Shadow (Scavenger Trilogy Book 1)

by K. J. Parker

  ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘Now, please listen very carefully, because I’m about to teach you the most important lesson you’ll ever learn.’ He waited for a heartbeat or so, just long enough to tantalise the class into paying attention. ‘Moving your feet as little as you can, turn round in a circle, keeping your eyes fixed at all times on the tip of your sword.’

  Of course, it was something of a shambles. For one thing, he hadn’t specified clockwise or anticlockwise, and it was the first time they’d ever done the exercise . . . Inevitably, one or two novices collided in opposition, their foils meshing like the cogs of a gear-train. There was a certain amount of giggling, and the ludicrous sound of young, pattering feet on a polished wood floor.

  ‘That’ll do,’ Father Tutor called out, and at once the giggling stopped and the youth in the room evaporated like water sprinkled on the bed of a forge. ‘Lower your swords, stand down and listen carefully; this is very difficult, and if you get it wrong you will undoubtedly lose your first live fight and die. Now then.’ He took a deep breath and stuck his thumbs into his sash, an unconscious mannerism that he hated because he knew it made him look pompous and fat, but that he had no real control over. The class was staring at him; he felt apprehension and antagonism. That was good.

  ‘Think,’ he told him, ‘about the circle you’ve just drawn in the air.’ (Was that Father Tutor talking, or the Junior Tutor that Monach had grown into, eighteen years later, the one who copied his former teacher’s words and mannerisms now that he was a teacher himself ? The sword-point describes a circle—) ‘You can’t see it now,’ Father Tutor went on. ‘You’d better learn to see it, because it’s the circle of life and death – your life, your death, and the lives and deaths of others, possibly dozens or hundreds of them. So long as you’re alone in the circle, you’re safe, and so is your enemy. He can’t reach you, and you can’t reach him. As soon as either of you steps into the other’s circle – and of course when you enter his circle, he enters yours – both of you are in terrible danger, both of you are a single moment away from success, from victory. The circle of life and death – there’s a grand, magical-sounding name for you, but that’s precisely what it is. Alone in your circle, you’re safe and you can achieve nothing. Once your circle meshes with someone else’s, you carry with you victory and defeat, both at the same time, success and failure, life and death.’

  They were gazing at him, spellbound – all it took, he reflected cynically, was a little melodrama. He made them wait for a few more moments, then went on. ‘Know your circle,’ he said. ‘Learn it, so that you can see it – not just when you make an effort and look for it, but all the time, whether you want to see it or not. I know it’s imaginary, but you’ve got to make it more real than anything you can touch or see or hear or smell or taste. You’ve got to know how far you can reach out into the world, and how close the world can come to you, before you have to draw and cut. Does everybody understand, or shall I go through it again?’

  He paused for a while, watching the ranks of novices all earnestly imagining dotted lines in the air around them, panicking because they couldn’t quite see them yet. Of course, they were all convinced that they’d just learned something exceptionally profound, like the true secret name of God, when in fact he’d just given them a very useful but entirely basic and mundane lesson in swordsmanship technique. It would be years, probably decades, before they came to realise that the exceptionally profound is always, by definition, basic and mundane.

  ‘Before the next class,’ he said, snapping them back into the visible world, ‘I want you all to learn your circle so well that you’ll know immediately when someone breaks into it – and that includes someone behind you or off to the side, not just in front. We’ll learn that until everybody’s got it perfectly; then we’ll do the same thing with our eyes shut. And then, when we really know our own circles, we’ll learn how to see other people’s.’ He smiled, his most off-putting smile. ‘Usually, I find it takes about ten years to get it right. And that’s if you’re really trying.’

  The class broke up. Father Tutor drifted out of the hall, reaching the door long before any of the scampering novices, even though he had further to go, and one novice from the second-from-last row—

  —Sat up in bed, bolt upright, his eyes still closed, making a noise with his mouth that had words in it but wasn’t speech. Then, as his eyes opened, the dream broke up like thawing ice on a pond, and he remembered who and when and where he was, and where his circle began and ended. Not long afterwards he found out what had woken him up; there was a leak in the roof (water, not sunlight leaking through scraped lamb-skin windows) and a fat, wet raindrop had landed in his ear.

