by K. J. Parker
Poldarn grinned. 'I see,' he said.
'Well, quite.' Noja grinned back. 'Actually, compared with some of the specimens he's fetched home-There was one poor old devil who'd had his jaw smashed by a windlass handle, and the bones set all funny; and three or four with the most spectacular harelips; not forgetting the one-legged hunchback-delightful man, he knew all about flower remedies. So, I knew as soon as I saw you. I hope you don't mind terribly much.'
'Doesn't bother me at all,' Poldarn replied. 'I mean, I think your brother is a very strange man, but I'm not in the least offended or anything like that. Is he right, by the way? That is, does it work?'
'What do you-oh, I see what you mean.' She frowned slightly. 'Yes,' she said. 'At least, he needn't bother, I really do only want someone to keep me company. It's just the way I am, really.'
(Copis again, Poldarn thought.) 'Whatever,' he said. 'But-well, I really do have things I have to see to while I'm here, if that's all right.'
'Of course.' She looked at the back of the coachman's neck. 'But not straight away, I hope.'
Poldarn hesitated; then he said, 'There's nothing that can't wait a day or so. I'm sorry if I embarrassed you.'
Noja shook her head. 'Can't be done,' she replied. 'And believe me, better men than you have tried. But when it comes to being embarrassing, I'm the heavyweight champion. Now, do you want to head out to Beal right away, or would you rather see a bit more of the city first, or what? Like I told you, I don't mind. Anything's better than sitting in a room with a lot of women doing embroidery.'
'Let's go to Beal,' Poldarn said, after pretending to think it over for a while. 'And what exactly is a honey festival, anyway? I don't think I've ever heard-'
'It's a festival,' Noja said, 'with honey. People-beekeepers, presumably-bring in thousands of jars of honey from the country, and you can buy it to take home or just stand there eating it with a spoon until you throw up, and there's a prize for the best honey in the show. We used to go because my brother got landed with a bee farm when one of his customers went bust and his assets were divided up; being Jetat, he made a study of the honey trade, hired a good bailiff, turned the business round in four years and sold it at a thumping great profit. And like I said, the festival was good fun, in a nauseating sort of way.'
Poldarn shrugged. 'Fine,' he said. 'Let's go.' He didn't ask again whether the Emperor would be there; he'd heard her the first time, after all, and he didn't want to be too obvious.
Noja sent one of the footmen back to the house to tell Ciana Jetat where they'd gone; that left one footman and two coachmen (three to one, in Deymeson terms, assuming Noja classed as a non-combatant). The ride out of town towards the northern hills-Beal lay in the valley on the other side-was slow and dull: Noja embarked on a series of tales of mercantile adventure involving daring purchasing coups and bluffs called and uncalled in jute options and charcoal futures, most of which went over Poldarn's head like teal rising out of a reed-bed. He filtered out the words and half-listened to the patterns and inflections of her voice, which was by no means unpleasant, reminding him of a cheerful but repetitive tune played on a cane-stalk flute. By the time her flow of commercial epics dried up, they were outside the city walls and trundling along a wide, dusty road flanked by tall beech hedges. There were carts and carriages and traps in front and behind, more going the other way. He thought about Falx Roisin, and his short time as a courier in the Bohec valley-terrible, fatal things had tended to happen to people who'd shared wheeled transport with him back then. In fact, a large proportion of what memories he had seemed to involve a combination of carts and unexpected violence.
Night fell faster in the hinterland of Torcea than in Tulice or the Bohec valley. The sunset was spectacular but short, and as soon as the sun had disappeared (like a big chunk of bronze scrap sinking down into the crucible as it melted) Poldarn began to feel uncomfortably cold in the thin shirt and coat he'd been issued with back at Ciana's house. Noja looked like she was cold too; she'd stopped talking and was trying to snuggle down under a thin, coarse travelling rug, which she didn't offer to share. All in all, Poldarn was delighted when they passed under a gallows sign and he read the words The Purity of Soul, with Orchat underneath in smaller letters.
