by K. J. Parker
‘Like a tapeworm?’
The kid scowled. ‘Yes, I know, it all sounds a bit dumb. But that’s just because I’m not explaining it right – you need one of them to explain it. And the point is, if you can do the sword-drawing stuff that well without being trained at all, then it sort of stands to reason that you’re halfway there already; maybe you’ve even got a little tiny bit of the divine in you that’s been there ever since you were born. I mean, that’d practically make you a god, even though you don’t seem to be aware of it.’
Ciartan thought for a moment. ‘So you’re saying you think I should go to this Deymeson place and join up. It can’t be as simple as that, though. I mean, presumably there’s a test before they’ll let you join up. And what about board and lodging, and paying for the teaching, and things like that? I haven’t got any money—’
‘They have,’ Aciava said. ‘They’re incredibly rich. You see, people give them money, and leave them money and land and stuff when they die, so the monks will pray for their souls. And they get money from tithes and local taxes and customs and tolls and all sorts of things. They’re major landowners, particularly up north – which is why some people send their sons to join, so they’ll work their way up the ladder and become abbots and whatever, as an alternative to going in the army or to Court. The point being, if they want you, they’ll pay for your keep and all your tuition and everything, for the rest of your life. I mean, for poor families it’s a wonderful deal.’
‘I can see that,’ Ciartan said. ‘So, what do you have to do to get in? Do you just have to draw a sword very quickly, or is there other stuff as well?’
The kid shook his head. ‘It’s not like that,’ he said. ‘When I joined, I was shown into this long, dark room, and half a dozen of the senior tutors and so on looked at me for a while, and they asked me a question or two, which didn’t seem to make much sense but I’d been expecting that so it didn’t bother me; then I had to show them a few draws; and then the Father Tutor, that’s the senior monk in charge of training, told me I’d passed and where to go to get my clothes and stuff, and that was it, I started straight away; in classes the next day. Mind you, our family’s been sending its younger sons to Deymeson for six hundred years. But what I’m trying to say is, if they think you’ve got what it takes, they’ll take you in and train you, even if you’re – well, nobody. It’s like they say: it’s not who you are or who you used to be, it’s who you’re going to be that’s important.’
Ciartan thought about it for a moment or so. The whole thing sounded pretty bizarre to him, especially the vague bits about perfection. On the other hand he had to face facts; when his people had brought him here, obviously they’d only had a very sketchy idea about how the Empire worked. They’d imagined it was more like back home, where there was a place for everyone and everyone found his place. Instead, it had turned out to be all loose and ragged and disorganised; everyone telling everyone else what to do, nobody actually doing anything. In consequence, he’d had to think about all sorts of things that really ought to have taken care of themselves, such as food and clothes and places to sleep. What was more, providing for even such basic things as these was hardly easy or straightforward. In fact, it was absurdly hard to make a living here, unless you owned land (now there was a strange notion; it was like the ox owning the plough) or your family had taught you a trade, or there was some other pre-existing pattern you could fit into. In a way it was like being an offcomer back home, except that here everybody was an offcomer, and nobody knew where they ought to be. By comparison, the order sounded almost normal. And further, Ciartan considered, if the order was rich and powerful like the kid said, what better way to gather useful intelligence and so on than to get in with the upper crust? Put like that—
‘You really think I’d be able to get in?’
‘Of course.’ Aciava smiled. He seemed pleased, as though he’d just found a big clump of mushrooms. ‘Trust me. Come along with me, and everything’ll be just fine.’
Ciartan took a step back. ‘I know it’s silly,’ he said, ‘but every time someone says Trust me, I get suspicious. What’s it to you whether I join this order of yours or not?’
‘What on earth do you mean?’ The kid looked suddenly hurt and angry, as if Ciartan had just spat in his face. ‘I’m just trying to be helpful, that’s all. And doing my bit for religion, like we’re supposed to. Why? What other reason could there be?’
