by K. J. Parker
Oida wanted to laugh out loud. “You really shouldn’t be telling me all this,” he said.
“Oh, why not? Everybody knows you’re neutral. You know, you really ought to stick around, and then you can sing at the victory celebrations. The biggest party in the history of the world – you wouldn’t want to miss that, now, would you?”
“Certainly not,” Oida said, “and, yes, I’d love to, if I won’t be under your feet. I won’t ask how long you expect to be here for, because obviously—”
“Quite,” the breastplate said firmly. “But actually we can make you quite comfortable, if you don’t mind tents. There’s plenty of the good stuff left. This came from the old Grace and Austerity, out on the west road. Know it?”
Oida smiled. “I thought it tasted familiar. You didn’t happen to find their private stock of Aelian red, did you? From memory, it was right at the back of the cellar, under a pile of old coats.”
“I’ll save you a bottle,” the breastplate said gravely. “My word as an officer.”
The shopkeeper had seemed confident that the Lodge had someone close to Senza, and Oida was prepared to share that confidence. Figuring out who it could be and establishing contact, however, wouldn’t be easy. Logical; if Oida the musician could work out who it was, so could Senza’s intelligence people. It had to be someone unlikely – and once you started playing that game, you were simply begging to make catastrophic mistakes. It was infuriating to think that there was someone close at hand he could report to, get a message out by, hand responsibility over to, and no way to get at him; but life is full of intense frustrations and painful ironies, and yet here the human race still is, clinging grimly on and managing somehow.
His meeting with Senza was brief and rather uncomfortable. At first he wondered if Senza somehow knew that, right up to that dramatic last-minute reprieve, Oida had intended to kill him – no, surely not, Senza was smart and had almost superhuman intuition, especially where anything to do with violence was concerned, but the fact that Oida was still alive strongly suggested that the thought had never crossed Senza’s mind. Then he realised what it was, and the revelation struck him like a bolt of lightning; Senza simply didn’t like him very much. Oida hadn’t been expecting that. It wasn’t the first time they’d met, and as far as he could gather Senza hadn’t manifested any antipathy at any of their previous meetings; but on those occasions Senza hadn’t been quite so preoccupied with other things, and had therefore presumably made more of an effort to mask his feelings. This time he wasn’t actively rude or hostile or anything like that; on the contrary, he welcomed Oida to the camp, thanked him for agreeing to entertain the troops and told him he was welcome to stay as long as he liked, anything he wanted, just ask. But anyone with any degree of sensitivity can tell. Senza didn’t like him. Why not, for God’s sake? Everybody likes Oida, what’s not to like? But there it was; and what can’t be explained must be accepted.
So he filled his time with making himself useful, something he was good at. He sang ballads for the troops (and the garrison inside Rasch must’ve wondered what all that cheering was about) and scurrilous topical songs for the junior officers and arias from the classics for the senior officers and the general staff; he made himself generally available at certain specified times so that men could come up and tell him how wonderful he was and how much their female relatives adored him; he hung around the officers’ mess so that captains and majors could write home saying how they’d spent a whole half-hour talking to the celebrated Oida, and, actually he was a really nice man, quite ordinary, once you got to know him. He signed things and added sentences to the ends of letters home, assessed the merits of cherished musical instruments and played a bar or two on them, then wrote his name on the back, thereby rendering them exquisitely saleable. It was the sort of thing he was used to doing wherever he went and he did it particularly well, but he found himself feeling increasingly depressed. For one thing, there was the possibility that Senza was wrong and Forza really was dead, in which case— He tried not to think about that.
“Oh, he’s alive all right,” his friend the breastplate (his real name was Frontizo) assured him over a bowl of tea in the mess. “I can’t tell you how we know, but we know. He’s just biding his time. It doesn’t matter. We’ve got foraging parties out all over the place fetching in supplies, so we won’t starve, and you simply don’t get camp fever and dysentery and all that nonsense in one of Senza’s camps. We can stay here practically indefinitely and wait the bugger out. He’ll blink first, you can bet on it.”
