Sharps

by K. J. Parker

  “No way in hell,” Suidas replied pleasantly, threading the messer through his belt and closing his coat round it. “And if I’m keeping mine, you might as well keep yours. Right, let’s get going.”

  They followed the yard, passed through another arch and came out into a wide street. There was nobody to be seen. “The hell with it,” Suidas muttered. “Which way?”

  “Right,” Addo replied. “I can’t remember the name offhand, but I think this leads straight out of town. If I’m right, there should be a bridge quite soon.”

  They walked for a while in total silence, with Iseutz trailing behind like a tired dog on a lead. “You saw a map,” Suidas said.

  “In the Guild house. It was just lying about. I glanced at it, on general principles. I always like to know where I am.”

  “Heredity,” Suidas said. “For which, right now, I’m profoundly grateful. This looks like that bridge of yours.”

  “Splendid,” Addo said. “I think we may actually be going the right way.”

  A little later, Addo said: “I lost sight of Giraut and the others when we—”

  “Forget it,” Suidas said. “Not your fault.”

  They walked on in silence for a while further; then Addo stopped dead.

  “What?” Suidas said.

  “Look.”

  All Suidas could see in the moonlight was a row of barrels. “What?”

  Addo took a few steps, and stopped again. “Barrels,” he said excitedly.

  “I can see that. What’s the matter with you?”

  “Barrels. Which means coopers. Cooper’s Alley.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “The livery yard,” Addo said, “is on the corner of Moorway and Cooper’s Alley. I heard Tzimisces say so to the officer.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” Suidas snapped, but Addo was looking round wildly. “The street we’ve been walking down,” he said. “That’s got to be Moorway. I remember now, Moorway leads from the Circus up to the Northgate.” He laughed, like a small boy. “We’ve come round three sides of a square,” he said. “We were almost there when we …”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Look.”

  There was a small yellow square of light: a window. Addo grabbed Iseutz’s hand and dragged her toward it; Suidas followed. They found a pair of tall doors beside the lighted window, by whose stray glow they saw wisps of straw on the paving stones, and an unmistakable pile of horseshit.

  “Livery yard,” Addo said.

  “You’re kidding,” Suidas murmured. He shouldered past Addo, clenched his fist tight and banged on the door. There was a horrible interval of stillness and silence; then they heard footsteps, and the door opened. “There you are,” said a voice. It was Tzimisces.

  “You shouldn’t have wandered off like that,” Tzimisces said.

  The coach was bigger than the chaise, heavier and more ornate, with red leather seats and a coat of arms painted on the door. Inside, it smelt of mould. Two horses were already between the shafts; they were waiting for the groom to lead out the front pair.

  “After you left,” Tzimisces was saying, “the Aram Chantat showed up. Things got a bit nasty at that point.” He shrugged, a sort of these-things-happen gesture. “I got Phrantzes and Giraut out of the way, and we came straight here.”

  “What about Lieutenant …?” Iseutz stopped. She’d forgotten his name.

  “Tzazo,” Tzimisces said. “I don’t think he made it. The Aram Chantat didn’t charge straight away, you see; they held back and let off a couple of volleys of arrows, to loosen things up. It was dark, needless to say, so they had no idea what they were shooting at. That was when we left. We heard the charge go home, of course. Fortuitous,” he added (and Giraut wondered where he’d got that particular word from, at that particular moment). “With all the mess they’ll have made, nobody’s going to notice that some of the bodies had slash wounds that didn’t come from overhead.” He gave Suidas a reproachful look. When it failed to have any effect, he turned it on Addo, who looked down at his feet. “We’ll say no more about it,” he went on. “But please, in future—”

  “Hang on,” Suidas interrupted. “Are you expecting more of that sort of stuff? Because if you are …”

  “As far as I can tell, this was an isolated incident,” Tzimisces said, “resulting from an extreme act and exceptional local circumstances. However, if anything like this happens again, I trust there’ll be no repetition. Do I make myself clear?”

