by K. J. Parker
There was a still silence, maybe four heartbeats, and then one of the horsemen nodded; fault forgiven, just this once. “We do want to get to Pithecusa,” the first one said, “but we’re late already; we can’t afford the time it’d take with you walking along with us. I’m sorry. I don’t see what we can do.”
“You’re lost, though. You don’t know the way. You’ll be very, very late if you just ride around at random.”
The second horseman shook his head. “You said, go back to Boc Afon. So we’ll do that, and when we get there, we’ll ask the way to Pithecusa. Someone there’s bound to know. We don’t need you to tell us how to get to Boc. We’ve just come from there.”
She tried to think, but there was a sort of thundering inside her head, like waves breaking against a rock. “You can’t just leave me here.”
They didn’t answer. They didn’t need to.
“Fine,” she said. “In that case, just give me some food. I’m starving. It’s the least you can do.”
One of them shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “We’re a bit low on supplies. We need what we’ve got left.”
“But I’ll starve.”
“We’re sorry,” the first rider said. “I wish we could help, but we can’t.”
Then he pulled his horse’s head around and rode away, and the others followed immediately, as though they were all limbs of one invisible body. She stooped for a stone, but by the time she’d found one big enough to be worth throwing, they were well out of range. Then she found she didn’t have the strength to straighten up, so she sat down instead.
The horsemen were receding fast, losing human shape, turning into geometric points on the straight line of the infinite road. She thought; I can follow their trail, and that’ll take me to Boc Afon, and everything will be all right. So that’s fine, then, she thought, and passed out.
She woke up soaking wet. There were puddles all round her, and the air smelled of rain. There was a man crouched over her. He was taking off her left boot.
Careless, or new to the profession; he had a knife in a sheath on his belt, and its handle was closer to her hand than his. She made a grab for it, but a sort of tearing pain in her back and neck made her freeze and whimper. The man looked round. He was clearly embarrassed. He drew the knife and threw it away, about three yards. “Sorry,” he said. “Thought you were dead.”
Behind him she saw a horse, its reins tied to a heavy stone. The man wore a Western military gambeson with rust stains down the front and sides, and Eastern cavalryman’s breeches. His boots were wrapped in tattered scarves. “Well, I’m not,” she said. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“You look like you’re in a bad way,” he replied, getting the boot clear of her heel with a little tug. “What’s the matter?”
“I’ve been walking God knows how long with no food.”
“It’ll be all right,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll ride back to Boc Afon and tell someone you’re here. You’ll be safe and sound in no time.”
“Give me my boot back.”
“You’re not going anywhere, the state you’re in. You don’t need them. But if I’m going to ride to Boc to get help for you, I need decent footwear. Mine are a mess and the stirrups don’t half chafe your feet.”
The satchel of money wasn’t where she’d left it, and she was prepared to bet the gold angels had evaporated from her pocket. “You realise what you’re doing is murder.”
He laughed. “Don’t be silly,” he said. “I’m going to see to it that you get rescued. Trust me.”
“At least give me some food. I’ve paid enough for it, God knows.”
“Sorry.” He did look genuinely sad. “But I’ve hardly got anything left, just enough to get me to Boc. Wouldn’t be any good if I fainted from hunger, fell off and bust my head open. Then we’d both be screwed.”
The knife was only four yards away. It would get her the horse, not to mention her boots and her money back, and her life. Surely, she thought, I’ve got the strength to crawl four stupid yards. But apparently not.
“You just lie there and get some rest.” He was fishing out the padding she’d stuffed in the boots. “Boc’s only a day’s fast ride away, so you’ll be just fine, I promise you. I give you my word. Everything’s going to be just fine.” He lifted his foot, hopped around comically while he pulled the boot on. It was a bit too small. “You’re lucky I happened to come along.”
He got the other boot on, scrambled on to the horse. “Just take it easy,” he called back to her: “save your strength.” Then he splashed away through the puddles, and in due course the straight line swallowed him up, as though he’d never existed.
Two peat-diggers, an old man and his sister, found her. They were on their way to Eubine, a small village ten miles off the road, but when they saw the state she was in they reckoned it’d be better to take her to the doctor in Boc Afon. They wrapped her up in blankets and the old woman made some vegetable soup.
“She’s waking up,” the old man said. “Now then, just lie still. You’re going to be fine.”
He was small and thin, with a dark brown face and bushy white hair. He spoke Imperial with an accent you could’ve plastered a wall with.
“Who are you?” she replied in Tembe.
The old man smiled. “I’m Thunderbolt and this is my sister, She-Stamps-Them-Flat. Fancy you knowing Tembe. There’s not many as does in these parts.”
She smiled as best she could; her face didn’t seem to be working. “You’re a long way from Blemya.”
“Too right. We came out here, what, forty years ago, for the seasonal work, got stuck, been here ever since. It’s all right, apart from the cold and the damp.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“That’s all right. We’re about sixteen miles from Boc. We’ll take you there first thing in the morning. There’s a doctor there.”
“I haven’t got any—”
“Our treat,” the old woman said. “Look at the state of you, out on the moor on your own like that. What happened to your boots?”
