by K. J. Parker
‘I think so.’
‘Well done. Anyhow, it’s another two days due south from the Bohec to the south coast – that’s the bay – and it’s a day’s sail from one of the south coast ports straight across the bay to Torcea, where I come from, but of course you can only do that in summer; the rest of the year you have to go the long way round, to the east. Due west’s just open sea, of course, and nobody’s got the faintest idea what’s on the other side of it. And that’s all, really. At least, they’re the only places I’ve ever been to, and they’re enough to be going on with.’
He was feeling drowsy, but this was all good, solid information, as good as tools or weapons. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘And where are we, right now?’
She laughed. ‘Oh, we’re nowhere much,’ she said. ‘We’re at least three days from Josequin; actually, Weal or Mael would be closer, but there’s two lots of mountains in the way.’
‘Have you got anything to eat?’
‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘In the cart. Lift the lid off the box, you’ll find a jar. Josequin biscuits.’ She laughed. ‘And if they don’t refresh your memory, you really aren’t from around here.’
Josequin biscuits turned out to be round, flat and thin, slightly bigger than the palm of his hand; oatmeal sweetened with honey, and there were bits of nuts and raisins in them as well. He didn’t remember them, and they’d have been a little too sweet for his taste if he hadn’t been so hungry. He ate two.
‘It’s one of the odd things about this racket,’ Copis said. ‘Either you’re starving on the road between jobs, or you’re eating wonderful stuff like that – only delicacies are fit for the god, you see. Salmon, smoked lamb, partridges, peacock – plenty of that kind of thing, but if you want a stack of griddle cakes and a hunk of cooking cheese, forget it. Same with drink. If you’d told me five years ago there’d come a day when I’d swap a jug of wine for an equal measure of milk, I’d have laughed in your face. Truth is, though, I never did like wine much. How about you? You don’t know, I suppose.’
‘No.’
‘Oh well.’ He could sense that she was about to ask. ‘You know,’ she went on, ‘I’ve been thinking. I’ve lost my partner, you’re at a loose end till you get your memory back. Seems a bit silly for both of us to wander around the place with no means of earning a living.’
‘You want me to do what he did. Pretend to be a god.’
She giggled. ‘Not a god. The god. Oh damn, I suppose I’ve got to explain that, too. Have I?’
‘It’d help.’
‘All right, then. Lately – let’s say the last ten years, give or take a year – a lot of people, especially up here, have started believing in this new god – well, he’s not new exactly, he’s in all the old stories, but he was supposed to have gone away, and he’s due to come back just before the end of the world. Really he’s kind of a mixed blessing, because he sorts out the good from the bad, however you define that kind of thing, and if you’ve been good you get to survive and inherit the earth, while if you’re bad the enemy’s going to get you. For the enemy,’ she went on, ‘read the pirates, or that’s the way people are taking it, and you can’t blame them, all things considered. Of course it’s all just a load of old rubbish. But you know what they say: opportunities and mushrooms.’
‘Opportunities and mushrooms what?’
‘Grow up out of horseshit,’ she explained. ‘So what do you think? I mean,’ she added, ‘it’s not as if you’re spoilt for choice, is it?’
He laughed. ‘I was thinking earlier,’ he said, ‘about how all of a sudden every damn thing was a choice; all the options you could ever wish for, and no reason for favouring one over the other. I don’t know,’ he went on. ‘What if we show up in some place and it turns out I’ve been there before and they recognise me?’
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t that be a good thing?’
‘That depends,’ he replied, ‘on what I’d been doing the last time I was there. Suppose I really am one of these pirates, for instance.’
‘Then you wouldn’t need to have any worries on that score,’ Copis replied. ‘Nobody knows what they look like. Guess why. Their standard operating procedure is no survivors. Makes it all much simpler really, doesn’t it?’
‘All right, then,’ he said, stifling a yawn with the back of his hand. ‘But the moment my memory comes back, chances are I’ll be off and away like a hare. So long as that’s understood . . .’
