”

  “You wiped their minds.”

  “Yes.”

  I was waiting for the tactical officer inside my head to suggest something, but nothing came. “That was a horrible thing to do.”

  “You’ve done worse.”

  “To save my life,” I said. “I never tried to harm you.”

  “You had them put something nasty in my food,” she replied, as though correcting an obvious flaw in my logic. “It didn’t kill me, but it made me very ill. So I suggested, how would it be if we told everybody I died, and then he’d assume he’d succeeded, and I’d be safe. So that’s what we did.” She took another bite from the apple. “I gather you came to my funeral. Did you cry?”

  “No.”

  She nodded. “I told them I wanted to stay behind, after they went home. I’ve got a few jobs to do while I’m here, and then I’ll head back.” She paused, as if waiting for something. “Why haven’t you tried to get inside my head?”

  “I wish you no harm,” I told her.

  “That’s a good one.” She took another bite from the apple, then threw the core into the corner of the room. “You never mean any harm, do you? You didn’t mean to blind your sister. Except you did. You held the branch back on purpose.”