The Belly of the Bow f-2

by K. J. Parker

  They found the lost arrow about a hundred yards down the orchard; it had hit a tree and splintered. Loredan studied the break for a moment, decided that it was beyond repair and flexed it over his thumbs against the break, snapping off the head. ‘Job for you tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Drill the broken shaft out of the socket and salvage the flights and the nock. I’ll get the beeswax and the oil, you get the stove lit, we’ll put a couple of coats of wax on the bow and it can cure overnight.’

  The boy noticed the beginnings of a big purple bruise on the inside of Loredan’s left arm, three inches or so above the wrist; he also had a raw patch on his left forefinger, where the fletchings had ridden over it as the arrow was released, ripping the skin. Loredan didn’t seem to have noticed; he ignored the marks the way a woman takes no notice of the scratches left by her cat’s ever-open claws, and if challenged replies that it’s just the cat’s way of being friendly. If I become a master bowyer I suppose I’ll end up all scraped and battered too, he reflected.

  They finished the bow with hot wax mixed with a little oil, wrapped the handle in cord and hung it horizontally on a rack to dry; then the boy went back to slicing the bark off a rough stave with the drawknife, and Loredan started roughing out another billet. Neither of them spoke for about an hour, until the boy had finished the stave he was working on and brought the drawknife over to be sharpened.

  ‘Does it ever bother you,’ he asked, ‘making weapons that people kill each other with?’

  Loredan shook his head. ‘Not in the least,’ he said. ‘Compared with what I used to do for a living, it’s blissfully innocent. And what I used to do never really bothered me all that much, or at least not in that way. Most of the time I was too busy worrying about whether I’d be alive at the end of the next fight.’

  ‘And before that,’ the boy persisted. ‘When you were in the army. Did it bother you then?’

  ‘Sometimes. But not very often, for the same reason.’ He picked up the drawknife and tested the edge on the ball of his thumb. ‘And every time, it bothered me a little less. Besides, it isn’t really like that in the army. Most of it’s very, very boring; boredom enlivened by rare interludes of extreme terror. But the more you do something, the easier it gets, and the easier it becomes to do something a little bit worse – it’s gradual, you see, half an inch at a time, and you don’t realise it’s happening to you until it’s done and you reach the point where quite suddenly you can’t go any further without snapping.’

  ‘Uncle Gorgas, what a surprise. I thought you weren’t going to bother with me any more.’

  Gorgas sat down on the bed and tried to keep from gagging. He’d been in some foul places in his time, but the smell here was unbearable. ‘I never said that,’ he replied. ‘Or if I did, it was only because you’d annoyed me and made me lose my temper. Do you like living like this, by the way?’

  Iseutz smiled. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘I think it’s disgusting. Don’t you?’

  Gorgas sighed. ‘I’m going to tell the warders to get this place cleaned up, whether you like it or not. It can’t be healthy, for one thing.’

  ‘But Uncle,’ she replied with a hurt note in her voice, ‘that’s why I want it like this. So I can catch some horrible disease and die, and then I’ll be out of the way. You see? I’m just trying to be nice.’

  Gorgas held up his hand. ‘Not today,’ he said, ‘I’m not in the mood. I’ve been chasing Shastel halberdiers up and down the mountains, I’ve had your mother on at me, I can’t remember offhand the last time I had any sleep, and as soon as I’m through here I’ve got to go back to the mountains to collect your uncle Bardas and bring him back here, whether he likes it or not. So don’t start, all right?’

  ‘Or?’ Iseutz sat down on the floor opposite him and studied him. ‘Or what? Come on, let’s have the threat.’

  ‘Just – don’t start.’ Gorgas closed his eyes and breathed out deeply through his nose. ‘Another little job your mother gave me was to deal with you. You’re an embarrassment to her, apparently. As is your uncle. And I’m not sure she approves of me, either.’

  ‘Oh? Why not?’

  ‘She reckons I’m not businesslike enough.’

