The Two of Swords--Part Nineteen

by K. J. Parker

  For crying out loud, she thought; but she jumped up, dragged on the first coat that came to hand, and scuttled down six flights of stairs into the stable yard. No grooms around – off early to find somewhere to watch the coronation from – so she wasted an insufferably long time finding a harness and forcing it on a singularly unhelpful horse; then an hour’s gallop, the stirrups galling her slippered feet, to the guard outpost where Musen had been caught. By the time she got there, the sun was dangerously close to its zenith. It occurred to her as she jumped off the horse and wrapped its reins round a broken rail that she had no way of proving her identity and authority to the perfect strangers who were in charge here, which might mean—Of course, she’d come out without her knife. Probably just as well.

  Ridiculous, she thought. I’m not going to murder half a dozen loyal, innocent Lodge soldiers just to rescue that worthless son-of-a—But, by pure fluke, the outpost commander had just been transferred from guard duty at the palace, and she’d had occasion to be very rude and unpleasant to him about a week ago, so he remembered her just fine.

  Even so. Yes, he conceded, she was entirely within her rights to countermand the warrant and order the prisoner’s release, but there should be a form; to be precise, a writ of countermand. If she wasn’t familiar with the precise form of words, he had the book of precedents in his office, if she’d care to consult it. So she spent a ludicrous half-hour reading the form out to him while he wrote it down in painful, scrupulous longhand; then he copied it out twice; then she signed all three copies and he handed her one copy back, for her records.

  There were no cells at the outpost, only a root cellar. They lifted the trapdoor and she lowered herself in, hung by her fingers and dropped six inches to the floor. Something moved in the darkness. They handed her down a lamp.

  “You,” Musen said. “What are you doing here?”

  It occurred to her that nobody had bothered to tell him the good news. “Rescuing you, idiot,” she said. “We’re friends, remember?”

  He shrugged. “If you say so. Am I—?”

  She nodded. “And as far as I’m concerned, you’re welcome to piss off and not come back. You realise I’m missing the coronation because of you.”

  She listened to what she’d just said, and noted that Musen had the sense not to answer.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get out of here, before I change my mind.”

  The horses, saddles, saddlebags and money were in the guardhouse (evidence). She had to sign receipts for them. “Where will you go?” she asked.

  Another shrug. “I thought the Lodge was my home,” he said. “Apparently not.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” she said. “I’ll find you a job somewhere.”

  “No thanks.”

  “You can go to Beal and teach thieving.”

  She could see he was tempted. But he shook his head.

  “I don’t want anything more to do with the Lodge,” he said.

  His face was a picture of sullen misery. She understood. He hadn’t lost his faith, but the thing he believed in had. “Axio,” she said.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact,” he spat back. “He understood. He knew what the Lodge ought to be about. He saw what they’ve been doing, and he was going to put a stop to it.”

  The terrible thing was, she couldn’t argue with that. “He left it a bit late,” was the best she could do.

  “Yeah, sure. But at least he knew that what you’ve been doing is wrong. That’s something. That’s honesty.”

  She took a deep breath, then let it go. “Sixty angels won’t get you very far,” she said. “I’ll make it five hundred.”

  “I don’t want your money, thank you.”

  Everybody else’s, just not hers. That was her told.

  “He’d have won,” he said. “I don’t think you realise that. He was that close. The horse-boys would’ve followed him, and he’d have killed your lot and taken over the Lodge, if that arsehole Teucer hadn’t shot him.”

  That shocked her. “Balls,” she said; he didn’t reply, because he knew he was right and she was wrong. She shuddered. That close? She’d have to ask someone about that. “And anyway, if he hadn’t, you’d be dead.”

  “Maybe,” Musen replied. “Or maybe he’d just have beaten me up a bit, like he did before. Wouldn’t have made any odds.”

  She could feel her temper fraying. He had that effect on her. So did the truth. “You shouldn’t have stolen the bloody thing, then, should you?”

  He looked at her. “No,” he said. “No, I guess I shouldn’t have.”

  There was only so much of that sort of thing she could take. “Good luck,” she said. “Next time, I won’t be there to save your useless neck, so try a bit harder not to get caught. Go somewhere, a long way away, and don’t even think about coming back.”

  He didn’t dignify that with a reply, and she walked away.

  “You missed a good party,” Thratta told her. “It’s been a while since anyone’s had a chance to let their hair down. Did them all a power of good, I reckon. Where were you, by the way?”

  Saving the man who saved us all, she wanted to say. “Something came up.”

  He shrugged. “I can see why you wouldn’t want to be there,” he said. “Painful for you. Still, it’s for the best.”

  “I’m going to the wedding,” she said.

  He looked surprised. “You sure? There’s no need, you know.”

  “Yes there bloody well is,” she said, and left him staring at her back.

  “I’m sorry,” Procopius said. “You can’t go.”

  She gave him an icy look. “Really? Why not?”

  He sat down next to her. It was warm in the back quadrangle, the benches there were comfortable and he looked tired. “Because I’m dying,” he said.