  He stood up and opened the shutter a little, just enough to see the first stains of sunrise through the wet air. He wasn’t as canny about the weather as some, but he could tell from the shape and height of the clouds that it was going to be a long, wet day, miserable for travelling in. He wasn’t particularly happy to find that there was another leak in the roof directly above his right boot, which squelched loudly when he put his foot in it.

  With his coat pulled round his ears and his hat dragged down over them he scuttled across the courtyard to the stables, woke up the groom by yelling in his ear, and told him to get his horse ready as soon as possible; then he scuttled back to the main building, found the landlord, paid him and demanded bread, cheese, hot milk and cider, in that order. By the time he’d dealt with them, the groom had given his horse a cursory dab with the brush and the curry-comb and slopped on the saddle and bridle (but he was always careful to check his own straps and girths, so that was all right). He left the inn just after full sunrise and followed the road west, towards Laise Bohec.

  Find Tazencius, he says. Wonderful. And what if Tazencius doesn’t want to be found? To which Father Tutor would have replied that Tazencius’ wishes in the matter were so far down the list of priorities that he really didn’t need to worry about them. Easy enough to say, in a warm, well-lit upstairs room in the keep of Deymeson.

  In the seventh book of the Dialectics, Posuerus wrote, ‘If you want to find out where someone is, ask his enemy.’ Like so much of Posuerus’ wisdom, it was true up to a point; it was fairly likely that Major-General Actis knew where Tazencius was, rather less likely that he’d be prepared to tell a civilian, even an accredited representative of the order with a sealed pass from Father Prior. But it was a place to start, more likely to succeed than combing the side roads looking under bushes. Major-General Actis, of course, probably wasn’t in Laise right now, but that was no bad thing, since it wasn’t the man himself he was planning to talk to.

  Because of the rain and the churned-up roads and a bridge washed away just south of where the Lambo joined the Bohec, it took him five hours instead of two to reach Laise, and by the time he got there he wasn’t in the mood for subtly picking bits of information out of junior officers like a man scraping the last bit of meat from a crab’s claw. Instead he barged past the sentry in a flurry of sodden coat-tails, calling loudly for the duty officer and trying to look like a spy in a hurry. The duty officer was in the Eastgate tower, playing scuttlejack with the quartermaster and the chief engineer; they jumped up guiltily when he strode in, and tried to stand in front of the board.

  Here goes nothing, Monach thought. ‘You two,’ he snapped at the quartermaster and the engineer, ‘take a walk.’ They did as they were told, giving Monach grounds to be grateful to the rain; when a man’s drenched to the skin and has a suitably hostile attitude, it’s very hard to tell whether he’s a soldier or a civilian without asking him directly.

  ‘Right,’ Monach said, sitting down on the duty officer’s stool and laying his wet, dripping hat right on top of the scuttlejack board, ‘I haven’t got long – the east road’s a disgrace, as I’ll be pointing out in my report – so let’s get straight to the point, please. Prince Tazencius. Where is he?’

  The duty officer looked properly miserable. Monach could sympa
thise. It was the nightmare of everyone who holds a middle-level rank in a strict hierarchy to be given a direct order that contradicts another direct order by someone whose exact seniority you don’t know and daren’t ask for fear of sounding insubordinate; which was why he’d chosen the duty officer, of course. (Attack your enemy at his strongest point; when attacking your allies, look for the weakest link in the chain; Posuerus, Dialectics, VI, 32. Very true, up to a point, and beyond that point, lethally misleading. Typical Posuerus.)

  ‘I’m not supposed to say,’ the poor man mumbled, thereby giving away the fact that he knew the answer. He probably wasn’t a very good scuttlejack player, either. ‘I really need to see some authorisation—’

  Monach made an ungracious noise. ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘except that like everything else with me or on me it’s soaked right through, and even if the ink hasn’t run it’d take three hours to dry out enough to be legible. If I had three hours to waste I wouldn’t need to be here, I’d have gone straight to Actis Fraim and asked him.’

