The Two of Swords, Part 4

by K. J. Parker

  “A coded love sonnet.”

  “Well, yes. But if the Eastern government’s behind it somehow—” He made a vague despairing gesture. “They come here,” he said. “They hand over this bizarre thing. The same night a member of the cabinet is murdered by an unknown assassin. It’s got to mean something. Well, hasn’t it?”

  She looked at him. “Oh, come on,” she said.

  He pulled a sad face. “I’ve sent Professor Juxia away,” he said, “and told him to make the same analysis of all Procopius’ major orchestral works, see if they’re all like it.”

  “Dax! You didn’t.”

  “Serves him right,” Daxin replied. “Also, I got the impression he’d have done it anyway. No, listen. If Procopius makes a habit of encoding third-rate romantic slush in all his compositions, then there’s no special significance and nothing to bother about. If not—” No good. He knew that look.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I hereby pardon you for dragging me out of bed at this ridiculous hour of the morning. The thought of that poor man doing all those idiotic sums—”

  He lowered his voice. That always made her listen. “You need to take it seriously,” he said. “Right now, we’ve got to take everything seriously. Come on, you know what a horrible bloody mess we’re in.”

  She gave him a cold look. “I had sort of gathered, yes.”

  “I’m sorry. Of course you know. It’s just—” He ran out of words. He was twenty-three years old, chief executive of a big, rich country hours away from civil war, and he simply hadn’t a clue. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But Iaxas is taking it seriously, so I thought—”

  She nodded. “It’s just so weird,” she said. “We’ll see what your professor finds out, and then we’ll know.”

  He felt the tension drain out of him. “You’d better get back before you’re missed,” he said.

  “You make it sound like—” She stopped and frowned. “Yes, right,” she said. “Now I’ve got to go and put on all that horrible junk. It’s not fair. I look like a woodlouse. Why can’t I wear nice clothes, just once in a while?”

  One of the steelnecks, General Rixotal, had put it best. In an unguarded moment, among friends, he was reported as having said, “You know what’s wrong with this country? It’s being run by bloody children.”

  Daxin couldn’t agree more. It struck him as ludicrous; almost as ridiculous as taking the second son of a minor nobleman, who’d picked up his education the same way a dog picks up scraps at table, and making him Grand Logothete of Blemya, simply because he’d played Rattlesnakes with the queen when they were kids. The truly awful thing was that he was a good Logothete, a brilliant one, born to it, a natural. He could guess why. Years of being careful, keeping his eyes and ears open, learning quickly, having to keep the peace between Father and his brother, doing and getting things for himself because nobody else was going to; it had been the perfect training. Mostly, he could understand people. If you could do that, the rest of it was just keeping calm and paying attention to detail.

  “As far as we can tell,” the colonel said, “he must’ve climbed the wall, come in here, through the window, done it, stuck the guard and made off down the corridor. That’s what all the evidence tells us. It just doesn’t make sense, that’s all.”

  Daxin peered down at the brown-stained sheets. No sense at all. An assassin, skilful enough to climb the outer wall of the north elevation, cool enough to kill a man and not wake the woman sleeping next to him, instead of simply turning round and going back the way he’d come, took the huge and unnecessary risk of killing a guard and wandering off down a corridor, with half the palace to walk through before he could get out again. But the killer had definitely come in through the window; there had been the clear prints of toes and heels in the grime on the ledge outside, and traces of that grime on the sheepskin rug, which surely ruled out the possibility that he’d come from inside the palace. An inside killer would’ve had a much easier job, given that he was committed to killing the guard anyway. Clearly a man who knew what he was doing. The colonel was still baffled by the fact that he’d managed to open the door and come out into the corridor without the guard yelling and raising the alarm. You’d have to be so quick and so quiet. The only men the colonel knew of who were that good were the Eastern emperor’s Pasgite bodyguards – tiny wild men from the far north, trained to kill from childhood, so strange-looking and alien it was a moot point whether they were genuinely human. That (the colonel said) tied in rather neatly with the size of the footprints; also, the Pasgites always went barefoot.