  The girl nodded. ‘She’s right,’ she said. ‘You don’t know when to cut your losses. You throw good money after bad, or good time at any rate. You can’t see when the game’s not worth the candle. You-’

  Gorgas opened his eyes. ‘All right, that’ll do,’ he sighed. ‘You’ve made your point. Actually, I don’t mind you saying that. It’s just another way of saying that I don’t give up on things that matter to me.’

  She looked at him, her head slightly on one side. ‘That’s true,’ she said. ‘Oh, I don’t know about the things-that-matter-to-you part, because I don’t know what you mean by “things that matter”. But it’s true, you don’t give up easily.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m not sure I meant it nicely. And you certainly don’t let little things like guilt or ordinary common decency stand in your way, I’ll say that for you.’

  Gorgas yawned. ‘You know, this is the first real chance I’ve had to relax since that damned raiding party landed. I could probably get to like it in here; no hassles, no worries, nobody depending on me for anything. Perhaps next time Niessa tells me to do something, I’ll just refuse. If you take away the smell and the filth, it’s not a bad little place you’ve got here. Better than a muddy ditch under a wall, anyway.’

  ‘My heart bleeds,’ said Iseutz. ‘And you’re changing the subject.’

  ‘So what? You were insulting me.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I was trying to understand you. I want to understand you, you see. If I can understand you, and my mother, and the rest of the family, it might give me some clues about how I managed to turn out such a mess.’

  Gorgas nodded. ‘That’s possible,’ he said. ‘So, what’s your point?’

  ‘Well.’ Iseutz thought for a moment. ‘Let’s see, we were talking about not knowing when to quit. Now then, I’d say that a man who’s killed his father and brother-in-law and tried to kill his sister and his brother because he was afraid of what they’d do to him if they realised he’d arranged for someone to rape his sister – I haven’t left anything out, have I? Only it’s quite a lot to have to remember.’

  ‘Go on,’ Gorgas said.

  ‘You’d have thought a man like that would give up on his family; you know, he’d come to the conclusion that probably the survivors wouldn’t want to have very much to do with him any more, and so he’d just go away and do something else. But not you. Not Gorgas Loredan. You brush all that stuff magnificently away. Stop cribbing, you say, you’re still on your feet, aren’t you? Let’s be friends.’ She grinned. ‘You know, in spite of everything, I can’t help admiring that.’

  ‘Like I said,’ Gorgas replied, looking away, ‘I don’t give up easily when it comes to things that matter to me. Like family. I keep going, I don’t listen till I’m hearing the answer I want to hear. You see, I’ve proved that people can change, and they can forgive, too. Look at your mother and me. And if we can do it, so can you. For pity’s sake, you’ve only got one life. Why ruin it over something you can’t do anything about?’

  ‘Ah.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m like you, you see, persistent. When it comes to things that matter to me. Like killing Uncle Bardas. When it really matters to you, there’s nothing you can’t do something about.’

  A mouse poked its head out from a crack between two stones in the wall, looked round and scuttled across the floor. With a quick, fluent movement Gorgas pulled his purse from his coat pocket and threw it hard, hitting the mouse’s head and killing it instantly. The girl glowered at him.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ she demanded.

  Gorgas shrugged. ‘It was a mouse,’ he said. ‘What about it?’

  ‘You don’t kill things for no reason,’ the girl replied angrily. ‘You don’t kill things just because of what they are. You just don’
t.’

  ‘That’s nice coming from you. You want to kill your own uncle.’

  ‘Yes,’ Iseutz replied, ‘for a reason.’ She got onto her hands and knees, crawled across the floor and picked the mouse up by its tail. ‘A very good reason. Just killing things because they’re there is a waste.’

  Gorgas pulled a face. ‘Big deal,’ he said. ‘So it’s a waste of mice. There isn’t exactly a shortage.’

  ‘It’s a waste of life,’ she replied. ‘That’s bad. I was starting to think I understood you, but maybe I got you wrong.’ She dangled the mouse above her head, reached up with her mouth, chewed off its head and swallowed it. ‘Killing for food is all right,’ she said.

  Gorgas looked away. ‘You’re disgusting,’ he said. ‘You sit there talking like a rational person, and then you do something like that.’