Oida nodded. “What if he’s out there raising armies?” he said. “Have we got reinforcements on the way?”
Frontizo shook his head. “Don’t need them,” he said. “Senza’s got it all worked out. The more troops Forza brings, the more trouble he’ll find himself in. We’re counting on seventy thousand, any more would be a bonus. If they come to us, we won’t have to go out and find them. It’s been one of the great ambitions of Senza’s life to fight a battle here at Rasch; he reckons there’s a unique combination of landscape features that make this the perfect killing bottle.”
Oida didn’t try and hide his shudder; he was the sensitive artist, after all.
“It’s for the best,” Frontizo reassured him. “The more of them we kill, the sooner the war will be over. I know it’s hard, but buying peace is like buying anything. You’ve got to pay through the nose for quality. The main thing is to make sure the other chap ends up getting stuck with the bill.”
Oida usually made a point of not staying too long in one place. He recognised that there was something about him (he had no idea what it was) that got on people’s nerves after three days. Under normal circumstances this wasn’t a problem, since his schedule was so hectic that three days in one place didn’t happen very often. For those occasions where he found himself stranded for longer periods, he’d worked out various ways of being elusive without any risk of giving offence. The best excuse was work; he could claim to be in the throes of composition, and everyone was perfectly happy to give him a wide berth. Further or in the alternative he could be ill; as a result of long and diligent practice, he could make himself sneeze for extended periods more or less at will, and he knew the symptoms of half a dozen minor but tiresome ailments better than most doctors.
After eight days in Senza’s camp, he was both ill and working. It was vitally important, he realised, not to get on these people’s nerves. In particular, he couldn’t do anything that might possibly alienate Senza himself.
So far, the highly efficient and far-ranging scout network had seen no sign at all of an approaching army. Fair enough; if Forza was coming, he’d make an effort not to be seen, and he was as good at that sort of thing as his brother, if not better. But time was passing; if Forza was out there, why hadn’t he come to the defence of Rasch? He’d discussed this topic endlessly with Frontizo, whom he’d identified as a high-ranking nonentity, someone he could irritate with complete immunity; in fact, it appeared that Frontizo genuinely liked him and looked forward to their conversations. Frontizo’s hypothesis was that Forza was calling Senza’s bluff. He’d figured out that Senza didn’t have the manpower or the heavy plant to pose a real threat to Rasch, and could therefore be ignored. Oida told him he was missing the point. Forza wouldn’t be lured into the trap by the danger to Rasch. He was wise enough and icy-hearted enough to let Rasch be taken and burned, if he thought there was any risk of losing a battle against his brother if he tried to relieve it. No, the lure had to be the relatively small size of the Eastern army and the distance Senza had put between himself and any source of resupply or reinforcement. On which score, Oida reckoned, he’d done more than enough – he had a tiny army, he was surrounded and hopelessly exposed. So where was Forza?
Frontizo replied that Forza was far too smart to go for something that was so obviously too good to be true. It had TRAP written all over it in letters of burnished bronze, and Forza could read. No, what Forza was doing was really q
uite subtle. Instead of taking the bait when he was supposed to, namely right away, before Senza got smart and changed his mind, he was deliberately biding his time. He’d guessed or learned that Senza had brought all his provisions with him, instead of depending on a traditional line of supply; he was waiting till Senza had eaten his very last biscuit and had no option but to give up and go home, and then he’d strike.
“Which is where he’s gone wrong, of course,” Frontizo went on. “Thanks to everybody in the West being scared stiff of us, the countryside’s deserted for miles around, we can send out our foragers and help ourselves to the standing corn. We’ve got two thousand men out right now, harvesting wheat. Also, the local peasantry bolted so quick, they neglected to empty their larders first. We can sit here in comfort till Forza’s realised he’s made a mistake, and by then Rasch will be starving and he’ll have to do something; or else we actually take Rasch, and then Forza won’t be a general any more.”
Oida looked at him. “You don’t suppose Forza really is dead, do you?”
