The Two of Swords--Part Nineteen

by K. J. Parker

  The Two of Swords: Part Nineteen

  K. J. Parker

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  orbitshortfiction.com

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by K. J. Parker

  Cover design by Kirk Benshoff

  Cover copyright © 2017 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  First ebook edition: September 2017

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  ISBN 978-0-316-27191-2

  E3-20170824-JV-NF

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Four

  Extras Meet the Author

  About Orbit Short Fiction

  By K. J. Parker

  Orbit Newsletter

  FOUR

  So she went to the Single Teardrop temple, mostly because it was the first building she came to that wasn’t locked and shuttered. The name derives from the colossal post-Revisionist fresco that covers the whole of the north wall. The Invincible Sun stands in glory, radiating golden light over all the nations of the earth. His face is serene, totally impassive, and in his left eye glistens a single golden tear. Over the course of a thousand years of passionate debate, opinions have divided sharply over what the tear means, the only consensus being that it must mean something. She looked at it, and decided that the artist had put it in because, without it, the composition was bland and commonplace, and the tear made it rather more interesting.

  She tried to concentrate on the points at issue, but instead her mind wandered, breaking out of the confines of the problem to be resolved like goats through a newly laid hedge.

  All her life, she realised, she’d had faith, ever since the Lodge bought her from the berry-pickers and told her she had talents which the Great Smith considered useful. She’d believed it instinctively and absolutely, the way a drowning man catches hold of a rope. She had accepted that she belonged to the Lodge, in both senses; she was a member of it – no longer alone, no longer weak – and its property, to be disposed of as the Lodge saw fit, regardless of any wishes of her own. And now, after a long, gruelling campaign of fruitless victories and bloodless defeats, she’d fallen in love with Oida, the man who’d just lied to her, and who she knew she could never trust about anything apart from the fact that he loved her. Faith and love; she didn’t really want to think about them right now; it was rather more important to worry out this business of the letter and Oida’s slip of the tongue about orders. But she thought about faith and love, and realised that what they had in common was that they can’t be acquired by choice. You can’t decide to have faith, or be in love. You can’t make yourself love or believe. Faith and love steal over you, like sleep. The more you try to go to sleep, the more you lie awake. The priests and the Lodge urge and implore you to have faith, to believe, to trust; how stupid is that? You can desperately want to believe, but the more you try, the less it happens. You can see how much better your life would be if only you could bring yourself to fall in love, but it simply can’t be done. By the same token, once you have faith, once you’re in love, you can’t just snap your fingers and wake up; and once those fingers have snapped and you open your eyes, no power on earth will bring back sleep, faith or love, not even if the emperor were to command it; honour and riches if you comply, a horrible death if you don’t. It simply can’t be done.

  And the Great Smith had ordered her to murder Oida, and she’d done no such thing. Oida had been right about that, even if he was a liar. She’d refused a direct order from the whole of which she was a tiny part. The little finger had refused an order from the brain. That was impossible, because the finger has no will of its own, but nevertheless she hadn’t done as she was told, so she no longer belonged. Could that possibly have brought about the end of the world? Unlikely, because she wasn’t that important. She only had importance, relevance, meaning as a component part of the whole. But had her dysfunction thrown everything out of joint (the small part that breaks and derails the whole machine)? Highly unlikely. The war had depopulated the empire long before she made her act of rebellion. The likeliest thing was that she’d broken nobody and nothing except herself. There was a degree of comfort in that, but not very much.

  But if there was schism in the Lodge, and if the order she’d been given was crooked and unholy – she thought about that, and decided that it made no difference. The brain orders the hand to strike. The little finger refuses, the blow isn’t struck, the misguided decision isn’t implemented – makes no odds. Thou shalt not second-guess the Lord thy God. If there was schism and treachery in the Lodge, it could only be because the Great Smith had a use for schism and treachery; which was certainly not impossible, given that He has a use for everything, even murder, even Axio and Musen. Everything, that is, apart from her, because she’d been told to do a simple thing and had refused.

  She glanced up at the vast image on the wall in front of her. There are no paintings, icons, frescos, mosaics, carvings of the Great Smith. Nobody knows why, there just aren’t. She’d always assumed that it was because He didn’t like the way He looked, something she could easily relate to. Was there a tear in His eye? She doubted it. Not the contemplative, introspective sort, from what she knew of Him, not an intellectual, very much the man of action. If He saw something that distressed Him, he’d do something about it, instead of snivelling. The Invincible Sun had never appealed to her, even for a moment. What credibility could you find in a god who died every evening, messily and publicly, in a blaze of melodramatic red blood? Priests she’d talked to had been surprised by her attitude. How can you not believe, they told her, when you can see Him, every day of the year, when it isn’t cloudy and overcast? To which she was given to answering that she came from the Mesoge, where it was always raining.

