by K. J. Parker
He looked at them; he knew they’d all heard what he hadn’t said. No war, no soldiers. He wondered if he’d lost them, at the last moment. “Kudei?” he said.
“Fine by me,” Kudei replied. “You may’ve had seven extra years in the service. I’ve had seven years with my brothers. I’ve been on the point of just packing a bag and walking out for I don’t know how long.”
“Anyway,” Muri said, “these are just details, we can sort them out later. The important thing is, we want to come with you, Teuche. We ought to be together again. It’s been too long.”
“Aidi?”
Aidi spread his hands in an exaggerated gesture. “Whatever you all decide is fine by me,” he said. “Just so long as there’s not too much digging, that’s all I ask. And if we’re going to take along a bunch of the common people to handle all that side of things, I really don’t see a problem.”
Kunessin frowned, but Kudei was grinning. Muri said, “It’s just a shame about Fly. Do you think you could talk to him again, Teuche?”
“Just one thing,” Kudei said. “You’re sure this island’s uninhabited? Only, if it’s everything you say, it strikes me as odd that nobody wants it but you.”
“There were people there once,” Kunessin said, “but not any more. The military cleared them out when they built the station.”
“No chance they’ll come back?”
“No,” Kunessin said. “I read the file. That’s not an issue.”
“And nobody else has got any sort of claim there?” Kudei insisted.
Kunessin shook his head.
“What about our lot?” Aidi put in. “The government . . .”
Kunessin smiled. “The military made a full report, compiled by a senior member of the general staff. Concluded the place wasn’t viable. No realistic, cost-effective prospect of any further use.”
Aidi raised an eyebrow. “Senior member of the general staff ?”
“Me,” Kunessin said.
“Ah. Very sensible.” Aidi nodded gravely. “Well, in that case, I can’t see there’s any problems we can’t deal with.” He yawned. “I was getting bored with shopkeeping anyway,” he said. “The money’s good, but you’ve got to be polite to a lot of very stupid people you’d rather kick out into the street.” He turned his head sharply and looked Kunessin in the eye. “Just so long as there’s no fighting. I’m bored with that too.”
Kunessin shook his head. “No fighting. Nobody to fight. And if it doesn’t work out, we can always come home again.”
“Yes, of course,” Aidi said quickly. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I feel this calls for a drink. On me, naturally. Muri, you’re nearest to the bell.”
“I need to get back home,” Kudei said, standing up. “My turn to do the milking. When’s the next staff meeting?”
“Tomorrow morning, early as you like,” Kunessin said. “First item on the agenda: stores and supplies. I’ve already covered the basics, I think, but it’s something we all need to talk about. Muri? Does that suit you?”
Muri smiled. “Sure. It’s not like I’ve got anything else to do.”
“Aidi?”
“Likewise.” He frowned. “I gather we’re not going to have that drink, then.”
“Better not,” Kunessin said. “Fact is, my drinking days are over.”
“Well, you’re no fun,” Aidi said. “In that case, I’ll see you all tomorrow.” He stood up. “I have no idea what I’ve just got myself into, but what the hell. Good night, gentlemen.”
Kudei left with him, but Muri hesitated. “I’m going to have a cup of tea,” Kunessin said. “Join me?”
“Sure,” Muri said, sitting down again.
Kunessin rang the bell. “Muri,” he said, “I was so sorry to hear about what happened.”
Muri shrugged. “It was just bad luck,” he said. “You know what it’s like. Just when you think you’ve got everything dealt with and settled.”
Kunessin raised an eyebrow. “That’s a rather odd way of putting it.”
“You think so?” Muri laughed. “It’s the way my mind works, when it works at all. Things to do today: settle down, achieve serenity, live happily ever after. Tick the box and move on. Of course, real life won’t let you get away with an attitude like that, so the moment your back’s turned, it slips in and trashes everything. It’s probably just nature’s cure for complacency, though why it needs curing I’m not entirely sure. Still, I don’t make the rules.” He’d been talking quickly; he stopped with equal abruptness. “What about you?” he said, after a moment. “I’ll be honest with you, I never could figure out why you stayed in the service. I’d have thought you’d have come straight back here and bought a farm.”
