by K. J. Parker
“How do you know that?”
She shrugged. “I know everything about you,” she said. “More than you do.”
“You’ve been inside my head.”
Then she really laughed. She made a noise like a donkey. “You have no idea, have you? How much trouble you’ve caused. Well, of course you haven’t, you saw to that. You ran away.”
“People were trying to kill me.”
“I don’t mean that, stupid.” She took a deep breath, then let it go slowly. “You know what,” she said. “Once I made you a promise. I think I’ll break it. Well? If I do, will you forgive me?”
I looked at her. “You never promised me anything.”
“It’s rude to call someone a liar. Well? Are you going to forgive me or not?”
I shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“Fine.” She sat up straight, put down the knife, and folded her hands in her lap. “I made you a promise, about five years ago. You don’t remember, do you?”
I shook my head.
“I came to see you,” she said. “You don’t remember, but I do. You were living in a nice suite of rooms next door but two to the Old Theatre. There was a marble staircase, and a big oak door with a shutter in it. You had a servant, I think he was Cimbrian. You made him wear a white tunic with brass buttons.” She paused and grinned at me. “Remember?”
“I remember.”
“The big door opened into a sort of hall,” she went on, “with a marble floor, white and red, in a chessboard pattern. There were three couches and a brass table. Oh, yes, and a sort of palm tree thing in a big clay pot. And you had a parrot, in a cage.”
“Go on,” I said.
“You were sitting on one of the couches, and you had a barber to shave you. He was a tall man with red hair, left-handed. His name was Euja, I know, because you said, Thank you, Euja, that’s all for today. Remember?”
“Yes.”
She nodded approvingly. “You told me to sit down and you rang a bell, for tea. It came in a red-and-white porcelain pot, and there was a dragon on the bottom of the bowl. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“You waited till the servant had poured the tea, then you asked me politely what you could do for me. You must’ve thought I was a customer. I was fifteen. I told you, I’m your daughter.”
I stared at her—her eyes, not the side of her head. “Go on.”
“I told you things about my mother, things I’d heard from the people who brought me up. They were servants from my mother’s family. They died when I was six, in the plague, and the woman’s sister had me then. But I told you things, about her, and you realised I was telling the truth.”
“Go on.”
She smiled at me. “I told you how poor we were, because all the money my mother’s father left for me had gone. I knew you were rich. I asked you for money.”
My mouth was dry. “What did I say?”
She frowned. “You looked at me for a long time. Then you asked how I’d found you. I said, I’d heard about you; how you could go inside people’s heads and take away memories. That’s how I knew. I could do it too. Of course,” she went on, “I couldn’t be sure until I told you the secret things, about my mother. You recognised them all, and then I was certain. But I made sure.”
“You looked—”
“In your head, yes. I saw my mother’s bedroom, just as my nurse described it. And anyway, I recognised you, from her memories. You were much younger then, of course. But your voice was the same.”
My feet and knees had gone cold. “So,” I said, “you asked me for money. What did I say?”
She was silent for a long time. “You said you wouldn’t give me anything, but I could earn four thousand angels. If I’d do a simple job for you. Then you took a piece of paper from the brass table and wrote out a draft and showed it to me.”
“I wanted you to take away a memory,” I said. “Well?”
“Of course. What other possible use could I be?”
I closed my eyes. “What did you take from me?”
I heard her say, “This.”
* * *
I remembered it all, very clearly. I remembered hearing my younger sister crying, upstairs in the loft. I remember hearing my mother yelling at my father, the usual hateful stuff. Not again, I thought. I’d just come in from putting the chickens away; it was raining, and I was still wearing a coat, the big homespun that my uncle had left behind when he came to visit. I wanted to get to the fire—I was wet and cold—but that would mean going through the main room, which was where my mother and father were fighting. I decided I’d have to stay where I was until they stopped.
Then they came out past the chimney corner; I could see them, but they hadn’t seen me. My father staggered a little; I knew what that meant, he’d been drinking, and when he was drunk he did stupid things. I saw him reach in the corner for his stick, a heavy blackthorn cudgel I knew only too well. He took a step forward, and I knew he was about to hit my mother. She screamed at him, you’re stupid, you’re so stupid, I should have listened to my family, they said you were useless and you are. He swung at her, aiming for her head. Long practice made her duck and swerve, and he hit her on the arm. She tried to back away, but her foot caught in the rucked-up rug and she tripped forward, toward him. He was about to hit her again, and my inner tactician told me that this time he’d get her, because she was off-balance and couldn’t get out of the way. I suddenly remembered that in my right hand was the knife I’d taken with me to cut the twine on the neck of the feed sack. I stepped forward, in between them, and whether my father walked into the knife or whether I stabbed him, I simply don’t know.
My mother was staring at him. I’d let go of the knife; it was still stuck in him. He opened his mouth, but all that came out was blood. She grabbed the knife and pulled it out, and then he fell over, crushing the little table. Nobody falls like that unless they’re dead.