  He took one last look round, then thanked the colonel and went to meet the Emergencies Commission. No further leads, he reported. All we can say for certain is that the clues we’ve found have yielded no definite information whatsoever about who the killer was, what country or party or organisation. It was possible that the assassin was a Pasgite, or a child, but even if that was true, all it implied was that the killer was a hired assassin, which was more or less certain anyway.

  “We’ve got the City more or less locked down,” the prefect said. “Two battalions of Life Guards on the streets, a big presence on all the gates, random stop and search, keeping the pressure up generally. General Ixion’s brought down four regiments of marines and all the south-eastern cavalry and stationed them in a ring round the suburbs. It’s working for now, there haven’t been any more riots or anything like that. And he’s pretty confident about the men themselves. They’ll do what he tells them.”

  Daxin nodded. Ixion was a good man, for a steelneck, and the soldiers liked him. The trouble was, he was seventy-three years old and desperate to retire. “Outside the City,” he said.

  The Chief Commissioner pulled a sad face. “Not so good,” he said. “Because Ixion’s pulled so many troops out to secure the City, we’ve got trouble in the South and the West. Mostly quite peaceful, people out on the streets shouting and waving banners, but no real trouble so far. I guess it’s because it’s all so vague and mysterious, and nobody actually knows anything at all. It’s hard to work up a really good head of righteous indignation when you’ve got a sneaking suspicion in the back of your mind that it might just have been your side that did it.”

  Daxin thought for a moment. “I think we can probably slacken off gently in the City,” he said. “Nice and gradually, so people get the impression that things are easing up, but we can still come down like a ton of bricks if we have to. If we keep it too tight for too long, it’s more or less inevitable that something’ll strike sparks, and then we’ll be in real trouble. I’m not too worried about out of town. Country people have got too much to do at this time of year, and I gather the miners have stayed pretty quiet.”

  “So far,” said the Deputy Chief. “They never liked him anyway.”

  “Small blessings,” Daxin said. “What about the lodges? They’ve been remarkably relaxed about the whole thing.”

  “I’m guessing they’ve come to the conclusion there’s nothing in it for them,” the Chief Commissioner said. “Either that or they’re playing a very long game. I confess, I don’t like it when they’re quiet.”

  News from the war. The Belot brothers had fought a battle, a big one. It had come as a shock to the governments of both sides, who hadn’t really known what they were up to; both brothers were experts at moving quietly and very fast. They’d fought to a standstill for the best part of a day just outside the oasis city of Rumadon, on the border, only thirty miles or so south of the Blemyan frontier. Early reports said casualties were in the tens of thousands on each side, and that afterwards both armies had pulled back and gone away, and nobody was entirely sure where they were now.

  “The priestess,” the Count of the Stables said, as they walked together into the Lesser Hall for dinner. “Did you notice her?”

  “Hard not to,” Daxin said. “Bright red dress.”

  “I thought they didn’t ordain women in the West.”

  “They don’t.” Taxin stopped to l
et a server go past with a big tray of fresh bread. “Priestesses are different. They stand up in Temple and chant things, but they don’t actually do anything. Like, they can’t hear confessions or confirm you or anything like that.”

  The Count sighed. “It’s confusing,” he said.

  “We used to have them here,” broke in the Urban Tribune, who was behind them in the procession. “But they sort of died out about fifty years ago, when we introduced women deacons. They don’t have women deacons in the West,” he added. “All a bit primitive, if you ask me.”

  Later, when they were sitting down, the Count said, “I looked it up.”

  “Looked up what?” Daxin said, with his mouth full.

  “Priestesses,” the Count said. “In relation to foreign embassies. I read through all the relevant stuff in Porphyrion’s Offices. Nothing at all in Imperial protocol says you’ve got to have a priestess on an embassy. They made that up.”

