by K. J. Parker
She didn’t have far to go. At the end of the corridor (past twelve cells identical to hers, all with their doors open, so she was the only guest) was a small, plain room, whitewashed walls, brightly lit by four lamps mounted on high brackets, two plain chairs facing each other, their feet fixed to the floor with iron straps. They pushed her down into a chair and tied her to it with good, stout hemp rope. Then they left her alone for a long time.
Her back was to the door, so she heard rather than saw it open. A man walked past her and sat down. She didn’t recognise him. He was in a Guards issue gambeson, streaked with rust, regulation red breeches and red woollen cloak; about forty-five, hair cropped to three-quarters of an inch precisely. He looked tired and preoccupied. He sat down, glanced at a small wad of papers, then put them on the floor between his feet.
“You Telamon?”
“Yes.”
He nodded; she’d given the correct answer, well done. He mentioned a date. “You were an intelligence officer assigned to the garrison at Beloisa.”
“Yes.”
He picked up the papers, leafed through, read something, looked up. “It says here you murdered Sciro Hepsionas, a political officer, shortly before the garrison was evacuated. How do you plead?”
She looked at him. “You have no proof.”
That sent him back to his papers. He selected three sheets, put the rest back on the floor. “You admitted it in four separate conversations.”
“That’s hearsay. Inadmissible.”
“Not when it constitutes an admission.”
“Anyone who says I said that is a liar.”
“Mphm.” He looked up from the papers. “All I’m concerned with is whether there’s a case to answer, I’m not interested in the facts, just whether there’s admissible prima facie evidence. Naturally, you’ll have an opportunity to put your case at the trial.”
She shifted a little, but the ropes were tight. “Look,” she said, “what’s all this about?”
He gave her a disapproving look. “Murder,” he answered. “It’s against the law.”
“I didn’t murder him. I never murdered anybody.”
“Quite. But my job’s to report on the evidence, and I have twelve sworn depositions. Whether they’re true or not is up to the judge. This is really just a formality. How do you plead?”
“Not guilty.”
He nodded; an acceptable answer, and no skin off his nose either way. “Thank you,” he said. “Now, a date will be set for a preliminary hearing, at which point you will be made aware of the nature of the evidence against you and given an opportunity to state your defence. Should you wish to call witnesses, you can apply to the court for them to be summoned under subpoena. Until then, I’m remanding you into the custody of the Imperial Household.” He collected his papers and stood up. “Good luck,” he said, and walked out.
Maybe because she was being held by the Guards, the food wasn’t half bad; she suspected it was what the soldiers were getting, probably taken out of their ration. The bread was white and quite fresh, some days it was dried sausage and a mild, crumbly white cheese, other days it was bacon and beans, with tarragon; whichever, there was always a good scoop of fermented cabbage, a bit salty but no worse than you’d get in the Countenance. She got a pint and a half of weak white wine and, on the third day, a chamber pot of her very own. On the fourth day the warder, who never spoke, took away Illectus on Comedy and gave her Paiseric’s Analects instead. On the ninth day he brought her a nearly new copy of The Golden Donkey, and she was allowed to keep the Paiseric as well. Every time the warder appeared she asked for paper and a pen. It was a different warder each time. Maybe they were all deaf.
On the thirteenth day, just as the light was starting to fade, she was handed a wad of papers about the thickness of her hand. She tried to read them, but the handwriting was tiny, neat, cursive law-hand; she could make out the big decorative capitals at the start of each paragraph, but that was all. She got the general impression that this was the case against her, and then it was too dark to see.
She woke up out of an unpleasant dream which she immediately forgot, opened her eyes (but it was pitch dark, so it made no difference) and listened. No sound, but she was convinced there was someone in there with her.
All her adult life she’d made it a point to know where the nearest weapon was, or the nearest object she could use as one. In the cell there was nothing at all, which made her feel uncomfortable, like an itch she couldn’t reach, or a pulled muscle. She held her breath but couldn’t hear anything. Her imagination, then, or leftover horrors from the nightmare. She closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep. She was still trying when the sun rose. She jumped up and looked for the papers. They were gone.