She stood there for a moment or so, with the knife in her hand, looking at me; then I heard my sister’s voice, up at the top of the ladder. My mother swung round and screamed, “Go to bed!”
I tried to say something, but I couldn’t. I remember the look on her face. On the advice of my internal tactical officer I took a long step back, out of her reach.
He was going to kill you, I said.
Don’t be so stupid, she snapped at me. He would never—
He hit you with the stick. He—
I remember her knuckles were white around the knife handle. I knew, in that moment; like me, inside her head was a little voice advising her on distances and angles, how long a step she’d need to take to reach me, how to drive the knife home without letting me parry or ward her off. I took two long strides back, then turned and ran—
* * *
“You paid me,” she said, “to remove that. I’ve been keeping it safe for you all this time, like a trustee. I think you should have it back now.”
I think I actually raised a hand in front of me. “No,” I said. “Please, take it back. I don’t think I could bear to live with it.”
Then she grinned. “Oh, there’s more,” she said.
I remembered the day my father found my sister. He’d gone into the barn to get his billhook, and there she was, hanging from the crossbeam. He’d tried to cut her down, but in his shock and grief he’d cut himself to the bone; he ran into the house for something to bind the cut with, and I was there. Come with me, he shouted. I remembered seeing her. I remembered cutting her down, and how she landed like a hay bale tossed from the loft, and how he swore at me. I remembered the note she left, written on the flyleaf of the Book, because there was nothing else in the house to write on; how everybody hated her because she was so ugly, because of her missing eye. It was after that that my father started drinking.
* * *
I remembered the day I came home. I found my mother sitting in the kitchen. I remembered thinking how dirty the place was, not like it used to be, everything neat and c
lean. I got your letter, I told her.
She looked at me. I hadn’t seen her since the night my father died, when she’d called out all the neighbours to look for me, because I’d murdered my father and ought to be hung.
I need you to do something for me, she said.
* * *
“That’s enough,” I said. “Whatever it is you think I’ve done to you, that’s enough.”
The girl gave me a quizzical look. “You killed my mother,” she explained. “It’s not nearly enough.”
* * *
I need you to do something for me, she said.
I waited. It was as though she expected me to guess what it was. Well? I asked.
You can do that trick, she said. I’ve been hearing all about you. You’re making ever so much money in the City.
If it’s money, I said, but she scowled at me. You can take away memories.
Yes, I said.
Fine. I want you to go inside my mind and take out every memory of you. Everything. I want it so I don’t know you ever existed. Can you do that? And your brother and sister too, I want them to forget you. Take it all away, then get out and never come back. That’s all.
* * *
“I think I may take after her,” she said. “Strong. Single-minded.”
“How the hell are you doing this?” I said. “I couldn’t. I can only take them away, I can’t put them back.”
“I guess I’m better than you,” she said. “Better than you in every way. That wouldn’t be so hard.” She raised an eyebrow. “Do you remember? How I came to you when I was fifteen, and all you wanted was to get rid of those memories? But you had money, and we needed it so badly. And you never told me—” She stopped for a moment. “You never told me what I was going to see. And I’ve had it inside me ever since. You forced it on me, like rape. I would never—”
“All right,” I said. “So, what do you want me to do?”
Her eyes widened. “I want you to remember,” she said.
* * *
I remembered the letter. It was barely legible, written in cheap oak-gall ink on wrapping paper. This is to let you know, it said, that she died but the kid survived. Her father paid my husband and me to take the child away, but the money he gave us has all run out and we’re poor and we need money. You have a daughter. She’s five now. You can have her, if you like.
I remembered sending a draft for twenty angels, which was all I had; but I didn’t go. I couldn’t bear to. And I burned the letter, with the name and the address. Because I didn’t want her daughter, I wanted—
* * *
“You never meant me to see that,” she said. “But I did. And then you asked me to wipe me out of your mind as well, as though I’d never been born.” She looked at me again. “How could you do that? Like mother, like son?”
I said, “I’ll give you ten thousand angels. It’s all I’ve got.”
“I could get twice as much for you,” she replied, “but then you’d die, and that’d be letting you off easy. And you’re forgetting, you’ve got lots of money back in the City, with the Social and Beneficient. I want all that, as well.”
I wrote her two drafts. She read them carefully, to make sure they were in order. Then she folded them and tucked them into her sleeve. “What’s so sad about it,” she said, “is that all the really bad things you ever did were done for love—killing your father and my mother, I mean, blinding your sister was just stupid. You’re really very stupid, aren’t you? That’s what your mother called your father.” She examined me, as if she were considering buying me. “Are you happy?” she said. “Now, I mean. Here and now.”
“Yes,” I said. “Or I was.”
She tutted. “Can’t have that,” she said. “I think that playing the flute’s given you more happiness than anything else in your life, and that was someone else’s, wasn’t it? I don’t think you can be allowed to keep it. I think I’ll have it instead.”