Kunessin pulled a face. “The farm I wanted wasn’t available,” he said. “Besides, it was different once the war was over. Less work and more money.” He decided to change the subject. “It’s a shame about Fly,” he said. “But I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“I am,” Muri said.
“I think Aidi was right,” Kunessin said. “And the way I’m inclined to see it is, if he’s got a real reason to stay, we should let him. We’re only going because there’s nothing for us here. I don’t know,” he added, looking away. “All those years in the job, day-dreaming about coming home, planning what we were going to do. Then we get our wish, and somehow it has all changed. Not Kudei, of course. He had the farm to go back to, and his family. I really thought he’d have sorted all that out by now, but apparently not.”
“His brothers gave him a hard time, I think,” Muri said. “They didn’t like that he’d gone away for so long, and then came back expecting to carry on where he left off. Also, he doesn’t fit in with them. No disrespect, I know you’ve been close to them all your life, but Kudei’s just not like the rest of them. Actually, I can see their point. It can’t be easy having a brother who’s so much smarter and better at everything than you are, specially if he’s the youngest. You’d feel like you’re always in competition, but you’re never going to win. I can see why he’s not been comfortable there since he got back.”
Kunessin frowned. “It shouldn’t matter, on a farm,” he said. “That’s what’s so special about it. Every day should be the same, more or less; there shouldn’t be anything to compete about. Dad and I—” He stopped. “I’m glad Aidi decided to join up,” he said. “I thought we might have a problem with him.”
Muri laughed. “You know Aidi,” he said. “Because everything’s always come so easily to him, he’s not interested in success, like the rest of us. So he’s built up a thriving business and he’s making money; so what? Probably in his mind that counts as underachieving. No, I’m surprised he ever came back here at all. Except,” he went on, “I guess being in Faralia’s a wonderful ready-made excuse for not doing anything with his life.”
Kunessin nodded. “You mean, if he thought this idea of mine stood a chance of succeeding, he wouldn’t have agreed to come with us? Maybe you’re right. Still, I’d rather have Aidi just playing at being involved than half a dozen other people doing their very best. You know that as long as he’s around, you may not succeed but you won’t fail, if you see what I’m getting at.”
Muri smiled. “Remember what he was like about exams, back at the College? The rest of us’d be slaving away in the library, busting a gut. Aidi’d be swanning around, making sure everybody knew he hadn’t done a stroke of work. Then, when the results came out, we’d find we’d passed with distinction, and so had he.” He grinned. “He told me once that all he ever did was, the night before the exam he’d pick up the textbook, open it at random a few times and read a page or two, and next day he could absolutely guarantee that what came up in the paper was what he’d been looking at the night before. He said he had no idea how it worked, but it never failed.”
“He told me that too,” Kunessin said. “I’m not sure I believe it. But I can’t remember ever seeing him in the library. I think he just sat down in the exam room, read the quest
ion and figured the answer out from first principles. I know for a fact that’s what he did in our Tactics final, because the examiner made a point of praising him for a completely original answer. He told me once he didn’t like reading books because it got in the way of thinking. Still,” he went on, “maybe he was telling the truth, at that. He’s always been outrageously lucky, as well as everything else.”
Muri nodded eagerly. “Remember that time when we were pulling back after Bana, and they’d got us hemmed in on three sides and we thought we were completely screwed. Aidi couldn’t have had any way of knowing the Nineteenth would turn up like that. But to listen to him talk afterwards, it was all part of a carefully worked-out plan, and he was slightly annoyed at them for being ten minutes late.”
Kunessin frowned. “But he did know,” he said. “Nuctos had slipped out just before dawn and spied ahead; he’d seen them coming—” He broke off, turning his head so he couldn’t see Muri’s face. “Anyway,” he said, “there wasn’t much luck involved there, just a bloody good piece of tactical thinking.”
Neither of them said anything for a while. Then the door opened, and someone came to take their order for tea.