  (It was pure fluke that he happened to know General Actis’ first name; not that it mattered very much, since it was a certainty that the duty officer didn’t.)

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he replied, and Monach couldn’t help noticing how young and generally unfinished he looked, like a clay model for a bronze statue. ‘But I’ve got my orders, and—’

  ‘Yes, you’ve got your orders. From me. Now, if you’d care to obey them, you can get back to your game and I can go and change my clothes before I catch a fever and die.’ He leaned back on the stool, taking note of a rather ominous creak. ‘When you’re ready,’ he added.

  Determination drained out of the duty officer like grain from a rotten sack. ‘We think he’s headed north,’ he said, ‘looking to get across the Mahec and head north-west towards the sea.’ He winced and closed his hands tight. ‘We’ve got a very persuasive source telling us that he and Feron Amathy are planning to join forces with a large party of raiders who’ll be making landfall somewhere in the north-west in about a month’s time. The deal is, the raiders will take care of General Cronan, then transport Tazencius and the Amathy house across the bay for a sneak attack on Torcea; Tazencius will proclaim himself emperor, and in return for their help he’ll withdraw all the imperial garrisons north of the bay and let the raiders do what they like with Mael, Weal, Sansory, Boc, all the northern cities. When they’ve finished and gone home, Feron Amathy will take over what’s left and rule it as a kingdom.’ The duty officer stopped talking and looked down, apparently studying his hands, which were shaking.

  ‘I see,’ Monach said. ‘And what’s Actis Fraim supposed to be doing about this?’

  The duty officer looked up, puzzled, presumably, at how calmly Monach was taking the end of the world. ‘There’s not a lot he can do,’ he replied, ‘except try and cut Tazencius off before he crosses the Bohec, though there’s not much chance of that. Other than that, it’s a matter of staying put and waiting for General Cronan to decide what to do. Actis can’t go charging off north on his own, he’d be cut to ribbons.’

  Monach stood up. ‘You don’t have to answer this,’ he said, ‘but if I’m right about who this very persuasive source is, maybe the shock will make you sneeze. I think your very persuasive source is Chaplain Cleapho.’

  The duty officer stared at him, remembered what he’d been told to do, and mimed a rather unconvincing sneeze. ‘How did you know that?’ he asked.

  Monach narrowed his eyes in what he hoped was the correct manner. ‘You don’t want to ask me things like that,’ he said.

  ‘Oh.’ The duty officer looked away quickly. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t . . .’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Monach told him, erasing the whole conversation with a sweep of his arm. ‘Just tell me this. Where, as precisely as you can tell, is Tazencius likely to be now?’

  The duty officer thought for a moment, then reached behind him and picked up an old-fashioned brass map from the floor. ‘Here,’ he said, stabbing at the plate with a stubby finger that left a smudge on the polished metal. ‘At least, that’s the last place we had a sighting from. Little village called Cric, not far from Josequin.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ Monach said in a neutral voice. ‘I’ve been there.’

  ‘We got the report this morning,’ the duty officer went on. ‘He was headed in that direction, it was the only place he could be making for – well, if you’ve been there, you’ll know that, it’s all empty moorland up there. Our man reckoned he must have had barges waiting for him on the Bohec just downstream from Sansory; after we interrupted him north of Liancor, he’ll have sent on a message for them to pick him up further down the river; then by barge to Beal Ford, which is due south of Josequin, and up the old cart road headed for Cric. Our man said he didn’t seem to be in any great hurry, which Actis reckoned must mean he’s got time in hand – for example, he’s arranged to meet someone but they won’t be there for a day or so. If Cle – if our source is right, that someone’s got to be a messenger from the raiders.’

  ‘Quite,’ Monach said. ‘Thank you.’ He walked to the door, stopped and turned back. ‘This is just a wild guess,’ he said, ‘but if I mentioned the name Poldarn, or two people travelling around in a cart—’

  ‘Ah.’ The duty officer actually grinned. ‘That’s them. Well, her, anyway. I don’t think the man knows anything about it.’

  Monach kept his face as straight as possible. ‘The man,’ he repeated.

