by K. J. Parker
After Poldarn had scoured off the worst of the grime with handfuls of dry moss, he lay floating on his back in the water, staring up at the blue sky. Suppose, he thought, that the blue sky is a mirror in the same way as the blue water; suppose the sky could show you your reflection, not in space but time. Interesting concept, but false; nothing to be seen except the sun, a few fluffy white clouds, the silhouettes of a few crows – scouts for the big mob that hung around the back of the sheds, robbing the feed bins where the fodder for the treadmill and windlass mules was stored. Suppose, he said to himself (he knew that he was starting to get drowsy) that there are crows in the afternoon sky like there are stars at night: small twinkling spots of black, as opposed to silver. Could you learn to steer a ship by them, or tell your own fortune?
‘There you are.’ The voice came from behind the screen of flag irises. ‘Why am I not surprised? You always were a luxurious bastard.’
For a few drowsy moments he tried to convince himself he was dreaming; but the crows were too high up and far away. The voice belonged in his dreams, but also in the real world. ‘Gain Aciava,’ he said.
‘Hello, Ciartan.’ Gain Aciava pushed through the reeds and stood at the edge of the pool, his reflection torn up and shattered by slight ripples in the water. ‘Father Tutor once said you were an otter pretending to be a monk.’
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Same as you.’ Aciava grinned. ‘Wonderful thing, administration. They keep a big list somewhere in Torcea, of people with valuable specialist skills. Then, when the government suddenly needs us – die-founders, fettlers, people with relevant experience in advanced foundry work – they know where to look. And here I am. Some people might consider it an unpardonable intrusion, but the way I look at it, it’s got to be better than peddling false teeth for a living. What’s the water like?’
‘Overlooked,’ Poldarn replied. ‘You know about foundry work?’
‘Practically wrote the book.’ Aciava yawned. ‘Not that there really is a book, unless you count that musty old doorstop your pattern-maker lugs round with him. Spenno, is that right?’
Poldarn nodded. ‘Is there really a register?’
‘Oh yes. You’re on it, of course, only not under your current name. And half the people on it are dead, or far too old to work. What’s the matter? Aren’t you pleased to see me?’
‘I don’t know,’ Poldarn replied. ‘Depends. Were you telling the truth, last time?’
‘I always tell the truth.’ Aciava’s grin was full of teeth. ‘It’s a habit I got into when I was a kid, and I stuck like it. My old mother did warn me; I guess the wind changed when I wasn’t looking. Come on,’ he added, ‘don’t you remember the class motto when we were in fifth grade?’
‘No.’
‘Ah well.’ Aciava sat down on a rock. ‘So how’s the big secret project coming along? Did Galand Dev get his monster lathe built? Must say, I had my doubts when I heard about it. Seems a bloody strange way to go about making a tube. Me, I’d have tried casting it with a core, and the hell with what the book says.’
For some reason, Poldarn’s flesh began to crawl. ‘What book?’ he asked.
‘The book, stupid.’ Aciava reached inside his coat and pulled out a small book, bound in white vellum. ‘Next you’ll be telling me you’ve lost your copy. You haven’t, have you?’
‘What book?’
‘Here.’ He tossed the book in the air. Poldarn stood up and just managed to catch it before it fell in the water. On the spine, in long, spindly writing: Concerning Various Matters.
‘Where that idiot Spenno got hold of a copy, God only knows,’ Aciava was saying. ‘Different edition, obviously; probably an earlier one, not quite up to date. You can keep that one,’ he added, ‘I’ve got a spare. Look inside and you’ll see that it’s not mine anyway.’
Poldarn opened the book at the flyleaf. Written in the top left-hand corner: If this book should chance to roam, Box its ears and send it home. Xipho Dorunoxy, Grade II. ‘Where did you get this?’ he asked.
‘Ah,’ Aciava replied with a smirk, ‘that’d be telling. Are you going to stay in there all day, or are you going to show me where they keep the food? It’s been a long day, and you owe me dinner.’
Poldarn waded ashore and put his clothes on; they felt clammy and foul against his clean, wet skin. ‘Why are you here?’ he asked. ‘I don’t believe there’s any register. I’d have heard about it before now if there was.’
