by K. J. Parker
Huneric thought long and hard. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose we could.”
“Of course you could. Let me refresh your memory. Before the war, you were the biggest supplier of wooden dowels in the empire, mostly for joinery and cabinet-making. You built this site to carry out a contract for ash dowels for the shipyards, but the war at sea is pretty well over now, that contract’s nearly finished and when it’s over you’ll be sitting on your hands. Arrowshafts are just lengths of dowel; dogwood instead of ash, but so what? I don’t actually know what a dogwood tree looks like—”
“It’s not a tree. More a large bush.”
“Is that right? Easier for you, then, less sawing up. And the joy of it is, all you need to worry about is getting it done on time. Not meeting a price, not getting screwed on a couple of percentage points. The government will pay my suppliers direct. You supply me with arrowshafts, you’re a supplier. So long as you’re sensible, you can name your own price.”
Huneric looked at him as though he’d just turned water into wine.
“Oh, and while you’re at it,” he went on, “I’ll get you to drill the hole in one end, for the tang to go in. You can do it easier than we can, and of course you’ll get paid for it.”
Huneric blinked. “And what will you lot be doing?”
“We’ll stick the feathers on, fit the arrowhead and pack them in barrels. And deliver them, of course. On time, wherever the general tells us to. That’s all he wants, and then he’ll be happy.” Aimeric smiled. “Most things in life can be simple, if only you let them.”
He could tell that Huneric was annoyed about something, probably didn’t like him very much. He also had no alternative but to agree. They haggled half-heartedly over terms and details—Huneric proved to be one of those awkward people who won’t take Yes for an answer—and then there was nothing more to discuss. He had a deal.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” he said, and got out fast.
There were six more factories just like Huneric’s within a twenty-minute walk. Aimeric went to all of them and struck the same deal. Three million arrowshafts, where he’d agreed one million with Calojan. But Calojan had said, two million would be nice, never expecting he’d get them. It made a lot of sense to arrange a pleasant surprise for the only man in the world who actually mattered—curious, in fact, that nobody else had thought to do it, but never mind. No matter how simple the idea, someone’s always got to be first to have it. As for the extra million, well; if he contracted for three million in six weeks, he was pretty sure to get two. If he got stuck with an extra million, that’d be a problem for another day, or an opportunity. He decided he’d done well enough, and went to see the drop-forge people at Underway.
“That’s insane,” Hosculd told him, when he explained what he’d been doing all day.
Aimeric shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “But they’ve agreed to do it, so—”
“They must be mad.”
Hosculd was beginning to get on his nerves. “A week ago, I could’ve given you a perfectly reasoned discourse on why no sane man would be in the arms business anyway. Weapons lead to wars, war is the worst possible thing. Therefore, no sane man, et cetera. I’m a bit rusty now, of course, so I don’t suppose I could do justice to the material. Does it matter if everybody in this loathsome business is stupid except for me?”
Quite soon, he thought, I’ll go too far and lose him, and that’d be a stupid waste. Not yet, though; and when he’s furiously angry he says what he thinks. “All right,” Hosculd said. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. It’s just—”
“Yes,” Aimeric said. “Meanwhile, we’ve got to do something about getting my sister and mother out of jail. Did you—?”
Hosculd nodded. “I took it down there myself.”
“Well, at least they’ll have something to eat. How about books, embroidery stuff, that sort of thing? They must be bored out of their minds.”
Hosculd shook his head. “Debtors aren’t allowed personal property,” he said, “except for two changes of clothes and some bedlinen. If I took anything else down there, it’d just be confiscated.”
That could have been me in there, Aimeric thought. And without anything to read, even—No. Death first. Of course, his mother would say exactly the same thing. “I want you to go to the Board office, first thing. There’s got to be something we can do to hurry things along.”
Something occurred to Hosculd that troubled him. “Have you been to see them today?”
“What? Me? No, no time, I’ll go tomorrow. After I’ve seen the gang-masters.” He felt sure he was wearing a hunted look, though of course he had no way of knowing. “Oh, while I think of it. Carpenters. Do we know any?”