  ‘Look who’s talking,’ she replied. ‘You’re the one that killed it. What’s more disgusting, killing or eating?’

  Gorgas swallowed a couple of times; he badly wanted to be sick, but didn’t allow himself the luxury. ‘So when you kill Bardas, you’re going to eat him, right?’ he said. ‘And what about the skin and the bones? You aren’t going to waste those, surely? What are you going to make out of them?’

  Iseutz considered for a moment. ‘That’s a good point,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to give it careful thought. Of course,’ she added, ‘I’m not particularly good with my hands these days, but I might be able to manage something.’ She held up the mouse again, but before she could eat any more, Gorgas jumped to his feet and slapped it out of her hand. She spat at him and recoiled, like a cat that’s had its kill taken away.

  ‘You’re disgusting,’ Gorgas repeated. ‘You must take after your father.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ she answered sweetly. ‘He died before I was born, remember?’

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘Can we just go through it one more time?’ Vetriz asked patiently. ‘After all, this is an important part of my mercantile education. We’re going to buy salted fish.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘We’re going to buy salted fish,’ Vetriz repeated, ‘and take it halfway across the world to the island where we live, which sits in the middle of the sea-’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Which is stuffed so full of fish and fishermen that you can virtually walk across it from one fishing boat to the next on a carpet of premium-quality tuna, whiting, mackerel-’

  Venart sighed. ‘You’re missing the point,’ he said. ‘Granted, the Island has a thriving fishing industry. Granted, fresh fish is plentiful and cheap. Now, if you’ve been listening to any of the things I’ve been telling you about trade, you’ll have spotted the crucially important word I just used.’

  ‘Plentiful? Cheap?’

  ‘Fresh,’ Venart replied. ‘Fresh fish you can hardly give away. Salted fish, however, is a different matter entirely.’

  Vetriz stopped for a moment to look at a display of rugs. They were imported, but she wasn’t quite sure where from; the patterns were unusual and the texture finer and thinner than the Mesoge rugs that fetched such good prices on the Island. Before she could ask the price, however, Venart moved her on.

  ‘All right,’ she said, ‘so there’s not much salt fish sold on the Island. Maybe there’s a reason for that.’

  ‘You’re being obtuse,’ Venart said severely. ‘Look, we’ve got an established market for fresh fish, everyone lives on the stuff, but it’s so commonplace it’s boring. People will always try something different, so long as it’s not too different. Hey presto, salted fish. We could be on the verge of making a fortune.’

  ‘Or complete idiots of ourselves. Have you thought of that?’

  They left the main thoroughfare and passed under a low arch into a narrow street that went sharply uphill. Suddenly, it was dark under the low eaves of the house. ‘Trust me,’ Venart said calmly. ‘I mean, it’s not just the novelty aspect, there’s also the practical side. Fresh fish you’ve got to eat immediately. You can’t keep it.’

  ‘You don’t need to keep it. You just go out the next day and buy some more.’

  ‘And,’ Venart continued, as he dodged under a line of wet washing, ‘there’s the flavour. Entirely different flavour.’

  ‘Yes, it’s salty. Very salty.’

  ‘And not forgetting,’ Venart ground on, ‘value for money. If we can buy it at the right price, we’ll be able to make it so our salt fish won’t cost any more than the fresh stuff. That’s a very important consideration.’

  Vetriz sighed. The infuriating thing was that Venart was quite probably right. She remembered the sun-dried-beef craze that had swept the Island a few years ago; sun-dried strips of prime beef steak, imported from Colleon, had been the only fashionable thing to serve your guests, in spite of the fact that it tasted like rawhide and broke your teeth, and the cattle-boats from the Mesoge were ploughing across the sea half empty. And then there was the imported-water craze, and Nean goat’s milk cheese, and the live cuttlefish fetched all the way from Ria in huge terracotta vats, when you couldn’t fall off Founders’ Pier without coming up with three cuttlefish in your pocket.

