Sharps

by K. J. Parker

  Well, he wasn’t paid to be convincing. He shut the door, reminded the guards stationed outside it that no one was to enter or leave (as if they needed reminding) and passed down the corridor to the next door: Adulescentulus Carnufex, the Irrigator’s son. Something, Teudel thought, to tell his grandchildren. But young Carnufex was fast asleep, so that was all right. Shivering slightly from the cold, Teudel withdrew and applied himself to the next door: the team manager, Phrantzes. He adjusted his parameters accordingly.

  “There’s been an incident,” he replied to the obvious question. “With one of the guests. But everything’s under control, nothing to worry about. Sorry to have disturbed you.”

  He closed the door before Phrantzes could ask another question, and moved on to the last door. Slightly awkward, as the occupant was female. Different protocols therefore applied. He knocked, and waited.

  After a moment the door opened a crack, and a plain young woman scowled at him. “What the hell is …?”

  “Just making sure you’re all right, miss.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “No cause for alarm. Good night, miss.”

  “Wait a minute.” She had the gift of command. “What’s all the yelling about?”

  “Sorry, miss. Just a drill.”

  “Like hell. What’s going on?”

  “Thank you, miss. Sorry to have troubled you.”

  He applied his knee gently to the door, easing it shut. The two guards looked straight past him as he walked away. As soon as he was safely out of range, they’d be laughing. He cursed them with early promotion, so that they’d be the ones who had to deal politely with stroppy females with diplomatic status, and returned to the guard post. There he found Captain Lozo, the duty officer, looking weary and terrified, searching frantically for the ink bottle. Teudel took it from the desk drawer and gave it to him.

  “Sir, what the hell’s going on?” he asked.

  “Bloody good question.” Lozo fumbled with the ink-bottle stopper, forced it out with a violent twist, and spilled ink on the desk. “Some bloody fool of a government minister’s got himself killed, apparently. We think. We don’t know. Main thing is to close this place right down, make sure everybody stays put, and under no circumstances is anybody to leave the building until further notice. We think they’re trying to keep it quiet until they can bring in enough Aram Chantat. Once the news does get out, of course …”

  He didn’t need to expand on that. “And is it true? Which minister?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care,” Lozo replied. “Right now, all I’m concerned with is getting a status report out to Division, and then they can send someone in to take charge and I’m off the hook.” He frowned at the pool of ink on the desk, as if he couldn’t begin to imagine how it could possibly have got there. “All the Scherians safely contained?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s something, I suppose. God knows what’d happen if one of them contrived to get killed, we’d have another war on our hands in no time flat.” His frown deepened, and he turned and looked at Teudel as though he was a prophet on a holy mountain. “Do you suppose that’s why they’re here?” he said. “To get killed, to start another war.”

  “I …” It wasn’t the sort of question lieutenants in the Imperial service were supposed to address themselves to. “I don’t know, sir.”

  “It’d get the job done, though, wouldn’t it?”

  Once asked, however, it itched for an answer. “Do you think that’s why the Permians asked them here?”

  “Or why the Scherians sent them.” Lozo sat absolutely still for a moment, as if a sudden movement on his part might scare away the revelation of perfect truth. Then he shrugged hugely. “None of our business, anyhow. If they want a war, I guess they might as well have one. Were you here for the last lot, Teudel?”

  “No, sir.”

  Lozo nodded. “Too young. Well, you didn’t miss much. It was a mess, basically. The Scherians are a bunch of primitives who just happen to be led by the most brilliant tactical mind in twelve centuries. Fighting them is therefore a pain in the arse. One minute you’re slaughtering them like sheep, the next they’re all around you and you’re hiding in a ditch. And the Permians …” He laughed. “I have this recurring nightmare where I come back from the dead and I’m looking at my gravestone, and on it there’s my name and my rank and my unit, and under that in big curvy letters, He Died For Permia. Something like that’d really fuck up the afterlife, don’t you think?” He sighed, and dipped his pen in the ink. “Dismissed, Lieutenant. Go away and guard somebody, there’s a good fellow.”

