by K. J. Parker
Dorun looked down at the deck. “It’s worth trying, I suppose,” she said.
“Well, I think it’d carry a lot more weight if we all asked,” Chaere said quickly. “Start as we plan to go on. I mean, they can’t ride roughshod over all of us. Maybe you could have a word with the others.”
“I don’t think so,” Dorun said quietly, her hand over her mouth. “In fact, I don’t think I’m going to be up to doing anything that means moving away from this rail. Sorry,” she added wretchedly, “I don’t want to seem difficult, but I haven’t got a lot of choice.”
Chaere sniffed. “Well,” she said, standing up, “I’ll talk to them later. But don’t blame me if it all goes horribly wrong.”
A perfectly reasonable request, Dorun thought once she’d gone, on the face of it. Any fool could see, of course, that a shed or canopy raised on deck wouldn’t last two minutes once the wind started to blow. She smiled. Probably, Aidi Proiapsen would try explaining that to her, sweetly reasonable and wanting to tell her all the technical stuff - lap joints, stress points, shearing limits of materials - and that’d just make her irritable: you’re supposed to be so clever, can’t you do a simple thing like put up a shed? In the right conditions, a conversation like that could fester under both their skins for twenty years.
“How are you feeling?” She hadn’t noticed him approach, but she turned her head and did her best to smile. “Not good,” she said.
“No,” Kunessin said, “I can see that. I got seasick once, when I was young. Lasted three days and I was sure I was going to die. In fact, I can’t remember ever feeling worse, even when I was in the field hospital for seven weeks with blood poisoning, and they were convinced I wasn’t going to make it.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m glad you told me that. Listen,” she added on impulse. “Chaere - that’s Aidi Proiapsen’s wife . . .”
He nodded. “I’m gradually getting the hang of it.”
“She’s decided she wants a sort of covered gallery on the deck, to sit in when it rains. I take it that’s out of the question.”
He looked surprised, but nodded. “The wind’d rip it off in two seconds flat,” he replied. “All it’d take would be a side-wind . . .”
“Maybe you should warn him,” she said. “She’s not the world’s most tactful person.”
He grinned. “I appreciate your concern,” he said. “But Aidi’s not that bad really. Let him handle it in his own way. They’ll have to open negotiations sooner or later.”
It was an odd way of putting it, but she could see what he meant. “You’re very close, aren’t you?” she said. “All five of you.”
“In some ways, yes. But not in everything, by any means. We’ve been apart for quite a few years.”
“Even so.” The ship lurched, and she winced. “Oh God,” she muttered. “Am I really going to have to put up with this all the way to Sphoe?”
He smiled. “Yes,” he said. “But it stops as soon as you get off the ship. Or quite soon after, anyway.”
“Fine. That’s your idea of sympathy, is it?”
“Coming from me, that’s sympathy on an unprecedented scale. Cherish it.”
He left her and went below. As he’d feared, the cargo had shifted, so that three-hundredweight casks were jammed up against flimsy boxes and crates, ready to crush them as soon as the ship hit anything more boisterous than a gentle swell. The animals seemed quiet enough: the cows had backed into the far corner of their improvised pen, and the bull was standing in front of them, his tail swishing. Kunessin stuck a fork into the opened bale and threw him a mop of hay. He stared at it with contempt.
“He’s not happy.” He hadn’t noticed Kudei, up on top of the hayrick, lying on his stomach looking down at him. “But I don’t suppose he’ll be any trouble, so long as we keep our distance for a bit.”
Kunessin put the fork back. “How much of the hay got wet when we were loading?”
“Three score,” Kudei replied. “I’ve put the wet stuff on top; it’s drying quite well. It’s the flour and the oats I’m worried about.”
“Surely not. They’re safely packed in barrels.”
Kudei shook his head. “Someone down at the cooper’s saw you coming,” he said. “Green staves. With the damp and the warmth down here, some of them’ll warp, you can bet on it. I’m not so bothered about the oats, if the pasture’s as good as you say it is, but the flour was meant to be for us.”
“It’ll be all right,” Kunessin said firmly. “We’ve got nearly double what we’re likely to need.”