Aciava sighed. ‘There is too a register,’ he said. ‘And my name’s on it. So’s yours. But those clowns in Torcea have either lost it or forgotten about it, or else it got burned when your horrible relatives crisped Deymeson. Offhand, I can’t recall if there was more than one copy. Like I told you,’ he added, ‘I always tell the truth.’
‘Why are you here?’
‘Let’s say I came early for the class reunion. What’s the grub like on this project? I heard the idea was nothing but the best for our brave lads. But they say that in every war, and it always ends up being porridge and salt bacon. Remember the bean stew at Deymeson? Sometimes I can still taste it, in nightmares.’
‘Are you really an expert in foundry work?’
‘Of course.’ Big grin. ‘You don’t think they only taught religion and swordfighting at school, do you? I’ve forgotten more about pouring hot metal than your friend Spenno’ll ever know. They were lucky to get me, I’m telling you.’
‘Are you here for the project, or just to annoy me?’
‘That’s not a very nice thing to say to an old friend.’
Poldarn shrugged. ‘I’ll show you the canteen,’ he said. ‘Does anybody else know you’re here?’
‘I reported to the brigadier as soon as I arrived,’ Aciava replied. ‘I’m glad he’s in charge here. He’s a good man, and I always did get on well with him.’
The cookhouse was shutting up shop when they got there; they were just about to pour away the last of the soup and put out the fire. Once they’d finished their shift, nothing would ever induce the cooks to issue so much as an apple core – it was an inviolable rule of the foundry.
‘Never mind,’ Aciava said. ‘I’ll just have to make do with the last of the stuff I brought with me for the road. Join me?’
Poldarn remembered that he hadn’t had anything to eat for a long time. ‘No, thanks,’ he said.
‘Let’s see,’ Aciava said, as if he hadn’t heard. ‘I’ve got salt beef from Sirupat, you know, with the peppercorns on the outside, and some of that black rye bread, and Torcea biscuits, and there’s a chunk of that red Falcata cheese left. And I’ve got a couple of bottles of Cymari that I was going to take back home with me, but what the hell. They say it keeps, but I’ve never been able to restrain myself long enough to find out. Oh yes, and some apples. What I always say is, even if you do spend all your time on the road, there’s no reason to rough it if you don’t have to.’
‘No, thanks,’ Poldarn repeated, and walked away. Somehow he got the impression that Aciava hadn’t expected him to do that; as though the list of fare had been carefully compiled to include all his pet favourites. (What in any god’s name was a Torcea biscuit, anyway?) Instead, he gnawed at the stub end of a stale corn cake and washed it down with needled beer. Wonderful thing, integrity, but it tastes horrible.
He’d just managed to drift off to sleep when somebody prodded him awake. Not again, he thought, and propped himself up on one elbow. ‘Now what?’
This time it was Chiruwa, which made a change, though not a particularly welcome one. ‘Get up,’ he was saying. ‘Something’s happening.’
Poldarn scowled and sighed. ‘Chir, you bastard, there’s always something happening. Can’t you piss off and let me go back to sleep?’
Apparently not. He slouched across the yard and joined a mob of foundrymen, mixed up with offcomers (soldiers, the Torcea engineers, a few nonentities from the brigadier’s staff; no sign of Gain Aciava, so maybe he’d dreamt him after all).
They seemed excited or upset about something, and the way they were milling about round the drawing-office door suggested that they were expecting someone to come out and announce something.
Maybe it’d be worth missing sleep for, after all. ‘What’s going on, Chir?’ he asked again, but the other man just shrugged. ‘Search me,’ he said. ‘Malla met me a short while ago, told me something was on and they’d be issuing a statement any minute now. That’s all I know.’
‘Fine,’ Poldarn said. ‘So why’d you come and wake me up?’
Chiruwa looked surprised, even rather hurt. ‘You’re my friend,’ he said, ‘I thought you wouldn’t want to miss it.’
‘Oh,’ Poldarn said. No, he hadn’t been expecting that.
