by K. J. Parker
Soon as Intelligence were through shouting at me, I tottered down the hill to see Faustinus, the City Prefect. Faustinus is—I won’t say a friend, because I don’t want to make problems for him. He has rather more time for me than most Robur, and we’ve worked together on patching up the aqueducts. Faustinus wasn’t there, called away, important meeting of the Council. I left him a note, come and see me, and dragged myself back up the hill to Municipal Works, which is sort of my home when I’m in the City.
As a special favour, obtained for me by the personal intercession of Prefect Faustinus, I had a space of my own at Municipal Works. Once upon a time it was a charcoal shed; before that, I think the watchman kept his dog there. And before that, it was part of the Painted Cloister of the Fire temple that Temren the Great built to give thanks for his defeat of the Robur under Marcian III; it’s an old city, and wherever you dig, you find things. Anyway, the Clerk of the Works let me leave some stuff there, and letters and so forth pile up in an old box by the door, and I’d made myself a bed out of three packing crates (a carpenter, remember?). I didn’t bother looking at the letters. I crawled onto the bed, smothered myself in horse blankets, and fell asleep.
Some fool woke me up. He was enormous, and head to foot in gilded scale armour, like an enormous fish standing on its tail. He wasn’t alone. “What?” I yawned.
“Colonel Orhan.”
Well, I knew that. “What?”
“General Priscus’s compliments, sir, and you’re wanted in Council.”
That, of course, was a bare-faced lie. General Priscus didn’t want me anywhere in his jurisdiction, as he’d made quite clear when I was up for my promotion (but Priscus wasn’t in charge back then, praise be). Most particularly he didn’t want me on his Council, but sadly for him, he had no choice in the matter. “When?”
“Now, sir.”
I groaned. I was still wearing the bloodstained tunic with the hole in it, over the Malata medic’s off-white bandages. “I need to get washed and changed,” I said. “Give me ten minutes, will you?”
“No, sir.”
Among the things I have room for at Municipal Works is a spare grey cloak and regulation red felt pillbox hat. I put them on—it was a hot day, I knew I’d roast in the thick wool cloak, but it was that or go into Council in bloody rags—and shuffled to my feet. The golden-fish men fell in precisely around me. No need for that, but I imagine it was just force of habit.
The War Office is four doors down from the Golden Spire, on the left. It’s a small, low door in a bleak brick wall, and once you’re through that you’re in the most amazing knot garden, all lavender and box and bewilderingly lovely flowers, and then you’re looking at the double bronze doors, with two of the toughest soldiers in the army scowling at you, and then you’re inside, shading your eyes from the glare off all that white marble. I can see why people get offended when I go in there. I don’t half lower the tone.
Still, it’s a grand view from the top. Straight down Hill Street, all you see is roofs—red tiles, grey slates, thatch. No green or blue, just the work of men’s hands, as far as the eye can see. Nowhere else on earth you can do that. Every time I look at that view, regardless of context, I realise just how lucky I am.
From the window in the Council chamber, however, you can see the sea. General Priscus was sitting with his back to it, while I had the prime lookout position. Over his shoulder, I could see the arms of the harbour, and, beyond that, flat dark blue. Plenty of sails, but none of them the red and white stripes of the Sherden. Not yet, at any rate. If I’d offered to swap places with the general, he’d have thought I was trying to be funny, so I kept my mouth shut.
In terse, concise military language, General Priscus proceeded to tell us everything we already knew; a surprise attack by seaborne aggressors, no survivors, considerable damage to buildings and stores, enquiries continuing to ascertain the identity of the attackers—
“Excuse me,” I said.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Prefect Faustinus wince. As well he might. He’s told me, over and over again, don’t make trouble. He’s quite right and has my best interests at heart. He keeps asking me, why do you do it? Answer: I have no idea. I know it’s going to end badly, and God knows I don’t enjoy it. My knees go weak, I get this twisting pain in my stomach and my chest tightens up so I can barely breathe. I hear my own voice speaking and I think: not now, you fool, not again. But by then it’s too late.