Kudei jumped up. “Just as well,” he said, hopping from the large to the small rick, and from there to the deck. “Also, Aidi’s right. This ship is definitely too low in the water.”
“For now.” Kunessin manufactured a yawn. “But in a day or so we’ll have eaten and drunk the excess weight, and then we’ll be just right. The master reckons it’s set fair for the next forty-eight hours.”
“Well.” Kudei picked up a small barrel that had rolled on to its side and set it straight again. “I hope he’s right. I wish I knew about ships and all that stuff. It makes me nervous, having to rely on someone I don’t know very well.”
Kunessin grinned. “Aidi’s a mine of nautical information,” he said.
“Naturally. What does he reckon?”
“He thinks we’ll be lucky to get to Sphoe without having to swim.”
Kudei laughed. “Apart from that.”
“Oh, he reckons I paid well over the odds for the ship, which isn’t really suitable for what we want, and we should’ve had much more done to it before we set out; but that aside, it could be worse. Also, the master’s reasonably competent, but his dead reckoning’s out by at least two degrees, so we’ll probably go right on past Sphoe till we hit the mainland, and then we’ll have to double back against the wind, which at this time of year could take us a month.”
“Apart from that?”
“No major problems,” Kunessin said. “Oh, and he’s wrong about the two degrees. I had Muri look at it, and he reckons the master’s laid in a little bit extra to compensate for some current or other we’ll run into while we’re rounding the cape. I haven’t told Aidi, needless to say.” Using the flat of his right hand as a fulcrum, he levered himself up on top of the smaller hayrick, then pulled a face. “Damn it, Kudei,” he said, “it’s wet.”
“Told you.”
Kunessin shrugged. “Changing the subject,” he said, “how are things going with . . . ?” He froze, his face a study in acute embarrassment. “I really am most terribly sorry,” he said, “but I’ve forgotten . . .”
“Clea,” Kudei replied, grinning. “And not so bad, all things considered. We’re both of us - well, cautious, so that’s all right. I get the feeling she’s making an effort to get off on the right foot.”
“Good,” Kunessin said; it was his commanding-officer-taking-an-interest voice, but it had come out like that before he could do anything about it. Kudei only grinned. “You know me,” Kunessin went on awkwardly, “I haven’t got a clue. But . . . well, it may just be possible that Dorun and I are going to be friends, if that’s possible with women.”
“Best way,” Kudei said magisterially. “Just don’t try too hard, that’s all.” He sat down on a heap of meal sacks, picking at some loose stitching. “I watched my brothers come to grief that way,” he said. “Either trying too hard or not trying at all. Usually both,” he added with a grin. “Euge always says we have women in our house the way other families have mice. Says it all, really.”
Kunessin nodded.
“Dosei, on the other hand, says that a farm’s got to have women, the same way it’s got to have dogs.” Kudei shrugged. “My father wasn’t much better, come to that; when I think about it, I can’t see my mother had much of a life, but she always seemed too busy to notice. Trouble is, you want it to be different, so you try too hard. Like my uncle Teleclidin, remember him? Wouldn’t let his wife stir outside, or even make up the fire. Ke
pt her stuck in that poky little upstairs sitting room all day doing needlework, like a gentlewoman. Thirty years, and she hardly ever set foot downstairs. And he was convinced he was doing her a favour.”
“I remember him,” Teuche said, after a while. “Little short man, always wore a scarf, even in summer. Looked a bit like a bundle of dry sticks in a sack. But I remember seeing him wrestle a bullock into a stall for debudding, all on his own. Always took three of us to do that.”
“Oh, he was strong all right,” Kudei said. “But how old do you reckon he was when he died?”
Kunessin frowned. “He was pretty ancient when I knew him,” he said. “I don’t know. Seventy? Seventy-five?”
Kudei shook his head. “Actually,” he said, “he was fifty-seven.” He looked away, then said, “When I was a kid, I really didn’t want to be a farmer. What a total waste of a life, I thought. Everything you’ll ever know you’ve learned by the time you’re fifteen, and every year’s the same as the year before and the year after. You know exactly what you’ll be doing this day twelve months hence, because it’s what you’re doing today. I can’t do that, I thought, I’ll go mad. So I made them let me go to college and be a soldier.” He grinned. “Thought it’d make a difference.”
