by K. J. Parker
The Coalition announced that they would be represented by King Chauzida, his advisers Semplan and Joiauz, and King Raffen of the Selbst. Aimeric objected that under imperial law, Chauzida was under age; therefore, any agreement made by him would be invalid and not binding on either party. Raffen replied that if that was the case, there could be no peace talks; the empire could change its laws, or stand by for an assault on the City. Aimeric asked him to be reasonable; the empire had respected the Coalition’s views on women delegates, so a little reciprosity wouldn’t hurt anyone. Raffen replied that the Coalition had no problem at all negotiating with women, and where had Aimeric got that idea from? At that point, Gesel pushed the archdeacon out of his seat, sat down next to Aimeric and said that in that case, she had no objection to the child, and could they please get on?
“It makes perfect sense,” she added. “My child against yours, it makes it a fair fight. Right, what’s first?”
Raffen smiled. “This is what we want. You give us all the territory we’ve already taken. You evacuate the City and go across the sea. You can take as much stuff as you can get on your ships. You have one month.”
Gesel stared at him, lost for words. Aimeric heard himself say, “Why?”
“The empire is evil and must be destroyed,” Raffen replied calmly. “When you’ve gone, we’re going to dam the river, dig out canals and flood the whole place. All there’ll be left will be a few towers sticking up out of the water. Well,” he added with a smile, “you did it to us.”
Gesel opened her mouth, then closed it again. Aimeric said, “I’m sorry, but that makes no sense. It’s the biggest city in the world. You can’t just kill it.”
“We can try,” Raffen said. “You can leave, all your people can be safe, you can even take your money with you, or we can smash down your walls and kill the lot of you. I know which option I’d prefer, but if you insist on dying, I can’t do much about it.” He stood up. “That’s our offer,” he said. “Take it or leave it.”
Gesel looked at him in horror, then turned to Chauzida. “Your majesty,” she said, “let’s you and me talk. Like grown-ups,” she added, with a passing scowl at Raffen. “The Selbst seem to have this ridiculous grudge. We’ve never done your people any harm.”
“You killed my father,” Chauzida said.
Aimeric cleared his throat. “I think you’ll find that was the Sashan.”
“You made him fight the Sashan. We had no quarrel with them. He died because of your war.”
“The Sashan attacked us,” Gesel said. “They started it.”
“We didn’t force your father to do anything,” Aimeric said. “We paid him, he took the money. It was a business agreement.”
Chauzida shook his head. “You can kill someone with money just as well as with an arrow,” he said. “The empire kills people and destroys things. Sometimes it may not be your fault, but you’re still the cause. Get rid of you, and it won’t happen again. I’m sorry,” he said, “but I think king Raffen is right. Please take your people and go. We don’t want to fight, lots of our people will die, and all of yours. But we simply don’t have a choice.”
Aimeric was aware of something sharp poking him between the shoulder-blades. He turned his head and saw the archdeacon, frantically jabbing at him with the corner of his writing-case. The archdeacon handed him a note; he read it and dropped it on the floor. “A month isn’t nearly long enough,” he said. “Half of our merchant fleet is away, they won’t be back for a week at least. Three months is the shortest possible time it’d take, just to get all our people out safely, let alone any property. For one thing, we need to negotiate with someone to find somewhere to go. We can’t just turn up on the beach somewhere.”
Raffen sat down again. “Why not?” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Chauzida said, “but I think you’re playing for time. In three months, you can buy in a lot more weapons and food, and that’d mean more of my people would be killed. I don’t think we can agree. One month.”
Raffen cleared his throat. “How about this?” he said. “You send a herald to Moisin and order Calojan to give himself up to us. You have one month to get him to come quietly. If he’s in our hands by then, you get another month to finish clearing your people out.”
Gesel started to say something, but Aimeric kicked her under the table. “Agreed,” he said.
“Excuse me.” Gesel had grabbed him by the back of the neck, like she’d done when they were kids. “I need to confer with my brother for a moment.” She pulled him out of his chair and marched him out of the tent.
“Have you gone mad?” she said.