Everybody was looking at me. Priscus scowled. “What?”
“I know who they were,” I said.
I’d done it again. “You do.”
“Yes. They’re called the Sherden.”
When Priscus got angry, he lowered his voice until he practically purred. “Is there any reason why you didn’t see fit to mention this earlier?”
“Nobody asked me.”
Faustinus had his eyes tight shut. “Well,” said the general, “perhaps you’d be good enough to enlighten us now.”
When I’m nervous, I talk a lot. And I’m rude to people. This is ridiculous. Other times—when I’m angry, particularly when people are trying to provoke me, I can control my temper like a charioteer in the Hippodrome manages his horses. But panic makes me cocky; go figure. “Of course,” I said. “The Sherden are a loose confederation, mostly exiles and refugees from other nations, based around the estuary of the Schelm in south-eastern Permia. We tend to call them pirates but mostly they trade; we do a lot of business with them, direct or through intermediaries. They have fast, light ships, low tonnage but sturdy. Typically they only go thieving when times are hard, and then they pick off small, easy targets where they can be sure of a good, quick return—monasteries, absentee landlords’ villas, occasionally an army payroll or a wagon train of silver ore from the mines. Given the choice, though, they’d rather receive stolen goods than do the actual robbing; they know we could stamp them flat in two minutes if we wanted to. But we never have, because, like I said, we do a lot of business with them. Basically, they’re no bother to anyone.”
Admiral Zonaras leaned forward and glared up the table at me. “How many ships?”
“No idea,” I said, “it’s not my area of expertise, all I know about these people is from—well, our paths have crossed, let’s say. Naval Intelligence is bound to know. Ask them.”
Zonaras never cared for me at the best of times. “I’m asking you. Your best guess.”
I shrugged. “At any one time, total number around three fifty, four hundred ships. But you’re talking about dozens of small independent companies with no overall control. There’s no King of the Sherden or anything like that.”
Priscus looked past me down the table. “Do we have any figures for the number of ships at Classis?”
Nobody said anything. A marvellous, once-in-a-lifetime chance for me to keep my mouth shut. “About seventy,” I said.
“Hold on.” Sostratus, the Lord Chamberlain. If we’d been discussing a civilian issue, he’d have been in the chair instead of Priscus. “How do you know all this?”
I did my shrug. “I was there.”
“You what?”
Nobody knew. For crying out loud. “I was there,” I repeated. “I was at Classis on business, I saw the whole thing.” Muttering up and down the table. I pressed on. “My estimate of seventy is based on a direct view of their ships tied up at the docks. There were a dozen ships each side of each of the three jetties. Six twelves are seventy-two. I don’t think there could have been more than that when I looked, because there didn’t seem to be room, all the berths were full. They could have had more ships standing by to come in as others finished loading, I don’t know. I couldn’t see that far from where I was.”
Symmachus the Imperial agent said, “Why weren’t we told there was an eye witness?”
That didn’t improve the general’s temper. “The witness hasn’t seen fit to mention it until now, apparently. Still, better late than never. You’d better tell us all about it.”
; I was about to point out that I’d made a full deposition in the naval hospital at Colophon. I think Faustinus can read my mind sometimes. I saw him shake his head, vigorously, like a cow being buzzed by flies. He had a point. So I told them the whole tale, from seeing the smoke to being picked up by the cutter. I stopped. Long silence.
“It all seems fairly straightforward to me,” said Admiral Zonaras. “I can have the Fifth Fleet at sea in four days. They’ll make sure these Sherden never bother us again.”
A general nodding, like the wind swaying a maple hedge. I could feel the blood pounding at the back of my head. Don’t say it, I begged myself. “Excuse me,” I said.
After the Council broke up, I tried to sneak away down Hillgate, but Faustinus was too quick for me. He headed me off by the Callicrates fountain. “Are you out of your tiny mind?” he said.
“But it’s true,” I told him.