  She heard a footstep behind her and turned round quickly. She saw a young man, very tall, with red hair. He had a bow in his hand, but no arrow on the string.

  “Hello,” she said, trying her best to sound casual. “It’s Teucer, isn’t it?”

  “Commissioner.”

  Who? Oh yes, she’d forgotten. Silly, really, an outcast being a Commissioner of the Lodge. She smiled at him. “What are you doing here?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind coming with me.”

  But she did mind, very much. “Why? Where to?”

  He was good at looking respectful. Probably he’d learned it at Beal, where there’s so very muc
h to respect. It’s hard to look respectful while you draw an arrow from your quiver and nock it on the string, all in one fluent movement, without even glancing down. “Is that a threat?”

  “Yes, Commissioner.”

  Over the years, she’d been threatened by the best, and a bow is a pretty poor way of going about it. An archer’s only option is to kill or maim you, so he’s probably bluffing. “Put that thing down,” she said pleasantly, “and tell me who wants to see me. Please.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

  “Fine. Who gave you the order?”

  “Captain Musen.”

  Axio. She’d forgotten about him, too. “Well, now,” she said. “He’s a captain and I’m a Commissioner. Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to point arrows at people?”

  Rather to her surprise, he lowered the bow, though the arrow stayed on the string. “I was told not to take orders from you, Commissioner, I’m sorry.”

  “Really. On whose authority?”

  “Triumvir Axio, Commissioner.”

  She pulled a grin. “You won’t be needing the bow, Sergeant,” she said, “the Triumvir and I are old friends. All right, lead on. I’m right behind you.”

  But Axio shouldn’t need threats – not unless he’d found out. She did the mental geometry, and wished she’d taken the trouble to learn how to throw a knife. But Sergeant Teucer had learned a thing or two; he kept just enough distance between them to give himself time to draw and loose before she came within distance, and he watched her every step of the way, down Silvergate and across the square to the Mansion House, then down Drovers Yard, which (she remembered now) was where the Lodge had its meeting house in Iden. All properly official, then, though presumably the meeting house had been thoroughly ransacked by Intelligence – sure enough, the doors had been boarded up, and the boards prised off, and two archers were on sentry duty outside. One of them took away her knife, which she guessed was inevitable. Still, it was a shame to let it go, after so brief an acquaintance.

  She’d never been in the Warden’s office in the Iden house. Turned out she hadn’t missed much. It was oak-panelled, but lighter patches showed where various works of art had recently been removed, presumably to fund the war effort. The chair Axio was sitting in was a standard Western issue officers’ camp stool, and it was the only one in the room. Musen was standing next to him.

  “Thanks, Sergeant,” Axio said. “No, don’t go, I may need you.”

  Axio had been in the wars. He had a black eye, and a cut on his forehead, from which he hadn’t bothered to sponge off the dried blood. The knuckles of his left hand were skinned, and his clothes were grimy and caked with mud. He looked at her for a moment, then said, “I remembered something. About my brother.”

  His right hand was resting on the lid of the rosewood box, balanced on his knee. She looked at it, then lifted her eyes quickly.

  “He’s ambidextrous.”

  “No he’s not.”

  Axio shook his head. “Yes,” he said, “he is. Or at least, he was when he was a kid, and I don’t think it’s something that goes away as you get older. For some reason, he quit using his left when he was about fifteen, but that was just him being perverse. He can write and play the fiddle just as well with his left as his right.”

  He opened the lid of the rosewood box, then let it fall to the floor. Salt spilled out everywhere, and something rolled behind the leg of his stool. “I didn’t know that,” she heard herself say.

  “No reason why you should. He’s alive, isn’t he?”

  “No, of course not. I killed him.”

  “No.” Axio glared at her. “He’s alive, and you disobeyed orders. He figured the finger would fool me, and it did, for a time. Where is he?”

  “He’s dead,” she said, with as much anger as she could muster. “I stabbed him in the chest – here,” she said, pointing to her ribs, “and then in the ear, through into the brain. Then I cut off his finger to show you. It’s true. I can take you to where he’s buried, if you want.”

  But he smiled at her. “No you can’t,” he said, “because I’ve been there, and the grave’s empty. Just a box full of bricks. I don’t blame you for that,” he added kindly. “You were long gone by the time they played that little charade. I’m guessing he arranged it himself, which is why it was done so badly. No, he’s alive all right. Tell me where he is, or I’ll kill you.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Axio nodded, and suddenly she was on the floor, with a strong hand gripping the back of her neck. Then she was dragged to her knees by her hair. “You know about me,” Axio said. “Tell me where he is, and I’ll let you live.”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it again. Then Musen kicked her in the face, and all she could think about was the pain.

