The Two of Swords--Part Nineteen

by K. J. Parker

  “Yes, I know, he told me so himself. Is this Headquarters? I didn’t know we had one.”

  Thratta reached inside his black woollen gown and produced a book. “If I give you this,” he said, “you have to promise on your word of honour not to read for more than an hour at a time, with a two-hour interval. Otherwise, the doctor says, it may cause inflammation of the brain.”

  Which is what all good books do, of course. “Thank you,” she said; but he hadn’t given it to her yet. He was holding it just outside comfortable grabbing range. “What’s going on? Why is everyone going to so much trouble about me? Where’s Oida? Is he all right?”

  “I’ve spoken to the doctor,” Thratta said, “and he feels that if you continue to make good progress, you may be able to stomach solid food in a day or so. In the meantime, he recommends that you stay on the beef and barley broth. It’s particularly rich in the phlegmatic humour, which of course is what you need most at this stage.”

  “I see,” she said. “Thank you. Who’s the head of the Lodge? You must know, you were in a meeting with him.”

  The book wasn’t getting any closer, and Thratta was scowling. “Try and sleep,” he said. “Sleep is the best medicine for your condition, that’s what the doctor says.”

  “Where’s Axio?”

  Thratta stood up. He was still holding the book. “I’ll be going now,” he said. “Don’t fret about things that don’t concern you. You don’t want a relapse, do you?”

  Fair enough. She was good as gold for a whole day, and that got her the book. It was Tycho’s Reflections on Infinite Silence, which she’d been meaning to read for years. Six pages in, she decided it was overrated, all style and precious little substance, but a sovereign remedy for insomnia. Just what the doctor ordered.

  Maybe she was getting soft, but she couldn’t bring herself to kill the old woman, or even bash her over the head. Maybe it was because she was, for all her many faults, a living and reasonably able-bodied human being, and from what she’d seen lately there were so few of those left that it would be a shame to waste one of them, even a largely unsatisfactory specimen like her. The doctor, on the other hand – the only problem was, how? She had no knife, no belt, no items of crockery or cutlery, and Tycho’s Reflections was a vellum-bound pocket-size student’s edition and no help at all. The chamber pot was a flimsy enamel-tin thing, no heft to it and you couldn’t smash it to get a sharp shard. The doctor never brought his medical bag, so no help there. One good thing: there didn’t seem to be a guard on the door. So, what would the Great Smith do, He who makes good use of everything, no matter how humble?

  Eventually, she decided on the sheet; the bottom one, not the top. Tearing the wretched thing was harder than she’d anticipated. She had to use her teeth to get it started, but once she’d breached the hem, it came apart quite easily, and she soon had twelve three-foot strips of good-quality linen. Plaiting took a long time, since the old woman interrupted her every half-hour, and it took a while to unmake and remake the bed with the damaged part of the sheet underneath her, out of sight. It helped concentrate her mind to reflect that she only had one chance, since the bedclothes were changed every day. But it was wonderful to be doing something, to have a project, an aim. When at last she’d twisted her rope, she found that it had come up short: three feet down to two and a quarter. She should have allowed for the foreshortening effect of torsion. Silly girl.

  In the event it was touch and go; the doctor was stronger than she’d expected, and she was shocked to find how weak she was, in spite of all that strengthening broth – maybe she really was sick after all. She slackened the rope just a bit and asked him about that.

  “Of course you’re sick,” the doctor gasped. “What do you think you’re in here for?”

  Oh, she thought; still, too late to worry about that now. She tightened the rope. It would be far easier to kill him, but she went the extra mile and throttled him till he went all weak, and then let go. He wore strong leather boots with a good solid heel, just right for knocking a man silly with.

  She looked down at him, sleeping peacefully, getting plenty of rest. For her part, she was exhausted; nothing she’d like more than to get back into bed, except that there was a strange man in it. She tied his hands with her beautifully crafted rope and stuffed a sock in his mouth. Time to go.