Offhand, Ciartan couldn’t think of one; nor could he figure out why the two crows that were circling overhead were in any way relevant. But they were, because—
(Because he remembered: he’d had a dream once, when he’d been just a child, back at Haldersness. He could remember the dream, because it had had crows in it, and that meant the dream didn’t just evaporate as soon as he woke up. In that dream he’d been here, exactly this place, talking to this rather annoying young man. In fact, he’d had this same dream several times and, on each occasion, as soon as the kid asked him What other reason could there be? he’d woken up.)
Aciava was staring at him. He didn’t look happy. ‘Well?’
‘Well what?’
‘Well, have you come up with a reason why I should want you to come to Deymeson, apart from trying to help you and help the order? I think you’d better think of one, because otherwise I’m going to have to take that as an insult.’
(Every time, Ciartan remembered, except once; and on that occasion, the dream had been slightly different, because part of the way through – at this exact point, in fact – everything had changed suddenly. Both he and the kid were somehow much older, and the kid wasn’t asking him to come to Deymeson. He was asking him to join up with some other venture, which apparently involved people they both knew, old classmates, something like that. For some reason, he’d told the kid no, and things had started going wrong after that; cracks in the clay, lies, mistaken identities, (Clay? What clay?) deception and murder and coincidences and just plain rotten luck. And for some reason, it had been very important – he’d made a point of telling himself he had to remember this when he woke up– that the pattern that recreates the lost shape (where the tallow is burnt out in the middle) is in fact an empty hole, a gap waiting to be filled, like a blank memory.)
Deep breath. ‘I’m sorry,’ Ciartan said, and Aciava relaxed – it occurred to Ciartan that if he hadn’t apologised the kid would’ve felt obliged to fight him or something like that, and the thought of fighting him was scaring the kid half to death. ‘I didn’t mean to insult you,’ Ciartan went on. ‘It was just me thinking aloud. I guess I’m not used to people being nice for no reason.’
‘Well,’ the kid replied, ‘I guess that’s fair enough. Only, it’s not for no reason. Religion’s a reason, and after all, I’m training to be a monk, hopefully an ordained priest further along the line. Got to start somewhere, you know. And it’ll do me no harm at all with Father Tutor if I bring along a good new recruit for the start of the new term.’
Was that just a little bit glib, a tad too reasonable? No, Ciartan decided, it could have been, but this time it wasn’t. ‘That’s all right, then,’ he said. ‘I guess that makes it mutual benefit.’
‘Exactly.’ Aciava smiled. ‘The only way to receive is to give,’ he added portentously, ‘and that’s a genuine five-quarter precept of religion.’
A what? Ciartan wanted to ask; but instead he woke up, because some bastard was prodding him in the shoulder with a stick.
‘Piss off,’ Poldarn muttered.
‘I said, wake up,’ Banspati replied. ‘Bloody hell, you’re harder to wake up than a dead tree.’
Poldarn opened his eyes. ‘What do you want?’ he grumbled.
‘You missed the meeting.’
‘What meeting?’
‘The one you missed. It was important. We had a vote and everything.’
Poldarn remembered. That meeting. To decide whether, in view of the fact that they’d spent the last four weeks trying to cast the Falcata gui
ld bell and every time the mould had failed, they should close the works down or keep trying. And he’d missed it. Buggery.
‘Oh, right,’ he said, sitting up. ‘So, what was the result?’
Banspati sighed. ‘Bloody disaster,’ he said mournfully. ‘You know, there’s times when I wonder why the hell I bother. I mean, it’s an uphill struggle every bloody step of the way, and at my time of life I just don’t need this kind of—’
‘The vote,’ Poldarn interrupted. ‘Yes or no?’
Banspati pulled a face. ‘Yes and no,’ he said. ‘What they all reckoned was – and since when does voting for something make it true even if it isn’t? Supposed to be craftsmen, but I didn’t see any bloody sign of it. Anyhow, what they reckon is, the only way we’re going to get this fucking bell made is if we let the core dry out thoroughly – I mean, really dry out, like three weeks before we even put on the tallow. What difference that’s supposed to make I really don’t know, but hey, I’m just the bloody foreman.’