A few moments later, the door opened and Galand Dev came out. He was frowning, as though considering some technical matter that should’ve been straightforward but that was proving unexpectedly difficult. He looked round, then held up his hand for silence, which he got.
‘Brigadier Muno’s asked me to make an announcement,’ he said. ‘We’ve just had word that on his way back to Torcea, General Muno Silsny and his escort were attacked. We don’t have any details as yet, but I’m sorry to say that the main point has been confirmed, direct from Torcea. General Muno Silsny is dead.’
Chapter Seven
Monach woke up out of a strange dream to find that someone was touching him. Immediately, he pushed back the instinctive response. Curious: he’d spent so many years training himself to react instantly to any intrusion into his circle, and now he was having to learn not to.
‘You were shouting,’ she said.
‘Was I?’ He grinned feebly. ‘Sorry about that.’
She shrugged. ‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’s nearly dawn, anyhow. Was it the same dream, or a different one?’
‘Different,’ he replied. ‘And, I don’t know, more sort of odd than horrible, if you see what I mean. Did I wake up Ciartan?’
She shook her head. ‘He’s dead to the world,’ she told him. ‘Just as well,’ she added. ‘You know it upsets him when you get bad dreams. Also, he’s teething.’
‘Again?’ He grinned. ‘That kid’s going to have more teeth than a polecat, the way he’s going on.’
‘He can’t help it,’ she said defensively. ‘And he hates it when they hurt.’
‘You fuss too much,’ he replied, knowing it’d annoy her. ‘Suppose I’d better be getting up now. We’re supposed to be making an early start, aren’t we?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s pissing it down,’ she said. ‘There’s no point, we’d only get the wagons stuck.’
‘That’s all right, then.’ He lay back, staring at the barn rafters. ‘We’ll wait for it to stop and try and make up time when we hit the military road. Does it always rain like this in this horrible country?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘This time of year, anyway.’
‘Bloody hell. It’s a miracle anybody manages to live here.’
‘They’re used to it.’ She pulled a blanket round her shoulders and looked at him. ‘You’d better tell me about it,’ she said.
‘Tell you about what?’
‘The dream,’ she said. ‘It’s making you act all nasty, so it must be bothering you.’
He nodded. ‘Like I said,’ he told her, ‘it wasn’t so much bad as strange. Bad dreams I can handle,’ he added with a faint smile.
‘Go on,’ she said.
‘Well.’ He thought for a moment. ‘We were back at Deymeson, all of us – you, me, Gain, Elaos, Cordo, Ciartan– and it was just after first lesson. We were in third grade, I think, but you know how you can never tell how old you are in dreams. Anyway, the lesson had been metalwork, we’d been doing casting in bronze—’
‘That’s odd,’ she interrupted.
‘Well, of course it is, that’s the point. We never did that, any of us.’
She frowned. ‘Hold on,’ she said. ‘Didn’t Gain take foundry as an option in fifth grade?’
He thought about that. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I think you’re right. Ciartan and Cordo took forgework, you and I did precious metals, Elaos – what did Elaos do? I can’t remember.’
‘Engraving.’
‘So he did, you’re right. God only knows how you remember all this stuff.’
‘Practice,’ she said. ‘So, we were all coming out of class. Then what?’
‘We were moaning,’ he continued, ‘about the assignment we’d just been set. We had to cast a flute—’
‘You don’t cast flutes. You—’
‘I know that, thank you. But in the dream, we had to cast a flute, in bronze, and we weren’t allowed to use a core.’
She looked blank. ‘Is that good or bad?’ she asked. ‘I don’t know anything about casting.’
‘Well, I don’t know a hell of a lot,’ he admitted. ‘But in the dream it was pretty serious, because we were all arguing like mad about it. And then Ciartan lost his temper—’
‘What’s odd about that?’ she interrupted, smiling. ‘Sounds just like real life to me.’
‘Ciartan lost his temper,’ he repeated, ‘and one of the other kids – I’m blowed if I can remember his name, but he had straight black hair, small nose, played the flute—’
‘Torcuat.’