She hadn’t read The Golden Donkey for years, not since the Lodge had scooped her up out of the blueberry moors and packed her off to Beal; she’d been given a copy by a fellow student, and when she’d pointed out that books weren’t a lot of use to her, he taught her to read. It’s a profoundly silly book, ranging from knockabout comedy to vague metaphysical speculation to softcore pornography, and just the thing for when you want to forget where you are. She tried rationing herself – a chapter, then an hour’s exercise, then two hours’ sleep – but her self-control wasn’t up to it, and when she got to the bit where the hero has to spend the night protecting a dead body from witches changed into rats, she couldn’t help herself. This is the most amazing fun, she thought, and the door opened.
She looked up, and saw a man who probably wasn’t a soldier in the Household Guard. For one thing, he was too old, fifty at least, a huge man (forget-it big, as a friend of hers used to put it); bald on top with long grey sides scraped back in a ponytail, and a long, thin moustache dribbling down his hamlike cheeks. His clothes were scruffy-ordinary, and he had a sword in his right hand, rather a special one, a short concave-curved backsabre, rarely seen this far south. The blade was smeared with red sticky stuff.
She froze; he scowled at her. “Don’t just sit there, come on,” he said. His voice was higher than you’d expect from such a big, fat man, and she couldn’t quite place the accent.
“Who are you?”
“You’re being rescued, you stupid bitch. Come on.”
He had a stupendous double chin, with a wart the size of a bean lodged in the fold. “Go to hell,” she snapped. “Get away from me.”
He rolled his eyes and took a long stride towards her. She shrank back. The only possible weapon, apart from his sword, was the chamber pot, and that was in the far corner of the cell. “You coming or not?”
“No. Get away.”
He sighed, then punched her on the jaw. Her head shot back and connected with the wall, and she went straight to sleep.
*
“You’re a total pain in the arse, you know that?”
She opened her eyes. Her head was splitting, her jaw ached and she felt sick. She could see rafters; she recognised them. She was in the hayloft of the Sun in Splendour, on the Cotyle road out of Rasch.
She tried to get up, but a huge hand on her throat pushed her back down and held her; not throttling her, but putting her on notice that she wasn’t allowed to move. The fat man’s face appeared above her. Since she’d seen him last, he’d picked up a nasty cut, from the corner of his left eye down to the bottom of the jaw. The blood was just starting to cake up.
“Who are you?”
He looked at her for three heartbeats, then took his hand away. She didn’t move. “I’m Porpax,” he said. “You don’t know me. You’re heavier than you look.”
Porpax; not a common name. But there was a Porpax the city guard was very interested in talking to, concerning a spate of violent armed robberies. There were posters nailed to doors all over the place.
“What’s going on?” she said.
He sat down beside her in the hay. She couldn’t see the sword he’d been holding, or any other weapon. “I’m a friend of Oida,” he said. “He told me to look aft
er you.”
It was almost impossible to imagine that Porpax and Oida were members of the same species, let alone friends. “You what?”
He gave her a weary look. “He had to go away a bit sudden. So he told me, you look after her, see she doesn’t get in any trouble. Then you get yourself arrested and slung in the Guards, for crying out loud. That’s why you’re a pain in the arse.”
Among the crimes attributed to Porpax the armed robber was the single-handed slaughter of a half-platoon of the Watch. “Oida’s a friend of yours?”
He nodded. “I say friend,” he said. “More a business friend, if you see what I mean.” He picked up a stalk of hay and picked his teeth with it. “Ungrateful cow, aren’t you?”
“Screw you,” she said. “I don’t know what all this is about, but—”
“You were in for murder. They were going to pull your neck.”
“I didn’t want to go.”
“Tough.” He looked at her, and evidently didn’t like what he saw. “Oida said, if she gets herself in trouble, get her out of it. You got any idea what it takes to spring someone from the Guards? No, course you haven’t, because it’s never been done.”