  She suddenly couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “The doctor told me what to look out for,” he said. “When certain things start to happen, it means I haven’t got long left, days rather than weeks, and that’s if I’m lucky. It’s fine,” he added, “I’ve known it was coming for some time, but it was gracious enough to wait for me to finish my work. My ninth symphony,” he added. “The only thing I’ve ever done that’s any good. And I know I can never top it, so, really, what’s the point in hanging on?”

  It was possible, more than remotely possible, that he was lying; that, as soon as the ship sailed for Blemya, he’d make a spectacular recovery. But she couldn’t risk it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Truly I am. But why does that mean I can’t go?”

  He gave her a reproachful look. “Three Triumvirs,” he said, “one of whom must succeed me. Lycao’s going to have her hands full with Senza Belot, and, besides, I sounded her out and she refused, point blank. Thratta feels he’s not up to the job, and I agree with him. And in any case, I think I’d have chosen you, even if Lycao had been prepared to do it. She has brains and a compelling personality, but she’s needed where she’s going, and, besides, you get things done. And you have absolute, perfect faith. Surprisingly, that’s the most important thing.”

  She felt as though the sky had just fallen on her. “Me,” she said. “You’re joking.”

  “I have a lively sense of humour, but no, I’m not. So, obviously, you can’t go, you’ll be needed here. There’s a great deal I have to tell you, things I have to pass on to my successor by word of mouth because they can’t be put down on paper, and only a short amount of time. I’m very sorry, but there it is.”

  “I can’t,” she said, and she felt more wretched than she’d ever done in her whole life. “The head of the Lodge is—It’s the most important thing in the whole world. It’s out of the question. You’d have to make decisions, and they’d have to be right. No, I’m sorry. I can’t do it, I don’t have the brains, or the strength.”

  He didn’t seem to have heard her. “There’s no formal investiture, obviously. What happens is, I stop breathing, you start work. You ought to know by now, promo
tion in the Lodge isn’t something you’re happy about, it’s not something you want. It’s an insufferable, crushing weight that squeezes the life out of you. It starts when you wake up in the morning and it never ever stops. That’s what Axio never understood. He wanted it. Which, of course, is why he couldn’t possibly be allowed to have it. Trust me, it’s the worst burden anybody could ever inflict on anybody else. And you have absolutely no choice.”

  She turned her head and looked at him. She looked at the scar, which his father’s knife had left, and which he’d worn all his life, like a badge of office. “Ah well,” she said. “If you put it like that, how can I possibly refuse?”

  He stood up. “Good girl,” he said. “That’s the ticket.”

  He was right. There was a lot to learn. She had to know the names of agents and representatives in every town in the reunited empire, their life histories, abilities, defects, their dark and poisonous secrets that nobody else could ever be told. She had to assimilate and properly understand a vast body of doctrine, abstruse and esoteric, which would form the basis for every decision she’d ever take. She had to learn the art of identifying the lesser of two evils, or six, or twenty. She had to commit to memory the mind-bending scope of the Lodge’s assets and possessions, the stupefying wealth it had squirrelled away, the arcane, twisted structures by which it secretly owned money, resources, means of production – and the more she learned, the more she came to realise that the utopian schemes, the aptitude tests she’d been doing for the last few months were actually true and for real, because the Lodge truly did have the money, and the power, and the influence, and the authority to do all those impractical, impossible things. That horrified her: decisions, choices she’d made on the basis that it was all strictly make-believe now turned out to be very real and about to happen. She desperately wanted to go back and do them all again, but Procopius wouldn’t let her; it’s too late now, the decision’s been made, the orders have been given, your word is law and your actions are irrevocable. Also, he added casually, you got it right the first time.

  “Is it a sort of inspiration?” she asked. “When I decide something, is it actually the Great Smith talking through my mouth and putting the thoughts into my head?”

  That made him smile. “You don’t still believe in the Great Smith, do you? That’s so sweet. Nothing wrong with it,” he hastened to assure her, “if you find it’s helpful, it’s an entirely valid perspective, though personally I’ve always regarded Him as a sort of extended metaphor. But the country people like someone solid to believe in. A figurehead, if you like. A bit like the emperor.”

  “Not inspiration, then.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. It’s entirely possible that you work things out in the back of your mind and then hear them as the voice of the Great Smith, and that gives you the confidence to believe in your own decisions. Not a bad way of going about it, not bad at all. Confidence is nine-tenths of the battle, in my opinion.”

  She looked at him. He’d gone downhill a lot since the ships sailed for Blemya. His skin was grey, his voice was little more than a whisper and he closed his eyes when he talked, as though making a great effort. “You said you chose me because I have faith. And now you tell me the thing I have faith in doesn’t exist.”

  He laughed. “That’s like saying that if you hate the hat I’m wearing, you hate me too. The difference between us is, you worship an old man in a leather apron and I worship an extended metaphor. Different hats, that’s all. Can we get on now, please? We’ve still an awful lot to get through.”

