Savages

by K. J. Parker

  It was dark by the time they arrived at the house, and all Aimeric wanted to do was dissolve in a warm bath and go to bed. Instead, he was told that his mother was waiting for him in the upstairs room.

  “Mother,” he said.

  She turned her head and looked at him. “You’re too late for dinner,” she said. “You’ll have to have something cold on a tray.”

  For seven years, until she married Father, she’d been the principal soubrette at the Comedy theatre. The Golden Butterfly, they’d called her. Certain death to mention that nowadays, of course. A little of that ethereal beauty still remained, almost detached, like a pool of rainwater stranded in mud as the floods recede. His father had believed he was marrying a beautiful airhead. Best mistake he ever made, people said.

  He supposed he ought to say something. “Mother,” he said. “I’m so sorry—”

  She looked at him. “Did Hosculd explain?”

  “No.”

  “Good. I told him not to. Sit down.”

  He sat. The upstairs room was Mother’s territory. Accordingly, the furnishings were sparse, severe, uncomfortable and obscenely expensive. He perched on a three-legged ivory stool, folded his hands in his lap, and waited.

  “The business is bankrupt,” she said.

  He frowned. “Sorry?”

  “You heard me. We’re on the point of collapse. There’s no money.”

  A very odd feeling. The closest he’d ever been was a bad moment in the Compassion, end of the term before last, when a man he’d ben having a political discussion with very nearly succeeded in strangling him. A sort of vagueness, inability to think; a floating sensation in a moment of total numb stupidity. It occurred to him that he might be having a stroke, except there was no pain. “What do you mean?” he heard himself say.

  “There’s no money,” his mother repeated. “To be precise, we have twenty-six thousand four hundred in the current account, as at close of business this evening. Tomorrow morning I have to pay out twenty-four thousand nine hundred for the wages. The day after tomorrow, I have to pay the steel bill, which is eighteen thousand two hundred and fifty. We’re owed forty-six thousand by the Armoury Board, payable in six weeks time, but by then we need to have found five hundred and eighty-six thousand for bills and overheads, plus fifty-four thousand interest on loans. There’s also the penalties on contracts we won’t be able to honour, which will be something in the order of five hundred thousand.” She paused to draw breath, then went on, “The assets of the business, at valuation as at your father’s death, stood at five million three. Loans and mortgages charged on those assets, seven million nine. Value of contracts—”

  “I don’t understand.” He wanted to laugh, because it was a really good joke. “How can we go bust making weapons for the government in the middle of a war?”

  She gave him her famous non-smile. “Good question,” she said. “Somehow, your father managed it. Mostly, I gather, by ruinous under-bidding to offer the lowest price on large-scale contracts. For the last three years we’ve been equipping the armies of the Empire at twenty per cent below cost, apparently. Tremendously patriotic of us, but really rather stupid. Also, he was paying well over the odds for labour, when everyone else was hiring foreigners and savages. I knew about that,” she added briskly, “but not about the under-bidding. Stupid of me. I assumed he’d have more sense.”

  Aimeric stared at her. “But we’re winning the war,” he said.

  “Quite,” she said. “Which, of course, makes matters worse. About the only thing that could have saved us—presumably he was counting on it—would’ve been a major defeat, the loss of an entire division, a whole army. Then there’d have had to be new contracts for equipping new recruits, and presumably he was hoping he’d have the Board over a barrel and a chance to renegotiate the old contracts and bleed them white on the new ones. Instead, we’ve got Calojan driving the Sashan into the sea, and the end of the war possibly only a matter of months away. After which, the entire civilised world will be awash with surplus armaments, and nobody will want to buy new for a generation. We’re finished.”

  Aimeric shook his head. “The government won’t let us go bust,” he said. “They need what we make. They can’t fight a war without us.”

  She made a faint tutting noise, as though he’d made an elementary mistake in his long division. “The government is our biggest creditor,” she said. “They’ll take over everything and run it themselves. It’s what they’ve been wanting to do since the outbreak. Your father—” She stopped. Some things are diminished by being confined in words. “They’ll take everything and there won’t be anything left. There it is.”