  It was a direct order, but Teudel didn’t feel like obeying it. Instead, he went back to the tower and prowled round for a while annoying the guards, until he was quite certain there was nothing he could usefully do there; then he retired to the gatehouse, on the assumption that it’d be a logical place for anyone to look if they wanted to find him. Another war: he didn’t exactly relish the thought, but the fact had to be faced. In war, officers died, and their juniors were promoted to replace them. In peace, there was only old age, illness or disgrace, and he wasn’t prepared to wait that long. But a really good public-order crisis; it was a possibility he hadn’t considered in any detail. He couldn’t help remembering the case histories of men, great and glorious men, who’d been started on their careers by incidents in times of civic turmoil; men who’d thought quickly and calmly on the spot and saved the day, and been rewarded. Most of them, though, hadn’t had to operate in a confined space infested with the Aram Chantat. And careers could be ruined as well as accelerated in anomalous circumstances such as these …

  The night air made him shiver, and he remembered how cold it had been in young Carnufex’s room. Hard to see how people’s brains could work properly in the cold. His own thought processes slowed alarmingly once he’d reached the point where he could no longer feel his fingers. Fortunately, there was a good fire going in the gatehouse. He sat in front of it, and slowly came back to life. He listened hard, but there were no sounds of tumult and disorder from the other side of the gate. Probably just as well, he decided on balance. Plenty of time for that tomorrow, when there’d be light to see by.

  He Died For Permia, though. He pictured the look on Lozo’s face as he’d said it, and couldn’t help laughing.

  From her window, Iseutz could see a red glow. It could easily have been the sunrise, but it wasn’t.

  This is the safest place in the city, she told herself. It has to be, it’s stuffed full of government ministers. That sounded entirely fine and reasonable, until it occurred to her that maybe it was the government and its ministers that the people who’d started the fires wanted to get at.

  It was, of course, utterly intolerable that they should be stuck here in the middle of a revolution or whatever it was. Clearly whatever point the tour may have had was long since gone, superseded by events; in which case, the only rational course of action would be to get them safely away from centres of population (she didn’t think they’d be rioting in the villages; too much work to do, and nothing to burn down except their own barns) and then back to Scheria, as quickly as possible. But no: here they were, in the biggest target in the city. The Guild house was an old building, with wood floors and oak-panelled walls; it’d burn for days. Wonderful.

  She looked at the door. She knew there were guards posted there – for her protection, no doubt; two men who’d bravely die for her, seconds before she died herself: male logic. She considered the possibility of simply walking out and ignoring them; would they physically restrain her and put her back inside? On the balance of probabilities, yes, and she couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for the idea of fighting them. One, maybe, with the element of surprise. Two, forget it. Besides, even if she got past them, where would she go? It was all very well imagining herself mingling with the crowd, slipping quietly away into the back streets, making her way to an unguarded gate; there was far too much Permia between her and the bor
der, and what would she eat, and where would she sleep? The horrible fact was that her future was out of her control, until further notice. The thought sickened her, but she choked it down.

  So: sit still, like a good little girl, and wait for someone to come and get you. She clenched her hands until she was afraid she’d break a finger. Why did people have to be so stupid?

  She thought about Addo. Whatever else he was, he wasn’t stupid. Contingency plans and fallback positions would be second nature to the Irrigator’s son. She’d noticed a dozen times how he assimilated the layout of every confined space he entered – other doors, ways round furniture, the geometry of the placement of guards. If there was a way out of this trap, Addo Carnufex would find it, and he’d feel duty-bound to take her, them, with him if he possibly could. His door, she remembered, was the next but one to hers. Worth bearing in mind.

