by K. J. Parker
Hosculd nodded. “If I hadn’t known who I was talking to, I’d have said he was perfectly charming. Only,” he added grimly, “perfectly charming people don’t have you arrested.”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
That night, instead of going to Orsella, he went home to his father’s house, repurchased from the receiver and refurnished with as much of the old furniture as he’d been able to trace and buy back. It was now an authentic forgery of the original. He hadn’t been back for a while (he couldn’t remember exactly how long) but even so he hadn’t been expecting—
“What,” he said, “is that?”
His mother gave him a grim smile. “Your sister brought it home,” she said. “Talk to her about it.”
Not that he’d have objected to it if it had been somewhere else. He quite admired late Reactionist sculpture, in an impersonal, dispassionate sort of a way. In a cloister garden, it’d have been fine. A large cloister garden, or a public park.
“Gesel,” he said, trying to sound calm and reasonable, “it can’t stay there.”
“Why not?” His sister looked through him, as if he was a window on a rainy day. “Besides, it’s got nothing to do with you. You don’t live here any more.”
“Yes I do.”
“Funny,” she said. “I don’t remember seeing you much in the last six months. Well, ever since you came back from university.”
Between them, the Invincible Sun towered like the tallest tree in the forest; the tree that was there before the forest grew up, and its wide spread of branches block out the light, so that nothing can survive under them. How they’d managed to get it through the door without knocking its head off, he had no idea. “It’s too big,” he said.
“It’s a masterpiece of religious art,” she said calmly. “Having it here makes me feel at peace.”
“Gesel, it takes up the whole bloody room.”
She turned and started to walk away. He followed her, stopped abruptly, just in time to save himself from bashing his head against the Sun’s outstretched left arm. “Gesel, listen. I have no problem at all with you finding solace in religion.”
“Thank you so much.”
“Can’t it go in the garden? It’d look much better outside. Statues like that are meant to be seen in natural light.”
“I want it in here,” Gesel said. “With me. I can sit under it and feel safe.”
“For crying out loud.” He stopped. He’d raised his voice, and that somehow meant she’d won. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll build a house next door and live in that, and you two can stay here and be cosy together.”
“You can if you like,” she said. “You can do whatever you want, it’s no concern of mine.”
“Gesel.” She turned her head and was looking at him as though he was something she’d brought in on the sole of her shoe. “What’s the matter?”
“Oh, nothing.”
It was the sort of oh, nothing that means, where do I start? He stifled a big sigh. At the very least, this was going to take a very long time, and he was tired. “Gesel,” he said. “This religion thing. Is it—?”
“Religion isn’t a thing,” she snapped. “Please do try not to be offensive.”
“If I’ve done something wrong—”
“You? Do something wrong? Perish the thought.”
He felt as though his heart would burst with rage, but somehow he couldn’t quite bring himself to rant and yell while standing under the armpit of the Invincible Sun. “Fine,” he said. “It’s up to you. Tell me what’s the matter, I’ll apologise and do something about it. Or if you prefer, I’ll just go. You choose.”
“Just go away, Aimeric. You’re not my brother any more. Go away and leave us in peace.”
He looked at her and reflected that some battles aren’t worth winning. “I’ll be in my room,” he said. “Come and talk to me if you want to. If not—” He couldn’t think of an if-not, so he left the room (he had to squeeze sideways) and went upstairs. His room was empty, just walls and floorboards. He sat on the floor with his back to the wall and waited, but nobody came. After a while, he heard Gesel’s voice, muffled and filtered by the intervening architecture. She was singing the Office of Intercession, praying for his soul, loudly and off-key. That was as much as he could take. He left the room, slamming the door behind him, and went to see his mother.
“What?” she said, without looking round. She was brushing her hair. It was a sort of dirty grey and, released from captivity, came down to her waist.
“Gesel’s praying for me.”
“That’s nice of her.”
“It’s the service for the dead.” Aimeric sat down on the dressing-table stool. “What’s got in to her?”
“That’s rich, coming from you.” She put down the brush—ivory, with an embossed silver back; he hadn’t seen it before—and scowled at him. “What’s got in to you, Aimeric? What do you think you’re playing at?”
He raised both eyebrows. “Me? Gosh, let’s see. Running the family business, governing the empire. It helps pass the time. What was I supposed to be doing?”
“Don’t be clever with me. Where have you been? We haven’t seen you for months. Where are you living?”
“Mother, for pity’s sake.” He looked up at her. “I’ve got a couple of rooms in Town. It’s more convenient for work, and government business. Meanwhile, your daughter, my sister, is turning into a religious maniac. Aren’t you a bit concerned about that?”
“That Vesani woman you’re living with—”
“She’s an art historian.” Which was true. “I met her while I was away. I expect we’ll get married at some point, but right now I’m just too busy. Mother, there’s a temple-sized statue of God in our living room. That’s not normal.”
“She’s upset. She doesn’t like what’s been happening. She thinks you’re getting yourself in the most terrible trouble. And so do I.”
“Don’t be silly,” he said gently. “The business is doing really well, the commander-in-chief is my personal friend, I’m a member of the Council and I’ve met a girl I really like. That’s all. I promise you.”