  Suidas gave him a closed-door look. Addo mumbled something, presumably an apology. Iseutz said, “If Addo hadn’t pulled me out of there—”

  “You’d have been rescued by the Aram Chantat, like the rest of us. And now the matter’s closed, as far as I’m concerned. I suggest we all reflect on it at our leisure, and try and learn the obvious lessons.”

  “Excuse me,” Giraut interrupted. “What about our stuff?”

  There was a moment’s silence; then Suidas barked out a short laugh. Tzimisces ignored him.

  “Naturally, if your belongings survived the attack on the Guild house and if there’s an opportunity to have someone retrieve them, I’ll do so. For now, though, we must assume that they’re lost. I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m sure our hosts will be happy to replace them.”

  “What happened to the soldiers?” Iseutz asked. “The rest of Tzazo’s men.”

  “I don’t know,” Tzimisces replied briskly. “Well, it looks as if the coach is ready for us. No escort, I’m afraid, but that might be no bad thing. Having soldiers with us at this point would only attract attention.”

  The driver was an old, bald man in a huge coat. He had a boy of about fourteen with him on the box, most likely his grandson. The boy was eating an apple.

  “Where are we going?” Suidas asked, as he shut the door and the coach moved off.

  “North out of town,” Tzimisces replied, “then we’ll work our way east through the lanes until we pick up the main east road to Beaute. There’s a post station about five miles along, where we can send ahead for an escort.”

  Giraut wondered what had become of Lieutenant Totila, but there was no point in asking. It occurred to him that Lieutenant Tzazo, and possibly Totila as well, and an unspecified number of their Blueskin escort, had died to protect him. It was an extraordinary thought. In his more romantic moments, when he was younger, he’d occasionally thought how grand it would be to lay down one’s life for one’s friend. He’d imagined it, once or twice, having contrived various scenarios to fit the dramatic requirements. In these little narratives, there had always been plenty of time – for deliberate choices, for speeches, farewells, dying words. The idea that you could find yourself in a situation, suddenly closing in around you before you’d had a chance to appreciate what was happening, where you’d be called upon to give your life for a complete stranger, struck him as quite bizarre. He wondered: at what point had Tzazo, or Totila, or any of them realised that this mess was one they weren’t getting out of; had they seen a chance to run and nobly forsworn it, or had death simply swirled round them like floodwater, following the unseen bursting of a distant dam, and swept them away without giving them any chance to make a choice? Of course it was different if you were a soldier. Presumably you were trained, or at the very least you’d thought it through beforehand and decided that it (whatever it was) justified the risk. To protect and serve the innocent and the weak; something like that, at any rate, and once you’d made the decision and signed the piece of paper and been issued your uniform, your consent to whatever happened to you after that could be taken for granted. It was peacetime, after all. Nobody had to be a soldier if they didn’t want to. Even so. He couldn’t help imagining Lieutenant Tzazo making his final report before the Court of the Invincible Sun – I died so that Giraut Bryennius might live – and all around him the assembled cherubim and the glorious hosts of heaven staring at him as though he was not quite right in the head.

  “Why’ve
we stopped?” Suidas said.

  It was a silly question, and Tzimisces didn’t answer. He stood up, leaned across Addo (who somehow managed to shrink to about half his normal size without moving) and pulled down the window. A moment later, he sat down again.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Well, don’t you think you ought to find out?” Iseutz said.

  Tzimisces sighed, stood up again, edged his way past Addo’s feet and climbed out of the coach. Nobody spoke until he came back, a long time later.

  “The driver says this is as far as he’s prepared to go,” Tzimisces said. “He wants to leave us here and go back to town. I told him that wasn’t acceptable.”

  “And?”

  “He’s just sitting there,” Tzimisces said.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Suidas said.

  “That wouldn’t be a good idea,” Tzimisces replied.

  “We could offer him money,” Addo suggested.

  “We haven’t got any,” Phrantzes muttered. “Have we?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” Tzimisces said. “I think our only option is to sit tight and wait. Sooner or later there should be a patrol – we’re on the main road, at last – and I’ll get the commander to commandeer the coach. We shouldn’t have any trouble after that.”

