by K. J. Parker
Poldarn looked at her. ‘Isn’t it?’
‘Of course not,’ she said briskly. ‘The whole purpose of religion is to annihilate doubt; and fear’s just a kind of doubt, after all. The reason we learn how to fight with the sword is so that, once we’ve been trained, there’s nothing on this earth that we need to be afraid of, nothing we can’t kill. Once we know that – really know it, believe it – that’s fear disposed of, and once we’ve got rid of fear we’re free of the biggest restraint on us, we’re at liberty to act purely in accordance with religion. That’s absolutely basic, essential. Fear and doubt are what stand between the impulse for the draw and the cut itself. Once the draw’s so perfect that it no longer exists, there’s no longer any room for fear or doubt. It’s what religion is for.’
‘You’ve got to excuse Xipho,’ Gain interrupted. ‘She learned all that by heart for sixth-grade tests, and it sort of got stuck in her mouth, like a fishbone. She pukes it all up once a week, and then she’s fine.’
Poldarn ignored him. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s not the way I think. Yes, I’m afraid there’s something I did that I don’t want to know about. In fact, I’m absolutely terrified of it, and when Gain showed up and – well, threatened to tell me, that’s what it comes down to: yes, I really didn’t want to know. In fact, I only let him say what he did because by then I’d seen enough of him to form the impression that he wasn’t to be trusted.’
Gain burst out laughing. ‘Screw you, Ciartan,’ he said. ‘You were always saying things like that. No wonder nobody liked you.’
‘Shut up, Gain,’ Copis said, like a mother to a fractious child. ‘Well, at least I can set your mind at rest on that score – assuming you’ll believe me, of course, but that’s up to you. Look, I can’t tell you about anything you may’ve got up to before Deymeson, but I do know everything that’s happened to you since then. And yes, you’ve done some pretty severe things, including killing people, and not just soldiers or enemies in a fair fight. But there’s nothing you’ve done that you need to be afraid of. Nothing you can’t live with, I mean.’
Poldarn looked at her for a long time. ‘You reckon,’ he said.
‘I know for a fact,’ she answered briskly. ‘You did things in self-defence, or to protect other people, or to help the cause, religion. You did things that would’ve been unforgivable without the right motive. But the justification was always there. Nothing you did was – well, evil, for want of a better word. And each time, it’s hard to think of what else you could’ve done, in the circumstances. Now it’s true,’ she went on, ‘what I said to you that time, at Deymeson, when you were with the raiders, attacking us.’
‘I remember,’ Poldarn said quietly. ‘You told me I was the most evil man in the world. You wanted to kill me.’
Copis nodded. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I was wrong.’
Next to her, Gain whistled. ‘Did you hear that?’ he said. ‘I never thought I’d live to—’
‘Be quiet. I was wrong,’ Copis repeated. ‘At the time, there were things I didn’t know, hadn’t been told. They were things I couldn’t be allowed to know if I was to do my job as your keeper. Once that job was over, it was necessary that I should be told, so I could do the next job that was lined up for me. So now I understand a whole lot more about you, why you did those things.’
‘Those things,’ Poldarn repeated. ‘What sort of things?’
Copis shivered a little, probably because of the cold. ‘Well, for one, taking part in the attack on Deymeson, not warning us or helping us fight back. At the time, I didn’t understand; I thought you could’ve got away from the savages before they launched the attack, come and warned us what they were going to do. I thought you’d betrayed us out of selfishness, because they’d turned out to be your people, where you came from.’
‘Copis,’ Poldarn broke in angrily, ‘I’d just escaped from your fucking Order, they’d been setting me up to believe I was General Cronan himself, or someone else I wasn’t; they were playing some horrible trick on me, as part of some grand strategy. I wanted to help my people kill every last one of the bastards.’
‘I know,’ Copis replied calmly. ‘At the time I thought that was wrong. But now I know it was right. Deymeson had to be taken out, obliterated. It was in the interests of religion for it to be destroyed. And before you say that wasn’t why you helped the savages,’ she went on, before he could interrupt, ‘actually, it was. The Deymeson Order had to be taken out because it was following the wrong path, and the error it was making was what prompted it to try and use you, the way it did. So yes, you were right and I was wrong. I hope,’ she added stiffly, as though proposing a toast at a formal dinner, ‘that you can forgive me for that.’