“That’s a good joke,” Kunessin said. “All I ever wanted was what you couldn’t stand the thought of.” He stood up suddenly. “You know something?” he said. “When we were at the war, I used to lie awake sometimes, making plans: how I could murder your entire family, one at a time or the whole lot of them together, so you’d be the only one left, and then I’d buy the farm off you. Oh, I thought of every possible way: poisoning the stream, boarding up the house at night and setting it on fire, killing them all in their beds and making it look like soldiers did it. It’s a bloody good thing we were so far away, or I might have done it, too. I had it all worked out, times and distances down to the second, every eventuality covered with a back-up plan. When it was really bad, in the war, thinking about it was the only thing that kept me going sometimes. There was no ill will, believe it or not; I thought of them all as targets, like you do when you’re fighting in a battle. It was one of the reasons I stayed on after the war: I didn’t dare come home, in case I went ahead and did it.”
Kudei thought for a while, then he said, “What if I’d refused to sell?”
“You wouldn’t have,” Kunessin said. “I’ve always known you didn’t want the farm.”
“Yes, but what if I’d refused?”
Kunessin looked down, at his hands steepled in his lap. “Then I’d have bullied you into letting me come and work for you,” he said. “And then I’d have waited to see who died first. After all, we’re a long-lived family, you’re not. Anyhow, it wouldn’t have come to that. I’d have talked you into selling.”
He realised Kudei was looking at him. “What made you decide to tell me that?” Kudei said.
“I guess I thought you should know,” Kunessin replied. “It’s one of the few things I’m deeply ashamed of.”
Kudei rubbed his eyes, as though he was suddenly tired. “You never did it, though,” he said. “It was just daydreams. And we were all a bit off our heads back then.”
“Not me,” Kunessin said. “The only reason I didn’t do it was because we were hundreds of miles away. If they’d ever given us two weeks’ leave . . .”
“You shouldn’t say any more,” Kudei snapped. “And you shouldn’t have told me. It’s really not the sort of thing I want to know.”
“It’s why we’re going to Sphoe,” Kunessin said calmly. “You need to know the reason, or I’m leading you out here under false pretences. You ought to know the worst thing about me. There shouldn’t be any secrets.”
“Stuff that’s just inside your head . . .” Kudei turned away, like someone avoiding a blow. “The way I’m going to choose to see it,” he said, “you had some crazy ideas at one time, most probably because of the war and what it did to all of us; but you never did anything about them, and it’s all over with now and out of the way. Just do me a favour and never mention it again.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“Yes,” Kudei said. “And if there’s anything else you want to tell me . . .”
“There isn’t.”
“Good. Then let’s forget it. All right?”
“All right,” Kunessin said. “And I’m sorry, if that makes any difference.”
Kudei got up and slipped past him; it reminded Kunessin of someone getting out of the bull’s pen in a hurry, because he’s starting to get agitated. “I’m going up on deck,” Kudei said. “You might want to stay down here for a while and count something.”
After he’d gone, Kunessin sat down again and thought long and hard about what had just been said. He took the conversation apart, broke it down into its functional components, searching for any ill-considered or insensitive things he may have said, or even implied. But there was nothing to find: he’d told the truth, advancing his pikes of honesty into the open ground. He’d told the truth and thereby flushed out and killed a secret; and secrets are just lies that haven’t been spoken out loud, poisonous things that should be killed on sight. For some reason, however, Kudei had been upset by the simple truth.
Disingenuous, even when lying to himself. Of course Kudei was upset, because what he’d confessed had been a monstrous thing. But it too was dead now; and besides, all five of them had shared far worse, eaten from the same bowl. All in all, he felt hurt: he’d offered his friend something old and rare, and Kudei hadn’t wanted it. He forgave him, of course, but he was still bothered about it; about why he’d rejected it, when it was offered with such good will.