‘Three weeks,’ Poldarn repeated.
‘That’s right. We make a core, leave it three weeks, then we carry on. In the meantime, I’m afraid I’m having to lay the lot of you off. Don’t want to, can’t afford not to. We’ve got this fucking penalty clause hanging over us, and there just isn’t the money for wages until we know how much we’re going to be made to pay.’
Poldarn scowled at him. ‘Wonderful,’ he said. ‘And what’re we supposed to live on in the meantime?’
Banspati shrugged. ‘That’s your business,’ he said. ‘If I was you, I’d start looking round for a job somewhere, just to tide you over. After all, you’ve got to eat, and we can’t pay you.’
Poldarn stood up. ‘What do you mean, get a job? A job doing what? This isn’t the city, you know, I can’t just go to the hiring fair or stand about outside the corn exchange till somebody hires me. We’re in the middle of nowhere—’
‘Well, the others are in the same boat too,’ Banspati replied. ‘It’s not just you, you know. And don’t pull faces at me like it’s all my fault. I didn’t vote for this bloody stupid idea, so you can’t go blaming me.’
Poldarn never did find out for certain whose idea it had been or whose fault it was. Nobody at all seemed happy about it, even though the vote in support of the motion had apparently been unanimous (though everybody he asked said they’d voted against, which was odd). More important, nobody seemed to have given any thought as to how they were going to earn a living while the works were shut down.
Poldarn had been exaggerating slightly when he’d said they were in the middle of nowhere. Falcata was only a few days away, and there were half a dozen small villages that could be reached in a day or so of hard walking. But the chances of finding any work at that time of year were slim to non-existent. Any day now, the rains would start; the flat plain that began at Ilno and stretched over as far as the lower slopes of the Sourwater Hills would soon be flooded, with only the villages and the embanked roads above water. Good for the reed-beds and the osier gardens; good for the market gardeners in the fat strip between Falcata and the Green River, since the alluvial silt that the flood water washed down off Sourhead was just the job for beans and cabbages. For everyone else on the levels, it was simply a fact of life; six weeks every year when you stayed home and found something to do indoors. It had never been a fact of life that bothered the foundry crew, since the flood water had never come far enough up the vale to affect them, and if they had finished work to deliver, there were always barges and rafts – easier, in fact, to float a bell than lug it about on a cart. So long as everybody stayed where they were meant to be, in fact, the wet season was nothing to worry about, and who’d be stupid enough to go wandering about in those conditions?
Someone or other, possibly Malla Ancola but probably not, made vague noises about sticking together and taking the road up the vale into the hills, through the big woods and out the other side, heading for Balehut or even the coast. That idea was so impractical that nobody could be bothered to point out the problems; but someone else suggested spending the forced holiday in the woods, burning their own supply of charcoal, which (if they got it right) could save them enough money to cover what they stood to lose on the penalty clause, in the long term; and as for the short term, everybody knew how easy it was to live off the land in a forest, hunting and gathering all those deer and birds and wild pigs and nuts and roots and berries, not to mention wild mushrooms and truffles. In fact, the argument ran, the only real danger was that they’d get so used to the carefree life of the forester and the collier that they’d never want to go back to rotten old foundry work.
This proposal went the rounds all the next day and halfway through the night, and then died, as quickly and suddenly as it had arisen; at which point people started to drift away, most of them aiming without much hope to reach Falcata before the rain started. The group Poldarn joined up with, however, declared that they were headed the other way. Burning their own coals, they acknowledged, was obviously not a realistic proposition (why this was so, nobody bothered to say; presumably because it was obvious and they didn’t want to look ignorant); but hadn’t Poldarn said they were always on the lookout for casual labour at the burning camps, to replace the ones who suddenly took it into their heads to drift away and do something else? It was worth a try; and even if there wasn’t any food, from what Poldarn had told them there was no shortage of free beer for anybody who was too slow to get out of the way in time.