“Gesel—”
“We can’t give them Calojan, we don’t know where he is. And if you think I’m going to stand by and watch them flood the City—”
He put his hand over her mouth. Her eyes went alarmingly wide, and for a moment he was worried she couldn’t breathe. “Listen,” he said. “We’re not going to give them Calojan, or the City. We’re not going to give them anything.”
“So what—?”
“We’re going to have to fight,” he said. “But it’s all right. Listen.” And, as succinctly as he could, he told her about Scona oil. “In a month’s time the new supply of raw oil will be in from Scona, we’ll have gallons of the horrible stuff. We’ll shoot it directly onto their tents and wagons. God knows how many of them we’ll kill, but it’s not like we’ve got a choice.”
“Raffen—”
“The Selbst can’t take the City on their own,” Aimeric said. “And besides, Raffen won’t want to see his people going up in flames, any more than Chauzida will. It’ll mean we keep the City, just as long as we’ve got this horrible thing and they haven’t.” He took a deep breath and removed his hand. “God knows, it’s not what I want to do. But if we’ve got to load all the people onto ships and dump them on a coastline somewhere, it’s just not going to work. A lot of them’ll die, and the rest won’t be much better off. If Calojan was here I wouldn’t even consider it, but as it is—”
“The hell with Calojan.” Her eyes were shining. “We don’t need him any more. Don’t you see? If this weapon’s half as good as you say it is, we can take the war to them, we can get back the empire, we can wipe them out for good. Aimeric, you idiot, why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
He looked at her and shivered. “We’d better get back inside,” he said. “Don’t say anything. Just leave it all to me.”
“You?” She gazed at him. “Are you mad?”
Well, now. What sane man would seriously consider launching burning Scona oil at children? You’d have to be out of your mind. “Gesel,” he said. “Shut up.”
Two weeks. The oil arrived, and Ermanaric tested scale models of the catapults, to give him an idea of the elevation and windage needed to hit the Cosseilhatz civilians. Raffen gave safe passage to three imperial messengers as far as Moisin. When they came back, they told Aimeric there was no sign of Calojan; not in Moisin, not anywhere.
Later that day, he met Semplan in the big tent. “My people spoke to Calojan,” Aimeric said. “He says he’ll surrender, but first he needs to make preparations for the defence of Moisin. I’m afraid he doesn’t trust you not to attack the moment he leaves.”
Semplan didn’t say anything. The agreement, of course, made no reference to Moisin, or any of the other cities still holding out against the Coalition.
“Anyway,” Aimeric went on, “the orders I gave him were to go straight to your commander at Moisin. Perhaps you’ll be good enough to tell me when he shows up there.”
“Of course.” Semplan was a truly bad dissembler. In the City, he’d starve. “I’m pleased to hear he’s decided to be reasonable.”
“He wouldn’t do anything that might jeopardise the safety of the empire, or its people. You know that as well as I do.”
Maybe Semplan had difficulty with the word jeopardise. He nodded, stood up and left the tent.
Three weeks. Ermanaric reported that they now h
ad a hundred gallons of Scona oil, and two hundred heavy-duty terracotta half-gallon wine jars. The only problem remaining was lighting the fuse reliably and safely, so it’d stay alight as it soared through the air and wouldn’t erupt in flames while it was still on the catapult arm. But he had every confidence; which was just as well, since there were only seven days left before the Cosseilhatz withdrew their wagons to a safe distance and began the assault.
“I think he’s just gone,” the archdeacon said gloomily. “He’s realised that there’s no hope for the empire, and that the savages will want him dead. He’s probably in Mezentia by now, giving lectures at the military academy.”
“Well,” the chancellor said, “at least we can be fairly sure he hasn’t defected to the enemy. If he had, we’d be dead by now. At the very least, they wouldn’t be demanding that we hand him over.”
“They’d have told us if they’d killed him,” the prefect said. “So, he’s still out there somewhere. On the other hand, if he was coming home, he’d have done it by now.”