  There was still an awful lot to get through when his voice grew so quiet that she couldn’t make out the words, and when she tried to tell him that, he couldn’t hear her. So he went on painfully revealing the crucial, quintessential truth, which she couldn’t hear, until at last he fell into a deep, slow-breathing sleep. Twenty hours later, he woke up for the last time, and she asked him, “How do I let everyone know I’m the new leader?”

  He told her, but she couldn’t hear. And then he died.

  She sat beside the bed looking at him, his white face, a skull bound in parchment like a book, his empty, useless body. I stop breathing, he’d told her, you start work. She had absolutely no idea what she was suppose to do next.

  The door opened and Sutento came in. He looked at the thing in the bed and nodded. “All done, then.”

  An odd way of putting it, but she wasn’t going to quarrel with it. “Yes.”

  “You’ll be wanting to see the day-book.”

  “Will I?”

  “Yes.”

  “What the hell is the day-book?”

  “I’ll fetch it down directly.”

  The day-book was old, fat, covered in dark brown leather and written in a code she couldn’t read. She stared at it for a while, then closed it and let her mind wander. A little later, Sutento came back and took it away, and she never saw it again.

  Since she had no idea what work she was supposed to be doing, she carried on with what she’d been doing before she’d started her sessions with Procopius. It was the same work, but she found it a hundred times harder, because she knew there was nobody to review it, check it, stop her, point out her ridiculous mistakes and make her do it again. She was so busy that she couldn’t spare the time to attend Procopius’ funeral, to which was annexed the premier of his last work, the ninth symphony. Sutento told her there was almost nobody there for the service or the concert. Fair enough; the death of a musician, even one as eminent as Procopius, was something and nothing in the ruins of a great empire. The Mezentines sent a cultural attaché, but his carriage broke an axle on the atrocious roads and he arrived two days after the event.

  She never left Procopius’ old tower room these days. Outside, they told her, things were already starting to happen. Fifty thousand Aram no Vei horsemen had arrived to garrison the city and the northern frontier – she vaguely remembered signing something to do with that, but it was a long time ago and she’d had so much else to think about since then – but she didn’t see or hear them; all she could do was take the reports on trust; believe in them, have faith. The first fleet of grain ships from Simmeria docked at Beloisa and unloaded its cargo on to a thousand newly built carts, for onward transmission to relief depots all over the empire, to feed the starving survivors in the famine districts. The Resettlement Commission made its first set of recommendations, which she couldn’t find time to read. Five thousand miners (from Saevolus Andrapodiza at practically cost, prisoners from some war Senza Belot was fighting in a faraway country of which she knew little) arrived at the Weal Teuchisma and set about reopening the collapsed shafts. She knew she’d ordered or authorised all that, having sifted the relevant data and reached an informed decision, but there was so much of it all that she couldn’t keep track, let alone take more than a passing interest. She opened the hidden lock gates and oceans of money flowed out through them. She felt more hopelessly alone than she’d ever done starving and footsore on an empty road in the wilderness. Most days, the only other human being she saw to speak to was Sutento, who brought her letters and the books she’d asked for and her meals on a tray. Gradually she came to understand why Procopius couldn’t believe in the Great Smith; for the same reason that the Great Smith doesn’t believe in the Great Smith. And Axio had wanted this job. The sad, deluded fool.

  One morning, no different from all the other mornings, Sutento said to her, “Oida would like to see you.”

  That didn’t make sense. “He’s in Blemya.”

  “No, he’s here. Can you spare him five minutes?”

  She wanted to scream. “He’s in Blemya. What’s wrong with you?”

  He was staring at her. No way for the leader of the Lodge to behave. “Of course,” Sutento said. “So I’ll tell him you don’t want to see him.”

  She looked round the room. She’d hardly left it since Procopius died. Still his books, his furniture, his writing slope on the small desk by the window, where he sat to write music. It was
enough to make you believe in reincarnation. “Tell him I can spare him ten minutes.”

  It wasn’t fair, she protested to herself. It shouldn’t be allowed; the emperor, making an unscheduled call. What was the Lord Chamberlain thinking of? The emperor should ride into Iden in a chariot drawn by milk-white horses, or on the back of an elephant, while awe-struck crowds gazed in stunned silence from behind the shields of a wall of impassive, arm-linked soldiers. And a servant shouldn’t announce him as simply Oida, because the man she used to know by that name was dead. She should know. Obedient as ever to the commands of her superiors, she’d killed him.

  He’d shaved the stupid beard. He was dressed in a simple monk’s habit – a well-cut monk’s habit, of course, with neatly hemmed sleeves, made from the best Aelian bleached wool, and was that a lining poking out from the back of the collar? He’d caught the sun, the ferocious Blemyan sun. It suited him.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said. “I’ve got something for you.”

  He opened his mouth to speak. She turned her back, went to Procopius’ desk, opened the secret drawer she’d discovered quite by chance, and took out a plain rosewood box. “Wedding present,” she said.

  He opened it, shuddered and closed it quickly. “Is that—?”

  She nodded. “The rest of him’s buried somewhere, I have no idea where. Musen – you remember him? – he insisted, I had to bargain like mad just to get that much. But I thought you might like something to remember him by.”