Mightier than the Sword

by K. J. Parker

  I set my Cassites to picking through the ashes for bones. Skulls, I told them, were the thing to look for, since a human being has only one head, and I needed to know if the entire complement was accounted for. I came up short; there were a hundred and sixteen praying monks, ninety-seven nuns and a hundred and forty-two lay brethren, but all we could find was two hundred and seventy-six skulls. I could live with the discrepancy. A good hot fire, such as you get from burning dry wood or dry paper, will consume bone completely. It all depended on where in the building they were. Of the two-hundred-seventy, fifty-three skulls showed evidence of crushing, cutting or piercing. We also recovered forty-seven arm and leg bones that showed blade-marks. Inconclusive; but the impression I got was of monks and nuns cut down in a general fox-in-the-henhouse panic, rather than the more systematic approach I’d been postulating—the entire congregation herded into the temple or the chapter-house, say, and then burnt alive. I didn’t get a chance to make the sort of detailed analysis I’d been hoping for, because it came on to rain and turned the ash to black mud. But we sifted trial areas with sieves, and came up with bone and metal fragments and charred timbers we could identify as heavy furniture. The metal was almost all iron. There was something about the ash I couldn’t quite understand, but as I said, the rain came and put a stop to my speculations.

  I WAS TEMPTED to head back to Cort Doce and correlate what I’d found with the report Svangerd had compiled for me, but my schedule said Cort Sambic was next, so that was where we went. Needless to say, when we got there we found them in a pretty desperate state. Sambic was even better fortified than Cort Doce, and when we got there, all the monks were on the wall, praying brethren as well as lay; as soon as we came in sight they started making the most appalling racket, banging on tin buckets and saucepan-lids, as though we were rooks on the spring wheat. They didn’t want to open the gate, even when I walked up alone and bare-headed, with my warrant in my hand. They didn’t believe me. I could’ve waylaid a genuine Imperial legate, cut his throat and stolen his credentials. I think they’d have shot arrows at me if I’d hung about any longer. So we pitched our tents in the Foregate, and I sent a rider back to Doce; could Svangerd please spare a couple of irreproachably genuine monks to vouch for me? They came the next day—amazingly fast—in a beautiful low-sprung chaise drawn by four thoroughbred Hill Aelians (you wouldn’t find better horses in the Hippodrome back home), and after a rather embarrassing yelling-at-the-tops-of-our-voices conference under the guard tower, we were acknowledged as authentic government agents and allowed in through the door.

  The abbot of Cort Sambic was a complete surprise.

  “Stachel?” I didn’t mean to shout. “What’re you doing here? Aren’t you dead?”

  He gave me a stone-face, dignified look. “It’s a grey area,” he said. “Come in and have a beer.”

  Once I’d seen Stachel, Sambic made sense. It wasn’t just a fortress, it was the perfect fortress, as described by Vitalian in the Mirror of Warlike Virtues. Very recently, within the last ten years, someone had miraculously found the money and the labour and the time and the energy to follow Vitalian’s blueprint down to the letter—triple walls, staggered gateways, huge fat dirt bastions to soak up artillery bombardments, projecting galleries to frustrate scaling ladders, the whole nine yards, with some wild-eyed enthusiast directing the work with his thumb stuck between the pages of the book to mark the place. Guess who gave Stachel a copy of Vitalian, as a birthday present, because he couldn’t afford to buy one for himself?

  “It’s a grey area,” he said, snapping his fingers to summon attendants, “because when a man joins the holy monks, he’s deemed to undergo death of the earthly body and rebirth as a new spiritual entity, which is why he takes a new name and has nothing more to do with his disreputable friends from the old days. No, don’t sit on that one, it’s pretty but it won’t take your weight.”

  I sat on a stool. “You’re dead,” I repeated. “They cut off your head, for crying out loud. I went and saw it on the Northgate.”

