by K. J. Parker
Aimeric poured himself a large dose of the archdeacon’s strong wine but didn’t drink it. “How long before he gets home?”
“It’s a five-day journey for the Mail. Knowing Calojan, he’ll find a way to do it in four. So nine days, maybe ten. Till then, I imagine everything will stay pretty well frozen. We aren’t in charge any more, I think His Majesty made that abundantly clear, but he’s refusing to do any business at all until Calojan gets home, so—”
Aimeric frowned. “Are we sure he’s better? I mean, that all sounds a bit funny to me.”
The archdeacon smiled. “Aimeric,” he said, “I do believe I can see the way your mind is working. If he’s still ill, we can have him locked up by the doctors and carry on running things as before. Arguably he’s acting irrationally, therefore he’s still ill.” Aimeric opened his mouth, but the archdeacon went on, “I won’t say the thought hadn’t tiptoed across my mind, but you can forget it. We’d never get away with it, for one thing. Also, and you may choose not to believe me but I promise you I’m quite sincere, I don’t want to rule the empire, I want Sechimer to be well and take his old job back again, I want things to go back to how they used to be so that maybe I can finally get some sleep. And yes, I believe he’s completely recovered, in body and mind. He wants Calojan here because he doesn’t trust us, like I just said. That’s not irrational behaviour, it’s common sense. If I was in his shoes, I’d be thinking exactly the same way.”
Aimeric wasn’t so sure. “Yes, but flying off the handle like that about a comparatively trivial…”
The archdeacon shook his head. “Not to him.” He sighed, to express resignation at the prospect of having to make a lengthy explanation. “I don’t think you quite grasp how Sechimer’s mind works. In a way, he’s much luckier than me. He’s a man of faith. He believes in the Invincible Sun, in the Precepts, in absolutes of right and wrong. So, here’s how he sees it. Before the battle—I’m guessing, but I think I’m on fairly solid ground here—before the battle, he gets down on his knees and prays; dear God, I know it’ll take a miracle, but please let me win, and if I do I promise I’ll be good and lead a righteous life ever after. What happens? He wins, but gets struck down by an arrow. He comes round three months later, to find that his self-appointed proxies have celebrated the victory the Invincible Sun gave him in answer to his prayer by oppressing the weak and throwing innocent women and children out on the streets, simply in order to mount a display that’s the very epitome of vainglorious pomp and blasphemous pride. Of course he’s furious. He’s scared stiff.”
Aimeric stared at him. “That’s really what he’s thinking?”
“I’m quietly confident, yes.” The archdeacon nodded gently. “I’ve had better opportunities than most to observe the thought processes of true believers, and that’s exactly the way I’d expect one to react.”
“You knew that,” Aimeric said, “and you didn’t stop them flooding the Westponds.”
The archdeacon shrugged. “I thought Sechimer was going to die,” he said. “I’m delighted to be able to say I was wrong. Now I’m afraid it looks rather as if our fates are in the hands of general Calojan.” He smiled. “Ah well.”
Aimeric got up to leave; then a horrible thought struck him. “The project,” he said. It was a stupid word for it, but the only one that sprang to mind.
“What project?”
“The manuscript. Codex Synergicus.”
“Oh, that. Postponed indefinitely, I think, don’t you? After all, we don’t need it now, do we?”
Aimeric felt as though he’d just been slammed against a wall. “But the forger will be here tomorrow.”
“Then you’d better send him back home again, hadn’t you? Give him some money—it’ll have to come out of your own pocket, I’m afraid, as of now we have no funds at our disposal—and get him on the first coach out of town.”
“I can’t. I made promises.”
The archdeacon looked at him. “I can’t help that,” he said. “Aimeric, maybe you don’t quite understand. The regency is over, dissolved, finished. Rightly or wrongly, the emperor is furiously angry with us. Whether we retire quietly into private life or end up with a very good view of the Square depends on whether Calojan—” he almost spat the name “—is prepared to stick his neck out for us. The integrity of your solemn undertakings to prominent Vesani criminals is the last thing on my mind at the moment, trust me.”