“I think I’ll go home, actually,” Muri said. “I’ve got a few things to clear up. See you tomorrow.”
He left quickly, and Kunessin asked for a pot of black tea and a plate of barley cakes. The waiter appeared to disapprove, which amused him: the great General Kunessin ordering peasant food. Well, he thought, it’ll be something he can tell his grandchildren.
Easier than he’d expected - but Fly Alces hadn’t turned up, so on balance he had to put it down as a failure. Unless he had all of them, the complete set, it wouldn’t work, and there’d be no point to any of it. He poured the tea - he’d forgotten to ask for butter, and of course they hadn’t thought to offer it - and broke up a barley cake with his fingers. Would tea bushes grow on Sphoe? He very much doubted it. Still, there would be the ship.
There was a knock at the door, and for a moment he thought it might just possibly be the missing butter. But instead it was Thouridos Alces.
Kunessin looked at him. “You’re late,” he said.
Alces grinned. “I know. Sorry.”
“You always were late for staff meetings, Fly.”
“Fine. I’ll go away again.”
Kunessin shrugged. “You might as well,” he said. “You’ve come to tell me you’re staying here, and you didn’t want to meet the others, in case they tried to make you change your mind. You reckoned you could handle me on your own, but you might not be able to stand up to Aidi.”
Alces sat down, grabbed two cakes, slipped one up his sleeve. “Nice to see you too, Teuche. So, tell me about it.”
Kunessin sighed and moved the plate, so that Alces would have to cross into his territory in order to conduct further raids. “We’re going to found a colony,” Kunessin said. “There’s an island, ideal for comfortable subsistence agriculture. We’ll have it all to ourselves.”
“Sounds a bit bleak,” Alces said with his mouth full. “Subsistence agriculture. That’s living in a cave and wearing goatskins, isn’t it?”
“Hardly,” Kunessin replied, sipping his tea. Oily, and too strong without butter. “It’s not like we’ll have been washed ashore from a shipwreck. We’ll take everything we want from civilisation with us.”
Alces looked at him. “Brocade curtains?” he said. “Harpsichords?”
“Thanks for reminding me; I’ll put them on the list. Anyway, what do you care? You’re staying, aren’t you?”
Alces stared down at his hands, folded in his lap. “I don’t know,” he said. “You’re quite right, by the way. I’ve been standing in the doorway of the cooper’s shop on Spangate, watching the front door of this place. When I saw Muri leave, I counted to two hundred, just in case any of them had any reason to come back.”
“It’s her, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Alces said.
“That’s funny.” Kunessin broke up another cake; he hadn’t eaten the first one yet. “Any of the others, not a problem. Even me,” he admitted. “I can believe I could’ve met a girl and settled down, five years ago. But not you, somehow. Damn it, Fly, if you’d wanted to get old, why did you ever leave the farm in the first place?”
“Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Yes, but a fencing school,” Kunessin snapped. “Of all the bloody stupid things, Fly. Is that really what your whole life’s been leading up to?”
Maybe Alces was offended, at what he’d said or how he’d said it. “Seems to me that what my whole life’s leading up to is death,” he said. “While I’m waiting, I might as well earn an honest thaler, preferably without killing anybody.”
“So you teach swordsmanship. Not very well, if that’s your mission statement.”
Alces grinned. “Like the boxer’s tombstone. You remember,” he added, as Kunessin raised an eyebrow. “Here lies Mago the boxer, of whom it may honestly be said that he never harmed anybody.”
“Oh God.” Kunessin pulled the most dramatic of faces. “I remember, Menin’s history lectures. Frankly, boy . . .” (His impersonation had become hopelessly stylised after twenty years, but Alces smiled nevertheless.) “And the knife as far as Ephianassa.” His face fell. “We’re both of us getting old, Fly, that’s the awful thing. I’m not sure I can handle it.”
Alces shrugged. “You should’ve stayed in the army.”
Kunessin shook his head. “I can see why the fencing school,” he said, and it was almost an apology. “You’ve got to stay light on your feet to teach fencing. You know what? I walked up to Little Moor yesterday and I had to stop three parts of the way up. That’s terrible.”