Brooding on it wouldn’t help, though, and he had other things to occupy his mind. He looked round at the stores, thousands of thalers’ worth; the lives of killed men, represented by these barrels and sacks and boxes, like the people represented in parliament. Every copper penny he’d ever made out of the wars was invested here (and by the end, the money was just a way of keeping score, like entries in the game book: so many head killed on such a day, transferred to the larder and consumed); he’d made sure of it, so there’d be no going back, no chance of a return to Faralia, to the valley, the farm. Why hadn’t Kudei understood that? It really was a most magnificent gesture, the abjuring of all his rights, claims and interests in what should rightfully have been his - if the war hadn’t come, if thousands of dead men hadn’t poisoned the grazing with the juices from their rotting bodies. Well, he’d spoiled any number of other men’s fields, and some of it had been about staying alive and keeping death away from his friends, and some of it had been just work. But when it had been up to him, on those occasions when he’d had the choice, it had been for the money, because the money would somehow bring him the farm . . .
“A prize agent?” Aidi had said. “What the hell’s a prize agent, and what do we need one for?”
He’d explained: the armour, weapons and military equipment of the enemy dead belonged to the state, just as their personal possessions belonged to the regimental treasury, but someone, a serving officer, had to be responsible for collecting and shipping it all and putting it in auction; for all which tedious, distasteful work he was entitled to five per cent of the gross. Apparently they had to have one, it was regulations. And so, if nobody else wanted the job . . .
“You go ahead, as far as I’m concerned,” Nuctos had said, straight away. “We all get our cut from Regimental without having to lift a finger. You want all that aggravation, you’re more than welcome.”
Muri had agreed, of course; Kudei wasn’t interested; Fly made a show of objecting, but changed his tune immediately when threatened with the job. “Really, it should be me,” Aidi had said cautiously. “I’m the one with commercial experience. No offence, but what do you know about buying and selling?”
“I’ll pick it up as I go along,” he’d replied. “More to the point, Aidi, you don’t need the money, I do. My family lives in one room behi
nd the tannery, or had you forgotten that?”
Aidi: brave as a lion, but talk out loud about poverty and he’d run a mile. “Fine,” he’d said, hands wide, “you carry on. If you need any help, just ask.”
“Thanks,” he’d said, and didn’t add “but over my dead body”; Aidi could read a double page of accounts at sight, and the books he intended to keep weren’t going to be honest: not to the government, or the army, or the other five members of A Company. He’d shed his blood for them, of course; he’d fight for them, endure anything for them, willingly die for them. But he had no intention whatsoever of being honest with the money. After all, he needed it; for the farm.
What he’d made during the war was, of course, small change compared with what he’d gouged the army for once he’d been made a general. Which was perfectly all right, after he’d first set eyes on Sphoe and known straight away what he was going to do with it. All along, ever since the beginning, when it was for the farm, he’d thought of himself as just a trustee. Once he’d seen Sphoe and given up on the farm, it was practically a duty. If any serving soldier had defrauded the government more remorselessly, ingeniously or comprehensively, he’d be vastly surprised, and it wouldn’t have been for want of trying. Even when they charged the line, and he ducked under the needle-pointed pike-heads at the very last moment, coming up like a diver with the foreshafts on the tops of his shoulders, hacking into forearms and collar bones like a woodcutter, soaking wet with blood like a shepherd in the rain, and the jarring of his sword on their bones had made his tendons ache and his fingers go numb, the agency had always been in the back of his mind, the shine of the silver like dew on the grass, big five-thaler coins sprawled on a table like dead bodies littering a meadow . . .
And now it was all sacks of flour and barrels of malt, new ploughs still gleaming with the tempering oil, coils of wire, kegs of nails, cases of shoes and hats and long winter stockings, tin plates, spare blades for the bow saws, horseshoe blanks, buttons (five thousand buttons, various), seed drills, post mauls, hammer wedges, spikes you tied to your shoes when you crawled about thatching a roof; so much hardware, as though his father had taken one look at all the dead bodies on a battlefield, waved his hand and muttered an incantation, and turned all that foul, poisonous meat into good, useful household supplies. And why couldn’t Kudei understand that, of all people?