‘That’s fine,’ she replied. ‘So, welcome to the team. I suppose I’d better tell you what the job entails.’
‘Later,’ he muttered, as his eyelids started to get heavy. ‘I’ve had a long day.’
She was saying something when he fell asleep, and the dream opened for him, almost impatiently, like a child who’s been promised a walk. Remembering was easy here; he remembered the short man and the dead man in the barn and the woman – but when he looked round, everything was different.
This time he was standing beside a fountain in the middle of a courtyard. He was much younger here, and his reflection in the edge of the pool showed him a round, slightly chubby face topped by a tangle of reddish curls and with the first scruffy traces of a beard. He turned his head, because there was someone standing behind him.
‘Ready?’
He watched himself nod, as the other man (perhaps a year or two older, dressed in the same plain white shirt and rather elegant grey trousers) opened a wooden box and handed him a knife. He picked it up and looked at it thoughtfully, examining it as if the details mattered to him. It was a good-looking knife, as knives go; the blade was about seven inches long, double-edged and gently tapering to a point, the hilt was ivory, carved with a spiral pattern. It looked expensive and either new or very carefully looked after. He wondered why it was important.
‘Remember,’ the other man said, ‘he’ll start off going for your face, trying to scare you. Keep your guard up, don’t let him in close, you’ll be fine. What you’ll need to be doing is using your feet – don’t let him make you play his game, up and down in a straight line. Use your back foot, try and get round him all the time, don’t be afraid to use left-hand blocks – you’re quicker than him; he’s bigger and stronger but that really shouldn’t come into it. Let him wear himself out, and then he’ll get sloppy and drop his guard. He’s only got to do it once, after all, and you’re home and dry. Got that?’
For a moment, he hadn’t been paying attention; he’d been looking at the statue that formed the centrepiece of the fountain. Not beautiful, by any stretch of the imagination, but striking: a crow, very realistically rendered, holding a gold ring in its beak.
(Ah, now I know where I am, I’m back inside my memory. So that’s all right.)
He nodded. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘I ought to be able to handle this. To be honest, I’m more concerned about what’s going to happen afterwards.’
That seemed to annoy the other man. ‘Don’t think about that,’ he said. ‘Really, you mustn’t. Anything like that could distract you, put you in two minds at the crucial moment. As far as you’re concerned, all you’re here to do is stick that knife in his ribs. We’ll handle the rest, don’t you worry.’
It was beautifully cool in the courtyard, near the water. When the other man wasn’t looking, he reached out and cupped a little in his hand; when he sipped, he made a soft slurping noise and immediately felt embarrassed.
‘All right,’ the other man said, peering round a column and through the courtyard gate, ‘he’s coming. You know what to do. Good luck.’
(I know what to do, do I? This’ll be interesting.)
He grinned in reply, slid the knife into his sash behind his back and moved away from the fountain towards the gateway, where he couldn’t be seen by anyone coming in from the main yard. The other man sat down on a bench in the shadows on the west side of the yard, pulled out a book, opened it at random and started to read. Not long afterwards, he saw a shadow coming in through the gateway and recognise
d it as his cue. Timing was important here; he counted under his breath, one, two, then started to walk briskly towards the gate. After five steps he collided heavily with the man whose shadow he’d just seen. Without stopping to catch his breath, he said his line, ‘Watch out, you bloody fool. Why can’t you look where you’re going?’
The man he’d just walked into had caught him, holding him by the elbows so he wouldn’t fall over. ‘I do apologise,’ he said. ‘My fault. Terribly sorry.’
A big man, this newcomer, over six feet tall, broad-shouldered, with long, straight black hair, a thick beard with maybe five or six grey hairs in it, and noticeably gentle brown eyes. He was smiling. No good at all.
‘That’s not good enough,’ he improvised. ‘Crashing into me like that, you could have done me an injury.’ He sounded nervous, and he had an unpleasant feeling that the big man had picked up on it. Nevertheless; ‘Someone ought to teach you a lesson,’ he went on, trying to make that nervousness sound like anger and not making a very good job of it.