“We’ve got some.”
“Have we? Oh, that’s handy. Tell them, I want ten thousand equilateral triangles cut out of three-quarter inch pine board—”
“What triangles?”
Aimeric blinked. “Triangles whose sides are all the same length,” he said. “Sorry, thought you’d have—Anyway, three-quarter inch thick, sides seven inches long. Oh, and a hole drilled in the exact centre, precisely three-eighths. Precisely. Got that?”
Hosculd was frowning. “The same diameter as the arrowshafts.”
“Yes. Got to be a push fit, you see.”
“What do you want ten thousand—?”
“See the Board man about a chit for materials,” Aimeric went on, raising his voice just a little. “Take on more men if you need to, we need them in five weeks. Oh, and get five thousand glue kettles. Small ones, nothing fancy.”
“Five thousand glue kettles,” Hosculd repeated. “Where the hell from?”
“The glue kettle people, of course. I don’t know, do I? You may have to get them made. Five weeks. And brushes, and small charcoal stoves. Should be able to get them off the shelf somewhere.”
“Five thousand?”
Aimeric thought for a moment. “Twenty-five hundred. Two men can share. Now then, let’s see. Oh, barrels. We’ve got barrels, presumably.”
“Not enough for two million—”
“Then get some more. Right, I think that’s about it. No, last thing. How many men have we got?”
Hosculd looked at him. “Full-time, you mean? Nine hundred.”
“Splendid.”
“You didn’t know—”
“But I do now. And that really is it.” He grinned. “You know, it makes me wonder what the hell people do all day. I’ve just set in motion two million arrows, and it’s only taken me about twelve hours.”
Just before dawn he was shaken awake by Hosculd, who told him there were soldiers at the door.
“What?”
“Soldiers,” Hosculd repeated grimly. “A sergeant and two kettlehats. You’d better come and see what they want.”
“For crying out loud,” Aimeric groaned. He rolled out of bed, grabbed his shirt and tied it round his waist.
“Just make sure you leave me and my family out of it,” Hosculd growled in his ear. He nodded vaguely and blundered to the front door.
The sergeant looked at him with the total lack of expression soldiers use for dissolute civilians. “Aimeric de Peguilhan?”
“That’s me.”
“Letter for you, sir. From general Calojan.”
Aimeric stared at him for a moment, then held out his hand. The letter came in a standard issue bronze message tube, embossed with the eagle-grasping-thunderbolt and the number 20. “Thanks,” Aimeric mumbled.
“Would you like us to wait for a reply, sir?”
“No, that’s fine.”
Impeccable salute, precise to within half a minute of angle. “Sir.”
Aimeric staggered back indoors and spent the best part of two minutes trying to poke the rolled-up letter out of the tube. In the end he had to wander into the kitchen and use the back of a wooden spoon.
Calojan to Aimeric de Peguilhan, greetings.
I hope you know what you’re playi
ng at. I’ve had a succession of grubby little men trooping through my office with bits of paper signed by you, wanting money. The Armoury Board is hopping mad, yelling and screaming—which is probably why I’ve countersigned everything and told them to get on with it.
My time, however, is not without value; so I’ve appointed an officer i/c all your little bits of signed paper. His name is major Gundohad, at Central Supply. Please direct your vultures to him, not me. Enclosed please find a warrant, with all the relevant scrambled egg, to show to your grubby little men.
By scrambled egg, Calojan apparently meant the Imperial seal, affixed to the bottom of a magnificent example of illuminated calligraphy. The warrant—he read it, then read it again. As far as he could tell—in second year you could do either Law or Logic but not both; he’d opted for Logic—the warrant authorised him to do anything.
He grinned like an idiot. His poor father; forty years in the business, going through channels, wrestling with the Board, never occurred to him to take one big stride and step over all of that, go directly to the man himself. True, by all accounts Calojan was unique, a one-off, a phenomenon. Even so.
