Shadow (Scavenger Trilogy Book 1)

by K. J. Parker

  Once he’d parted company from the false god and his priestess (they vanished as if by magic; one moment they were there, the next they’d gone), he turned his horse east, towards the road that led to Deymeson, rest and sanity. (‘Just one thing,’ the man had asked. ‘What was it gave us away, when we told you the first story?’ He replied that it had been the bit about glassblowing; true, there were glassworks in Josequin, but he didn’t look anything like any glassblower he’d ever met, and as it happened he’d met several. Glassblowing was, however, one of the trades of which Poldarn was supposed to be the patron; hence the mental association, for a southerner. At which the man had shaken his head. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘that was perfectly true. Not about Josequin, I’ve never been there in my life. But I was apprenticed to a glassworks when I was a kid, and I passed my trade test, even stuck it there for a year or two, so yes, I’m a glassblower all right.’) With any luck he’d be able to turn in his report, kid his way through his debriefing and get back to drawing and cutting practice. All in all, he decided, he wasn’t suited to being an investigator: too complicated for his liking, nothing straightforward that split down the grain or cut cleanly. The Poldarn business was worse than any other investigation he’d been involved with, of course; it was a case of the more he thought about it, the more obscure it became.

  The trick, as he knew perfectly well, was not to think about it. No need to, after all. He’d make his report; an investigator – somebody else, please God, let it be somebody else – would be sent to Morevich to verify the false god’s story, the matter would be reported in passing in closed chapter and put aside as a dead issue. The nasty loose ends, such as who had put on the show at Cric, how he’d been able to foretell the future and raise the dead, how General Allectus had managed to survive this long without being found, who the god in the cart was if he wasn’t Poldarn, these fell outside his remit and he didn’t have to bother about them. Indeed, if he tried to raise any of these issues, he’d get told off by Father Tutor, and quite right, too. It’s not the place of the swordsman to fight shadows. (Who’d said that? Somebody famous.)

  For the rest of the day he kept catching sight of two black birds, rooks or crows or ravens, flying slowly alongside him a long way away. Whether they were the same ones or different each time he had no way of knowing, but most of the time he was fairly certain they were ravens, therefore not significant or a coincidence.

  He reached the Piety and Poverty an hour before dark and spent the evening playing whittlejack for pleasure and profit with a party of bone merchants en route to Sansory to buy at the ossiary sale. By the time he’d finished with them, the number of cartloads of bones they’d be able to afford had gone down considerably, but they seemed good-humoured about it and even offered to buy him a drink. He refused politely, explaining that he had to be up early and clear-headed in the morning, and went to bed, wondering what on earth he was going to do with the substantial sum of money he’d just acquired. It was no conceivable use to him, and he didn’t relish the prospect of explaining how he’d come by it if he turned it over to Brother Treasurer. Giving it back to the four jolly bonemen would probably be construed as an insult, and he was too tired to go back and deliberately lose it to them, even assuming he was capable of such finesse in his play. He could dump it, he supposed, or leave it in his room for the groom or the chambermaid, but the Piety was the kind of place where they might just send on a purse of money found in a guest’s room, with an explanatory note (‘the serving girl says you left this money on your pillow . . .’, not something he’d like Father Tutor to read if he could help it). There was always the deserving poor, of course, except that brothers of the order weren’t authorised to deal in largesse and charity except by special licence of their superiors, for fear of setting awkward precedents, upsetting the balance of existing aid and alms initiatives, and so on, and so on. In the end he spent a whole hour staring resentfully at the purse, wishing he’d had the moral fortitude to resist the chance of playing whittlejack with born losers . . . But he’d always been exceptionally good at the game, and he enjoyed it, and only got a chance to play once in a blue moon, and everybody knows that it’s physically impossible to play it except for money.

  Some god or angel must have visited him in a dream, because when he woke up he knew exactly what to do. He found the innkeeper, a man he’d known for years (though the innkeeper didn’t know him from a brick in the wall, owing to the fact that each time he’d been there he’d been using a different persona) and reckoned he could trust, at least with something he couldn’t give a damn about.