  He shrugged. “You’re confusing me with someone else,” he said. “Mind you, I seem to remember there was this cooper’s apprentice in Lonazep who looked a bit like me, or would’ve done if someone had smashed his face in with a hammer and pulled out all his teeth. Maybe it was his head you saw. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he came to a bad end. Anyway,” he added, with a huge grin, “how the devil are you? What’s she like?”

  So that was how they’d managed it. I’d wondered, at the time. His parents had been so cool and stoical; our son has been found guilty of conspiring against the Emperor, we’re not sorry he’s been executed, we’re glad the plot was detected in time. Still, a monastery. I’d have thought Stachel would’ve preferred the axe. Though I don’t imagine they gave him the choice.

  “What’s who like?”

  “This girl,” he said. “The tart you bought a six-million-tremiss house for. What can she do that’s worth that sort of money?”

  When I knew him Stachel couldn’t afford his own copy of Vitalian, but he had quite a few books, the sort with pictures in. He’d always been of an academic turn of mind. He used to talk about collating all the available source material, adding in the results of his own extensive researches and compiling the definitive work on the subject—sort of an equivalent to Vitalian’s Mirror, but with full-page coloured illustrations. I wouldn’t last five minutes inside his head.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said. “Are you really an abbot? I can’t believe it.”

  Two tall men in elegant grey gowns brought us honey-cakes and sweet fortified wine in tiny silver beakers. “Screw you, then,” he said, knocking his wine back in one. I knew better than to try. “I started off as a simple novice, no name, no past or antecedents. I got this far by sheer unadulterated merit, because I happen to be an outstanding scholar. And a damned good administrator, come to that.”

  I tried one of the biscuits. Excellent. “You’re very young to be wearing the silly hat,” I said.

  He nodded. “Second youngest in history, discounting the political appointments,” he said. “If you gave a stuff about spiritual matters you’d have come across my five-volume commentaries on Sechimer and my proposed revision of the minor catechism. As it is—”

  A light glowed in my head. “Oh, you’re the Honestus,” I said. “Sorry, I didn’t make the connection. Anyway, I’d assumed he was someone a hundred years ago.”

  He looked up. “So you’ve read them?”

  I pulled a face. “The commentaries, sorry, no,” I said. “The catechism, yes, of course.”

  “What do you think?”

  There was an eagerness in his voice I remembered so well; drunken adolescent discussions of the Nature of the Soul in noisy bars, surrounded by bad company. “I’m not sure,” I said.

  “Oh.”

  “You put your case too well. Any argument so elegantly and persuasively presented makes me suspicious.”

  He hated me for a second and a half, then shrugged. “I let myself get carried away,” he said. “It’s like decorating a chapel. Why just have carvings and mosaics when you can have frescoes and gilded mouldings as well? And the result’s not the splendour of God, it’s bad taste.”

  Later, when I’d retired to bed with a slightly thick head, I reflected on Stachel and me. When he was arrested, I did everything I possibly could, used all my connections and influence; deaf ears, coupled with grim warnings about choosing my friends more carefully. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t save him, being who I was, until it dawned on me that I was nobody special, after all; that there were ever so many things the Empress’ nephew couldn’t do, and the only result of trying was getting myself in trouble. That realisation had a big effect on me, and I vowed to learn the lesson; humility, realism, think about what you’re doing, how it’ll impact on you and other people. But of course it wasn’t like that. Execute the Empress’ nephew’s best friend? Of course not. Instead, we cu
t off the head of some poor innocent apprentice and crush it in a mortar till it can be mistaken for him, and then we send the friend to a distant monastery and make sure he does well (though Stachel didn’t seem to have guessed that bit; he’s bright, but he has a high opinion of himself). And they didn’t tell me at the time because I’m a known blabbermouth, and afterwards it must have slipped their minds, the way things do. It’s a bit like finding out, late in life, that the Invincible Sun made the sky blue because He knew it’s your favourite colour.