  The flagstones in the corridor outside were freezing cold under her bare feet, and her head was throbbing. Since she hadn’t really expected to get this far, she hadn’t given any thought to what she intended to do – get out of that horrible room, the limit of her ambitions. Beyond that, her thinking was rather vague. Find out everything, or something along those lines.

  Wherever this place was, it had corridors. This one had four doors in it, apart from the one to her room, which she’d remembered to shut after her. At the end of the corridor was a spiral staircase, the sort that always made her feel dizzy. Up or down? She had no coin to toss. She chose down.

  Probably a poor choice, since it brought her out into a courtyard, where she’d have been spotted instantly if there had been anyone about. But there wasn’t, so that was all right. A substantial place, this, a bit like a college or a monastery. She drew back into the doorway and looked round carefully. There was a long, single-storey building on the opposite side of the courtyard. It had a plainly visible door. That was as good a reason as any. She ran across the yard, wincing at the cobbles, grabbed the latch, lifted it, went through, slammed the door behind her.

  The stench hit her like a hammer. The most disgusting smell she’d ever encountered, like a battlefield, but in a confined space. The only light came from a narrow slit of a window high up on the wall opposite, a white-hot glowing bar lying across the floor. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, and then she saw that she was in a room full of dead dogs.

  She didn’t actually count them, but she guessed there were well over a hundred. What they’d died of wasn’t immediately apparent; probably not starvation, because the bigger dogs would’ve eaten the smaller ones and there were all shapes and sizes. The only thing they had in common was identical gold collars—

  Yes, they’d be gold all right, and none of your low-grade alloy, the stuff they’d been reduced to making coins from. This would be pure, better than ninety-seven parts fine, because only the best was good enough for the late emperor’s beloved pets. Which meant she was in the palace, at Iden Astea, about nine hundred yards from the Single Teardrop.

  Headquarters.

  You spend such a long time yearning for things to make sense, and then you get what you wish for. Serves you right, really.

  “What are you doing out of bed?”

  Just like her mother. “I wouldn’t come any closer if I were you,” she said helpfully. “It’s not very nice in here.”

  Triumvir Thratta clearly knew what to expect; he’d stopped at the door, and he had a thick scarf wrapped round his face. “Come out of there,” he said. “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you in your room?”

  “I bashed the doctor’s head in,” she explained. “Sorry. Touch of cabin fever. I don’t like being cooped up for very long.” Talking wasn’t good. Every time she opened her mouth, she could taste the loathsome smell on her tongue. “I don’t think I did him any lasting damage, but I’m no expert. You’ll have to ask him, as and when he wakes up.”

  She could make out at least two soldiers standing behind Thratta, with their regulation scarves over their mouths. Time to come quietly. Besides, she was freezing cold in nothing but a shift.

  “We found Doctor Luseric,” Thratta said. “You’ll be relieved to hear he’s all right. Now, I must insist—”

  “Yes, of course.” She picked her way between a cluster of decomposing dogs. The floor was damp and sticky. “It’s all right,” she said. “I’ve answered most of those irritating questions you refused to answer. I’ll be a good girl from now on.”

  One positive result of her tantrum: a new room, with a chair as well as a bed
, and an unshuttered window. From it she could look down into the main quadrangle. There wasn’t an awful lot to see. From time to time, people came and went, mostly in groups of three or four, well wrapped up in heavy coats and hoods or broad hats, a few soldiers but mostly civilians, about two-thirds more men than women. She kept a careful lookout for tall archers, but there didn’t seem to be any of those. The food improved dramatically, and the doctor no longer bothered her. According to the chatty, red-faced woman who brought her meals, he was scared stiff of her and nothing would induce him to go near her, even with an armed escort. No book, and no fire in the grate; but in it she found a finger-long stick of charred elder, and the walls were smooth and whitewashed. She spent a whole day marshalling her thoughts, then started writing on the walls.

  “What’s all that about, then?” the red-faced woman asked.

  “Just a few notes,” she told her. “It helps me think.”

  “That’s not proper writing.”

  “It’s Mezentine,” she explained. “They use different letters from us.”