  ‘See this?’ he said, emptying a few of the coins on to his palm. ‘Belongs to a friend of mine. He left it with me for safe-keeping and I was going to meet him here and give it back to him. But he must’ve got held up somewhere, and I haven’t got time to hang around waiting for him. Can you keep an eye out for him, and let him have it?’

  He could see the innkeeper looking wistfully at the money and resolving to be good. ‘No problem,’ he replied. ‘So what’s he called, your friend?’

  Monach shook his head. ‘It’s not as simple as that,’ he replied. ‘I promise you there’s nothing skew about it, only he won’t be travelling under his own name.’ Then he gave the innkeeper the description of the god in the cart he’d heard from the man in Cric who might have been General Allectus. ‘He may be travelling in a cart,’ he added. ‘Possibly he’ll have a woman with him, or he may just send her, I can’t say for certain. ’ He then described the priestess. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ he added. ‘I don’t think my friend’ll begrudge you two gross-quarters for your trouble.’

  The innkeeper brightened up considerably, and said no, that wasn’t necessary; Monach insisted, the innkeeper insisted back, Monach counterinsisted and the innkeeper tightened his hand round the purse so hard it was a miracle he didn’t bend the coins double. ‘Oh, one other thing,’ Monach added. ‘As and when one of them shows up, if you can spare one of your people to run out to the Joy and Sorrow at Deymeson, leave a message for me there. My name’s Monach.’

  ‘Of course,’ the innkeeper said. ‘I’ll send one of my boys over. They’re always glad of an excuse for a trip out.’

  Monach thanked him and ordered a good breakfast. As he ate it, he wondered whether it had been such a good idea after all. Anybody riding east from Sansory would be sure to stay over at the Piety, it was the only half-decent inn on a bleak and miserable road. There was therefore a one in four chance that the other Poldarn, the one who’d been to Cric, would end up there sooner or later; slightly better odds that the innkeeper would recognise him from Monach’s description and send the message. If sent, the message was almost certain to reach him, since the Joy was owned by the Order and the people there were used to fielding strange and unintelligible messages and passing them on discreetly. In short, there was a remote but far from negligible chance that he’d end up getting a lead on this other Poldarn, the one he’d been thinking long, awkward thoughts about, and that given such a lead he might feel a moral obligation to do something about it. The god or angel in his dream had reckoned that was a good idea. He wasn’t so sure.

  He was still prodding at this question like a sore tooth when he reached Deymeson. As always, he had mixed feelings as he dismounted and knocked at the gate, waiting for Brother Porter to open up. It had to be admitted, he enjoyed being out in the world, free for a while from authority and the Rule, living his vicarious lives, eating good food in inns and sleeping between sheets instead of under a single blanket on a stone bench. But the soft beds never did his back any good, the food gave him indigestion after a day or so, and he’d joined the order and submitted to the Rule because this was the only place on earth where he could do what he most wanted to do, what he needed to do in order to make sense of the world. In a week’s time, when he’d got back into the routine of offices, services, training, teaching and practice, the thought of going outside wouldn’t please him at all; it’d be a chore to
be got over with rather than an opportunity for a holiday.

  ‘He wants to see you straight away,’ Brother Porter told him, as soon as he was inside the gate. ‘Been sending down, asking are you back yet, anybody know where you’ve got to?’ Brother Porter’s grin had a definite spike of malice to it. ‘Said to tell you, leave your horse for the ostlers to see to, you go straight on up.’

  Monach sighed. It was never personal with Brother Porter; he savoured the misfortunes of everybody with equal relish, to the point where it was hard to resent him. ‘Wonderful,’ he said, ‘thank you so much for telling me.’

  The reception he received from Father Tutor was most disturbing; no polite enquiry about his health, subtly barbed references to tardiness or ineptitude, graceful derision of his work or results, no torture of any kind. Instead Father Tutor actually seemed pleased to see him, in a preoccupied sort of a way. For his mentor and guide to come so close to acknowledging that he might actually need his services, instead of merely tolerating them, the situation must be close to catastrophic.