Poldarn decided not to reply to that. ‘What else?’ he said. ‘What other things?’
This time Copis smiled. ‘Are you sure you want to know?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘Excellent – we’re making progress. Well,’ she went on, ‘first, you betrayed someone who trusted you; someone who’d always shown you nothing but favour, kindness even. Including giving you his own daughter.’
‘Tazencius,’ Poldarn said.
‘Tazencius. He was your sponsor at Deymeson. He got you a place there, because you were brought up by the savages and he wanted someone to be a go-between for him with them. So he got you the best possible education, and then he bound you to him with a marriage alliance, to make sure of your loyalty. But you betrayed him: you took all the advantages he’d given you, the training and the skills and the contacts, and you sided with his enemies. Not just a spur-of-the-moment thing, you knew right from the start, from before you married Lysalis, that that’s what you were going to do. But you did it for the right reason. For religion.’
Poldarn frowned. ‘You mean for the Order,’ he said.
‘Same thing,’ Copis replied, almost casually. ‘Father Abbot and Father Tutor knew what Tazencius had in mind for you; you told Father Tutor yourself, as soon as you realised. And he asked you to go along with it until the time was right, and then you betrayed Tazencius – to the Order. To us.’ She paused, probably for emphasis. ‘And when you did that, you betrayed your wife as well; she loved you, and I think you probably loved her, in a way; and your son, too, as a father should. You had to betray both of them, and you did, because it was the right thing to do.’
‘Was it?’ Poldarn asked.
‘Of course. Tazencius was going to throw the whole Empire into chaos, because of his ambitions, his lethal feud with General Cronan, who was the only hope against the savages. Thanks to you, we stopped him dead in his tracks. It saved the Empire. It was the right thing.’
Poldarn breathed in slowly, decided not to comment. ‘What else?’ he said.
Copis nodded. ‘You joined the Amathy house,’ she said. ‘It was Tazencius’s idea, and ours as well. We knew that Feron Amathy was an even bigger danger than Tazencius; he had the same idea, about using the savages to attack the Empire, so that whoever got rid of them would automatically gain power. He and Tazencius were in it together, at least to begin with, though both of them were planning to get rid of the other at the earliest opportunity. It was Tazencius who introduced you to him, you can guess what for. So, while you were with the Amathy house, you helped us with Tazencius. Then, when that was all sorted out, you did the same with Feron Amathy: betrayed him, to us. And the result was that Feron Amathy ceased to be a threat to the Empire, at that time.’
‘Just a moment,’ Poldarn interrupted. ‘Feron Amathy’s still very much alive, and Tazencius is the Emperor. Did something go wrong?’
Copis shook her head. ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘The beauty of Father Tutor’s strategic planning was its economy. He had a genius for reusing the same pieces, instead of having to get rid of them and bring on new ones. Both Tazencius and Feron Amathy were – how shall I put it, they were adapted, or put on the right track; we altered them, so they’d be useful rather than harmful. Like taking a bro
ken piece of scrap iron and making a useful tool out of it. Oh, I’m not saying we made them into good people,’ she added, with a wry grin. ‘Far from it. Feron Amathy really is the most evil man in the world, there’s no possible doubt about that; and Tazencius is just plain stupid. But it’s like taking a weapon away from an enemy and using it to defend yourself. The weapon remains the same, but the use it’s put to changes. They’re now weapons for us, rather than against us. Like,’ she added, ‘the Deymeson Order, which I helped destroy. It’d become a liability rather than an asset.’
Poldarn couldn’t help noticing the look of disquiet on Gain’s face while she was saying all this; and he’s used to her, he thought. ‘And me,’ he said. ‘What am I, right now?’
‘Oh, an asset, like you’ve always been. Isn’t that what I’ve been trying to tell you?’
He decided to ignore that, too. ‘I get the impression,’ he said, ‘from what you’ve said, and Gain too, that this Father Tutor’s dead now. Is that right?’
