Sharps
Page 50
For the afternoon feed of the day in question he’d worked up what he considered was his finest effort yet. He’d started with the basic structure of the aubade, by its very nature a self-limiting form – but he’d extended it with a six-bar lyrical coda that recapitulated the opening theme transposed into the major key with a far livelier time signature. He’d run though the coda many times during the day, sitting with his back to the fattest, oldest beech in the glade. A wolf tree, the men from the farm called it. It had been there before the rest of the wood grew up, and instead of pointing its branches directly at the sky, it spread them wide, like his mother making a despairing gesture, blocking the light from the surrounding area so that nothing could grow there, and thus forming the clearing which generations of pigs had extended by devastation into a glade. When the angle of the beams of light piercing the canopy told him it was time for the feed, he got up slowly, brushed himself free of leaf mould and twigs, and hauled the yellow bucket out from its secure storage in a holly clump. Three pigs looked up, their ears glowing translucent against the slanting light. He grinned at them, and lugged the bucket into the middle of the clearing. Then he walked slowly to the hollow tree and felt inside the crack for the barley sack. Two more pigs lifted their heads, still diligently chewing. He cleared his throat with a brisk cough and began to sing.
La doca votz ai auzida …
(Lyrics weren’t his strong point. They had to be in the formal language of Home, or he might just as well sing ballads and, in theory, he was fluent in it as befitted a boy of noble birth albeit in exile. In practice, he could pick his way through a few of the simpler poems and homilies in the books, and say things like “My name is Gignomai, where is this place, what time is dinner?” As far as writing formal verse went, however, he hadn’t got a hope, so he tended to borrow lines from real poems and bend them till they sort of fitted.)
De rosinholets savatges—
He stopped suddenly, the next phrase congealed in his throat. A string of horsemen had appeared through the curtain of leaves and were riding up the track towards him. In the lead was his brother Luso, followed by half a dozen of the farm men and one riderless horse.
His first impression was that they’d been out hawking, because he could see a bundle of brown-feathered birds, tied at the neck, slung across the pommel of Luso’s saddle. But there was no hawk on Luso’s wrist. Had Luso lost the hawk? If so, there’d be open war at dinner. The hawk had come on a ship from Home; it had cost a fortune. There had been the most appalling row when Luso turned up with it one day, but Father had forgiven Luso because a hawk was, after all, a highly suitable possession for a gentleman. If Luso had contrived to mislay the wretched thing …
Luso looked at him without smiling. “What was that awful noise?” he said.
There was no way he could explain. “Sorry,” he said.
They hadn’t been hawking. They were wearing their padded shirts, with horn scales sewn into the lining. Two of the men had wide, shiny dark red stains soaking through their shirts, Luso had a deep cut just under his left eye, and they all looked exhausted. The birds on Luso’s saddle were chickens.
“Keep the noise down, will you?” Luso said. He was too tired to be sarcastic. For Luso to pass up an opportunity like this, something had to be wrong. The men rode by without saying anything. Their horses had fallen into a loose, weary trudge, too languid to spook the pigs. He didn’t bother trying to hide the barley sack behind his legs; Luso didn’t seem interested. Under the chicken feathers, he could see the holsters for the snapping-hen pistols. The ball pommel of one pistol was just visible. The other holster was empty.
When they’d gone, he performed the feeding ritual quickly and in silence. It worked just as well without music. When the swineherds showed up to drive the pigs back to the farm, they were quiet and looked rather scared. He didn’t ask what the matter was.
Father was angry about the man getting killed, but he was absolutely furious about the loss of the pistol, so furious that he didn’t mention it at all, which was a very bad sign. Gignomai heard the shouting before they were called in to dinner – that was all about the man’s death, how it’d leave them short-handed at the worst possible time, how Luso had a sacred duty by virtue of his station in life not to expose his inferiors to unnecessary and frivolous dangers – not a word about the pistol, but it was plain as day from what was said and what wasn’t that the real issue wasn’t something that could be absolved through sheer volume of abuse. Dinner was, by contrast, an eerily silent affair, with everybody staring at their hands or their plates. When the main course was served, however, Father looked up and said, in a terrible voice, “What the hell is this supposed to be?”
A long silence; then Luso said, “It’s chicken.”
“Get it out of my sight,” Father said, and the plates were whisked away. No great loss, Gignomai couldn’t help thinking; it had been sparse and stringy and tough as strips of leather binding, and he was pretty sure he’d last seen it draped over the pistol-holsters, in which case the chickens had been laying hens, not table birds, and not fit for eating. There was rather more to it than that, of course. They’d eaten layers before, when they’d had to, and had pretended they were perfectly fine.
Table of Contents
Sharps
By K. J. Parker
Copyright
Beginning Reading
Acknowledgements
Extras
About the Author
The Hammer
The Year When
Table of Contents
Sharps
By K. J. Parker
Copyright
Beginning Reading
Acknowledgements
Extras
About the Author
The Hammer
The Year When