  It was.

  ‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ Father Tutor said. ‘Tazencius has gone missing.’

  Monach tried to stop his jaw swinging open; it was sloppy, undisciplined and sure to be commented on. Father Tutor didn’t seem to have noticed.

  ‘As far as we can make out,’ Father Tutor went on, ‘he was recalled, presumably in disgrace; a troop of cavalry, from one of the household regiments, was sent to bring him back, but he got past them – have you heard any of this?’

  Monach shook his head.

  ‘He got past them,’ Father Tutor continued, staring past Monach’s head at the corner of the ceiling, ‘but they caught him up; something odd happened there, and we can’t find out what it was, but the upshot was they got him back. Then they lost him again.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Oh indeed,’ Father Tutor said, and just for a moment there was a reassuring note of mockery in his voice. ‘Furthermore, their bodies were found between Sansory and Mael, carved up, and no trace of Tazencius whatsoever.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Monach interrupted, ‘but when you say carved up—’

  Father Tutor nodded. ‘Massive cuts and slashes to the neck and upper body, consistent with the wounds typically made by backsabres. Which, as you know, could mean any one of a number of things, all of them in this context contradictory. Just the sort of vital clue we could’ve done without, if you ask me. Anyway,’ Father Tutor said, looking away in another direction, ‘I need a good eye, a fast hand and above all a sharp mind. I want you to find Tazencius and bring him back here, as quickly as possible.’

  Monach realised he’d caught his breath. He let it go, and said, ‘Understood. Where do you suggest I should start?’

  Father Tutor thought for a moment. ‘Sansory,’ he replied.

  ‘Right. Actually, I’ve just come from there.’

  A shrug of the shoulders. ‘I don’t imagine for one moment that Tazencius is there,’ he said, ‘but I believe that you’re more likely to pick up the scent there than anywhere else. I can’t give you any better advice than that, I’m afraid; you’ll just have to pick it up as you go along. You’ll manage, though. You seem to have a flair for the work. Do you want to take anybody with you? As you can imagine, manpower is at something of a premium at the moment, but I could certainly spare you a dozen or so men at arms and half a dozen brothers—’

  Just when Monach thought there couldn’t be any more surprises . . . ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘but I’ll be better off recruiting locally, if I need help; it’s less awkward that way. I might need money, though,’ he added.

  ‘Whatever you think fit,’ Father Tutor replied, dismissing the detail with a slight gesture of the left hand. ‘And anything else you might need, help yourself. If you’ll bear with me a moment, I’ll write the requisition now.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Monach said in a very small voice. ‘When do I leave?’

  Father Tutor looked up from his lectern. ‘That’s up to you too,’ he said. ‘If you feel up to leaving straight away, that’d obviously save time, but if you want to rest and prepare yourself, I’ll quite understand, you can leave in the morning.’

  ‘I think I’ll do that,’ Monach said, ‘if you’re sure that’s all right. The truth is, I haven’t been able to keep up my practice while I’ve been away, and I’m starting to feel awkward, like my skin’s shrunk.’

  Father Tutor nodded gravely. ‘Very sensible,’ he said. ‘In which case, may I recommend an hour of solitary meditation, a light meal and an afternoon in one of the private chapels working quietly and steadily through the principal sequences? I don’t know about you, but I found it always worked for me.’

  The principal sequences: kneeling draw, seated draw, standing draw, the eight cuts and the eight wards, the circle of life and death, the blind fencer, the sheathed sword. As he released control of his body to the memory, the instinct that guided him in the movements, he tried to clear his mind by reciting the paradoxes of defence:Space is time.

  The circle of life is the circle of death.

  Sheathed, the sword is drawn back to strike.

  The fastest draw is not drawing.

  Only the finest master can match the skill of the novice.

  Only he who does not think will live for ever.