  I also considered the fact that Stachel got in all that trouble because he was part of a conspiracy to murder my uncle and aunt, and quite possibly me as well, for tidiness’ sake, and at the time that thought never entered my head. Was he still a red-hot republican? You think you know people.

  Actually, I remember the cooper’s boy. He was no good anyhow and no great loss. Even so.

  “TRABEA IS AN arsehole,” Stachel told me, as I got ready to leave after a much longer stay than I’d anticipated. “You really want to watch him. He’s corrupt and greedy and lazy and treacherous, and as soon as you get home you want to get him recalled and strung up.”

  I nodded. “You don’t like him much.”

  Stachel frowned. “Actually I do,” he said. “He can be very charming, and occasionally very thoughtful, and efficient, so long as what you want fits in with one of his personal agendas. And he makes me laugh, which is a special blessing. But a lot of bad people are very likeable, and a lot of good people are boring and dead miserable.”

  “I’ll watch out for him,” I said.

  Stachel nodded, satisfied that I’d taken the point. “They say he’s got a Scherian doctor who knows every single poisonous substance in the world,” he said. “Snake venoms, mushrooms, berries, seeds, special kinds of mould you sprinkle on cheese, the lot. If you get sick, for pity’s sake don’t let him near you.”

  He poured himself a drink, offered me one, which I refused. “What can you tell me about Cort Auzon?”

  He shook his head. “No more than you’ll have read already in your briefing notes. It used to be a great house with a fantastic library, but it fell on hard times about fifty years ago, nobody knows why, and now they haven’t got two coppers to rub together.” He scratched his ear. “I sent a man over there, year before last, offered to help them out by buying some of their books. He came back with a shipload, literally—one of those barges they use for hauling bulk timber, and it was riding dangerously low in the water. Complete mixture of junk and treasure, they must have just pulled books off the shelves at random. That’s how the fifth eclogue of Ausonius came to light, when we all thought it had been lost five hundred years ago, and three brand new Terpaio comedies.” He smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ve got my boys copying them for you right now, soon as they’re done I’ll send them on. The abbot’s a man called Gensomer, but I don’t know a thing about him.”

  HALFWAY FROM SAMBIC to Auzon—by land—is the Hope of Redemption, a big old inn that used to be an Imperial staging post, when we still ran a regular mail beyond the mountains. I expected it to be quiet—actually I expected it to be derelict, with no roof and thistles growing up through the kitchen floor—but in the event I had to wave my warrant around before I got a room, and that meant turning out a prosperous merchant, his wife, son and three daughters. The Cassites pitched their tents in some poor devil’s hay meadow (we’re not suppose to pay compensation because of setting precedents, but I do) and I sent a military tribune, in full armour and regimentals, to terrify the kitchen staff into heating me some water for a bath.

  “You’re busy,” I said to the landlord.

  “No more so than usual.”

  I asked him about that. Apparently, over the last few years, a brisk trade had started up between our north coast and the Fleyja Islands, which are silly little bits of rock out in the deep, stormy sea. I didn’t know anybody lived there, but apparently they do, and they have amber, beaver pelts for making felt for hats, freshwater pearls, hops and huge quantities of small, smooth-shelled walnuts, no good for eating but just right for making oil. In return we trade them wheat, wool, salt and copper. Amazing, the things that go on that we don’t know about. Apparently it’s worth it for some of the great merchant companies from the City to send stuff up here, in spite of the cost and the risk. You’d have thought some of them might have seen fit to mention all this to the government, but I can see why they haven’t; we’d start levying taxes, and maybe send a fleet to conquer the islands, and once government barges in, the days of easy profits and quick returns are over and done with. I gather the Fleyja people use their own boats, which are stupid little things, no more than faggots of twigs tied together with rope and decked over. Hundreds of them drown every year, but that doesn’t stop them coming.

  The bath was an enormous terracotta thing, like the clay coffins of Blemya, where they bury their dead sitting up. The water was warm, and there was a china sprinkler for sand and a Mezentine jar of rose-scented oil, and a bronze scraper in the shape of a leaping dolphin.