She remembered the blood on his sword blade. “If I wasn’t in trouble before,” she said, “I am now, thanks to you. What were you thinking of? You’re mad.”
He shrugged. “I did as I was told. I’m reliable, me. Never let a mate down, that’s my rule.”
“How much did he pay you?”
“Twelve thousand. Only he hasn’t paid me yet. You’re my pension. It’s time I packed all this in.”
The Sun in Splendour: a respectable house, used by government couriers, among others. How had he smuggled her in without being seen? Then she saw a big hessian sack lying in the hay.
“Now then,” said Porpax, “if you’re fit we’d better be going. Won’t be long before they come here looking.”
“I’m not going in the sack.”
“Yes you are.”
A sharp twinge of pain from her jaw made up her mind for her. She stood up so he could pull the sack down over her, then felt the world swim around her as she was hoisted up and slung with alarming ease over his shoulder. A huge hand clamped down firmly on the small of her back. She tried hard to think about something else.
“I’ll do anything for money,” he told her cheerfully, as their cart bounced through the ruts, jarring her teeth painfully together. “Your pal Oida came round the Charity and Grace, said he wanted a man for a job, a really nasty piece of work, he said, but someone who can be trusted. So Myrrhine, she’s a friend of mine from way back, straight away she said, you want Porpax. And he said, I don’t want him, he’s in a lot of bother, they’re looking for him all over town. And Myrrhine said, you want the best, that’s Porpax. He’s dead reliable and he’ll do anything for money.”
Listening to him was making her teeth hurt. “What exactly did he hire you to do?”
Porpax smiled. “Look after you,” he said, “like you were my own kid. If you got yourself in any bother, get you out of it, and take you to a place of safety. I’m relying on you, he said, his very words: I’m relying on you to see to it she’s all right, and if she gets in trouble, do whatever it takes.”
“Including slaughtering half a dozen soldiers.”
He turned his head. “More than that, pet,” he said gently, and she shivered. “That was the Guards barracks you were in, they don’t muck about. I should know, I was in the Guards fifteen years. Colour sergeant, I was, till I got in a bit of bother. That’s how come I know my way around in there. Things don’t change in the Guards, see, they like their traditions. And once a Guard, always a Guard, and we look after our own, even when a man’s in a bit of a fix. So when they pulled me in about that other spot of business – I let ’em, of course, put myself where they couldn’t help finding me – and I said who I was, and of course all the old-timers remember me, best colour sergeant they ever had, that’s what they say about me. Wouldn’t argue with that, I was a right bastard in my day. No, they weren’t fussed about some damnfool Watch charges. Forget about it, they said, you’re one of us, you come with us and you can sit it out down the barracks till your bit of bother blows over, and then you can be on your way. So then of course I was in, which is half the battle, right? And I know who’d have which keys, and the back ways round the place they don’t tell just anyone about.”
She nodded slowly. “How much did you say Oida paid you?”
“Hasn’t paid me yet. But I trust him. Gentleman and a scholar, everybody knows that.”
She looked straight at him. “If they catch you—”
“I reckon I’m like the bloody shits. People who catch me don’t live long.” He grinned. There are only five colour sergeants in the Guards at any one time; it’s the highest rank an enlisted man can reach. “I was going to leave town anyhow. This way, I make a bob or two. It’s no bother. I do this stuff for a living.”
If she’d planned the route, she couldn’t have done a better job, and she reckoned she knew the fifty or so square miles north of the city better than anyone in the Service. But there were times when she looked up or jerked awake and didn’t know where she was; she’d ask and he’d tell her, and suddenly it would make sense – yes, there had to be a small strip of land between this road and that, but she’d always assumed you couldn’t get there, because of the mountains, or the marshes. But apparently there were droves and logging roads in those impossible places, because there they were trundling along them, and making marvellously good time into the bargain. “Did we ever offer you a job?” she asked.