  Like the draw itself, he reflected (and his right hand found the hilt, the sword sliced the air where an enemy’s neck would be and the hilt found his left hand for the finishing cut); he knew the paradoxes so well that any shred of meaning they’d once had for him had long since been ground away and they’d become nothing but noises, as instinctive to his mind as the position of the hilt was to his hand. By the time he’d worked through all the sequences it was after evensong, and as his mind came back he realised he was exhausted. He dragged himself back to his quarters, lay down on the stone ledge like a book replaced on its proper shelf, and fell asleep.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘Just my rotten luck,’ the new man was saying, ‘just my rotten bloody filthy stinking luck. Fifteen of us in the pool, and he has to pick me. Typical.’

  Poldarn had been learning the art of not listening. He’d had to pick it up as he went along, but desperation is a fine teacher. He had no alternative but to learn, and learn quickly, otherwise he’d have to kill the man to save himself from going crazy, and killing him would of course prove him right.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming you,’ the new man went on, in exactly the same low mumbling voice he’d been using for the last three days. ‘You didn’t choose me, he did. I mean, I don’t suppose it’s much fun for you people, having everybody you ride with ending up dead. I mean, if it was me in your shoes, I wouldn’t be able to sleep nights thinking about it. I’m sorry for you, really I am. No, it’s him I’m angry with, really, really angry, because he had no call to go picking me, I never did him any harm—’

  It was in Poldarn’s mind to point out at some stage that so far they’d been on the road together for three days and two nights, and so far the worst peril they’d encountered had been the pea soup in the Mercy and Forbearance. He hadn’t done so yet, partly because of tempting providence, partly because interrupting the new man’s flow wasn’t going to be easy. Words poured steadily out of him like grain flowing through a hole in the bottom of a manger, and all he could do was hang on and wait till eventually there weren’t any more.

  Which was a pity, because if he’d been able to have a normal conversation with the man there were all sorts of questions he’d have liked to have asked about Liancor, the place they were going to. For one thing, it was south of the Bohec, and it was the first time (first time he could remember) that he’d been across the river. Things were different on this side. Instead of sprawling shapelessly, the moor was parcelled up in neat, sheep-filled squares with birch-hedged banks and dry-stone walls. Here and there he saw buildings – sheds and linhays mostly, but a few houses and yards as well, suggesting that
life on this side was settled and secure enough that people dared to live outside the villages. The road was narrower, sheltered from the wind by banks and hedges, more rutted and worn, and much busier – hardly an hour went by without another cart or wagon creaking past them, going the other way. There were birds other than crows on this side of the river: big mobs of pigeons and peewits, either pitched in the trees or down on the ground, munching devastating rides through fields of young cabbage and kale; every now and then a buzzard circling high over a copse or covert; just occasionally a heron standing in the bed of one of the fast, shallow rivers that drained down to the Bohec out of the moorland hills. It was useful, productive country, on your side rather than against you, and people quite definitely lived here. As for Liancor itself, he knew absolutely nothing about it apart from the name.

  ‘What I want to know is—’ The new man stopped abruptly and sat up, staring at something on the other side of the combe; then, just as Poldarn (who couldn’t see anything) was about to ask what was so interesting, he sighed. ‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘I suppose that’s it. Had to come sooner or later.’

  Poldarn peered as hard as he could, but all he could see was a hillside, some walls, a couple of thorn trees bent sideways by the wind, and a small group of wild ponies. ‘What are you talking about?’ he said.

  ‘Over there,’ the new man said. ‘Are you blind or something? Look, they’re—’

  Which was as far as he got. A stone whizzed out of nowhere and hit him in the middle of his forehead. His head jerked back and he fell on his back in the bed of the cart as another stone smacked into Poldarn’s shoulder, wasting its force against the steel plates sewn into his gambeson. It was still enough to startle him out of his wits and move him in his seat, as if he’d been shoved. The next two rattled off the side of the cart, digging out finger-sized chunks of timber. He didn’t hang around to see if the grouping improved. From the box he jumped on to the bank, scrambled over it and half slid, half fell into the ditch on the other side, which was about eighteen inches deep and full of water.