‘That’s right,’ he said, surprised. ‘Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. Torcuat. Anyhow, they got into a fight; and you remember how Ciartan went through that phase of carrying a knife all the time. Stuffed down inside the leg of his boot, the stupid clown, I’m amazed he never cut his shin open. Anyway, he got this knife out and he was waving it around, and Torcuat was yelling bloody murder at him, and we were all worried Father Tutor’d hear the racket and come and see what was going on. So you jumped in and took the knife off him – only for some reason it wasn’t a knife any more, it was a little axe, sort of a hatchet. But you got it away from him, and he’d gone all dumb and ashamed, because you’d told him he was an arsehole. Then the door opened and Father Tutor came in, but he didn’t seem to have heard the noise, or maybe he was preoccupied and wasn’t bothered about it; he had this really serious look on his face, and we all knew there was something badly wrong. And here’s where it gets a bit surreal, because suddenly we were all sitting in his study—’
‘All of us? There wouldn’t be room.’
‘All of us,’ he repeated. ‘And in front of him, right in the middle of his desk, was this sort of stump thing, and on it there was this statue of a crow; only it wasn’t a statue, because suddenly it spread its wings and said “Caw” or whatever crows say—’
‘A crow,’ she said. ‘Interesting.’
‘Well, quite. Sort of like what my old mother used to tell me: don’t play with that, dear, you don’t know where it’s been.’
She frowned. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘we’ve both known him a very long time, and remember what he told us, about the people where he came from, so maybe it’s not so surprising after all. Go on.’
‘It gets weirder,’ he said. ‘Father Tutor calls Ciartan up to the front, tells him there’s this really bad news from home; his grandfather’s died, and left him the farm – so, I was thinking, not such bad news after all; and his best friend’s been burned to death in a fire, and his daughter’s expecting a baby.’ He paused, and she got the impression he’d missed something out at this point; nothing he felt was important, but something that she wouldn’t like. ‘And then he went on, Father Tutor, that is; he said that the volcano had erupted and buried his house and all the farmland under molten lava, so he couldn’t ever go back home again – and I was thinking, bloody hell, even though it’s him, you can’t help feeling a bit sorry for the bastard, all that dreadful stuff happening all at once.’
‘How very sweet,’ she said.
‘Well,’ he replied, ‘you were sobbing your little heart out, so you can’t talk. And he was just stood there, grinning like an idiot; and the crow was cackling away like it was laughing, and
then he sort of reached out – I tell you, he never moved that fast in real life – and he grabbed the crow round the neck and squashed it, literally squashed it down into the fireplace and held it there till it was all burned up. And Father Tutor just sat there, like he didn’t mind a bit; and then he said to Ciartan to cheer up, because as a sort of consolation prize he was being given the hand of the Emperor’s daughter in marriage, and if that all went all right – like it was a test or probation or something – if that all went all right, he’d be allowed to kill his son, make the flute and take his rightful place as king of the gods once term was finished. And I was sitting there thinking, that’s a bit rich, this is bloody Ciartan we’re talking about; then he leans across to me and says, yes, fine, but—’ He paused, an embarrassed look on his face.
‘But,’ she said. ‘Go on. It’s about me, isn’t it?’
‘Well, yes. Basically, he was saying it was all very well getting all that nice stuff Father Tutor had just said, but it didn’t count worth spit because I’d – well, you and me . . .’
She was grinning. ‘You’ve gone all pink,’ she said.
‘Yes, well. I used to be a monk, remember? Anyway, the gist of it was that all the goodies didn’t matter if, well, if it was going to be me getting the girl and not him; only that wasn’t going to happen, since he’d kill me first, and all sorts of charming stuff like that.’
‘Sounds pretty much like Ciartan to me.’
‘Quite. Anyway, then he got his hands round my throat, and I was struggling and yelling, “No, stop—”’
‘I know. I heard you.’
‘And then,’ he concluded, ‘I woke up.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Bloody hell, Xipho, I’ve got to admit, I’ve had about as much of him as I can take.’
‘You have.’
‘Well,’ he said, embarrassed, ‘anyhow. But it’s getting beyond a joke.’ He looked at her. ‘You don’t – well, you don’t actually think there really is anything to it, do you? Seriously, I mean.’