“Who’s us?”
“Imperial Intelligence. The spooks.”
“Oh, that lot.” He pulled a scowly face. “Turned ’em down,” he said. “And I was in the condemned cell at the time, so you can see what I think of those bastards. Slippery. Can’t trust ’em further that you can spit. No, I wouldn’t soil my hands.”
Still, as far as she could tell, almost directly north. “Where are we going, exactly?” she asked, on the morning of the third day.
He smiled at her. “Place of safety. Safest place there is.”
“Where’s that?”
“You’ll know when you get there.”
“Did Oida say you weren’t to tell me?”
He leaned towards her and put his left forefinger on her lips. “I’m telling you nicely,” he said. “Don’t ask.”
So she spent the rest of the morning pretending to be asleep, while she thought about various practicalities of her situation. If she’d had a knife, she’d have taken the risk and stabbed him, because there wasn’t much room on the box of the cart; they were sitting thigh to thigh, and nobody’s that quick. But she hadn’t seen a knife, he didn’t seem to carry one; he ate with his fingers, and everything else he used the backsabre for. So she thought about that. It lived on his side of the box, so she’d have to lean right across him to get to it; he left it behind when he stopped to pee, but of course he’d notice if it wasn’t there when he got back. As for trying to creep up on him when he was pissing or having a shit, she considered and dismissed the idea very quickly; eyes in the back of his head, for sure. Very well, then; she could wait till he was asleep, grab the sabre and run for it. She thought about that and decided she didn’t like the idea at all. She would run and run until she was exhausted, and just when she was sure she was safe, there he’d be, rested and at ease and fresh as a daisy. Curious thing; never before had she met an opponent she was afraid of – plenty that were bigger and stronger and faster, many who were better fighters, but she’d always known for a certainty that there’d be a way for her to prevail, and all she had to do was figure out what it was. But Colour Sergeant Porpax of the Guards (charged with preserving her from all harm, like an angel) scared her so much that at times she could scarcely breathe; which might just have been why Oida had chosen him. Damn the man.
“Course, this Lodge thing’s making it dead easy,” he was saying
. “Stupid bloody idea, rounding ’em all up and pulling their necks, hadn’t they noticed the Lodge is into every damn thing? So, get rid of all the Lodge types, everything grinds to a halt, which is why they can’t spare more than a couple of platoons to come looking for us, and that’s if they’re even trying. And you’d need three full companies to find us in this country, and I’m talking about Guards, not the brickheads. It’s the poor sod who’s on our case I feel sorry for. He’s going to have to go back to his CO and say he’s let us get away, and then everything’ll be his fault and his feet won’t touch. We don’t do excuses in the Guards. Do it right and nothing’s said, just noted, carry on, get it wrong and they kick your arse twelve ways to Ascension. Only way to do things, of course, if you want results.”
She stared at him. “You’re not a Craftsman.”
“Me? Do me a favour. Get in with those bastards, can’t call your life your own. Never saw the point in it myself. Oh, I’m not saying some of ’em don’t believe in all that crap, the Great Smith and we all come back as someone else, but I’m telling you, I don’t. Load of dogshit, that’s all it is. And I don’t like the Lodge. Wankers, most of ’em.”
Oida’s a Craftsman, she nearly said. “So, no great loss, then.”
“Wouldn’t say that. We had a lot of Lodge types in the Guards and actually they were all right. It was just something you did if you wanted to get on, make your number with the officers. Not my way, though. I never really gave a shit what the officers thought of me. Keep out of their way and get the job done. Didn’t work, of course, or I wouldn’t have got into trouble.” He sighed, and shifted the reins into his left hand. “Broke a captain’s neck, for bad-mouthing me in front of the men. That’s their trouble: they don’t know when to stop.”
The last landmark she’d recognised was Apoina, and that had been hours ago. Silly, really, because the road couldn’t be more than five miles away to the west, and she’d been up and down it more times than she could begin to calculate. But wherever this was, she’d never been there.