There’s never a bit of paper when you need one. He was forced to cut the flyleaf out of Hosculd’s copy of the Offices (luckily, Hosculd’s family didn’t follow the practice of using the flyleaf to record births, marriages and deaths). He found the ink and wrote—
Aimeric de Peguilhan to His Excellency general Calojan, greetings.
Noted, and thank you.
He rolled up the note and stuffed it into the tube; reluctantly, because it was a pretty thing and he’d have liked to have kept it. But the scrambled-egg warrant was prettier still, and he was definitely keeping that.
He rummaged about in Hosculd’s kitchen cupboard and eventually found a silver-gilt napkin ring, a cut above the rest of Hosculd’s junk, probably a family heirloom of some sort. He rolled up the warrant and slipped the ring over it. It’d do, till he could find something more suitable.
The news everyone had been waiting for arrived; the snow in the Jehec mountains had finally thawed, the Mair was in spate and unfordable, and the Blue Comb pass was open. Calojan mustered the Third Army on the parade ground in the Ropewalks. He had sixteen thousand regular infantry, nine thousand heavy cavalry and fifteen thousand Aram Cosseilhatz auxiliaries. It was the largest army the empire had been able to put into the field for quite some time. It was also, according to the best informed opinions, not enough.
“I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone,” he told the emperor, at a private briefing at dawn on the day of his departure. “It’ll be either three weeks or for ever. As I used to tell my mother, don’t wait up.”
Sechimer smiled. “It’s not looking good, is it?”
For a moment, Calojan’s grin wavered. “The bloody thing is,” he said, “there’s so many of them. You slaughter them like sheep one day, a week later they’re back and there’s three times the number. I have this horrible dream where we finally win, and we set off to take possession of our new territories, and we cross the frontier and travel for days and days and never see a living soul, because we killed them all. It’s ridiculous, really.”
“You get that one too, do you?”
“Unfortunately,” Calojan went on, “we simply don’t have those sort of resources.”
Sechimer looked at him. “It’s true, then. I wasn’t sure. You can’t always believe—”
“It’s true. They can afford at least four more defeats on the scale of Greenwater. If we lose one battle, that’s it. Time to pack. There’ll be nothing left.”
Sechimer gently massaged the scar where the stub of the sixth finger had been. He’d had it discreetly removed by a defecting Sashan surgeon, because tradition insisted that the emperor must be without visible physical defect. “Your friends the Aram Cosseilhatz—”
“Have a curious aversion to getting killed,” Calojan said. “Which complicates things further. I can foresee a scenario where we win a glorious victory, wipe out all five of the Sashan field armies, and still end up losing the war because the Cosseilhatz take casualties at a level they consider unacceptable. If that happens, they’re just gone, like that. No amount of money would persuade them to stay.” He shook his head. “If I was the Sashan, I’d concentrate everything on killing as many Cosseilhatz as possible, no matter what the cost, even if it meant losing ten major cities and three armies.” He looked away, and his grin returned. “The really stupid thing is, they could have had the Cosseilhatz instead of us. The clan council gave them first refusal, but the Great King wouldn’t meet their price. They’d rather have fought for him, all things being equal. Similar religion, for one thing.”
“Just as well he’s an idiot,” Sechimer said.
“He’s an idiot with something in the region of two hundred thousand men in the field,” Calojan said. “And I’d still bet my money on him, if I could get decent odds anywhere.”
The president of the college of augurs took the usual auspices. The ceremony was irregular, because the army had already left (for some reason, Calojan chose to leave just after dawn, though the schedule he’d sent the president clearly said noon); however, there were precedents, so they carried on as usual.
When the ceremony was over and the president had thoroughly washed his hands and scrubbed under his fingernails, he sent a herald to the palace urgently requiring an audience with the emperor—
“Require,” Sechimer said. “Now that’s a truly priestly word.”
“It’s how they always phrase it,” somebody told him.
“Of course,” Sechimer said. “Well, I suppose I’d better see what he wants.”