  Saloninus, in the Exceptional Dialogues, speculates about the end of the world. Will it be a great sundering, the sky falling on the land, or a great inundation, the sea gradually rising until the last treetop is drowned, or a great fire, or—Wrong. The end of the world is like this, and a deaf man who couldn’t lipread wouldn’t even realise what had just happened. “So,” Aimeric said. “What will we do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She must have failed to understand the question. He repeated it.

  “I don’t know.” She never raised her voice. “It’s not like I can go back on the stage again. You’re useless. Your sister knows how to wear clothes and hold still while they do her hair. We aren’t on speaking terms with your uncle Hilderic. I really don’t know. This house will have to go, obviously. I don’t know if your father put anything aside for something like this, though I doubt it. If he did, the secret died with him. I’m sorry, Aimeric, I really don’t know. I don’t suppose any of your college friends has a father who needs a clerk and a housekeeper.”

  Not meant as a joke. He looked at her. All his life, she’d always known what to do, in every circumstance. No money. Think.

  “How much did you say was in—?”

  She laughed. “The twenty-six thousand? The same thought did cross my mind. But we can’t get at it until the bank opens in the morning, and by then the news will be all round the town. We wouldn’t get past the City gate.”

  “Isn’t there anyone you could talk to?”

  “I tried,” she said. “Stupidly. I went to see Senator Luitprand on the Ways and Means committee. He owed your father enough favours, God knows.”

  “And?”

  “Luitprand alerted the Armoury Board, the bank and our principal suppliers. National security. Serves me right for thinking someone might actually be inclined to help us.” She examined a fingernail, picked at it, looked away. “Hosculd wanted to help. He offered me his life savings. I told him not to be so stupid.”

  “How much has he—?”

  She looked at him. “There’s nothing we can do, Aimeric. I for one am simply too tired to bother any more. I propose sitting here still and quiet and waiting to find out what they intend to do with us. It’s not ideal, but I don’t see that we have much say in the matter any more.”

  The way she’d phrased that made him shiver. “What do you mean, do with us?”

  She smiled coldly at him. “One line of argument would be that your father was the business, so its debts and malfeasances died with him. An alternative view would be that you’re his heir, the company is still in being, therefore you should be held liable. I don’t think they’d be able to make out a case against you in the criminal courts, but a civil action’s quite different, I understand. And a debtors’ prison’s more or less the same as any other sort of prison, though I imagine you get a slightly better class of people.”

  “That’s—” The way she’d said it. “That’s not fair.”

  “No, not really. After all, you made it abundantly clear that you never wanted anything to do with the business, apart from the luxuries its proceeds bought you. Of course, if you’d taken a little bit more of an interest, we might not find ourselves in this ghastly situation, but that’s all past history, isn’t it? No, I don’t suppose for one moment that what’s going to happen to us will
be the least bit fair. That’s life, Aimeric. It’s a pity they didn’t teach you that at that expensive university.”

  He felt as though she’d just stabbed him. He’d always assumed—He drew a line in his mind. “There must be something we can do,” his voice said. She didn’t bother to reply. Instead, she said, “Gesel’s downstairs, if there’s anything you want to say to her.” She was quite right; he’d forgotten all about his sister. Most people did. Even so. “She’ll have heard you arrive.”

  She picked up her embroidery frame. He had no idea what had become of all the cushions, centrepieces, gloves, screens, pillowcases she’d embroidered over the years; she worked at it for four hours a day, every day without fail, but there wasn’t a single thing to be seen anywhere in the house, never had been. He wondered; if you took the frame away from her (the bailiffs would do just that), would she still sit there, from supper till bedtime, her hands moving without frame, thread or needle? She didn’t like people looking, but the glances he’d managed to steal over the years suggested she was very good at it. As she should be, after so long.

  The frame told him he was supposed to go now. He got up without a word and lumbered down the stairs into the main room. Gesel was sitting on a stool beside the shuttered window. “Hello,” he said.