'Food,' Noja said, as the coachmen unfolded the steps for her. 'Don't know about you, but this chill in the air's given me an appetite. The leek and artichoke soup here was always fairly good, though I think the old cook quit about eighteen months ago. Still, it's risk it or go hungry.'
'We risk it,' Poldarn said assertively. 'And you said we'd be stopping here for the night.'
She nodded. The gesture reminded Poldarn very strongly of someone he couldn't immediately call to mind.
The leek and artichoke soup was fairly ordinary, but the bacon and wild mushroom casserole was much better, or so Noja reckoned. As far as Poldarn was concerned, it was stew, and as such a profound improvement on nothing at all. In scale and volume it wasn't anything like the catering at the Ciana house-you could see over your plate without a ladder-but Noja didn't seem to mind, and memories of what passed for food at Dui Chirra were still fresh enough in Poldarn's mind to make him grateful for anything he could get that didn't have cinders floating on top of it. They ate in a small private dining room wedged in between the kitchens and the common room. It was warm and quiet, and Noja, for some reason, had started telling stories about her childhood in the country; something about stealing a cake from their well-off neighbours and hiding it under her sister's bed, getting her into all sorts of trouble… Once again, Poldarn stepped back from what she was saying and treated her voice as music; just because he had so few memories of his own, he didn't necessarily need to fill up the empty space with other people's. Instead, he tried to reconstruct the geography of the forest where he'd first run into Ciana Jetat; which direction had the light been coming from, how far had he walked since dawn when he ran into the hunting party, and (probably most important of all) how had Cleapho, the most important man in the Empire, arrived at the rendezvous with Copis and Gain Aciava, alone and without getting covered in mud?
'So that was that,' Noja was saying. 'My sister was sent to bed without any supper, while I was allowed to stay up until Daddy came home from the fair. Monstrously unjust, of course, and she never did get any of the cake-'
'Your sister,' Poldarn asked quietly. 'What did you say her name was?'
Noja stopped and stared at him, her eyes suddenly wide. He'd seen that expression before, usually when his opponent had been expecting to be parried with the flat, and got a cut across the forearm instead. 'Well,' she said, 'we always called her Weasel, because-'
'Because of the shape of her nose,' Poldarn said. 'But what was her regular name?'
Noja didn't answer for a while. Then she stood up and carefully slipped the catch of the brooch that held her cloak together. 'I'm tired,' she said flatly, without expression. 'I think I'll go to bed now. You coming?'
Poldarn looked at her. She was allowing the cloak to slip down over her shoulders, revealing the sharp profile of her collarbone. 'You go on,' he said. 'I think I'll just sit up for awhile.'
'Fine.' Her eyes were ice cold, like the touch of dead meat. 'Don't stay up too late,' she said. 'We ought to make an early start in the morning.'
Noja waited for a reply, then turned and walked out. The angle of her cheekbone as she moved away was entirely familiar. Mostly, Poldarn realised, he felt disappointed.
After she'd gone he counted up to two hundred, then opened the door cautiously and listened; the coachmen and the footman hadn't struck him as the sort of men who had the knack of breathing quietly. A small, detached part of him regretted missing the honey festival, which had sounded rather pleasant, if you liked that sort of thing. But they hadn't been going there in any case.
Nobody in the corridor, which was pitch dark; but it was easy enough to locate the kitchens by smell alone. He considered his options. There would be people in the common room, but that was no gu
arantee of safety, and the shortest route to the stables was out that way, so that was where they'd be expecting him to go. Through the kitchens and round the back was three times as far. Simple mathematics: if she followed the relevant precept of religion (sharpen an arrowhead but make a shield as broad as possible), she'd have assigned two guards-the coachmen, presumably, they seemed to be a matched pair-to the common room, and stuck the footman outside the kitchen door. He was fairly sure he could handle the footman, quietly and without making a disturbance. But there was, of course, a third alternative: the stairs.