  The red-faced woman wasn’t impressed. “It’ll have to come off,” she said. “Bound to leave a mark. Soot on whitewash always leaves a mark.”

  “Sorry.”

  Her apology was neither accepted nor rejected, and, yes, it left a mark, but nothing anyone would ever be able to decipher. Not that it mattered, she knew she wouldn’t forget any of it in a hurry. But when the red-faced woman came next, she asked if she was allowed a pack of cards. To her surprise, the answer turned out to be yes. They came in a dark oak box with crudely forged iron hinges and a lock that had been forced, a long time ago. She waited for the red-faced woman to go, then opened the box and took out a rectangular block wrapped in faded red silk. It felt curiously heavy. She unwrapped it. Flat black plates that clattered as they spilt into her lap. A silver pack.

  She stared at them, desperately unwilling to touch them. A silver pack, black with tarnish, but traces of white powder clung to the recesses of the embossed shapes. She counted them. There were ninety-two, fourteen more than there should have been. Every pack ever made consists of seventy-eight cards; except for one, the first one ever, the prototype.

  Or a clever copy thereof; and she knew nothing about that sort of thing. Only a handful of people did – a handful minus one, if Glauca was dead yet. So she sifted through them, one by one, and found what she’d been expecting, or expected, to find. A thin sliver had been clipped off the top left edge of the Two of Swords. She dropped it as though it was red hot. It landed on the floor and bounced away under the bed.

  Not proof, because there’s no such thing. You can’t be made to believe, you can’t make yourself believe, the sheet of parchment had almost certainly been planted in the book for her to find, and if the pack was a fake then so was the sheet of parchment. And she didn’t believe in the Invincible Sun, even though He was real enough to blister the skin on the back of her neck when she forgot to cover up in summer, so proof was an irrelevance; proof proves nothing. In another life, she could imagine herself being lectured by her father, excellent reasons why she ought to marry so-and-so, an outstandingly good catch whom she didn’t happen to love. Proof and reasons are meaningless. All that matters is faith, and you can’t be forced to believe, or fall in love. You can be made to go to sleep (she knew a doctor who could vouch for that one) but only through an act of violence, tantamount to proof or reason, a battering over the head to nullify resistance and induce acceptance and tranquillity. But there was no need for anyone to bash her over the head with a shoe, or to file a corner off the Two of Swords. She looked at the jumble of tarnished silver plates in her lap, and she just knew, by the way her skin had crawled when she’d touched them. But so what? She’d already figured it out for herself, when she saw the dead dogs and their golden collars. Confirmation? Maybe. More likely, someone hadn’t given her enough credit for being able to make sense of the screamingly obvious.

  Be that as it may. Eventually she plucked up enough courage to shift the pack off her lap onto the bed, then fish around on the floor until she found the card she’d dropped. Then she sorted them into suits – five suits – and laid them out in order. It took a long time. Then she shuffled them, wrapped them in the faded silk and put them carefully back in the box. When the red-faced woman came in with her breakfast, she handed the box back.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I’m ready to talk to someone now.”

  “Right you are,” the red-faced woman said. “Now eat your porridge before it gets cold.”

  Later that day, the red-faced woman escorted her down the stairs and across the main quadrangle, in the middle of which an old man and a tall, skinny boy were driving a stake into the smooth, short grass. “What’s that for?” she asked. The red-faced woman said she didn’t know.

  The old man held the stake straight and steady while the boy swung the big hammer. He was taking great care, and she guessed it was the first time he’d been allowed to do the grown-up’s part of the job. Beside the old man on the grass was a large round wicker basket with a neatly fitting lid. The old man said, “That’ll do”, picked up a small hammer and a long square nail and opened the lid of the basket. He pulled out a man’s head by the hair; and then she reached the chapel doorway and she couldn’t see any more.