  I’d just got out, and was drying myself off in a sort of warm, cosy daze, when one of my tribunes banged on the door. “You’d better see this,” he shouted. He sounded rattled, and it takes a lot to do that to a Guards officer.

  I threw on my tunic and cloak and stumbled out onto the balcony. Below in the courtyard, I saw something that turned my knees to water; an Imperial courier’s chaise, with six heavy lancers for an escort.

  They haven’t built one of those chaises for fifty years, but no need, they made them to last. They look so frail and delicate, you can’t believe they’d stand up to five minutes over the ruts and potholes, but they go like the wind, drawn by four of the best horses you’ll ever see anywhere. I’ve ridden in one about a dozen times, and the springs are so good you can put a glass of wine down on the floor and it won’t spill a drop. Even so; an Imperial courier is the last thing a general on campaign wants to see, because it’s a surer bet than the Emperor’s horse in the Hippodrome that out of it will climb an Imperial legate, bringing you a summons, in purple ink with the Dragon seal; return to the City immediately to answer charges. I was there when the chaise came for my father—don’t worry, son, he told me, this is just some stupid misunderstanding, I’ll be back again before you know it. I wanted to go with him but he wouldn’t let me.

  I remember thinking a lot of things, between the driver jumping down and unfolding the steps and the door opening. One of them was, it’s not fair, I haven’t done anything, which shows how naïve I was, even then. Also selective with my memories. Everyone who’s carried the Imperial warrant’s done something, at one time or another, and I’m definitely no exception. And I remember thinking, it’s all right, aunt won’t let anything happen to me, followed by what if it’s her who sent the coach? And then the door opened, and the last person in the world I expected to see got out.

  I leaned over the balcony and shouted; “What the hell are you doing here? And what do you mean by giving me the fright of my life?”

  She was terribly pale, and she was leaning on a stick. “Pleased to see you too. Didn’t you get my letter?”

  Nothing, especially the mail, travels as fast as the couriers; but maybe she didn’t know that. “What are you doing here?” I repeated; and then, “How are you?”

  “Still alive,” she said. “Now find me somewhere I can lie down, before I fall over.”

  YOU'VE GOT TO hand it to her. “I made your man Mnesarchus break into your desk and steal your signet ring,” she told me calmly. “And then I made him forge me a travel warrant, and then we went to the courier’s office and they gave me this coach. And the six bull-eaters, which I confess I wasn’t expecting. Still, they look pretty in their shiny trousers.”

  As simple as that. I made a vow to send Mnesarchus to the slate quarries, and a moment later another one to bring him back and give him a nice farm somewhere. “I’m going to be in so much trouble,” I said.

  She grinned. “R
eally.”

  “You bet. Misuse of the Imperial courier, forgery of the Imperial seal—”

  “It was your ring.”

  “Yes, but I’m not supposed to have it, am I? And I’m most definitely not supposed to use it to transport my tart du jour halfway across the Empire. My aunt is going to skin me alive.”

  She thought about that. “I doubt it,” she said. “It shows style, and a total disregard for the rules and conventional opinion. People like that sort of thing in an emperor. He broke the rules to be with the woman he loves.”

  “I’m not the emperor. I will never be the emperor. That pinhead Scaurus is going to be the next emperor.” I stopped and gave her the nastiest look I could summon up. It made her giggle. “Is that why—?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” she said, and I believed her. “But your aunt won’t be cross, though she’ll probably write you a rude letter. She wants you to start acting the part.”

  I was suddenly furious. “How the hell can you say that? You don’t know her, you’ve never met her.”

  She sighed. I could see how tired she was. “You talk about her enough. I probably know her better than most people. Definitely better than you do. And she’ll be fine about it. She’s got much more important things to worry about, believe me.”

  I was still trying to be angry, but it was getting harder and harder. “I asked you a question,” I said. “Why are you here? You must be mad, thirty hours in a coach with your belly full of needlework.”