  “What if he decides to drive us back to …?” Giraut realised he’d forgotten the name of the town. “Where we just came from. Well, he lives there, so—”

  “The hell with that,” Suidas said abruptly. “I’ll talk to him.”

  “Sit down,” Tzimisces snapped, and after a moment Suidas subsided, like a pot taken off the boil. “May I remind you,” Tzimisces went on, “we’re in a friendly country in peacetime. Solving transport disputes at swordpoint isn’t acceptable behaviour.”

  “We can’t just sit here,” Iseutz protested.

  “On the contrary,” Tzimisces snapped, “there’s absolutely nothing else we can do, unless you feel like getting out and walking to Beaute. I wouldn’t recommend it, though. This road is patrolled by the Aram Chantat. I have official papers, which they will respect. I’m afraid I don’t have any spare copies to lend to individual members of the party.” He paused – Giraut could practically hear him counting to ten under his breath. “Why don’t we all settle down and sit quietly until the patrol gets here? Then it’ll all be sorted out, you have my word.”

  “Fine,” Suidas growled. “And if he does what Giraut just said, turns the coach round and heads back into town?”

  “Then you have my full permission to climb up on to the box and cut his throat,” Tzimisces replied pleasantly. “But he won’t. I’ve told him that if he does, he won’t get paid.”

  “But we can’t pay him anyway,” Iseutz nearly shrieked. “We haven’t got—”

  “Please,” Tzimisces said wearily, “keep your voice down. He doesn’t know that. And as soon as the patrol finds us, the coach will be requisitioned by the government and any issues of payment will cease to be relevant. I freely confess,” he added, as Iseutz made a despairing gesture with her arms that nearly put a hole through the coach door, “the situation is far from ideal. But it is under control, and before too long we will be on our way. Until then, we must stay calm and patient. That’s all there is to it.”

  There was a long silence. Then Addo said, “Colonel, as soon as we get somewhere where there’s light to see by, I’d like to challenge you to a game of chess. I think you’d be a fascinating opponent.”

  Iseutz giggled. Tzimisces said, “I’m afraid you’d win quite easily. I’m not very good at chess.”

  “Really?” Suidas clicked his tongue. “I had you down for a master tactician.”

  “Indeed. And the golden rule is, don’t fight battles you can’t win. I’d only agree to play if I could be sure of ambushing my opponent’s pieces on their way to the board and slaughtering them like sheep.”

  Intense terror followed by equally intense inactivity sent Giraut to sleep. He woke up to the sound of voices outside the coach.

  “Sh,” Suidas hissed at him. “It’s them. The Aram Chantat.”

  Giraut listened hard. He could hear voices, though no words; Tzimisces sounding cheerful, occasionally laughing, and a high, musical voice, talking quickly. It sounded like old friends meeting after a long separation.

  “It’s not the patrol,” Suidas said softly. “They’re from the town, looking for us.”

  Giraut suddenly felt cold. He could tell from the sound of Tzimisces’ voice and his knowledge of the man that he was putting on a high-quality performance, pulling out all the stops. Whether he was dissuading the Aram Chantat from arresting them or cajoling them into escorting them to Beaute, he had no idea. All he knew was, for that particular moment and that single purpose, he valued Tzimisces more than anyone else alive.

  After a very long time, he heard Tzimisces and the voice both laughing together; then the door opened and Tzimisces climbed back in. He closed the door behind him and sat down, pulling his coat tight around him.

  “Well?”

  “It’s all right,” Tzimisces said, and his voice had changed; he sounded tired, possibly even shaken.

  “What did they …?”

  “Several things. For instance, they wondered if we could shed any light on an incident where six Imperials and about three dozen Permian civilians were killed, not far from our coachyard.” He paused for breath. “I said I didn’t know anything about it. Anyway, they’re requisitioning the coach and they’re coming with us, part of the way at least. They’ve sent ahead to meet the patrol.” At that moment, the coach began to move forward. “Looks like they’ve just used their special blend of charm on our driver,” he added. “I warned him, but he wouldn’t listen.”