  ‘That’s right. Funny, isn’t it,’ he went on, ‘our man turning out to be a woman. No reason why not, of course, far less likely to make people suspicious; it’s just the thought of a female spy, that’s all.’

  Monach felt lucky enough to gamble. ‘That’s Cleapho for you,’ he said. ‘Always willing to give it a try.’

  ‘He’s a very clever man,’ the duty officer replied. ‘I’m just glad he’s on our side.’

  The more I think about it, Monach told himself as his horse splashed through thick puddles of mud on the north-east road, the harder it gets. What the hell am I going to tell Father Tutor?

  First, of course, he was disobeying orders; he’d been told to secure the person of Prince Tazencius, not report news – and most certainly not his interpretation of someone else’s misinformation. In this case, though, he was prepared to take the risk and do the penances, if ever he got the time (five thousand draws and eight thousand cuts would be a positive pleasure if only he could stay in Deymeson and not have to ride a horse again for a year); the thought of what Father Tutor would say to him if he didn’t disobey orders in this case was far more terrifying.

  Cleapho; now there was a difficult man to fathom, if ever there was one. Monach wasn’t sure if he was supposed to know that Cleapho was the head of his order – nearly everybody in Deymeson knew, of course, but how they ever found out was a mystery, since you never heard anybody mention it, even in the most private of conversations. It was pretty obvious what Cleapho was doing; his distrust of General Cronan was no secret either, hadn’t been for many years now. Cleapho was convinced that sooner or later Cronan would turn on the emperor and make a grab for the throne; he was too much of a patriot and an idealist not to. But Cronan wasn’t an idiot, and if this scheme of Cleapho’s was so transparent that even a lowly sword-monk could see through it, could Cronan possibly be fooled by it?

  He forded the river in blinding rain, just managing to get across (an hour later and the ford would be impassable; another damned complication), and resigned himself to a thoroughly unpleasant night ride up the ridge to Deymeson. As the ground underfoot turned from muddy slush to hard stone, he started thinking about Prince Tazencius. If Cleapho’s plot really was as shallow as he was assuming, he and Tazencius had staged Tazencius’ disgrace and rebellion in order to lure Cronan north of the Mahec and get rid of him – for all he knew, really with the help of the raiders, though the scary stuff about giving them Mael and Weal and Boc was clearly nonsense. Tazencius, he could safely
assume, was simply doing what his cousin Galien told him to (just as he always had done, from the famous knife fight incident all those years ago right up to the present), and Galien in turn was taking his orders direct from Prince Suevio, who was doing what his brother wanted but couldn’t do himself, or what Suevio thought he ought to want to do, or what Suevio had decided was good for his brother and the empire, though the emperor himself would have a fit if he ever found out . . . Monach flushed all that stuff out of his mind. Motivations really weren’t important; what mattered was the deployment of forces, the collision and intersection of circles, those of Cronan and his enemies, and whether anything could be done (by, for example, one self-effacing man with a short sword) to stop it.

  Far better, he decided, for him to concentrate on the smaller pieces, to keep his eye on the tip of the sword and watch for the moment when it violated the circumference. Two people, for instance, in a cart. He hadn’t even considered the possibility that whoever they were – the two inadequates he’d bullied – or thought he’d bullied; perhaps they’d been playing him, rather than the other way round – in Sansory jail, or the other Poldarn, the one he’d been starting to believe really was a god in a cart – they were nothing more mystical or supernatural than a couple of spies and couriers using a confidence trick as a cover for espionage and treason. There was a good reason why he hadn’t considered it; it was a bloody stupid idea, to use a dangerous and highly illegal activity as a cover for a dangerous and highly illegal activity. Then again, if the pair he’d spoken to – damn it, had given money to, out of pity – actually were agents for Tazencius or the Amathy house, they’d undoubtedly fooled him completely, which suggested it wasn’t such a bad cover after all. And if it wasn’t them but the other Poldarn, or the other Poldarn’s female companion . . . He realised he was laughing out loud, though he couldn’t hear the laughter over the wind and the clattering of hooves on the stony path. What if both his suspicions were true: that the man was the divine Poldarn and the woman was an Amathy house spy? What if neither of them knew?