She nodded. ‘He died before Deymeson fell, if that’s what you were thinking.’
Poldarn shook his head. ‘Couldn’t care less,’ he said. ‘But if he’s gone, who’s making all the decisions now? Who’s in charge—?’
At that, Copis smiled; warmly, for her. ‘You’ll be meeting him shortly,’ she said. ‘Of course, you’ve met him before. You’ll know him when you see him.’
‘But you can’t tell me his name?’
‘I could,’ Copis replied. ‘But then it wouldn’t be a surprise.’
‘This is it, then,’ Monach said doubtfully.
It lay across two sturdy oak trestles in the small shed behind the charcoal store: a seven-foot shiny yellow log with a hole down one end, as though the pith of the tree had rotted out. The other end was rounded, and halfway along its length two pegs stuck out, like the stubs of trimmed branches. Somewhere, Monach decided, between a very long, thin bell and a giant parsnip.
‘That’s it,’ Spenno replied gloomily. ‘Course, the bloody thing might blow itself to bits as soon as we touch it off. No way of knowing till we try it.’
Monach knelt down and peered into the mouth of the hole; as he did so, an uncomfortable thought occurred to him. ‘It hasn’t got anything in it, has it?’ he asked, standing up quickly and stepping to one side. ‘The volcano dust, or whatever you call it.’
‘Not likely.’ Spenno grinned. ‘We’re storing that right over the other side of the compound, well away from the main buildings. Tricky stuff, see: one hot ember from the fire and it’d go up like the Second Coming. They’d have to get the surveyors in from Torcea to redraw the maps.’
Monach didn’t like the thought of that. ‘So,’ he said warily, ‘when are you going to try it out?’
‘Tomorrow,’ Spenno replied gravely, ‘first thing. Assuming it’s not raining. That’s a problem with the bugger, it won’t go off in the wet. We’re working on that,’ he added hopefully.
‘Oh,’ Monach said. It occurred to him that a mighty superweapon that wouldn’t work in the rain was going to be a fat lot of use to anybody in Tulice, where it never seemed to stop.
‘The volcano dust’s got to be dry, see,’ Spenno explained. ‘If it gets wet it just turns into a filthy black mess, like mud, and when you stick the match in it, it just sits there.’
Oh well, Monach thought; let’s hope Brigadier Muno chooses the one dry day in the whole year to attack. Otherwise we’re screwed. ‘If it all goes all right tomorrow,’ he said, ‘how soon will the next batch be ready?’
‘Couldn’t say,’ Spenno replied. ‘We’ve only got the one lathe working at the moment, but we should have three more up and running in a day or so. Slight technical problems with the drill heads,’ he explained. ‘Clown of a blacksmith made ’em too brittle – they’re cracking up like glass. But we’ll get there.’
Monach went back to his quarters in the drawing office, splashing through the deep muddy pools in the yard on the way. Why hadn’t the stupid bastard mentioned before that the idiot bloody things didn’t work in the wet? Did they know about this minor drawback in Torcea, where they were counting on the Flutes to save the Empire from the raiders? Maybe if he sneaked out quietly and went and told Brigadier Muno that the Flutes were effectively useless everywhere except in the heart of the Morevich Desert, he’d realise that they weren’t worth having and go away; in which case, Monach thought with a grin, I could stay here and learn how to make bells. Nice cheerful things, bells, and they chime even when it’s pissing down.
He hadn’t realised how tired he was until he lay down, boots still on, wet shirt still clinging to his back and shoulders. He couldn’t find the strength to stand up again and take them off – chances were that Brigadier Muno would get him before pneumonia did, so it was all as broad as it was long. He closed his eyes—
Someone was standing over him, just grazing the edge of his circle. He sat up and said, ‘Who’s there?’
It was only Runting, the quartermaster. ‘Guess what,’ he was saying, in a bemused voice. ‘You’ve got a letter.’
‘A what?’ Monach said, as if Runting had told him there was a dragon waiting for him in the grain store.