‘I said I’m sorry,’ the man replied, letting go of his arms. ‘I’m in a bit of hurry, that’s all, and I wasn’t thinking. You aren’t hurt, are you?’ he added.
‘No. That’s not the point.’ This was all wrong; this dreadful man, this enemy of the empire, should be as easy to provoke as a wasps’ nest. Instead it was like trying to pick a fight with a pillow. ‘You barge around like you own the place – well, you don’t. Not yet, anyhow.’
That got his attention; but instead of getting angry he just seemed curious. Damnation, he’s figured it out, I’ve given the game away. He knows he’s being set up.
‘What a strange thing to say,’ the man replied. ‘And I’m very sorry I’ve upset you. It was just an accident, that’s all.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Out of the corner of his eye he could see the other man, his friend, looking embarrassed, shooting him a trust-you-to-cock-it-up look from behind the pages of his book. Now that did make him angry. ‘I think you did it on purpose—’
‘How could I have? I didn’t even know you were there.’
‘You did it on purpose,’ he ground on, ‘because you enjoy pushing people like us around, you like shoving us about because it makes you feel big. Well, we’ll see how big you are.’ And, on that really quite unsatisfactory line, he pulled the knife out, took a step back and crouched in the best coaching-manual fashion.
The big man looked at him and sighed. ‘I see,’ he said. He didn’t move. ‘Your idea?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ It was exquisitely embarrassing standing there in the second defensive guard (weight on the back foot, head and arms well forward, left elbow up, right hand low), talking back to an enemy who was upright, unarmed, with hands folded across his chest. ‘Come on,’ he said, aware that his voice was getting higher and higher the more flustered he became. ‘Scared, are you?’
‘Yes,’ the man replied (he didn’t look it). ‘People waving knives at me generally have that effect.’ Damn it, he was starting to walk backwards, he was getting away. This wasn’t meant to happen – it was time to do something. If he just walked away, and then told people about what’d just happened, how he’d been set up . . . Feeling wretchedly stupid, he stepped forward sharply with his left leg, threw a feint to the head and converted it into a thrust to the groin. The man blocked him easily with his left hand and punched him on the nose with his right.
He hadn’t been expecting that; it was bad form, common, to punch in a knife fight. And it hurt . . He staggered back three or four steps, managed not to drop the knife; if the man had followed up, he’d have had no chance. But he didn’t; he was turning his back, leaving. With a shout of dismay he jumped forward again, misjudging the distance because the punch had left him groggy, but he managed to grab the man’s shoulder and pull him round. The man’s right hand came up fast to take the knife away from him; as he pulled it away, like a child protecting a toy from an angry parent, the side of the man’s hand brushed against it and drew blood.
He was appalled at the sight of it, for some reason; he felt so stupid . . . But the man was still trying to get the knife; he hopped back two-footed and steadied himself. ‘For God’s sake,’ his friend was shouting behind him. He made a conscious effort, pretended he was back in the fencing school, about to perform an exercise. Come on, he was good at this . . . He struck out, narrowly missing the ball of the man’s right shoulder (but at least it was a legitimate fighting shot, not like that horrible confused grabbing and pulling away), and brought his arm back and down for a stomach thrust. The big man (his eyes were cold now) blocked that with his left forearm to the wrist, reached behind his back and drew his own knife (at last; I thought we’d never get there . . .). He was so relieved that he didn’t realise he was out of position and horribly open until it was almost too late.
But, as his friend had said earlier, he was quick. Another jump back, and he landed well, on the balls of his feet, good balance. The man was serious now, either angry or resigned; his back was bent too, his hands forward and low. The knife in his hand was one of those long, thin, square-section stilettos, the kind engineers and artillerymen carry, with a scale of inches engraved on the blade – no cutting edges, but extremely efficient for stabbing with. For the first time it occurred to him that he might easily get killed . . . He shivered, felt his stomach churn. He was an expert fencer, sure, but this was the first time in his life he’d ever tried to kill anybody, or face someone who was trying to kill him. He didn’t like it at all.