He received the president in the Long Gallery. To reach the throne from the door, you had to walk the length of the hall, passing underneath a hundred and twenty-seven life-sized portraits of dead emperors, beginning with Florian I. Only seventeen of the portraits had faces; the other hundred and ten were practically identical representations of a man’s body, dressed in the same lorus, chlamys and divitision that Florian had worn a thousand and twenty years ago and which now—except that Hodda had disposed of them somewhere; they hadn’t turned up yet, so Sechimer was still wearing theatrical props. Where their faces should have been, however, there was a crude oval of bare wood, where the paint had been scraped away when the subject of the portrait had been formally anathematised by his supplanter, or a later successor wishing to distance himself from the policies of his predecessors.
“Majesty,” the president said. “Thank you so much for seeing me at such short notice.”
Sechimer gave him such a pleasant smile. “Is something the matter?”
“I’m afraid so, yes.” The president explained, and Sechimer, who hadn’t done any background reading, nodded and mumbled politely to give the impression he was following it all. “So you see,” the president concluded, “we have a problem.”
Sechimer frowned. “This isn’t supposed to happen,” he said.
“Indeed,” the president said. “We take all necessary steps. Nevertheless—”
Suddenly Sechimer smiled. “You know,” he said, “I’ve never been what you’d call a regular templegoer, but something like this is enough to restore a man’s faith in the Almighty. If, in spite of all the trouble you people go to, He can still somehow contrive to get a bad reading past you, then it’s pretty damn convincing proof that He exists, don’t you think? Thank you, you’ve made my day.”
“Majesty—”
“I’m being flippant, do forgive me. So, these are really bad omens.”
“Yes.” The president hesitated, then added, “About as bad as they could possibly be.”
“I see. What do you want me to do?”
“Recall general Calojan immediately. If he engages the enemy under these auspices, the outcome is unavoidable. The empire will be irreparably damaged.”
Sechimer nodded. “This empire?” he asked. “Only, it’s that old chestnut again, isn’t it? If you cr
oss the Astleir, a mighty empire will fall. And the fool assumed they were referring to the enemy, but in fact it was his own.”
“This empire, Majesty,” the president said. “The eagle-with-thunderbolt was clearly visible in the lesions on the upper third quartile. The omen clearly indicates us.”
Sechimer was perfectly still for a moment. “Thank you,” he said. “It was good of you to bring this to my attention. I trust you’ve not—”
“Of course not, Majesty.”
“Of course not. The last thing we need is alarm and despondency. Well, I won’t keep you. Thank you again.”
The president retired, looking vaguely bewildered. When he’d gone, secretary Gulfilas leaned across the throne, close to Sechimer’s ear, and said, “Well?”
“Load of old nonsense.”
“Yes,” Gulfilas said, “but if we lose, the first thing the old fool will do is pin up his load of old nonsense on the temple doors, and suddenly it’ll all be your fault.”
“If we lose,” Sechimer replied, “it will be all my fault. Besides, it’ll be somewhat academic by then. Of mild interest to the Sashan, maybe, if they can be bothered to read it. We won’t be here. We’ll be dead.”
Gulfilas nodded. “Understood. So, no action.”
“No action. And find some way to keep that clown out of my hair, will you? I’ve got enough on my mind right now as it is.”
Sechimer retired to his chambers, where he took off the lorus, chlamys and divitision, laid them neatly on the bed, like you do with your uniform, and knelt on the floor under the icon. It was the one he’d brought from home, a basic village Accession to Glory, with yellow paint instead of gold leaf, the faces brown with age and wood smoke. He said three stages of the Office of Penance, the Beneficence and the General Confession, and then a special plea for forgiveness, because he’d spoken offensively to a priest. Then he looked up, and looked away. He’d met the eyes of the Invincible Sun, as he’d done twice a day every day of his life, and today they were cold and empty; nobody home. He drew his hand across his face, as if trying to wipe something off. It didn’t seem to help. He rocked back on his heels and tried to think what to do.