A very good view—? From the top of the Belltower arch, where the heads of traitors were displayed on meathooks. Aimeric suddenly felt very cold. “All right,” he said. “I’ll see to it.”
“I think you should. I don’t imagine it’d incline Sechimer to trust us if he found out we were intent on forging prophesies about him. And he’d only have our word as to what we intended them to say. In fact, I’d be inclined to send a messenger to turn this friend of yours back before he reaches the City.”
She, Aimeric thought, not he. But the archdeacon was right. A shame, a great shame, but never mind. “I’ll see to it right away,” he said.
“Good boy. And now I think you ought to leave. The less we’re seen together, the less likely it is that Sechimer will think we’re up to something behind his back.”
Aimeric thought carefully about what the archdeacon had said. It was good advice, and he couldn’t fault the archdeacon on his logic.
So he went to see his one friend in the military, a captain whose brother he’d given a job to. Captain Ortheric kept him waiting for an hour, then sent a clerk to say he could spare five minutes.
“Where’s Calojan?” Aimeric asked.
Ortheric scowled at him from behind his desk. “I can’t possibly tell you that.”
Aimeric sighed and sat down. He hadn’t been invited to. “Are you a betting man, Ortheric?”
“No, not really. Why?”
“I think you are,” Aimeric said pleasantly. “I think you’re gambling that I’m going to be disgraced along with the rest of the regency council, so you need to show everyone we aren’t really friends. I think you may have miscalculated the odds.”
“It’s not like that,” Ortheric said awkwardly. “But I can’t go around giving away military secrets to civilians. If I tell you where Calojan is, you’ll know the current location of the Fifth Army. That’s information likely to be of use to an enemy.”
“What enemy? They’re all dead. Besides, I’m not just a member of the council, I’m also a contractor engaged in supplying vital military equipment. I need to speak to the general personally about important technical issues.”
Ortheric was calmer now, and colder. “Fine,” he said. “Go through channels.”
Aimeric stood up. “You’ve placed your bet, then.”
Ortheric hesitated, then said, “Yes. Sorry.”
“No problem.” Aimeric gave him a pleasant smile. “If you lose your bet, I’ll try not to hold this against you. Good luck.”
He left the office and the building, turned the corner, stopped and leant against a wall, breathing hard. On the one hand, he really hadn’t expected the news of his disfavour to have travelled so fast. On the other hand, on Ortheric’s desk had been a letter bearing Calojan’s personal seal; routine orders about procuring oats and barley for the supply train carthorses, but at the top (as is usual with military correspondence) was the date and place. Aimeric had the useful knack of being able to read upside down. Two days ago, Calojan had been at the Sublime Grace at Vattenford. What Aimeric now needed most of all was a good map and a ruler.
He took Hosculd with him. He found it hard to explain why. He didn’t want to tell Hosculd it was for luck, and no plausible lie sprang readily to mind.
In the event, Hosculd proved useful. “He’ll be at Blockhouse 17,” he said, as Aimeric squinted helplessly at the map. “Coming from that direction, you can be sure of it.”
“There’s no such—”
“Not marked,” Hosculd explained. “Restricted. They only show it on command-level military ma
ps. Of course, half the carters in the City know where it is. And so do I.”
Fair enough. Hosculd had delivered military supplies often enough, before his promotion. “Can we get there in time?”
“If you don’t mind riding. A chaise on those roads; forget it.”
Hosculd was an accomplished horseman, a legacy from his boyhood on a farm in the Old Country. Aimeric followed, clinging on tight to a handful of mane and keeping his eyes fixed on the tail of Hosculd’s horse. Hour after hour of terror, misery and pain; they slept four hours in a ditch and started off again in pitch darkness. Just after noon, Hosculd stopped, stood up in his stirrups and pointed. “There it is,” he called out. “Blockhouse 17.”
Aimeric could just make out a squareish grey blob through the mist. “Are you sure about that?”
“Nothing else it could be, out here.”
Valid point. They’d been crossing the high moor instead of following the military road. Nothing lived up there, not even midges. “Right,” Aimeric said, trying to sound brisk; it came out as a sort of plaintive wail. “Let’s go and see the general.”