  “You’re back, then.”

  Almost an accusation; as if he was a fellow-prisoner who’d escaped and been recaptured, and now they were going to double the guard and build extra watchtowers. “Looks like it,” he said, went to pour himself a drink. The decanter was empty.

  “She had Gathia pour it all away,” Gesel said.

  He nodded. “Probably wise,” he said. “We all need to keep a clear head if we’re going to get out of this mess.” He stopped. “You do know—?”

  She nodded. Oh yes, she knew.

  “I asked her what we’re going to do. She said she didn’t know.”

  Gesel shrugged. “You don’t know,” she said. “You weren’t here.”

  “Yes, thank you, that fact hadn’t escaped my attention. For crying out loud,” he snapped, “what was everybody thinking of? Letting it get in such a state.”

  She frowned; breach of good taste. “He thought very highly of you, you know.”

  “Balls.”

  “He was very proud of you, going to the University.”

  “He did his damnedest to stop me going.”

  She looked at him. “Really,” she said. “Do you honestly think, if he hadn’t wanted you to go, he’d have let you?”

  Once again, that stunned feeling. He’d never thought of it in those terms before. The answer to her question, quite obviously, was, No.

  “He’d read out bits from your letters,” she went on. “Not the bits where you asked for more money, of course.”

  Which was the only reason he’d ever written. With little descriptive interludes between the heartfelt pleas, for padding and to create a general feeling of goodwill and benevolence. He’d copied those bits out of a book; The Student’s Scrivener, letters home for all occasions for young gentlemen of good family in temporarily embarrassed circumstances. And he’d always thought of his father as part enemy, part prey; to be beguiled, deceived, ambushed, punished, forced to pay reparations. Maybe he’d only spent all that money so as to have a reason to gouge some more.

  But there was no time for any of that. “She seems to have decided,” he said, “that all we can do is sit quietly and wait for the bailiffs.” He waited, to see how she reacted. Like the scorers said at archery practice when you missed the target completely; nothing seen. “Well? What do you think?”

  Quite possibly the first time he’d ever asked her that.

  “It’s not up to me, is it?”

  For a very short moment he wanted to hit her for that. No, not up to her, or to Mother, or Hosculd. Which leaves—

  “I’m going to bed,” he announced. “See you in the morning.”

  He lay in the dark and tried to remember the seventeen principal elements of the reductive syllogism; he got as far as twelve, lost his place and had to start over again. No good; time was running out, the exam was—No, not even in the dark. That foolish young man was gone for ever. No great loss, either.

  At some point, he fell asleep. He woke up, opened his eyes, thought, What am I doing here? His neck and back ached as though he’d just spent three days digging peat. He dragged on yesterday’s clothes and blundered into the main room. Gesel was there, and his mother. They were putting things in boxes.

  “I’m going to see general Calojan,” he said.

  “Don’t be stupid,” his mother said, not looking up.

  “No, really. My father came to me in a dream. He said go and see Calojan. I may be back for dinner.”

  “It’s rather unlikely that we’ll be here when you get back,” his mother replied. “If I find out where we’re being taken, I’ll try and leave a note on the door.”

  He’d taken a book—two, actually; but the one he’d brought to read was Saloninus’ Great Engine and Art of War, students’ economy omnibus edition—so the three-hour wait wasn’t so bad, though the window-seat in the anteroom was hard, with a sharp edge that cut into the backs of his thighs. He even took ten minutes off from contemplating the finest mind the world had ever known to stare up at the painted ceiling, on which a rather portly, red-faced Destiny entrusted some emperor with authority over the entire world (a small yellow thing like a pie-dish) while various gods and heroes stood around looking like they wished they were somewhere else. He was reading the famous passage about the relative merits of strength and weakness when a miserable-looking character in uniform came to tell him that the general would see him now.

  He tucked Saloninus away in his pocket, took out the other book and followed the sad officer into the next room.