  They met the patrol just before dawn. Giraut was woken up by yelling. The coach lurched and stooped as if it had hit a wall, throwing him into Addo’s lap. Nobody said anything.

  After a while the shouting stopped, and all they could hear was horses going away at a gallop. Then someone banged on the door. Without a word, Tzimisces got up and went out. He was gone for quite some time.

  There had been, he explained when he got back, sounding as close to the edge as they’d yet heard him, a bit of a misunderstanding. The patrol—

  “Cosseilhatz,” Suidas said.

  Tzimisces nodded firmly. “Exactly. Tribes,” he went on. “Actually, that’s entirely the wrong concept, but let’s not get sidetracked. There’s at least a dozen of them. The Chantat are just one, but we call all their different nations Aram Chantat, mostly because it’s the only one we can pronounce. Anyway, the guards from the town are Aram Chantat, the patrol are Aram Cosseilhatz. They don’t get on. And both of them being employed by the Permians isn’t anything like a good enough reason for them not to fight it out to the death, if they’re feeling that way inclined.” He breathed out long and slow. “Fortunately, the patrol outnumbers our escort three to one. Unfair odds,” he explained, “so they couldn’t start anything, they could only fight back if the Chantat attacked them. Which they came pretty close to doing,” he added, with a slight shake in his voice, “but their captain said no, their first duty was to hand over the – well, us to the patrol, because those were their orders. Business before pleasure, you might say. Of course, if it’d been the other way round, it’d have been completely different. The Chantat aren’t bound by the unfair-odds rule, only the Cosseilhatz. Wonderful people,” he added with feeling, “but complicated.”

  The coach was moving again. Iseutz said, “Hand over the what?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You hesitated. What were you going to say?”

  Tzimisces shrugged. “Fine. Technically, we’re now prisoners. Escorting third-party prisoners is a supervening duty,” he continued loudly over the beginning of Iseutz’s howl of fury, “which overrides the obligations of the tribal feud. If we were just honoured guests, they’d have had to attack the Cosseilhatz, and we’d now all be dead. It’s all right,” he went on.
“I’ll sort it out when we get to the post station.”

  “Marvellous,” Suidas said quietly. “So, whose prisoners are we, exactly?”

  “The Cosseilhatz,” Tzimisces said. “The orders were, hand us over to the patrol. Which they did. The Cosseilhatz were therefore obliged to take us. They’re not exactly happy about it, but they’ll do as they’re told.”

  Addo cleared his throat. “Which post station?” he said. “It can’t be the one you told us about earlier. We passed that hours ago.”

  “Quite right,” Tzimisces said. “It’ll be the next one along. The Cosseilhatz burnt the other one to the ground, two days ago.”

  There was a long silence. Then Suidas said brightly: “You know, I’m glad the War’s over. It makes getting from A to B so much less stressful.”

  The post house was a square white building with a flat roof, sitting beside the road in the middle of a mile-wide level plain between two cliffs. It had no grounds, yards or garden, which made it look as if it had been carelessly dropped there, like a crate fallen from a cart. From a distance it looked like a hut, but the closer they came, the bigger it grew. “It’s got to be the size of the New Year Temple,” Iseutz said. Giraut thought about it and said it was probably bigger.

  “It does seem pretty large for a relay station,” Addo said.

  Tzimisces yawned. “It was once a cathedral,” he said, “in the central square of a city.” He sat up a little and pointed through the window. “See that line there, in the distance? That was a river, hundreds of years ago. This plain was the breadbasket of Permia. But the river changed course, the city was deserted, nobody even knows what its name used to be. That thing over there is all that’s left. The Empire used it as a bonded warehouse. When the Permians took it over they tried to pull it down, but it’s so massively built they gave up. There was a battle near here in the War.”

  “Semont,” Addo said. “So this must be …”

  “Quite right,” Tzimisces said approvingly. “This is Semont de Danzer. Not one of your father’s battles.”