She shrugged. “A man stole them.”
The old woman scowled. “Some people,” she said. “Anyhow, you’re all right now. You’re going to be just fine.”
*
The doctor said there was nothing wrong with her, and charged the old man sixty stuivers. She grabbed her finger, to pull off the ring that Oida had given her in Lonazep, and found it wasn’t there any more. So she thanked them instead. They laughed. Anyone would’ve done the same, they said.
There was a white stripe where the ring had been. It would fade, in time.
There was a remote chance that she might be able to kid the Knights into writing her a letter of credit on her account in Rasch, so she went to the tavern where they did business in Boc, but the local agent wasn’t there; he’d left three days before, they said, on business in the city, and nobody knew when he’d be back. The man who told her that was very careless with his purse. He left it lying around in his coat pocket. Inside it was an angel twenty. Back in the money again.
She hurried out and tried to find the peat-diggers, but they weren’t in the market square, and they’d paid their bill at the inn and moved on. Damn them, she thought; so she went down to the taproom. No, they didn’t have any tea, no call for it, so she asked for a small red wine. The man gave her a funny look, and said he’d see what he could do.
The mail coach was in, and the driver was sitting by the fire telling everyone the latest news. There had been one hell of a battle, he said, at some village called Pithecusa. Four regiments of Imperial regulars and a squadron of auxiliary cavalry had been wiped out by the horse-archers—
“Hang on,” someone said. “They’re on our side, aren’t they?”
Not any more, apparently. The driver had got it from a couple of survivors, who’d flagged him down beside the road; one of them was in a hell of a mess, he’d taken them to the Brother’s house at Imea. On the way they told him all
about it, how the horse-boys suddenly fell out of the column, rode away at top speed, then looped and came back in shooting. Until the arrows started to hit, everyone thought it was some sort of showing-off display, and by then it was too late. The cavalry were shot down where they stood; the regulars formed a square, but the horse-boys rode into point-blank range, and their arrows went through regulation coats-of-plates like they weren’t there. Of course, the regulars had no archery support – at least, they did, that’s what the horse-boys had been for – so there was nothing they could do except stand there and get shot. Right at the end they tried a charge, which just made it easier for the horse-boys to finish them off. The two stragglers got out alive by shamming dead under a pile of bodies. No, they had no idea what made the horse-boys turn on them like that. Something someone said, maybe. That’s savages for you: you never know what they’ll do next.
“Four regiments,” someone said, after a very long silence. “I didn’t know we still had four regiments.”
“Where the hell is Forza Belot?” someone else wanted to know. An apparently well-informed man replied that he was consolidating his forces for the big push, which was going to drive the Easterners into the sea and end the war by midsummer. There was an awkward pause, and then someone bought the driver a drink and changed the subject.
She moved to the back of the taproom, where three men were playing cards for money. She asked if she could join in. They laughed, and someone pulled out a chair. She asked what they were playing. I’m not sure I know that game, she told them. That’s all right, they said, you’ll pick it up as you go along.
Which she did, to a remarkable degree. Not all that much later, there was just one man, and his tall piles of copper had melted down to one little stub, like a cheap candle. On the table between them sprawled a brown sea of small, worn coins.
“Remind me,” she said. “What do I do if I want to see what you’ve got?”
Pay double the bet, he told her, so she did that. He laid down five cards, one of which was the four of swords. There is no four of swords in an orthodox pack.
He leaned across the table to scoop up all the money. “Where the hell have you been?” he said. “We’ve been looking for you all over.”
“I got lost.”
“Really.” He scowled at her as though everything that had ever gone wrong since the Creation was her fault. “You do realise you’re putting the whole operation in jeopardy. You were given one simple thing to do—”
“I was arrested.” She’d raised her voice; not, perhaps, the best way to change his obviously poor opinion of her. “They grabbed me and put me in jail. What was I supposed to do?”
Maybe he hadn’t heard about that. Maybe he wasn’t interested. “If it was up to me,” he said, “this assignment would be taken away from you and given to somebody else. But it’s not, so you’re just going to have to pull yourself together and get on with it. Do you understand?”
“Look.” She tried her pleading face, but it had been a while and she hadn’t been practising it. “Can’t we go somewhere a bit less public and talk about this? People are staring.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Let’s talk about it anyway. Please?”
He thought for a moment, then sighed. “If you insist. All right, stand up and slap my face.”
Ah, she thought, right. She did as she was told. He belted her right back, making her head spin, then grabbed her wrist and pulled her across the room to the stairs. Behind them, people were cheering. Savages, she thought. And they’re wrong; the thing about savages is, they’re so predictable.
The stranger had one of the better rooms, with a view over the stable yard. “Let’s bypass the dancing around,” he said, sitting on the bed and pulling his boot off. “My name is Corason and I’m a Commissioner of the Lodge, so if you’re going to plead superior orders, forget it, because I outrank practically everybody on Earth.”
She stared at him. “You’re dead.”
“No I’m not.”
“Yes you are. You wandered off just before the big battle between Senza and Forza, the one that led to the relief of Rasch. You got shot by a horse-archer. Someone saw your body.”