Frontizo shook his head. “He’s alive,” he said. “Trust me.” He yawned, and lifted the lid off the teapot. “That’s enough shop talk for one day,” he said. “How about a game of cards?”
“If you like.”
“Do you know a game called Cartwheels?”
Oida thought quickly. Ever since he’d given away all his money, only to find he probably wasn’t going to die after all, he’d been wondering how to raise his travelling expenses back to civilisation without having to beg or steal. The way Frontizo dressed when off duty had tagged him as a viable mark, but Oida hadn’t wanted to make the suggestion himself for fear of looking predatory. “I used to play it when I was a kid,” he said truthfully. “But that was many years ago.”
“It’ll come back to you,” Frontizo said cheerfully, producing a worn-looking pack painted on thin lime board. “Basically it’s just Catch-Me, but prides beat straights and sevens are wild.”
Oida did his apologetic smile. “I’m afraid I haven’t got any money,” he said. “But we can play for olives or something.”
“I think I can risk taking your marker,” Frontizo said. “I’ll deal, shall I?”
Oida played it classical, losing the first four hands and exhibiting a weakness for over-cautious bidding. Frontizo, he observed, was a twitcher, but it seemed certain he hadn’t realised. Oida did a quick calculation of how much a senior staff officer could afford to lose without feeling aggrieved.
Frontizo dealt the fifth hand, and Oida frowned. Almost too good to be true. He played cautiously to start with, until all four sevens were accounted for and there remained nothing at all that could beat his pride of red kings and jacks. “Double that,” he said. “It is all right to double now, isn’t it?”
Frontizo laughed. “You can if you like,” he said. “I’m sure you’re good for the money.”
Oida was enormously tempted to enjoy himself for a bit, but decided not to. “In that case,” he said, “I’ll double and raise ten.”
“Fifty.”
Twitch, twitch. Much more of this and the fool would wipe himself out, which could lead to bad feeling. “I think I’ll see you,” he said, and turned over his last covered card. “King of Spears.”
But Frontizo nodded, as though they’d rehearsed all this before, and flipped his card over.
It was the Seven of Swords.
There is no suit of Swords in the regulation pack.
Frontizo grinned. “And sevens are wild, so that’s my trick, making five, so I win. You owe me one hundred and sixty-one angels.”
Oida stared at the card, then at the fool sitting opposite. “You’re Lodge,” he said.
Frontizo flipped the seven face downwards, then tucked it up his sleeve. “Don’t want to leave something like that lying about,” he said, “just in case. Yes, I am.”
“You bastard. Why didn’t you—?”
Frontizo frowned. “Oh come on,” he said. “Actually, I was fairly sure you were Lodge from the start, but I couldn’t be certain. So I figured, if he’s Lodge I bet I know what he’s here for; in which case, he’s had a wasted trip and he could probably do with some money to go home on. Hence the game.”
Oida looked at him. “You knew about me?”
“Oh, I’m not supposed to, obviously,” he said. “But I happened to meet your brother a while back, and he sort of hinted. Don’t pull faces,” he added. “I know he’s the skeleton in your cupboard. But I’m good at keeping my mouth shut, believe it or not.”
Oida breathed out slowly. “And you reckon you know why I’m here.”
“I don’t think you’d have to be Saloninus to work that one out,” Frontizo said gravely. “Anyway, you don’t need to worry about that any more. If it turns out that Senza needs killing, I’ll do it myself. Tastefully,” he added, “without undue fuss. Poison, or maybe an accident, even. I can get away with it, you can’t. In fact, I’ve got a choice of personal enemies lined up to take the blame, if it becomes necessary, which it won’t, I’m morally certain. So you can stop fretting yourself to death and relax.”
Oida grinned weakly. “How did you—?”
“One of these days, buy a mirror and take a look at yourself. Ever since you got here, you’ve been as jumpy as a rat in a kennel. People have been commenting on it. I tell them it’s because you’re a damn sight closer to the front lines than you’re used to being. You really ought to get a grip, though. You’re about as inscrutable as an inn sign.”