“That’s just laziness,” Alces said. “For crying out loud, Teuche, you’re thirty-eight years old, that’s hardly senile. My dad got married at thirty-eight, and his dad still referred to him as ‘the boy’. Bide there, he used to say, I’ll send the boy on after it. I remember him saying that, when I was a kid, and I thought he meant me. We’re not old yet, Teuche.”
“Maybe.” Kunessin moved awkwardly in his chair. “But you know what they say: you’re as old as you feel. On that basis, I’m about ninety.”
Slowly and deliberately, Alces reached past him and secured the last barley cake. “I know exactly what you mean,” he said. “It’s because we’d all lived two lifetimes’ worth of stuff by the time we were thirty. It’s like the winter evenings,” he went on. “It gets dark, you go home, take your boots off and get ready for bed, but really it’s still the middle of the afternoon. All in the mind, of course.”
Kunessin nodded. “So what you’re saying is,” he said, “I don’t need to go to a remote island and found the ideal republic just to keep from shrivelling up and fading away. Yes?”
Outside, two women were screaming at each other, though Kunessin couldn’t catch the actual words. It made him think of other screams, of orders frantically shouted that you couldn’t make out because of the padding in your helmet.
“This colony,” Alces said. “You’re planning on staying there for good?”
“Yes.”
Alces dipped his head to signify that the point was established beyond debate. “And what happens when you really get old?” he said. “I have this vision of you all hobbling round after the sheep on walking sticks. Not entirely practical, is it?”
Kunessin frowned. “What’s your point?” he said.
“Simply this.” Kunessin noticed that Alces’ eyes were wide, his chin lifted, as they’d always been at the very last moment, just before he unsheathed the sword (and he thought: exactly when did I become the enemy?). “I’ll come with you, Teuche, of course I will. I’d go with you anywhere, any time. But I’ve got to take Enyo with me.”
He stopped talking, and Kunessin could feel the implacable force of his defence. The deployment wasn’t one he’d been expecting, but still he said, “Of course you can, Fly, why the hell not? After all, we’re goin
g there to live, not just for two weeks’ leave. And besides,” he added, “she’s your wife.”
A sudden, unexpected attack in flank, throwing the enemy into confusion. “That’s all right then,” Alces muttered. “I thought you wouldn’t like the idea.”
“Really? You’re a strange bugger, Fly. Assuming,” he went on, “she’s prepared to go.”
Alces laughed. “No worries on that score,” he said. “Enyo’s a farm girl; she hates it in town. Her father was a farm labourer over to Actis.”
“Family?”
Alces frowned. “Killed in the war,” he said. “You remember, there was a lot of raiding there. It was while we were away.”
“I heard about it,” Kunessin said. “It’s called Sphoe, by the way.” Alces looked blank. “The island.”
“Oh, right.” Alces grinned. “You’re not going to rename it, then. Kunessia.”
Kunessin pulled a face. “I’m not sure I want you along after all,” he said. “If you’re going to be a disruptive influence.”
“Surely that’s the whole point of me going,” Alces replied. “We can be five disruptive influences together.”
Chapter Four
Cadet Muri Achaiois perplexed his tutors. One day he astonished them all with his brilliance; the next day, they could have sworn he was an imbecile. He worked harder than any of the cadets in his year, but made elementary mistakes through carelessness, and his greatest triumphs came not from diligence but pure untutored insight. All of the Faralia gang, as the tutors quickly came to call them, could be supremely exasperating on their day, but hardly a day passed without Cadet Achaiois’ name being mentioned in the staff room or the faculty offices.
It wasn’t just the tutors who were driven to distraction by Achaiois’ bewilderingly paradoxical nature. One evening in barracks, towards the end of his first term, he was sitting at the table in the room where the cadets cleaned and polished their kit, writing frantically on a scrap of wrapping paper he’d salvaged from the stores. Cadets Kunessin and Proiapsen, who’d been waiting for him to join them in a raid on the buttery, found him there and asked what he was doing.