  The epicentre of the salt-fish trade on Scona was the inner courtyard of a small anonymous inn tucked away in an alley leading off the dark, narrow street they were walking up. They missed the turning the first time; it was little more than a doorway, in a street where most of the doors were open all the time, and it was only when Vetriz insisted on stopping and asking someone (much to her brother’s disgust) that they found the right one. The alley was as narrow as a corridor, and they had to step over two or three old women who were sitting in the middle of it, completely blocking the way and appearing not to hear when politely asked to move; they were completely engrossed in their work, which was lacemaking. It was so dark in the alley that Vetriz could hardly see what they were doing, and the thought of them squatting in the shadows forming the tiny, intricate stitches made her feel sick – she had three beautiful lace collars back at the inn, which she’d bought in the market the previous day.

  They found the inn, which also appeared to be entirely composed of corridors, and just when they were sure they’d taken another wrong turning and were about to head back, they stumbled through into the courtyard.

  The first thing they noticed was the sunlight, and after that a beautiful cherry tree, which stood in the middle of the grass. Under it sat a very fat man, who appeared to be taking no notice whatsoever of the forty or so men and women who sat on stone benches on all four sides of the covered portico that surrounded the courtyard. They were mostly sitting still and staring vacantly at the sky or the ground, though a few were doing calculations on strings of tally-beads or writing laboriously on plain cedar-backed wax tablets. They showed no inclination to shift up and make room when asked to do so, and in the end Venart and Vetriz had to perch awkwardly on the end of a stone bench.

  What little conversation there was seemed to have nothing to do with fish. An ancient and disturbingly thin woman whose forearms were encircled with massive gold bangles from wrist to elbow was telling a rambling story about her daughter’s bad experiences in childbirth, which nobody was listening to. Two stocky bald men were playing checkers on a tiny board balanced on the points of their knees; the board was made of tiny tessarae of lapis lazuli and ivory, and the pieces were coral and amber. A bewildered-looking young man with long, tangled hair was working his way with dedicated efficiency through a tall brass jug of dark-red wine, which he held at arm’s length and poured into his mouth, drenching his beard and tunic. A nice-looking old man with snowy white hair and a brand-new pair of red boots was softly playing a mandolin. The place looked like a cross between some versions of the earthly paradise and a lunatic asylum.

  Then, quite unexpectedly, the fat man in the middle looked up from the book he was reading and started talking about cod. He said that because of the recent bad weather and the activities of pirates in the Belmar Strai
ts, good salt cod would quite soon be at a premium. There was a moment of dead silence, almost as if the fat man had said something obscene, before a huge, ferocious-looking individual with a head like a skull replied that he had a warehouse full of barrels of the very finest salt cod, the best that money could buy, and fairly soon he was going to have to throw it all in the sea just to make room for something he might one day have a chance of selling. He was interrupted by a handsome middle-aged lady on the other side of the courtyard, who said in a very matter-of-fact voice that because of the vast quantities of unsaleable cod that were constipating her barn she was staring bankruptcy in the face and considering doing away with herself. A nondescript man with a short grey beard added that he’d invested his daughter’s dowry in cod a short while back and accordingly was resigned to having the wretched girl on his hands for the rest of his life.

  The fat man nodded, was silent for a while, and then announced that, owing to the unprecedented demand, he was afraid he would have to ration his customers to a maximum of fifty elmirs of cod apiece for the foreseeable future, and the price would henceforth be seventeen quarters an elmir -

  (‘What’s an elmir?’ Vetriz whispered.

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ Venart replied.)

  – which was strictly non-negotiable, cash in advance, no notes of hand or letters of credit. A little wizened man in a corner, who was so tiny that Vetriz had to look quite hard before she managed to see him at all, called out, ‘Fifteen quarters.’ The fat man ignored him, repeated his price, and went back to his book. The dignified lady called out sixteen quarters, half on delivery, half in thirty days. Without looking up, the fat man said ‘Sixteen, cash.’ Everybody started to talk, and then shout, at once. Venart didn’t hear the closing bid above the din, but apparently the bidding was over, because the fat man prised himself up off the ground, brushed off the seat of his trousers, waddled across to one of the checkers-players and started a lively but muffled conversation with him. A cheerful-looking woman with improbably red hair stood up, walked over to the tree, sat under it and produced an embroidery frame.