She studied him for a while. “Aimeric,” she said, “you’ve always been a disappointment to me, but I wasn’t ever ashamed of you, not till recently. If you must insist on destroying yourself, do please try and keep your sister and me out of it, if that’s at all possible. Please don’t come back here again, it unsettles Gesel and you can see what sort of a state she’s in. Now if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like you to go home now. I expect your friend will be wondering where you’ve got to.”
He had nothing to say to that, so he walked out. He went to Orsella’s, but she yelled at him for opening the door and letting the wrong sort of dust in while the size was still wet. It was dark, and coming on to rain. He walked to the factory, but the gates were shut and padlocked. He realised that he had no home, something he’d clearly neglected to notice while his mind was on other things. On the other hand, he had thirty-seven solidi in his pocket, and that was just walking-around money. So he turned left down Hallgate and went to the Theatre. The performance was about a quarter of the way through, but it was a Hieronymus comedy, so he hadn’t missed anything. After the show, he sent his compliments, deep admiration and five solidi backstage to the actress who’d played the Queen of the Gods, and the rest of the evening didn’t turn out too badly after all.
The day started early in the offcomers’ camp in North Foregate. An hour before dawn, the women set off with every bucket, pail, jug and bottle they could find and walked the three miles to the Drovers’ well. The night carts had to be out of the City by sunrise, and the day traffic wasn’t allowed in until an hour after. During that hour, by tacit agreement of the Northgate sub-prefect, the women from the camp were allowed to draw water from the well. This was, of course, against the law, but the sub-prefect had done six tours of duty in the provinces and knew better than to try and enforce regulations against people who had nothing left to lose.
Shortly after the women left the camp, the food carts from the Golden Spire and the Metropolitan arrived and unloaded, accompanied by five platoons of kettlehats. The charity officers in change of distribution had calculated the amounts necessary by reference to the tables in the fifth appendix to Stratocrates’ Natural Science, which was written in North Scheria seven hundred years ago. It was possible that something had got lost in translation—some scholars believe that Stratocrates copied his data from an earlier Mezentine source, drawing on Perimadeian texts from the fourth century AUC; the camp spokesmen maintained that a pound and a half of flour per head per day wasn’t enough to live on: the priests, being educated men, knew better. Each day, when the sacks had been unloaded, the offcomers’ spokesmen repeated their formal protest, to be conveyed to the temple commissioners; each day, a junior official delivered the commissioners’ reply to the previous day’s protest, to the effect that the provisions delivered were charity rather than any kind of entitlement, and the recipients therefore had no say in the quantity or quality of the merciful relief provided. Furthermore, he pointed out, the supplies represented the grace of the Invincible Sun, delegated through the appropriate channels operated by the proper officials, and raising questions or objections therefore constituted blasphemy, which He could not be expected to tolerate indefinitely.
Calojan arrived not long after the women came back from the well. By that time, the men had done their work for the day and were mostly sitting on the ground outside their tents, playing pickstones or simply staring at the ground. Calojan looked round for someone to talk to, but nobody seemed prepared to acknowledge that he existed; the men simply walked away and the women stared at him and shook their heads, while the children ran off and hid. Eventually, a worried-looking man with a bald head appeared out of a tent. He had a baby in his arms. “Did you want something?” he asked.
“My name is general Calojan. I want to talk to whoever’s in charge.”
The man grinned at him. “That’d be me.”
That statement struck Calojan as absurd, but he was in no position to argue. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”
The man frowned, as though he’d been asked to do complex mental arithmetic. “In the tent,” he said, and Calojan followed him.
The tent was about forty grain-sacks, discarded after long use, slit open at the sides and stitched together and hung off laundry poles and vine props stolen from the nearby farms. Inside was blue with smoke from a small peat fire, over which a broken-and-wired-together pot hung off three sticks. There were three children and a woman sitting in there, apparently not bothered by the smoke. They stared at Calojan but neither moved nor spoke.
“Take a seat,” the man said, squatting on the floor and settling the baby against his chest. “What can I do for you?”
Calojan sat down and tucked his legs in close. “You’re the leader of these people.”
“Me? Not really.” The man shrugged. “I go and argue with the priests each morning when they bring the flour; me and a couple of others, but I do the talking. I guess that’s all the leading that goes on around here. My name’s Asburn, for what it’s worth.”
Calojan took a cloth bundle from his pocket, untied the corners and emptied it on the ground. “That’s ten gold solidi,” he said. “That’s just for talking to me. Now, are you the leader of these people?”
Asburn stared at the coins, then handed the baby to the woman. “Yes, that’d be me.”
“Splendid. I need soldiers. Your people have no work and nothing to eat except the Temple charity, which can be withdrawn at any time. Can your lot fight?”
Asburn smiled at him. “Are you serious?”
“Can they fight?”