  General Calojan wasn’t what he’d been expecting; in fact, his first thought was that the great man wasn’t there after all, and had deputised some clerk to see him. But a clerk probably wouldn’t have been sitting with his feet up on the general’s priceless Interregnum gilded burr walnut and ivory escritoire. The confusion was, however, warranted. The general, the last, best hope of the empire, Butcher Calojan, the White Death of the Sashan, was a small, thin, pale, rather rat-like man, with gossamer-fine white-blond hair, a narrow, pointed face, enormous eyes, a weak mouth and chin, soft lips, little girly hands; out of uniform, except he was wearing artillery boots. He hadn’t shaved his chin, and his moustache was music-hall-stereotype Permian immigrant. Strengths and weaknesses, he thought, mentally thanking Saloninus for bringing the issues to his attention. You looked at the general and you thought; if a pathetic creature like this has managed to rise to his pre-eminent position in spite of all his natural disadvantages, he must have a mind like a razor. Strengths and weaknesses indeed.

  “Hello,” Calojan said. “What can I do for you?”

  Aimeric hesitated; and in that moment of silence, Calojan saw the book in his hand. His face hardened, just a little. “I see you’ve brought me a present,” he said.

  Maybe not such a good idea after all. Still, he was committed to it now. He held it out. Calojan hesitated, just for a moment, then took it without looking and put it on the desk. “That’s a rarity,” he said. “Quite valuable.”

  “Is it?”

  Calojan grinned at him. “Between six and eight thousand, depending on condition. Limited edition of seventy, Dad’s middle period, which is very collectable these days, with hand-coloured plates. Ten out of ten for generosity,” he went on, sliding a sheet of parchment over the book. “About minus four for tact. Unless you’re trying to make some sort of clever statement.”

  “It belonged to my father,” Aimeric said.

  “Ah.”

  And in Aimeric’s mind, trumpets sounded. In with a chance, after all. “He kept it by his bed. He used to read it, last thing at night.”

  “I see. Your mother—” Calojan shook his head; we won’t go there. “Well,” he said, “thank y
ou for that. As it happens, it’s one I haven’t got.”

  “You collect your father’s work.”

  Calojan frowned. “I sort of feel I have to,” he said. “Even though the only model he ever used was my mother. But I guess he was an artist, in his way. Never thought of himself as one, but people nowadays say it’s art, so—” He folded his hands and leaned back in his chair. “Your point, I take it, is that we have something in common.”

  Aimeric nodded.

  “Namely, we aren’t to blame for the transgressions of our fathers. Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And quite right too. Fine, you’ve got my sympathy. Trouble is, I don’t see that there’s very much I can do for you.”

  “Don’t say that,” Aimeric said gently. “After all, you’re the most important man in the empire.”

  “I think you’ll find that’s the emperor,” Calojan said. “All right, what did you have in mind?”

  “Let’s not talk about me. What do you need?”

  Too early; tactical error. He looked at Calojan and saw a faint twinkle in his eyes. He knows I’ve made a mistake and he’s forgiven me. Prey complicit in its own capture; I have his permission to keep going. “What I mean is,” he went on, “how can I prove to you that our company is essential to the war effort, by supplying you with exactly what you need, when you need it.”

  “Oh come on.” Calojan was trying to be kind. “You’re bankrupt, everybody knows that. You can’t pay your suppliers—”

  “We’ll come to that in a moment,” Aimeric said calmly. “What do you need?”

  “Right now?” Calojan smiled at him. “I need one million bodkin-head dogwood-shaft medium spine arrows. Tanged, not socketed. Since you asked.”

  “Bodkin—?”

  “You’re new to all this, of course,” Calojan said pleasantly. “Let me explain.” He settled himself comfortably in his chair. “I’ve got a million arrows, of course I have. Four million, actually. But they’re the wrong sort. They’ve got heavy ash shafts, which means they’re just right for the issue infantry longbow, but rather inefficient for the short composites used by the Aram Cosseilhatz. Not bendy enough. They don’t shoot as far or as fast, and they’re a tad too long to draw easily from the quiver on horseback. Also, they’re socketed.”