He rolled his eyes at me. “Of course it’s true,” he said, “that’s not the point. The point is, you’ve pissed off everyone who matters a damn.”
Shrug. “They never liked me anyway.”
“Orhan.” Nobody calls me that. “You’re a clever man and you use your brain, which makes you unique in this man’s town, but you’ve got to do something about your attitude.”
“Attitude? Me?”
Why was I annoying the only man in the City who could stand the sight of me? Sorry, don’t know. “Orhan, you’ve got to do something about it, before you get yourself in serious trouble. You know your problem? You’re so full of resentment it oozes out of you, like a cow that hasn’t been milked. You put people’s backs up, and then they’d rather die than do what you tell them, even though it’s the right and sensible thing. You know what? If the empire comes crashing down, it could easily be all your fault.”
And that was me told. I nodded. “I know,” I said. “I fuck up good advice by giving it.” That made him grin, in spite of himself. “What I ought to do is get someone else, someone who’s not a total liability, to say things for me. Then people would listen.”
His face went sort of wooden. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “If only you could learn not to be so bloody rude.”
I sighed. “You look like you could use a drink.”
Faustinus always looks that way. This time, though, he shook his head. “Too busy,” he said, meaning too busy to risk being seen in public with me for at least a week. “Think about it, for crying out loud. Please. There’s too much at stake to risk screwing things up just because of your unfortunate personality.”
Fair comment, and I did actually think seriously about it, all the way down Hill Street. The trouble was, I’d been right. All I’d done was point out that the Fifth Fleet wouldn’t be going anywhere, not for quite some time. Admiral Zonaras had said that that was news to him; I pointed out that, since all the rope and all the barrel staves—that was what was in the shed next to the rope store, I learned that in the navy hospital, before they threw me out—for the entire navy had gone up in smoke—
Hang on, you’re saying, so maybe I should explain. They called it need-to-use stockholding, and they reckoned it saved the navy a fortune each year. The idea being, we had six fleets of three hundred and twenty ships each back then, and a ship on its own is not much use; you need masts, sails, oars, ropes, all manner of stores, of which the most important are barrels, for holding fresh water. Without water barrels, a ship can’t go out of sight of land, because of the need to tank up once a day, twice in hot weather. Now, if every single ship in the Fleet had to have its own separate set of gear—you’re probably better at sums than me, you work it out—that’s a lot of very expensive equipment, and since most of the time only two of the fleets, three in emergencies, are at sea at any given time; and since the navy yards had been to enormous trouble to make sure that everything was interchangeable, ship to ship—it was quite a coup on the part of the government official who thought of it. One fleet—the Home Division, which is on permanent duty guarding the straits—was fully equipped at all times. The other five shared two complete sets of gear, which for convenience and ease of speedy deployment were kept in store at Classis, ready to be issued at a moment’s notice when someone needed to use them.
Obviously Zonaras knew all that, at some level. But it’s perfectly possible to know something and not think about it. Or maybe the admiral was well aware that he couldn’t launch a single ship, now that all his ropes and all his barrel staves were just so much grey ash, but he didn’t want the rest of the Council in on the secret. In any event, he called me a damned liar and a bloody fool and various other things, all of them perfectly true but hardly relevant. General Priscus asked him straight out: can you send a fleet to Permia or can’t you? So Zonaras did the only thing he could, in the circumstances. He jumped up, gave me a scowl that made my teeth hurt and stalked out of the room without a word.
And that was that, as far as the Council was concerned. From my point of view, probably just as well. I’d already made a world of trouble for myself. If the Council hadn’t broken up in confusion at that point, I might easily have gone on to raise various other issues that had occurred to me about the Classis thing, which might well have cost me my neck.