None of them knew about Scona oil, and Aimeric was determined to keep it that way. So he’d made them into an evacuation subcommittee, to organise getting people on ships. Already, several hundred senators, assemblymen, distinguished landowners and clergy and their families were safe in the Vesani Republic, along with their best furniture and a significant proportion of the City’s coined gold money. There were only a few more boatloads to go, and then they could start evacuating the common people. Aimeric hadn’t pressed them on progress; if they’d found that uncharacteristic, they hadn’t said anything. The archdeacon had tentatively asked whether he should find a place on a ship for Aimeric’s mother; he’d replied that she had no intention of leaving while her daughter and grandson stayed behind (which was perfectly true). And what about Orsella?
“Later, perhaps,” Aimeric said. Sore point. He had an idea she’d made her own arrangements without telling him—in fact, he’d be amazed if she hadn’t—but she was still there and showed no signs of packing or spiriting away large sums of money. If she knew about Scona oil it wasn’t from him; but he’d long since given up trying to figure out how Orsella knew things.
The archdeacon asked Aimeric if he could see him in private.
“With the general evacuation about to start,” he said—he sounded nervous, almost guilty—“my colleagues and I believe that it’s time we established the foundations of an effective government in exile, based in the Vesani Republic, to provide the necessary functions of governance when our people start arriving there. Accordingly—”
“You want to get out while there’s still time,” Aimeric said. “Of course.”
The archdeacon flushed, pretended he hadn’t heard. “Accordingly,” he went on, “the regency council feels it would be appropriate if we transferred our seat of operations to the Republic as soon as possible. There will, after all, be considerable administrative and logistical hurdles to be cleared, and—”
“I said yes,” Aimeric interrupted. “Go. Get the Navy to take you if there’s no civilian ships.” The archdeacon opened his mouth and closed it again. “I agree with you,” Aimeric went on. “Time’s running out. And it’d be a tragedy if our people got there and there was nobody to pay taxes to when they arrived. I’ll stay here and look after things, it’s perfectly all right.”
The archdeacon gave him an odd look. “You’re quite happy to remain here,” he said.
“Yes. Gesel needs me and she’s not leaving. And who’s going to run the City if all its best and most talented administrators have flown the nest? Of course,” he went on, “you’ll need money. Can’t expect you to set up a seat of operations out of your own pockets, can we?”
He could feel the suspicion, like a blind man’s hand groping his face. Maybe he should’ve yelled and made a scene. Too late for that now. However, the offer of money managed to prevail over the archdeacon’s instinctive wariness. They started talking about exactly how much money, and the interview didn’t last much longer after that.
“At least I’ve got them off my back,” Aimeric said, when he got back to the palace that night. It was very late, and he’d been talking all day. “I had to give them next year’s highways and public works budget, but I don’t suppose we’ll be needing it.”
Orsella laughed. “Not so very long ago, those men were your friends.”
“Yes, they were, weren’t they?” Aimeric shrugged. “I don’t know. It was different then. The empire was there to be stolen from back then. Now it’s going to die unless I save it.”
“You’ve come a long way, Aimeric,” she said, and he didn’t think she was laughing at him. “Not nearly far enough and much, much too late, of course.”
“You can talk,” he said. “You came here to make money, no other reason.”
She kissed him on the forehead. “Perfectly true,” she said. “However, it may have escaped your attention, but I’m still here.”
He closed his eyes for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “Why?”
She frowned, as if working it out. “Because Calojan is still unaccounted for,” she said. “And because there’s still eight days to go. And because you’re here.”
“Those aren’t very good reasons.”
“Not individually, no. But put them together and it’s enough to tip the balance. Also,” she added casually, “I believe in the empire.”
He stared at her. “You what?”
“Oh, not as a force for good and a light to enlighten the heathen. I believe the empire’s not done for yet, not by a long way. There’s still eight days to go. A lot can happen in eight days.”
She knows, he thought; damn it, somehow she’s found out about the fire oil, or maybe she knows where Calojan is. In which case, she’d have told me, surely.
“Bless you for your simple faith,” he said. “I’m going to bed. I’m exhausted.”
“He’s dead,” Semplan said breathlessly.
They all looked at him, until he could bear it no longer. “It’s true,” he said, “I’ve seen it, I’ve got proof. Come and look.”