Poldarn wasn’t entirely sure that that was what he’d said; but it couldn’t be denied that his memory wasn’t the best in the world, so maybe they were right, at that. At any rate, since this expedition appeared in some way to have been his idea, he felt more or less obliged to tag along with it; also, he could see the sense in setting off up the hill if the plains were about to flood. As far as his companions in the venture were concerned, they all seemed like honest, decent, good-natured people, and it’d only be for a few weeks, until the core dried out.
‘There’s been a change of plan,’ Chiruwa said casually, as they reached the edge of the forest.
‘Oh?’ Poldarn shrugged. The afternoon sun was pleasantly warm, and his mind had been elsewhere. He hadn’t actually been paying much attention to what the others had been saying; least of all Chiruwa, who had a tendency to chatter away as though he was trying to use up a stockpile of words before they went stale. ‘Fair enough. What’s changed?’
Chiruwa avoided his gaze. ‘We talked it over, the rest of the guys and me, and we reckoned looking for work round the charcoal camps probably wasn’t such a good idea after all. Like, it’s the wet season coming on, they won’t be shipping much charcoal till the roads are clear again, most like they’ll be slowing down production, having a rest, that sort of thing. Probably not much work going.’
That seemed reasonable, now that Chiruwa mentioned it. Pity nobody had thought of it before. If they couldn’t get casual jobs around the burning camps, the prospects weren’t wonderful. Apart from the colliers, nobody much lived in the big woods; apart from the two or three inns along the road that catered to travellers, there weren’t any houses or settlements till you reached the Stonebick river. ‘So what did you have in mind?’ Poldarn asked. ‘Do we turn round and go back, or what?’
Chiruwa pulled a face. ‘We did consider that,’ he said. ‘Only we probably don’t have enough in the way of supplies to get as far as Falcata; and the smaller places might not have anything to spare. So we thought we’d carry on along the road for a bit.’
Poldarn looked at him. ‘Why?’
‘Well.’ Chiruwa, the foundry’s chief polisher, was a short man, very broad and wide, with an honest face partly shrouded by a big black moustache. You’d have felt fairly confident about paying him in advance for a large order of dried beans. ‘What we thought we’d do, we thought we could make a quarter or two in these parts. Not right here, of course. More where the road goes through the edge of the wood.’
‘
Doing what?’
‘Well.’ Chiruwa said again and breathed in through his nose. ‘There’s quite a bit of traffic on the road this time of year, people coming up from the plains before the rain starts. Also merchants and freight on the way to Ridgetop and Spadea – there’s big fairs there in a couple of weeks.’
Poldarn didn’t say anything, but that contradicted what Chiruwa had implied a moment or so before, about the colliers not being able to ship any charcoal because of the roads being impassable. Or maybe he’d just misunderstood, or didn’t know enough about the local geography. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘So, what about it? Are you planning on setting up an inn or something, because—’
‘Not really,’ Chiruwa replied. ‘What we had in mind was more like robbing them. Happens a lot around here,’ he went on quickly, in an it’s-all-right-really tone of voice. ‘And the weather’d be on our side, because we wouldn’t have to worry about the soldiers – once the rain starts they won’t be able to get up the road from Falcata. By the time the roads south are open again, we’ll have finished and be long gone. It’d be safe as houses, really.’
‘Robbing them?’ Poldarn reckoned he must have heard him wrong, or misunderstood what he’d been trying to say. ‘You mean, like – well, highwaymen, bandits, that sort of thing?’
‘Sort of,’ Chiruwa replied.
‘Sort of ?’
But Chiruwa didn’t seem inclined to explain any further. ‘So,’ he said, ‘are you in with us, or aren’t you?’
Didn’t look like he had very much choice in the matter. ‘Yes, all right, then,’ Poldarn said; then he hesitated. ‘I’m not killing anybody, mind. That’s—’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ Chiruwa assured him quickly. ‘You don’t get big escorts, or soldiers or anything, it’ll just be one or two people on their own. It’s not like we’ll be ambushing supply columns or anything like that. Besides, if they look like they’d be trouble, we just stay back and let them go on through. Goes without saying, really.’