So there I was, in the City, at a loose end. Properly speaking, since my business in town had finished, I should have gone back to Corps headquarters and got on with my paperwork. Somehow, though, I felt that would be a bad idea. It’s inconceivable that the general, or the admiral or the Chamberlain or one of the divisional chiefs, or one of their many, many staff, would arrange for a serving officer of the empire to be murdered as he rode home alone along the lonely roads across the moors. But even in an empire as well ordered as ours, there are bandits, discharged soldiers, runaway slaves, disaffected serfs, religious zealots and ordinary loons, all manner of bad people who’d cut your throat for the nails in your boots, and from time to time officers who’d made nuisances of themselves had fallen foul of them, and other hazards of long-distance travel. Give it a day or so, I told myself, then hitch a lift with a merchant caravan or a bunch of pilgrims. I have strong views about not tempting providence and, as a wise man once said, the difference between luck and a wheelbarrow is, luck doesn’t work if you push it.
3
Of course, there’s no shortage of thieves, crazy people and unfortunate accidents in the City too, but in town you can take steps to reduce the risk they pose. For instance, if you want to stay clear of the displeasure of the properly constituted authorities, who better to help you out than those people who do that sort of thing all the time, for a living?
I’m choosy about the company I keep, so I tend to stay clear of murderers, muggers, housebreakers and the extortion gangs. That still leaves me plenty of people to be friends with. The con men are all right, but they’re smarter than me and always on the lookout for business opportunities, so I generally drift towards the forgers, clippers and issuers of false coin. You meet a better class of person.
So I went to the Old Flower Market. If you’ve never been to the City, take note; you can’t buy flowers in the Old Flower Market. Like so many City neighbourhoods, it defines itself in terms of what was done there a long time ago but isn’t any more. For the avoidance of doubt, flowers are about the only thing you can’t buy there. Life and death, yes, no problem. A simple bunch of roses, no. The Old Flower Market is built on the ruins of a whole district that collapsed and fell into a sinkhole a hundred and fifty odd years ago—turned out it had been built directly over an underground river, which runs down though the middle of the hill on which Hill Street is built and eventually out into the Bay.
I headed straight for the Two Dogs, sat in the corner furthest from the fire and asked for a bowl of tea and a plate of honeycakes. Nobody orders tea in the Two Dogs.
A minute or so later, she came out and sat down opposite. “You’ve got a nerve,” she said.
“You know about this morning’s Council. I’m impressed.”
“No i
dea what you’re talking about.” She flared her nostrils: warning sign. “People have been in here looking for you.”
Her name is Aichma, and I knew her father, years ago, when he was captain of the Greens. He and I served together, before he quit the service and took to the Ring. Like me, he did well in his chosen profession, from tyro to Theme boss in six years. I miss him. When she was fourteen I told her that on his deathbed he made me promise to look after her. I was lying, of course. Keep away from my daughter or I’ll rip your head off was nearer the mark. And of course he didn’t have a deathbed. He bled out into the sand, with seventy thousand people cheering. That must be a strange way to go.
“If they weren’t government types, I’m not bothered,” I said. “What were they like?”
She shrugged. “Two northerners and a milkface. I told them I hadn’t seen you. Which was true.”
I relaxed. The milkface was a business colleague. It goes like this. The government sends me the payroll for my men in gold. I pay my men in silver, six tornece a man every month, a hundred and sixty tornece to the gold stamenon. There’s no official, legal way to change gold into silver, because of the perpetual shortage of silver coin, which comes about because of the Mint. It’s nobody’s fault. If you want to be the master of the Mint, you buy the job from the Chancellor for a great deal of money, which you’ve got to recoup somehow. But that’s all right, because your pay is a tenth of a per cent of all the coins struck in the Mint. Now, since it’s exactly as much time and work to strike a gold coin as a silver or a bronze one, the Mint strikes lots and lots of gold, silver when it absolutely has to and bronze never; the army regiments take care of the small change, striking their own crude, ghastly coinage on flattened offcuts of copper pipe. So, when I need silver to pay my men, I trade the government gold for somewhat less than official silver, which I get from honest tradesmen like the milkface and the two northerners. Which is how come I know so many people in the Old Flower Market. You can also begin to see how come I’ve been a success in this man’s army. The people who make it possible for me to do my job would run a mile from a blue-blood Imperial straight out of the Academy.