  It wasn’t the first time, and she’d been through worse. A part of her that stayed lucid and rational throughout pointed out that Axio and his men were more enthusiastic than scientific. Too much pain and the subject is swamped by it, and before you know it they die or pass out; which she did, at some point. She came round and saw the ceiling, through one eye. The other wouldn’t open, but she could move it under the eyelid, which was reassuring. Her face was wet; they’d brought her round with cold water.

  “Tell me where he is,” Axio said, though she couldn’t see him.

  She opened her mouth. Voice not working very well, so probably they’d damaged her throat. “Don’t know,” she said.

  “Is he here? In Iden?”

  “Don’t know.”

  She heard Axio sigh. He sounded so very weary, and disappointed, and distressed by all the deceit and wickedness in the world. “Kill her,” he said.

  “He’s in Blemya.”

  “Hold it,” Axio snapped. “Say again?”

  “In Blemya. With the queen. She’s a fan.”

  “A what?”

  “Fan,” she croaked. “She likes his music.”

  And that was a mistake; it was Procopius she liked, not Oida. She wondered if that was going to cost her her life; but apparently not. “No accounting for taste,” Axio said. “All right, take her to the infirmary and get her patched up.”

  “You’re incredibly lucky,” the doctor told her. “You came that close to losing the right eye, and how your lung wasn’t punctured I just don’t know. We might even get that left hand working again, though I wouldn’t bank on it.”

  She asked for a mirror, but he only smiled. “Better not,” he said. “I’d count your blessings if I were you. It could’ve been so much worse.”

  When she was well enough to have visitors, the chief steward came to see her. He apologised profusely. The food was terrible, the room was dirty, the bedclothes were a disgrace, but with no staff and no supplies other than what the black market could furnish, what could he do? And it was only going to get worse. The traders wouldn’t take money any more, they wanted paying in icons, rare manuscripts, ivory triptychs, things they could unload on foreigners, and it was common knowledge, the government had stripped the place bare when the Lodge declared war on the empire. True, a few particularly sacred and indispensible objects had been hidden away, but all of them had gone to keep bread on the table and salt in the jar, and as for hiring servants—

  It occurred to her, while the steward was talking, that she must still be a Commissioner of the Lodge and a person of importance. It didn’t matter, she assured him. He was doing a fine job in very trying circumstances, and she would make a point of commending him to the Promotions Committee (which she’d just invented, but he didn’t know that) at her earliest opportunity. Meanwhile, there was something he could do for her, if it didn’t involve breaking confidences or revealing classified information—

  Triumvir Axio and his guards had left on the same day that she’d been admitted to the hospital. They hadn’t said where they were going, though one of the grooms reckoned he’d heard two of the soldiers saying something about Blemya. Yes, ships were still running between Beloisa and Bl
emya, that was where the Blemyan traders came to barter looted religious and Imperial artwork for barley flour, so presumably the Triumvir had sailed with one of them, if that’s where he’d really gone, though of course you couldn’t rely on the word of the working classes, they’d say anything just to draw attention to themselves.

  Could he possibly take a letter for her? Of course, no trouble at all. And would he happen to know if Director Procopius, of the Imperial College of Music, was somewhere in the city? He couldn’t say, but he could try and find out. There were so few people in town these days that it shouldn’t be a problem.

  The doctor came twice a day, and he was very pleased with her, as though getting well was something you could decide to do – add that to the list, she told herself, but didn’t pursue it any further. In fact, she was doing so well, it might be possible for her to get up and walk once round the courtyard, if she promised to go back to bed for the rest of the day. How long before she was well enough to leave? Let’s not push our luck, shall we? It was a miracle she was alive at all.

  She asked the steward for something to read. He came back three hours later with a small oilskin bag, containing volumes 8, 9 and 14 of Gannadius’ History of the Aelian Republic. Lucky to have those, he told her, when she gave him a reproachful look; and she’d better get a move on and read them, because they were promised to a Bessamid trader who’d offered two bushels of wheat for them, sight unseen. She thanked him and said that they were a marvellous improvement on nothing at all, which was actually true.

  She woke up out of a deep sleep to find someone standing over her. She blinked. It was someone she knew, and didn’t want to see.

  “Commissioner,” he said.

  “General Belot,” she replied.

  Forza Belot had brought his own chair, which was just as well. He unfolded it and sat down. His face was thinner than it had been the last time she’d seen him, and he looked tired.

  “The idiot downstairs,” he said, “tells me you’re the highest ranking Lodge officer in the city. Is that true?”