Oida was deeply shocked by that, but this wasn’t the time or the place. “Well, that’s a relief,” he said. “I’d have done it if I had to, but I’m ever so glad to be let off the hook.”
“Of course you are,” Frontizo said. “Show me a man walking calmly and resolutely towards certain death and I’ll show you an idiot. Though I’m guessing you had something up your sleeve, a clever boy like you.”
“Actually, no.”
“Really? I’m disappointed. Assuming you’re telling the truth. Still, it’s all academic now, the burden’s been lifted off your shoulders and you can breathe again.” He smiled warmly and poured the last of the tea. “Did you really not guess who I was?”
“Absolutely not. I thought you were a loyal officer of the Eastern army.”
That got him a dirty look. “I am,” Frontizo said, “none more so, except where there’s a conflict of interests with the Lodge. Anyway, you surprise me. Didn’t it occur to you to wonder what an inveterate low-flier like me is doing attached to Senza’s elite strike force?”
Oida shrugged. “I assumed you’re someone’s brother-in-law.”
“As a matter of fact, I am.” Frontizo laughed. “That’s why Senza thinks he’s saddled with me. At least, I don’t think he suspects, but you never know with that one. It’s not a comfortable posting, believe me. There are thousands of acres across two empires fertilised with the remains of people who thought they knew what Senza Belot was thinking. Still, that’s not your worry. I imagine you’ll be buggering off now. Nothing to keep you here.”
Oida looked startled. “I can leave?”
“No offence, but we’d be glad to see you go. Not that it hasn’t been a privilege and a pleasure, but you know what they say about guests and fish. I’ll file a favourable report about you with Division if I live that long. Now then, would you like a pen and some paper? You’ve got some writing to do.”
Oida wrote him a note for a hundred and sixty-one angels. Frontizo glanced at it and handed it back. “Better make that three hundred,” he said, “you’ll need some travelling money. Must be nice to be able to afford to troll round the place like the King of Permia, dining at all the best places.”
Oida took another sheet of parchment. “Are you sure it’s all right for me to go? After what I’ve seen and heard, I mean.”
Frontizo shook his head. “What you think you’ve seen,” he said. “We aren’t quite as stupid as you think we are. And what you’ve heard from me, and if anyone as
ks, all we talked about was the truth behind your reputation as the empire’s premier sex pest. Once you’d got started, I shall tell them, the problem was getting you to shut up. So, no, don’t worry about that, it’ll be fine.”
Oida stood up. The tea had gone cold and he felt like he’d been in a fight. “One thing,” he said. “Do you know Forza’s not dead? I mean, has someone actually seen him?”
“I’ll have the money for you in an hour.” Frontizo tapped the side of his nose. “Stick to singing your songs and running errands,” he said. “It’s what you’re good at. No offence.”
The money was in an old sock, military-issue, carefully darned. “You sure you can spare it?” Oida asked.
“It’s not like I’ll have anything to spend it on any time soon.”
“I meant the sock.”
That got him a smile. “Where to now, then?”
Oida put the sock in his pocket and folded down the flap. “Actually,” he said, “for the first time in a long while, I don’t really know. Never thought I’d get out of here alive, so—” He shrugged. “I think I can safely assume my tour of the Western home provinces is cancelled.”
“Yes. Sorry about that.”
“Oh, don’t be,” Oida said. He checked the horse’s girth, then shortened the stirrup leathers. “Saves me having to sing the same ten songs another fifteen times. I’ll head back to Division, I guess, assuming I can get there, see if they’ve got anything for me. I was supposed to be going to Blemya at some point, but for all I know that’s off, too. I suppose I could wander up to Central and see a few old friends.”
Frontizo held the stirrup for him while he mounted. “I’ll say this for you,” he said, “you’re a brave man, in your own way. Did you really not have a back-up plan for getting out?”
Oida shook his head. “How could I? I didn’t know anything about the setup here when I arrived.”
Frontizo frowned, then grinned. “I’m an idiot,” he said. “Of course. You were going to pin it on me.”