  It wasn’t the chapel, of course, just a private side chapel the Imperial family used for quiet, informal daily worship when there was nobody at court who needed to be impressed. On the cedar-panelled walls hung portraits of all the emperors back to Jovian – guesswork, most of them, needless to say, what they should have looked like but probably didn’t, this being an imperfect world. The backgrounds were gold leaf and the frames were silver. On the altar stood a magnificent late Mannerist triptych of the Transfiguration, flanked by free-standing ivory statues of the Fifteen Disciples, middle-period Neo-Decadent school, quite possibly the only complete set to have survived the iconoclast riots of the Insurgency; apart from the set in Rasch, of course, except they were presumably ash now, or buried so deep in rubble that they’d never be found. Someone had placed a chair directly in front of the altar. It was a regulation-issue Western officer’s folding camp chair, and the webbing back was torn. A man came out of the shadows under the chancel loft, took off his coat, slung it over the back of the chair and sat down. He was Senza Belot. He fished a roll of paper out of his coat pocket and began to read.

  “Don’t get too comfortable.” The acoustics snatched the woman’s voice and bounced it off the walls, but she recognised Lycao. “She’ll be here any minute. Talk of the devil.”

  Senza looked up and saw her; their eyes met. Senza Belot stood up, tried to stuff the papers back in his coat pocket, gave up and let them drop to the floor. He looked straight at her and smiled. “Commissioner Telamon,” he said. “Good to see you again.”

  “Can we get on with it, please?” Lycao descended the long staircase that led to the choir stalls. She was wearing her Beal tutor’s gown, which didn’t suit her one bit. Odd choice for a honeymoon. She crossed the chancel floor and sat down cross-legged next to Senza’s chair. Her feet were bare and the soles were black from walking on dusty floors.

  Thratta pushed her forward. She stumbled, then found her feet. She’d been trembling when she came in, but now she felt fine. “Excuse me,” she said.

  Nobody seemed to have heard her. Thratta sat down on a pew in the front row. She went to sit next to him but he frowned and shook his head; no sitting down for her, apparently. Not that it mattered.

  “Excuse me,” she repeated.

  “Quiet,” Lycao said, not looking at her; she was leaning her head against Senza’s knee. Nothing happened for a long time. She realised that they were waiting for someone.

  “Excuse me,” she said.

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Lycao snapped. “What?”

  “Whose head is that? Outside. A man was about to nail it to a pole when I came in.”

  Senza frowned, clearly puzzled. She c
ouldn’t see Thratta’s face without turning her head, and she didn’t want to break eye contact. “No idea,” Lycao said. “Are you sure you didn’t imagine it?”

  “No,” she replied. “And I think it could be one of three people.”

  “I’m not really interested in your theories,” Lycao said.

  Senza reached out without looking and put his hand on the top of Lycao’s head, as a man might do with a favourite dog. “Don’t be mean,” he said. “She hasn’t done anything wrong.”

  “Tell that to Doctor Luseric,” Lycao said. “He’s in his own hospital with a cracked cheekbone.”

  Senza gave her a weak smile, as if to say, sorry, one of her moods. “That was my fault,” he said gently. “At least, Luseric’s my fault. I know he’s got a really bad bedside manner, but he’s pulled me through some nasty scrapes and I simply won’t have anyone else. I expect he got on your nerves.”

  She smiled. “A bit. But I wanted to get out of there.”

  “I know what you mean. I hate being cooped up, too. How’s the arm, by the way? No lasting damage?”

  “None, thank you.”

  “That’s the spirit. I guess we’re even now.”

  She heard the door open behind her, and footsteps, but she didn’t look round. She wanted her guess to be right; and, of course, it was.

  “Sorry to keep you all waiting.” She recognised Procopius’ voice before she saw him. “Fiddling with the coda to the third movement, lost track of time. Ah, there you are, Commissioner. I hope they’ve been looking after you.”

  Senza stood up, and sat down on the step next to Lycao. Procopius sat in the chair he’d just left. So I was right, she thought. Then she did her best curtsey, and bowed her head.

  She heard someone clapping. “Clever girl,” Procopius said. She looked up, and he was smiling at her, a truly horrible sight. “Told you she’d figured it out.”