They followed him out of the tent. Outside, someone had stuck a spear in the ground. On it was a head, the shaft shoved up into the windpipe, so that the head lolled forward, like a man dozing after a heavy meal. Raffen took a step forward, then stopped. “Is that—?”
Chauzida moved past him, turning sideways so as not to shove him out of the way. He pulled the head back a little by its hair so he could see the face clearly. “I think so. Uncle?”
“I’m not sure.” Joiauz tilted the chin. “It’s pretty beat up, and it’s been dead at least a week, so it’s sunk in a lot.” He glanced at Semplan. “Where did you get this?”
“Moisin,” Semplan said. “Two of our scouts brought it in just now. That’s the point. It’s got to be him, because our people got him. I mean, if it had been some bounty hunter or something—”
“Moisin,” Raffen repeated, as though he’d never heard of the place.
“That’s right,” Semplan said. Joiauz was doing something with the head, pushing the left ear-lobe back. “A routine patrol caught him outside the town. The weird thing was, he wasn’t trying to get out, he was headed back in. Anyway, they saw a man on a horse, he didn’t stop when they shouted, so they shot him. And it’s Calojan.”
“It is him,” Joiauz said quietly. “There’s a scar, a small one, just behind the left ear. He got it from a little nick on the cheekpiece of his helmet; only a scratch, but it bled like hell. I was there when it happened. He made a joke about it; all those years he’d been in the wars, and this would be his very first scar.” He let the head go; it drooped forward on the spear-shaft and fell to the ground. “That’s him all right.”
They looked at each other, then at the odd, almost comical object lying on the grass. “Well then,” Raffen said abruptly, “that changes things. We don’t need to wait any longer. Well, do we?”
“We gave them a month,” Chauzida said quietly. “Even i
f they didn’t give us Calojan, they had a month.”
“Six days left,” Raffen said. “The hell with it. What’s six days?”
“It’ll be another four days before Hunza gets here with the artillery and the siege stuff,” Semplan pointed out. “We can’t go before then.”
“We’ll give them their full month,” Chauzida said. “We aren’t liars. We don’t need to break our word.”
Raffen bent forward and picked the head up by the ear. “Unless anybody wants this for anything,” he said. “I think we should let them know their general’s dead. They can give it a state funeral if they want. They enjoy a good show in the City.”
A good show was what they got. Raffen’s men paraded it three times up and down the outside of the wall, on top of the longest pike they could find, to make sure Aimeric couldn’t hush it up. Then they left it, in a cedarwood box decorated with gold and ivory panels, outside the Bronze Gate. It stayed there for several hours before some soldiers came and collected it.
There were no major riots in the City, mostly because Aimeric had imposed a curfew and put the entire garrison on the streets. The curfew didn’t extend to the docks, where the lines of people waiting to get on ships clogged the roads so badly that the carts couldn’t get through and the ships riding at anchor couldn’t be provisioned for their next trip. There was no question of using troops to disperse the queues. Any suggestion that the regent was trying to stop people getting out would have started a panic that would’ve rendered the Cosseilhatz entirely superfluous. Instead, the carts had to go round to the palace landing-station, which was inside the palace walls and therefore clear of desperate crowds; there, the provisions were loaded on small boats and taken out to the ships by sea. It held everything up, of course; but it was patently obvious by now that only a tiny proportion of the population was going to get a place on a ship. Remarkably, most people stayed calm. It was inconceivable, they argued, that the savages could storm Florian’s wall, so their ridiculous deadline was meaningless anyway. There was still plenty of time to get out, and the Empress would see they were all right. For some reason, they’d come to love Gesel more than any emperor in living memory; because she was rude to the priests and didn’t take any nonsense, they said, or because they were sorry for her, losing her husband with a child on the way, or because she’d stayed in the City when all the big men had run away. The Empress cared about them, more than Sechimer ever had; hadn’t he brought all this down on their heads by flooding the Westponds and driving the Selbst king mad with desire for revenge? He should’ve known better, they said, dealing with savages. They’re so irrational.