He’d have liked a minute or so to catch his breath and scrape mud off his legs, but apparently Calojan could see him immediately. He followed the soldier up three flights of corkscrew stairs, the steps worn concave in the middle by six hundred years of issue boots. Calojan was sitting on his own at a table in the exact centre of a big square room, otherwise completely empty. The unshuttered window framed a wide-angle view of the moor like the most boring landscape mural in the world.
Calojan looked up. He was unshaven, in mud-splattered boots. “Hello,” he said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I wanted to talk to you.”
“I’d sort of gathered. What about?”
There was only one chair, and the table looked too frail to perch on. There was a map spread out on it; Calojan had been drawing lines on it with an ebony ruler and red, green and black inks. “I know,” Calojan said, with a feeble grin. “I’m supposed to get back to the City as soon as possible, no stopping for any reason whatsoever. It simply doesn’t work like that, of course. If I don’t do this paperwork, myself in person, not a deputy, horses will starve and soldiers will have to camp out in the open for days, not knowing where they’re supposed to be. So officially I’m wandering lost in the fog. Could happen to anyone.”
Aimeric composed a smile. “Of course you are.”
“Of course I am. So, what can I do for you?”
Aimeric hesitated, then said, “Did the emperor happen to mention—?”
“Oh yes.” Calojan nodded firmly. “A great big long letter in his own handwriting—did you know he can’t spell worth a damn? Hard to keep a straight face reading it, sometimes. You’re in trouble.” He pushed his chair back a little. “Is that why you’re here?”
“Indirectly.”
“Indirectly,” Calojan repeated. “Well, I’d sort of guessed you’re a brave man, Aimeric. I hadn’t realised quite how brave.”
“Me? I’m a coward. I dodged the draft.”
Calojan shook his head. “Any man who’s in as much trouble as you are and only wants to talk about that indirectly is brave enough to qualify for the Great King’s personal guard. I assumed you want me to get you off the hook with Sechimer.”
“That’d be nice,” Aimeric said. “But there was something else.”
“Good God.” Calojan shrugged. “Go on.”
Aimeric shifted his weight from his left foot to his right. He felt colossally stupid, talking like this standing up. “Before the emperor recovered,” he said, “I suggested a plan of action to archdeacon Vorsiger. It involved hiring a professional forger from the Vesani Republic to fake a copy of the Codex Synergicus. I don’t know if you heard, but the Mezentines—”
Calojan nodded. “Sounds interesting,” he said. “Wouldn’t mind a look at it myself.”
“Anyway,” Aimeric went on, “we thought it’d be a nice idea to make up a few prophecies, the sort of thing people would want to come true—victory, peace, universal prosperity, the emperor will reign for sixty years and it’ll be a new Age of Gold, that sort of thing. Lots of people will know by now that a true copy of the Codex has arrived from Mezentia, so it’s rather a good opportunity. That was my idea, at any rate.”
Calojan shrugged. “Not bad,” he said, “though perhaps you’re overestimating the gullibility of the average Imperial citizen. Not an unduly superstitious lot, I’ve always found.”
“There would also be a number of prophesies predicting recent events in considerable detail. These prophesies have obviously come true. The manuscript has an unimpeachable provenance and has been certified genuine by all the relevant experts. That’s science, not superstition.”
“Fine.” Calojan smiled. “Yes, I’d vote for that, I guess, so long as you make it look like the thing’s been unofficially leaked.” He looked at Aimeric closely. “So?”
“So, because the council’s out of favour, the project’s on hold. But the forger will be arriving very soon, she may already be in the City. If I turn round and tell her, sorry, the deal’s off, that’ll be that, she won’t come back again. And she’s the only forger capable of doing a really convincing job. The opportunity would be lost for ever.”
Calojan’s face hadn’t changed when he heard Aimeric’s choice of pronoun. “And you think that’s a big deal,” he said.
“I do, yes.”
“Of more immediate concern to you than saving your own neck.”
Aimeric took a deep breath. “Well, you see,” he said, “I was kind of assuming you’d put in a good word for me in any event, without me having to ask.”
“Did you now.”