  Daxin frowned. “But that’s pre-war, surely,” he said. “How it was under the united empire, in the old days. Presumably the West’s got its own protocols now. They like to invent new stuff to show they’re grander than the East.”

  The Count shrugged. “That’s probably it, then. I just thought it was funny, that’s all. Considering how anti-women they are in most things.”

  Look who’s talking, Daxin thought. “It’s like conjurors do,” he said. “Fetch on a girl in a red dress; at the crucial moment everyone’s gawping at her, so they don’t see you pull the Six of Thrones out of your sleeve.”

  “That’s an interesting remark,” the Count said, frowning. “So you think the Westerners did it?”

  “The murder?” Daxin shook his head. “I don’t think anything of the sort.”

  “Come on,” said the Count. “You say they had the priestess along as a distraction, but on the surface, so to speak, they didn’t actually do anything. Just handed over the music book and left. No distraction needed,” he added, “on the surface. So, if there was a distraction, it must’ve been to keep us from noticing something we didn’t actually see. Like the murder.”

  Daxin sighed. “You’re putting words in my mouth,” he said. “All I did was, I suggested that may be the reason why, as a matter of standard operating procedure, they routinely take women in red dresses along on embassies. On this specific occasion—”

  “Pass the mustard, would you?”

  Daxin reached across and grabbed the little silver pot. “Anyway,” he said, “we know exactly what function the priestess was serving: she was there to keep the Illustrious Oida from browsing the local wildlife. Given his reputation, I should say it was a very sensible precaution, though if you ask me it’s like inviting someone to lunch and he brings his own food. If you’ve finished with that—”

  The Count nodded. He took back the mustard and spooned a little dab on to the side of his plate. The Count said, “What did you make of him?”

  “Oida? As it happens, I know him from way back. He’s one of those people who’s actually a lot less objectionable than he likes to make out.”

  “Not sure I follow you,” the Count said, “but never mind. You do know he’s a distant cousin of Herself.”

  Daxin didn’t know that. “Really?”

  “Oh yes.” The Count was mopping up gravy with a corner of bread. “Once removed or is it twice? Not sure. On his mother’s side. Strictly speaking, he counts as a Royal. The chamberlain’s office had a fit when they found out, because by then, of course, it was too late, the wretched man was already here, and there’s all these protocols that should’ve been observed but weren’t. Fortunately, nobody knew, so—”

  “Oida’s a member of the Royal family.”

  “That’s right,” the Count said, “and as you know, there’s not a hell of a lot of them left, what with them slaughtering each other like sheep for the last hundred and fifty years. I seem to remember some clerk telling me that, theoretically, he’s something like tenth in line to the throne.”

  Daxin frowned. “You said he was a second cousin or something.”

  “Yes, but that’s beside the point. Strictly speaking—”

  “So if ten people die, Oida becomes king.”

  The Count laughed. “Can you really see that happening?” He ate a last chickpea and pushed away his plate. “Besides, you know the man, you said. He seems all right. We could do worse.”

  At least he’s a man, he meant. “The country wouldn’t stand for it,” Daxin said.

  “Of course not,” the Count agreed. “What’s for afters?”

  The senior librarian from the College of Heralds was typically efficient. Come back in two hours, he’d said, and he was as good as his word. When Daxin returned, he was presented with a proper formal family tree, complete with sources and brief biographical notes, where relevant. It was a huge document; there wasn’t a table big enough, so they had to spread it out on the floor.

  “No, it’s all right, I can manage just fine,” Daxin said quickly, as the old man began the slow and arduous process of kneeling down beside him. “I know how to read these things.”

  A bit of an overstatement, but he was able to get the general idea. Sure enough, Oida (Gennaeus Fraxiles Eurymedon Oida Mazentinus, in full Imperial nomenclature) was there up away in the middle of the right-hand margin. He was in blue, meaning he was still alive. Nearly all the names on the parchment were red, for dead. To his surprise, he also saw himself – Gennaeus Deas Eurymedon Daxin Epignatho – far out on the left-hand outskirts, in black, meaning correlative, or too remote to be family within the meaning of the relevant statutes.