The hell with it, he thought, and tried his best shot. It was a complex manoeuvre, made up of three parts – feint at the eyes, drop low for another feint to the hands, snap back up for a killing shot to the head – but it was a guaranteed match-winner if it worked and he’d practised it over and over again. The man stepped back on the first feint, read it (as he was meant to do), moved his left arm to block the blow shot, read that too—
—And what he should have done, if he’d learned his knife-fighting in the Purple Ring instead of an alley behind some dockside tavern, was sidestep for a counterattack, right into the path of the oncoming blade. Instead, quite improperly, he switched his weight on to his right foot and struck out hard with his left. The boot landed squarely in the younger man’s crotch. He dropped his knife and doubled over, hearing his own shriek of pain as he found himself suddenly and unexpectedly staring at the grass between his feet. Fuck, I’m going to die, he thought, just as the older man’s left fist crashed into the side of his head and dumped him on the ground.
For a long time, nothing happened. He was lying on his left arm, not really aware of very much beside the splitting pain in his head and groin. He heard his friend screaming, ‘You idiot!’ but he was past caring now about what other people thought of him; in fact, nothing really registered apart from his extreme discomfort. Then he saw the man’s boots coming towards him – that’s it, he’ll finish me off now, oh well – and tried to move, but he was wasting his time.
The other man lifted his right foot and kicked him hard in the stomach.
‘All right,’ he heard the man say, ‘you can get up now. And you—’ Presumably to his friend, though it hardly mattered. ‘You stay out of it. Don’t I know you from somewhere?’
‘I don’t think so,’ his friend stuttered – spineless bastard! Get him for that . . . ‘I was just sitting here . . .’
‘Yes, all right.’ The man sounded annoyed, that was all. ‘And I do know you, come to think of it. You’re Galien – I beg your pardon, Prince Galien. Your idea, was it?’
‘No, really,’ Galien replied, terrified. ‘Like I said, I was just . . .’
‘Bugger off.’
‘But I . . .’
‘I said bugger off.’ Apparently Galien did as he was told because he heard nothing more from him; instead he felt the man’s hand on his collar, hauling him up. His legs weren’t working very well, and he ended up hanging off the man’s hand, like a little kid. ‘And
you, Tazencius,’ the man was saying, ‘you really ought to know better. You really thought you could pull off something like this? You two?’
‘Let go of me,’ he gasped.
‘All right,’ the man said, and let go. Of course, he ended up back on the ground again. He had the feeling he’d turned his ankle over. ‘Now then, when you’re ready.’ He felt himself being hauled up again, like a fish on a line, and found himself looking straight into the man’s face. ‘You clown,’ the man said.
‘You—’ It was all he could manage to keep himself from bursting into tears. ‘You’re going to tell my father, aren’t you?’
Oh, the scorn in the man’s eyes . . . ‘No,’ he said. ‘That’d only make things worse, he’d have to punish you and then everybody would hate me, instead of just nearly everybody. Dear God, what is it with you people? Can’t you just leave me alone?’
‘I’m sorry.’ He said it without thinking, because it was what he felt. Suddenly the man smiled.
‘You’re sorry,’ he repeated. ‘Well, that’s all right, then.’ He let go. ‘Apologise nicely, or it’s straight up to bed and no pudding. You lot, you’re amazing.’ But he didn’t seem angry any more; the contempt was still there, but it probably always had been. And it was tolerant contempt, the sort he sometimes caught sight of in the eyes of the older servants, the ones who’d been at court a long time. ‘Now go away,’ the man went on, ‘before somebody comes along and sees us. And listen, Tazencius; next time you and your devious cousin want to play at politics, don’t try picking a fight with a soldier, or you might get hurt; and you’re a prince, and I’ve sworn to protect all the members of the royal family with my life, including, God help us all, you. I’d hate to get drawn into a fight with a grown-up just to stop you getting your silly throat cut. Got that?’