Aimeric smiled. “Because when you needed tanged dogwood arrows and they wouldn’t let you have them, I got you what you wanted. And, next time you need something really badly, you know I’ll get it for you. So, I’m useful to you. Also, unlike pretty well everybody else at the court apart from the emperor himself, you’re a man of honour and principle. You scared me to death and made a fool out of me when you were tricking the enemy into thinking you’d been recalled. Therefore, you’d stick your neck out for me because you’re grateful.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes.”
Calojan pushed his chair back further still, stretched his legs out and put his hands behind his head. “Aimeric,” he said, “let me tell you something I’ve learned over the years about luck. Luck is like a bow. You stretch it so far, it’ll shoot straight and fast and hit the mark. Stretch it just a little bit further, it’ll break, the top limb will bash you on the head and the lower limb will hit you in the balls so hard your eyes’ll water. Would you like us to start this conversation again from the beginning?”
“No, thanks.”
“Fine.” He sat up straight and edged his chair close to the table. “All right, here’s what I’ll do. I’ll tell Sechimer that in my opinion, what the regency council did was wrong; they shouldn’t have flooded the slums and driven out all those poor people, it was inhumane and arrogant, and anybody who knows Sechimer would also know he’d never do such a thing. But, I’ll go on, what’s done is done and the people who did it happen to be the wisest and most trustworthy men in the Imperial service—which isn’t saying much, of course, but there you are. At this particularly delicate moment, with the economy in a mess and everything really fragile after the hammering we’ve taken in the war, it’d be highly injudicious for His Majesty to deprive himself of the advice of his best men at a time when he most needs them, all because they did one bad, stupid thing. I might even draw his attention to the Sashan way of doing things, one mistake and you’re dead, and ask him to reflect on whether that approach served the Great King well.” He paused for breath, then went on; “That’s what I’d have said anyway, even if you hadn’t come to see me.”
“Thank you,” Aimeric said.
“It happens to be what I think,” Calojan said. “Now, assumi
ng Sechimer listens to me, you and your fellow idiots on the council will all be back in post in a day or two, and therefore in a position to carry out any projects, any worthwhile projects, you’d already set in motion. What you do in the meantime is up to you, and if it’s even remotely illegal, you never told me about it. Clear?”
It was a moment before Aimeric could speak. “Clear,” he said.
“Splendid.” He was frowning; he relaxed just a little. “Sticking my neck out is what I do,” he said. “Really, it’s the only thing I’m good at. So far, it’s served me and the empire well. By the same token, a man falling off a very tall building can say when he reaches the halfway point that so far, he’s come to no harm and he’s thoroughly enjoying the ride. I don’t know what you’re up to, Aimeric, but I won’t ask, because I don’t want to prompt you to lie to me, it’d be bad for our working relationship. Just promise me it won’t hurt the emperor. Well?”
“I promise.”
“You do know, don’t you, what’ll happen to you if you mess me around?”
“I can guess.”
“No,” Calojan said gently, “You’ve led a sheltered life, so I don’t suppose you can. But that’s fine, I’m sure you’ve got the message. Another snippet of homely folk wisdom from my inexhaustible supply; it may be chilly outside, but setting fire to your coat is a bloody stupid way to keep warm. Do think long and hard before you stick your neck out too far.” He yawned and rubbed his eyes. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “I can’t stay lost on the moors forever, much as I’d like to. I’d offer you a lift back to Town, but I don’t want to be seen with you right now.”
As well as a hundred and eighty trachy a day, the job at the de Peguilhan factory provided accommodation (a bunk in a long shed where two dozen other workers lived) and a meal each evening. It was cleaner and quieter than Westponds, but Raffen wasn’t sure he liked the people he was working with. They were all refugees from Mondhem; shorter and stockier than the City people, and miserable most of the time. They didn’t seem to like people from outside the empire—offcomers was one of the words they used; the others were presumably meant to be insulting, but Raffen didn’t know enough Imperial slang to catch the nuances. He’d had to fight twice, putting five highly skilled men out of action for several weeks. But the supervisor was a Permian who didn’t like Imperials, so he kept his job, just about, and there was no more of that sort of trouble.