‘A letter. Addressed to you. Here.’ He was holding out a brass tube the size of a medium leek. ‘Sentry on the north gate found it a minute or so ago, as he was doing his rounds. Swears blind it wasn’t there when he went round earlier.’
‘Oh.’ Monach was fumbling with the tinderbox; bloody damp, getting into everything. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘you do this. I never could start a fire to save my life.’
Runting gave him the tube and fiddled with the tinderbox, until at last he contrived to get a lamp going. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘aren’t you going to open it?’
Monach thought for a moment. ‘I can’t see why not,’ he said cautiously. Strange, he thought, very strange; time was, I used to spend an hour every morning just opening and reading letters. Now I’m handling this thing like I’m expecting it to jump out and bite me. ‘All right, thanks.’ He hesitated. Runting wasn’t showing any signs of going away. ‘I’ll give you a shout if I need you.’
‘Oh. Right.’ Runting shrugged and went out. With his thumbnail, Monach cracked the small blob of hard red wax and fished out a little scrap of paper. He recognised the shape: the flyleaf, torn out of a flat-bound book. The handwriting was thin, spindly. Familiar.
Earwig—
You must be wondering what’s going on, but don’t worry, I’ll explain everything when I see you. In case you’ve been worrying, Xipho’s just fine, and so’s the kid; he’s with me now, in fact, trying to eat one of my shoes. The woman I’ve got looking after him reckons he’s teething, whatever that means.
I hope I didn’t startle you too much the other night. Anyway, as you’ve probably already figured out for yourself, I’m not nearly as dead as they’d have you believe. Now, to business. If that clown Spenno’s finally pulled his finger out, the volcano-bell things should be about ready by now. Whatever happens, I don’t want Muno or anyone else from the government side getting their sticky paws on them. If the worst comes to the worst, get rid of the bloody things, destroy them. This is important. Right?
Can’t say any more now; I’ll explain everything when I see you.
Take care,
Cordo
PS Don’t you dare let Spenno see this letter, or he’ll sulk. Hell of an engineer, but a bloody prima donna, just like Fabricius (remember him from sixth grade? Must be something about working with metal, probably the fumes or whatever). Anyhow, you can keep him sweet, I’m sure. You always were a bloody crawler, Wig.
C.
On balance, Monach thought, I’d have preferred a dragon in the grain sheds. Less disconcerting, less trouble to deal with.
It was Cordo all right; nobody else he’d ever come across could ever achieve that same effortless, cheerful arrogance. Typical. Not content with not being dead after twenty-whatever years, he comes swanning back into the world ordering peop
le about, promising explanations, nonchalantly letting you know he’s been running things behind your back for God knows how long . . . Cordo. Cordo, for crying out loud. My friend, from the old days, is still alive. And all this time—
All this time, I’ve hated Ciartan to death for killing him. But he’s not killed, he’s sitting out there just outside my circle, pulling my strings. With Xipho. With Xipho—
Jealousy? It was all the Order’s fault, come to last; what the hell could they possibly have been thinking of, sticking one girl in with a class of nineteen adolescent boys – monks, for the gods’ sake. Of all the crazy, thoughtless things to do; Spenno’s volcano dust had nothing on it for a disaster waiting to happen. Of course he was jealous, of anybody who spoke to her or looked at her, right through grades one to seven, right through to here and now. (Ciartan; his bloody kid, and she even named it Ciartan after him.) He wanted to get a rock and smash Cordo’s skull for that, just for being with her, taking her away from him—
Brings back fond memories, Monach thought; of lectures and classes, when he’d sat in the back row gazing at the back of her head, not hearing a word Father Tutor was saying, his whole mind focused on her – and Xipho, totally, absolutely constant, impregnable as the citadel of Torcea, hard as a file blade, never the slightest encouragement, which only made it worse, turned up the heat in the furnace to where it’d have melted stone into glass. And all this time, this last year when he’d finally had her all to himself – nothing doing, of course, still the unattainable steel goddess, but at least he’d been with her every day, him and nobody else, none of the others; he’d taken her away from Ciartan; finally, after all these years, he’d won – And now Cordo was back, inexplicably alive, and she was off with him like a rat up a culvert.