I felt the burning pain, just above my ear. “Sorry,” she said. “Actually, I can do it without hurting, but it takes a little bit more effort, and I couldn’t be bothered. Don’t worry,” she went on, “you can still remember what it was like being a famous musician. I’ve just taken what you took. That’s fair, isn’t it?”
Instinctively, I tried to remember how to hold a flute, how you shape your lips, the spread of the fingers. All gone. I had no idea.
“I remember wondering,” she was saying, “why you didn’t have me wipe my mother out of your head. Those memories must’ve been painful, but you kept them. No, don’t explain,” she added, “I’d like to think it was some last spark of decency in you, and anything you say will probably disappoint me. I don’t want to have to punish you any more than I have already. I’m not a cruel person, you understand. It’s just that you disgust me so much. I wish you were a spider, so I could squash you.”
I looked at her; at the spot just above her ugly, lobeless ear. “What else can you do?” I said. “Apart from memories.”
She grinned. “Oh, lots of things. I can put ideas in people’s heads—like, for instance, I once met a really nasty man who had this special talent that allowed him to make stupid amounts of money. So I gave him this urge to gamble it all away. That’s justice, don’t you think?”
I shook my head. “That wasn’t you.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. How could you ever know for sure?” She laughed. “And now I think it’s time you did something for me. Call it twenty years’ worth of birthday presents from my father.”
I remember—I don’t know whose memory it was, mine or someone else’s—the time I got beaten up in the dockyards, late at night. I think it must’ve been me, because it was over some trivial gambling debt. I remember the point where they were still hitting me, but I’d stopped feeling it, and I was just bone weary, I wanted to lie down and go to sleep but they wouldn’t let me.
“Let me guess,” I said.
So I went into her mind, and there she was standing over me while I took down the scrolls from the shelves, watching to make sure I didn’t stick my nose in to anything else while I was there. Then I remembered going to see me, how badly I treated her, as though she had some horrible contagious disease. Then she pushed me out again; I found myself back in my bed, and she was staring at me.
I took a deep breath. “It’s all right,” I said. “Nothing bad’s happened. Just go home.”
She frowned. “Did I know you?” she said.
“No,” I told her. “Don’t lose the bits of paper in your sleeve, they’re valuable. Don’t think about anything. Just go home.”
Which she did; and so did I, back to the City, where I belonged.
Not straightaway, of course. I got my friend the director to arrange for me to be smuggled safely over the border; then I walked (no money, remember?) all the way to the City. I was scared stiff I’d be recognised, but luckily I didn’t run into anybody who remembered me. I went to the house where the old man and his son lived. I feel guilty about what I did to their guards and some of the servants, but they were in the way. I feel no guilt at all about what I did to the old man and his son.
Very soon afterwards, the new regime collapsed—as was inevitable, with its two leading lights reduced to vegetables. A few months later, they held proper elections again. After the inauguration of the new Consul and his cabinet, there was a grand reception at the Palace; entertainment was provided by a talented young flautist. Nobody knows where she suddenly appeared from, but people who should know compare her favourably with Clamanzi at his best. I’ve followed her career with interest, though from a distance; I’ve never actually heard her play. People who know her say that’s she’s happy, completely caught up in her music. I’m glad about that.
Of course, I don’t live in the City these days. I moved to Permia, bought a large farm, I’m completely retired now. In case you’re wondering: before I left the City, I stole a spade and went to a place on the moors, south of town, and dug up a big steel box full of gold coins.
I knew where to look for it, thanks to the clerk who stole it from the old man and his son—I never break a professional confidence, but I don’t always tell the truth. No angel, you might say. Ah, well.
I don’t want to detain you any longer than necessary, but I’d just like to share a few insights with you, as the world’s greatest living authority on suffering. I reckon I can claim that honour. I’ve caused more suffering, endured more suffering, witnessed, experienced, inflicted, savoured, analysed, enjoyed, dissected, wallowed in more suffering than anybody else who’s ever lived. I have been in the mind of my enemy, my victim, my persecutor, your enemy, your victim, your persecutor; I know pain like fish know water, like birds know air. Suffering has fed and clothed me most of my life, I’ve sunk my roots deep into it and sucked it up into me; pain and suffering have made me what I am. To be quite honest, I’m sick and tired of it.
Along the way, I guess I’ve lost my edge a bit—like blacksmiths, whose fingertips get burned so much they lose the fine touch. I’m not sure I can tell whose pain is which any more; is the child crying in the street me or just some stranger? Answer: to make a distinction is to miss the point entirely. To try and rationalise all this in terms of right, wrong, good, evil, is just naïve; the very worst things we do, after all, we do for love, and the very worst pain we feel comes from love. She was right about that. In my opinion, love is the greatest and most enduring enemy, because love gives rise to the memories that kill us, slowly, every day. I think a man who never encounters love might quite possibly live forever. He’d have to, because if he died, who the hell would ever remember him?
About the Author
Photograph by Shelley Humphries
Having worked in journalism, numismatics, and the law, K. J. Parker now writes for a precarious living.
K. J. Parker also writes under the name Tom Holt.
Also by K. J. Parker