He nodded. “Perfectly true. Only I wasn’t dead. I had a perfectly miserable ten days, and then Ocnisant’s people found me and fixed me up, and now here I am, live, kicking and giving you a direct order. Here,” he added, pulling up his shirt to reveal a shiny purple blotch the size of a dog’s paw. “Will that do?”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“And I didn’t wander off. I was doing a job of work. And Commissioner Axio and I saved Rasch by doing a deal, as you well know. The battle was just something personal between the Belot boys.”
He said it so casually: I saved the city, the battle and all its dead were neither here nor there. “And you’re here to find me.”
He nodded. “You’ve got a job to do, and the decision is, you’re the only one who can do it. Which means I have to spend days on end in this rat-hole, when I’ve got a mountain of work I ought to be doing, waiting for you to condescend to show up. And then I’ve got to take you to Blemya.”
Wax in her ears? “Blemya. You mean Permia.”
He looked at her as though she was stupid. “Oida’s not in Permia,” he said, “he’s in Blemya. So that’s where you’re going. And me, too, to make sure you don’t wander off again.”
“What’s he doing in Blemya?”
She’d said something amusing; he was grinning. “Buying the Blemyan army. No, seriously. We’re hiring forty thousand heavy infantry for the Lodge.”
She’d heard him loud and clear, but what she’d heard made no sense. “That’s impossible,” she said. “We haven’t got—”
He shook his head. “That kind of money, no, of course not.”
“So—”
He hesitated; not supposed to talk about it, but the story was too good not to share. “The East is bankrupt,” he said. “So’s the West, of course, but the East has actually run out of cash money: you walk into the Treasury vault and all you can see is marble floor. So, a few months back, the chief financial officer of the Eastern department of the Exchequer arranged a loan from the Knights; twenty million angels. Biggest loan ever in the history of international finance. Of course, the Knights couldn’t carry that much on their own, so they laid off about half of it on the Scholars, the Poor Brethren, the Sword-blade, the Crown of Gold, all the major banks this side of Mezentia. The cunning of it was, quite apart from the East getting enough liquidity to run the war for nine months, it’d dry up all the spare money in the world, so when the West goes looking for a loan, there won’t be anything left for anyone to lend them. Smart move, don’t you think? Of course, it was a Craftsman who thought of it.”
She had a feeling she knew what was coming. “Before—”
“Oh yes, naturally. And then, just before the trouble started and he had to make himself scarce, our man in the Eastern Treasury wrote the whole lot in strict-form letters of credit and sent it to our account with the Merchant Venturers in Blemya. So, when we send our newly hired army to obliterate the Eastern empire, we’ll be paying for it with their own money. Smart.”
She felt as though she’d been kicked in the face. “That’s—”
“Yes. Of course, there’s a downside. It’ll be the end of the Knights, and eight or nine other major banks. It’ll be a long time before there’s any money circulating anywhere, it’ll be barter and sea shells anywhere outside the main cities for the next fifty years, and that’ll be very bad for pretty much everybody. But, as the saying goes, omelettes and eggs. And we did more or less the same thing with the West and the horse-soldiers, except they didn’t have to borrow. We managed that with the very last of their cash reserves.”
She breathed in slow and deep, and out again. “So what’s Oida got to do with it?”
“What? Oh, didn’t I mention that? His idea. I told you, didn’t I, it was a Craftsman who
thought of it.”
She needed her mind to clear, quickly. “So he’s single-handedly won us this stupid, suicidal war. We’re actually going to beat both empires.”
Corason frowned. “Don’t count your chickens,” he said. “Both the Belot brothers are still very much alive, and we found out the hard way just recently we can’t touch either of them, not directly at least. And either of those two lunatics could crunch up our pretty new army, and then where would we be? But, yes, Oida did well there, and that’s why it had to be him in Blemya negotiating the deal. Like I said, he’s a smart boy. Like his brother.”
“He did all that for us,” she said, “and you still want me to kill him.”
“Yes. You know why. It’s necessary. The fact that he did us a good turn doesn’t change a thing.”
“Mere Barton? Oh, that’s all finished,” Corason said, as they clattered over the rickety bridge over the Finamor. “The Western army got there, found it deserted, burned it to the ground. Just like they were supposed to. It was only ever meant as a decoy. You know, make them think that was our home, base of operations, whatever, give them something to attack when they came after us. Of course, we had to make it look convincing, which is why we spent all that money and effort making it look nice. But you know as well as I do, the Lodge can’t be confined in any one place. It’s everywhere.”
He was, she felt, being disturbingly informative; whatever happened to need-to-know? Except that nothing he’d told her would be any use to an enemy, once they’d tortured it out of her. And it didn’t matter that she knew all this stuff, because before very long she’d be dead. Which explained why he was being so informative.
“Corason,” she said. “Am I going to get out of this alive?”
He shrugged, as though the point was trivial. “That’s up to you,” he said: “depends on how cleverly you go about it. You have our permission to survive, provided your survival doesn’t prejudice getting the job done. Everybody reckons you’re pretty smart. The secret, I’ve always found, is having several independent escape routes planned before you start. Lots of eggs in lots of baskets. Always worked for me.”