The bedrooms at the Purity of Soul were on all four sides of a gallery above the common room; one flight of stairs only, leading up from the end of the corridor he was standing in. It'd be a rather bone-jarring drop from a window down into the courtyard, but that couldn't be helped. The Weasel, he thought (assuming she'd been telling the truth), and the Earwig: a regular pest menagerie. Had they given him a nickname too, he wondered? Not that it mattered; but quite soon, one way or another, he'd be in a position where he'd never be able to ask about that sort of thing again. Whether he liked it or not, between them they had possession of most of his life (his memories their hostages, as it were). Even if everything went as well as it possibly could, he'd lose everything they knew about him for ever; and the loss of memories is the destruction of the past, and what is a human being except the sum of his experiences? Dead either way.
On balance, Poldarn decided, he'd rather be dead and still moving; so he turned his back to the wall and slid along it until the side of his foot bumped against the first stair. If they had to creak, he begged providence, let them creak softly. Up to a point, a creaking stair is your friend, because all stairs creak a little during the night, as the compressed fibres of the wood relax. The sound, being usual, is ignored and therefore inaudible. ('Something seen a hundred times becomes invisible': yet another precept of religion. There was probably a complete list of them, in alphabetical order, at the back of Concerning Various Matters, but he hadn't managed to get that far.) It's the sudden loud, complaining creak that gives you away and sets the dogs barking.
At the top of the stairs he paused. The plan had been simple enough-find an empty room, climb out of the window, drop down into the courtyard, steal a horse and escape. It was also, of course, the wrong thing to do.
He faced the door nearest to him, lifted the latch and walked in. There were two people in the bed, a man and a woman. The woman shrieked and tried to hide under the sheets; the man sat up sharply and stretched out his arm towards the sword propped up against the bedside chair. It was probably just as well for him that Poldarn got there first. He didn't draw the sword (an elegant if rather fussy object: moulded silver grip in the form of a leaping dolphin, which'd cut into your hand quite horribly if you ever had occasion to hit something); instead he closed his left hand around the scabbard chape and held it against his waist, ready for a theoretical draw.
'Sorry to burst in,' he said, 'but I need your window, just for a moment. You don't mind, do you?'
The man stared at him but didn't move or make a sound. Close enough for country music. 'Thanks,' Poldarn said; he slipped the shutter catch, pushed the shutters apart and swung his leg over the sill. Then he noticed that he was still holding the silver-hilted sword. 'You weren't using this for anything, were you?' he asked politely. No reply. Fine; he swung the other leg across the sill, relaxed his knees and dropped, hoping he wasn't directly above a pile of bricks or a bucket.
Landing hurt; but nothing seemed to be broken or bent, and he felt it would probably be sensible to get away from the open window. Making sure that the sword was still in its scabbard and hadn't been jarred out when he touched down, he hobbled as quickly as he could move across the yard, in what he hoped was the direction of the stables.
No mistake there; clearly his sense of direction was fit to be relied on, even in unknown territory in the dark. His self-satisfaction was ruined, however, when someone grabbed at his arm as he approached the stable door. As always, he felt the intrusion into his circle before the actual touch of the man's fingers, giving him ample time to sidestep, reach out, grab the arm by the wrist and wrench it round a half-turn. Not surprisingly, the voice that yelped with pain belonged to the one remaining footman.
'It's all right,' Poldarn said reassuringly, maintaining his grip. 'Keep your face shut and I won't damage you.'
Then someone hit him across the shoulder with a stick. The pain distracted him, when it should have concentrated his mind (take away five points for that); he let the footman go, and got a fist in his stomach as a reward for carelessness. Bad, he thought; don't want to draw the sword and start hurting people, don't want to get beaten up either. But the punch wasn't followed up, and neither was the attack with the stick. He waited to see what would happen next.
'Did you get him?' Noja's voice.
'Got him,' said one of the coachmen, behind his shoulder. 'He's got something in his hand-stay back.'
'It's all right,' Poldarn sighed, and he let the sword slip through his fingers. It clattered shrilly on the cobbles; probably some slight damage to that fancy silverwork. 'You can let go, I won't run away.'
'Inside the stable, quick,' Noja said. Someone opened the door and pushed Poldarn through, closing it after him. Inside, it was dark and smelled of horses. He heard the sword being drawn behind him, and hoped nobody would be stupid enough to wave it about in the dark; he could feel where it was, by some sort of deep-rooted instinct, but he doubted whether anybody else shared that abstruse talent.