  He stood up. “Could you do me a favour,” he said, “and write in who’s what in line to the throne? I’m not quite clear just from looking at it—”

  The librarian gave him a look. “We’re not supposed to do that,” he said. “Technically, in fact, it’s treason.”

  “Is it? Good heavens. Oh well, don’t, then; sorry I asked. Is it treason if you just tell me?”

  “That would be something of a grey area.”

  “Tell me very quietly.”

  He didn’t have a chance to talk to her for three days, which was infuriating. When finally they were alone in the South cloister and he’d blurted out his discovery, she looked at him and said, “Yes, I know.”

  It took him a second to recover. “You didn’t tell me.”

  “I assumed you—Oh, well, it doesn’t matter particularly, does it? I’ve got twelve cousins, as it happens. I don’t know any of them. I mean, we don’t send each other cakes at Ascension or anything. I bet you’ve got hundreds of cousins, and you couldn’t name half of them.”

  Perfectly true. “Yes, but Oida,” he said, and paused.

  “What about him?”

  “I met him,” Daxin said, “about three years ago, just after the coronation. He was here with the Easterners. I can’t remember how we got talking, but – well, it seemed perfectly natural at the time, he was interested and sympathetic and very well informed, and you know what we were like back then, didn’t know what day of the week it was. I thought he was just being nice, and, anyway, he’s supposed to be neutral and above it all, isn’t he?”

  She was frowning. “What did you tell him?”

  “Oh, nothing he didn’t know already, or at least he seemed like he knew it all, I really can’t be sure. It’s more what he told me.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Everything, basically,” Daxin said. “Sort of, a complete beginner’s guide to politics. Really opened my eyes. Scared the life out of me. Suddenly I realised just how dangerous our position is, how many people are out to get us, all that sort of thing. We sat up all night in the New Gallery, and he more or less explained to me how things stood, what we had to look out for, the sort of problems we’d have to face, what we ought to do about them. Incredibly helpful. I don’t think we’d still be alive today if it hadn’t been for him. To be honest, everything I’ve done this last three years has been based on what he told me
.”

  She was gazing at him. “You never said.”

  “No,” he said, “I didn’t. At the time I thought he was just this really clever, helpful man who felt sorry for us and wished us well. And he had nothing to gain that I could see. He was just—”

  “Being helpful. Well,” she said, “maybe he was.” She paused for a moment. “He didn’t say he and I are related?”

  “No, didn’t mention it.”

  “Maybe he thought you knew.”

  Well, he thought, with a sense of anticlimax, that would explain it. He felt stupid for not having thought of that. “Bit of an assumption, surely.”

  “Not really. Maybe he wanted to help us – help me – because we’re family. And anyway,” she went on, “I don’t see what difference it makes to anything. I mean, it’s not like there’s anything sinister. The worst you could read into it is, he wanted to make his number with us in case he ever needs anything from us – money, a safe place to go, something like that.” She grinned at him. “It’s not like he’s deviously and maliciously become my cousin, as part of some vast dark conspiracy.”

  Bad news. It came as a complete surprise. Daxin, whose entire strategy for coping was built around having plenty of notice of everything, realised he had no idea what to do. He felt as though it was all his fault, which was ridiculous.

  The Mavida were a loose confederation of nomadic tribes, living in the vast desert to the south of Blemya. Part of their territory was nominally Imperial land, both East and West; in practice, they roamed at will over an inconceivably large area of sand, mountain and scrub that nobody else had any possible use for whatsoever. They had sheep, or goats, or something of the sort, and traded fleeces at the outpost cities for a range of commodities, mostly flour and weapons. It was vaguely known that, from time to time, they were prone to intense bouts of religious fervour, usually coinciding with the appearance of a self-proclaimed messiah. They were pagans, worshipping the sun as a god. Nobody knew exactly how many of them there were. They were no bother to anyone.