  The window was stuck, but after a short, energetic fight that cost her the skin off two knuckles she managed to get it open. The cold air splashed on her face like water. She held still and closed her eyes, but she couldn’t hear anything: too high up, or too far away. That was probably good. If the rioters were laying siege to the Guild house, she was sure she’d be able to hear them. She remembered the soldiers in the streets. The Imperials had been wearing armour. There were over a thousand small steel plates in an Imperial cuirass (who had she heard that from? She couldn’t recall offhand), ingeniously and meticulously arranged to move with the body, leaving no gaps for a point to poke through. Apparently, though, that didn’t make them invulnerable against a furious mob, just as the walls of Flos Verjan hadn’t protected the city from the river water. That much pent-up anger would crush anything. In the end it came down to quantity, volume, mass, weight of numbers; and a man who was prepared to open the sluices. How on earth could anyone bring himself to do a thing like that – open the gates, start a war, let go a flood that once loosed was beyond anyone’s control? She couldn’t imagine, and she really didn’t want to try. She sucked her skinned knuckles and tried not to think how much more a sword cut into the bone would hurt, or a messer to the head, or a deep thrust from a broad blade that prised the ribs apart. Well, at least the match tomorrow would be cancelled; but she hadn’t been afraid of that, even though it was to be sharps. A properly regulated bout against a single opponent was at least under control, in its own rather bizarre terms. They’d dipped the sword blades in boiling water before the match at Joiauz, the way doctors boiled their instruments to avoid infection. She’d heard somewhere that most men cut up in a battle died later, slowly, from blood poisoning.

  There was a knock at her door. She started, then despised herself for it – blood-crazed rioters would hardly knock, would they? – and turned the handle. It was Phrantzes, looking rather dazed.

  “Well?” she said.

  “It’s riots,” he said. “I’ve just had our friend Captain Cuniva to see me – he wasn’t supposed to, but I think he likes us, after Addo said nice things about his book—”

  “What did he say?”

  “A government minister’s been killed,” Phrantzes replied. “Cuniva didn’t know which one, or when, or where. He says they tried to keep it quiet, at least till morning, but apparently that didn’t happen. There’s huge mobs in the streets, they’ve called out the Aram Chantat, no reports so far who’s getting the better of it. We’re to stay here till they’ve restored order, Cuniva said. When that might be is anyone’s guess. Meanwhile, just stay calm and—”

  “If anyone else tells me to stay calm, I shall scream,” Iseutz snapped. “They can’t just lock us up like this. You go to them and tell them we’re Scherian diplomats, we’ve got rights. I have no intention of sitting still and quiet in a locked room at the top of a tower. Cuniva’s a captain, isn’t he? He must outrank whoever’s in charge of this staircase.”

  “He’s waiting outside the door,” Phrantzes said quietly. “If you like, I’ll ask him in and you can talk to him. I wouldn’t, though, if I were you. He’s pretty strung up, and it wouldn’t be sensible to annoy the only man in the building who seems to give a damn.”

  She could just about see the logic in that. “All right,” she said, “I’ll just sit here and wait to be murdered. What’ll you be doing? I notice you’re not locked up in your cell.”

  “I’m the liaison,” Phrantzes said awkwardly. “Between us and the Imperials.”

  “Isn’t that Tzimisces’ job? Oh, don’t tell me. He’s gone again.”

  “He’s with the Guild authorities.” Their eyes met, and she thought: he can’t stand the creep either. He’s afraid of him. “They’re doing everything they can for us, I promise you. It’ll be all right.”

  Who was he talking to? Not her, she decided. And then it suddenly occurred to her: this was as good a time as any, and better than most. “Phrantzes,” she said, “what’ve they got on you? Besides your wife, I mean. There’s more, isn’t there?”

  He gave her a look of fury and terror, but it was too late now to disengage. “Well?”

  She could almost feel him break. What little strength there was had left him completely. He dropped down into the chair, his hands hanging over the arms, his head lolling on one side. For a moment, she thought he’d had a stroke. “I may as well tell you,” he said. “It won’t make any difference, I don’t suppose. And you won’t tell him, it’s not in your interests. Oh, the hell with it.” He lifted his head, and she could see more misery than she’d have thought it possible for one man to carry. She wished she was somewhere else, a long way away.

  “I was a transport officer in the War,” he said. “I was attached to General Carnufex’s staff, in the Belcors campaign.”

  Oh, she thought. “The one that Cuniva wrote that book about.”