'I should've noticed earlier,' he said into the darkness. 'But really, you don't look much like her; only when you move, not when you're sitting still.'
'My own silly fault,' Noja replied. 'If I hadn't started telling stories about her, you'd never have made the connection. Still, it doesn't really matter. It just makes things a bit more complicated, that's all.'
Poldarn thought about that but didn't say anything. 'So what've you got lined up for me tomorrow?' he said. 'Are we going back to the city?'
'No, of course not,' she replied. 'We're going on to Beal, like I said.'
'Because Tazencius is there.'
'That's right.' She sighed. 'It'd all have been so much less trouble if I hadn't been so careless. You know, I was worrying myself frantic about how to get you there, after everything I'd been told about you-the most dangerous man in the Empire, you know, all that stuff. When you said that was where you wanted to go anyway, I nearly burst out laughing.' She hesitated. 'Are you sure you only just figured it out?' she said. 'Or have you been playing us all along ever since you met up with Ciana in the forest?'
'Is that really what they say about me?' Poldarn asked. 'Most dangerous man in the Empire?'
'Well, yes,' Noja said, sounding confused; then, 'It's true, isn't it? You really have lost your memory. You don't know-' She broke off. Maybe one of the coachmen sniggered, or maybe not. 'Well, anyway,' she said, 'that's beside the point. As you've probably guessed, these three aren't just your average coachmen. They're Tazencius's own household guards, on loan. We insisted. The three of them together, even you won't be able to-'
'I told you,' Poldarn interrupted, 'I don't want a fight. I came here to meet Tazencius, and all you're doing is giving me a lift. I'm grateful, even if you have been playing me for a sucker.'
Even though he couldn't see Noja's face, he knew she didn't believe a word of that-a pity, since it was true. 'If you think you can make your peace with Tazencius after everything that's happened, you're more stupid than you look.' She was trying to sound harsh but she didn't have the gift for it-unlike her sister, who had difficulty being anything else. 'She won't be able to protect you any more, not now. Don't suppose she'll want to, either.'
Poldarn had to think for a moment before he figured out who she was. 'I wasn't expecting her to,' he replied. 'Truth is, I don't remember Lysalis at all. I've been told she was fond of me-'
'Fond's putting it mildly.' Noja sounded
amused. 'I think, honestly, that's what really made Tazencius hate you the most. He felt really bad about using his darling daughter as bait, to get you, the most evil man in the world; and then she goes and falls in love with you-you, of all people-and of course it's all his own fault.' Noja laughed hoarsely. 'Well, it wasn't so bad when you went missing, and he had the boy, of course; sometimes he could almost kid himself he didn't remember who the boy's father was every time he looked at him. But then you turned up again, not dead after all. Where did you vanish off to, by the way?'
Poldarn smiled in the dark. 'I went home,' he said.
'Home? Oh, I see, back there-' He could imagine a look of disgust crossing her face. 'But you didn't stay?'
'Got thrown out,' Poldarn said. 'For making trouble.'
'Well, of course. It's a pity you had to come back, things had sort of found their own level again: Cronan dead, Tazencius getting his chance, the new man turning out to be helpful after all.' Poldarn didn't know who 'the new man' was supposed to be, but he didn't want to show his ignorance. 'And then Gain found you, and of course you had to be right there on the spot, where the new weapons were being made. You know what? Xipho seems to believe it was just a coincidence; at least, that's what she said in her letters. Is that really true?'
'Yes,' Poldarn said.
Short pause. 'No, I don't believe it,' Noja said. 'I mean, the irony'd be too much, you helping to make the weapons that're going to blast your disgusting relatives out of the water before they can get within a hundred yards of landfall'
'Maybe I'd like that,' Poldarn suggested pleasantly.
'Maybe you would,' Noja replied. 'Wouldn't put anything past you. Honestly, I can see why Tazencius took to you, in the beginning. You really do think alike. Which is why,' she added, trying hard to sound threatening (but she didn't have the touch), 'you don't stand a chance of getting round him this time. He's got you figured out, you can rely on that.'