“Back home,” Asburn said, “by the time a boy’s twelve years old, he’s expected to be able to throw a spear twenty yards and shoot an arrow into a rolling wheel at fifty yards. It’s a father’s responsibility to teach his son the spear and the short axe, which are the weapons every man’s required to own by customary law. Freeholders’ sons usually take part in their first spear-games when they turn seventeen—that’s things like throwing the javelin or carrying off the ring on your spearpoint, all on horseback, and then there’s the general melee and exercises like that. When you get five or more of our people together in one place for more than half an hour, chances are they’ll have an archery contest. As far as proper fighting’s concerned, we try and keep it to a minimum, but we don’t always succeed. Every thirty years or so there tends to be a war somewhere; you don’t have to join in, but it helps keep the peace, if you follow me.”
Calojan nodded. “I’m offering two solidi a man, real gold money; also, I’ll feed the women and children while you’re away and pay five solidi compensation for every man killed. Weapons and armour supplied, horses for those who can ride them, but you’ve got to give them back afterwards.” He paused. “Do you need time to think about it?”
“No.”
Three days later, the new army paraded on the open heath beside the camp. There were just over five thousand of them, kitted out in forty years’ worth of unsaleable stock from the de Peguilhan warehouses, and Apsimar leaned close to Calojan and said softly, “Why are we doing this?”
They did actually look quite like soldiers. They were standing still in long lines, shields and spears at rest. The lines were straight and there was no talking in the ranks. Calojan lowered his voice. “Why is it,” he said, “that neither you nor your uncle ever bother to listen to me? No matter, I’ll say it again. We have no army. There are no soldiers. The Cosseilhatz refused to come unless your uncle gave them some land; he, in his infinite wisdom, refused. So, I’m taking what I can get. It was this or press-ganging dock workers.”
Apsimar gave him a troubled look. “You aren’t seriously suggesting we give imperial territory to savages.”
Calojan sighed. “I’m not suggesting anything,” he said. “All that side of things is most definitely none of my business, I just do the war. As of this morning, what with time-expired discharges and desertions, we have four thousand regular infantry and nine hundred heavy cavalry; basically, they’re the ones with no homes to go to. Reliable reports put Hunza’s army at four thousand cavalry and eleven thousand foot. There is effectively nothing at all standing between Hunza and the City except these men here. Do you understand, or would you like me to write it down for you?”
“Calojan, be reasonable,” Apsimar said. “You don’t know anything about these people. You have no idea whether they’ll fight or not, or if they can obey orders, or—”
“Apsimar,” Calojan said. “Be quiet.”
“I’m sorry, but I think you’re taking a rather cavalier attitude to—”
“Quiet.”
For the next two hours, Calojan took them through some fairly rudimentary drill. Afterwards he summoned Asburn. “You lied to me,” he said.
“What?”
Calojan grinned. “You told me these men haven’t ever done any formal military training. Obviously they have.”
Asburn shook his head. “We just listen carefully and do what we’re told,” he said.
“Is that right.” Calojan narrowed his eyes, as though he was trying to read something almost too far away to be legible. “Are there a lot of you, where you come from?”
“Where we—?”
“Beyond the north-western frontier of the empire.”
Asburn smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Hundreds of thousands, probably. We breed like rabbits. Why?”
“Just interested, that’s all.”
Sechimer arrived to review the troops. He looked at them for a long time without saying anything, then turned to Calojan and said, “Where did all these men come from?”
“They were here all the time,” Calojan replied. “In the City, and then stuck out here, doing nothing. Like the forty trachy you find in the lining of your coat. I think they’ll do.”
“What makes you say that?”
Calojan shrugged. “I’v
e been among soldiers most of my life.” He called over a junior officer and told him to stand the men down. “I think they’ve demonstrated that they can keep still,” he said. “Let’s see what they do next.”
The officer bawled out the command, and the ranks quietly relaxed, like a bow drawn and then not loosed. The men planted their spears and sat down on the ground, cross-legged, pulling their mailshirts over their knees. There was a low hum of conversation, like a distant swarm of bees. “I think they know how to be patient,” Sechimer said. “That’s important.”
“I think they’ll do,” Calojan repeated. “I had a long talk with Aimeric de Peguilhan’s foreman. He’s one of them, but he’s been here so long you can talk to him like he’s one of us.”
Sechimer laughed. “I could say the same thing about you.”
“Quite. From time to time I do tend to forget I’m a foreigner. It’s kind of you to remind me.”
“There are no nations and races inside the empire,” Sechimer said. “There’s just the emperor and his people.”
“Good old Florian. I sometimes wonder if he meant it the way it sounds.”
Sechimer shrugged. “Don’t ask me,” he said. “I only know the quotations, I’ve never read the actual speech. But I’m happy to take that line at face value.”
“Quite so.” Calojan nodded. “But you won’t let the Cosseilhatz settle in the empty valleys.”
“That’s different.”
“Of course it is. And this lot?”
Sechimer frowned. “They work hard, they don’t make trouble, they keep themselves to themselves. Also, we treated them abominably, so we ought to do something for them.” Suddenly he laughed. “Three hundred years ago, I’d be thinking; I like these people, they’d be a useful addition to the imperial family; let’s conquer them. Now—” He clicked his tongue. “I think it’s like the old question, can a man ever really be just friends with a woman? Can we be friends with people like this without subconsciously wanting to absorb them; what do you think?”