  He nodded. “That’s the one. I’m sure my name’s in that book, in fact I’m certain of it. You see, I inadvertently won that battle, by making a stupid, careless mistake. The general sent a squadron of cavalry to attack a bridge. It was a feint, they weren’t supposed to succeed, but they did. They chased off a detachment of Permians – not Imperials or Aram Chantat, I think they were mine workers, conscripts. I guess that’s why they ran instead of holding their ground and driving our cavalry off. Anyhow, the general sent me a note telling me not to send a supply train down a certain road; it’d be too close to the fighting at the bridge, and enemy stragglers might bump into our carts and cause a problem. Well, I was under pressure, I had to get the supplies to the front line or there’d be a horrible mess, but there wasn’t time to go the long way round. I figured, the attack’s just a feint, there’s no real danger of enemy soldiers streaming down that road to get away from the bridge. I sent the carts down the road anyway, and stuffed Carnufex’s note in with a load of other papers. If ever I was called on it, I’d say I’d never seen it, and some fool of a clerk had filed it in with the other stuff.” He paused, and swallowed a great gulp of air, as if he’d just come up out of deep water. “Well, there were soldiers on that road all right, the whole Permian unit, running like mad from our cavalry. They came round a bend in the road, and there were our carts. I don’t think they were actually looking for a fight, but they were scared, and some fool on a cart shot an arrow, and that was all it took. They slaughtered the cart crew, trashed the carts and wandered off. My fault.”

  Iseutz looked at him. “You said you won …”

  “Oh yes.” Phrantzes grinned at her. “At the time, I thought it was the most amazing stroke of luck. You see, about an hour later, nine hundred Imperial heavy cavalry came charging up that road. They’d broken through our line and were swinging round to outflank the main infantry. If they’d made it through, we’d have been slaughtered, lost the battle; for all I know, maybe even the War. But the road was blocked with smashed-up carts, they couldn’t get through. They dismounted and tried to get all the junk out of the way, but after a bit they realised they were too late, the moment had passed. By the time they’d cleared the road and executed their manoeuvre, they w
ouldn’t be charging the rear of an unsuspecting infantry division, they’d be riding straight down the throats of the archers and the field artillery. So they gave up. They got back on their horses and left the battlefield – which was the only sensible thing to do, God knows. They even stopped to pick up the few wounded carters who’d survived the Permian attack. One of them—”

  Iseutz’s eyes were very wide. “Suidas Deutzel.”

  He grinned at her. “That’s right. Nineteen years old, carter’s mate. He’d got himself horribly carved up, he should’ve bled to death, but the Blueskins scooped him up and took him to one of their field hospitals, where a very skilful doctor sewed him back together again. Six weeks later, he was well enough to walk, so they let him go. They figured he’d never bother anyone again, not after what he’d gone through.” Phrantzes closed his eyes for a moment. “They were wrong about that. Suidas joined the Fourteenth Land Auxiliary. You heard of them?”

  Iseutz shook her head.

  “Well, you damn well should have. They were a skirmisher unit, they weren’t supposed to do anything, just go ahead of the proper soldiers and make a pest of themselves. But by some bizarre chance, every man in that unit was – well, I suppose it was the circumstances in which they came together. They were all survivors, you see, from other units that’d been wiped out. Most men in that position deserted, or were posted a long way from the fighting. The few that didn’t got drafted into the Fourteenth Auxiliary. They were all men who just wanted a chance to kill the enemy, and they didn’t give a damn about anything else. It was unbelievable. They’d charge whole Imperial regiments and go through them like they weren’t there. They attacked wings of Aram Chantat – on foot, mind you, and the savages on horseback – and they just tore them to pieces. Fairly soon Carnufex realised what he’d got there and started using them for, basically, suicide missions; except they did the job, came back alive and nagged and yelled until they got sent out again. Suidas rose to be the junior captain of the Fourteenth, third in command. That’s who you’ve been sharing a carriage with, by the way. They say he used to have a big leather bag on his belt, and it stank; it was full of the little fingers of Permians he’d killed, and he meant to clean off the skin and the meat and string the bones on a necklace, like the Aram Chantat do, but they went bad before he got around to it. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’ve heard it from several men who were in that unit with him.”