Arcanum

by Simon Morden

  And Bavaria? Standing before Kossler, Lord of München, had been more than a little embarrassing, given that he’d so nearly met his end at the point of a dagger wielded by one of Ullmann’s agents. Her apology had been heartfelt, and she’d assuaged the man’s anger – and turned away the possibility of a war that neither of them wanted – by telling him that she’d killed Ullmann herself. It had become quite beery after that, and Kossler had drunkenly agreed to Carinthia keeping both Rosenheim and Simbach.

  When he’d sobered up, she’d reminded him of his promise. She would remind him again when she saw him later.

  Carinthia was safe for now, until next spring at least. They’d had a harvest, good enough to last them through, even with the extra mouths to feed, and with some to spare for their neighbours.

  All of this, everything from affairs of state to the fullness of a pig farmer’s stomach, was now officially going to be her concern. It served her right, really, for being so competent.

  She could have refused. She’d talked it over with Thaler, her father, and Wess, and they’d all urged her to accept, though she hadn’t been able to tell whether Thaler was encouraging her to do so to ensure that no one would ask him.

  She hadn’t talked to Peter Büber. She didn’t have to. She knew what he’d say.

  There’d be no coronation. She wasn’t nobility, and her father was vague enough as it was about his genealogy without trying to work his way back to King David. Knowing her luck, she’d be related to Herod Antipas instead.

  So she wouldn’t be their queen, nor their princess. Some might have hoped for that, but their prince was gone, and that was the end of it. They’d burnt his head, and what she’d been assured was the rest of his body, on a barge in the middle of the Salzach.

  In the end, picking a title had proved more difficult than picking the person to fill it.

  Thaler had suggested all sorts of impractical names based on offices from Athenian democracy. She was not, absolutely and definitely, going to be an archon, no matter how much sense it made in an Athenian context. She pointed out, and pointedly stuck to the idea, that this was Carinthia, and Athens had flourished and dwindled some two thousand years before them.

  Instead, they were going to install her – which made her sound like a piece of furniture – using the title of provost. She would be someone who’d been placed in charge of the palatinate. She hadn’t inherited it, or seized it. She’d been given it by the only people qualified to do so: the Carinthians themselves. And she wouldn’t be ruling on her own. There’d be an assembly in the spring, after the snows melted, and two in summer, and, oh, everything would be fine: she’d hardly ever have to make a decision on her own, though she’d kept the title strategos. Just in case.

  Her spatha, old and battered when she’d worn it, had been retired to over the fireplace in the solar. She turned around to see it held against the stonework by two wire brackets, thin enough so it looked as if it was floating there. If she ever needed it, she knew where it was. Today, they’d present her with the Sword of Carinthia: Felix’s sword, and Gerhard’s before him, along with all the others who’d wielded it since it had been forged and enchanted, and disenchanted again.

  She turned back to the windows, and the snow was still there.

  They’d survived. The Germans thanked their gods with more equivocation than she thanked hers. Then again, HaShem had never promised them magic.

  There was a knock at the door. She was used to that: the knock, the creak, the unnecessary bow or curtsy, the fumbling conversation and almost always the entirely obvious answer. The door stayed closed this time, and she was distracted more by that than by an announcement that Clovis, King of the Franks, had arrived, or some other dignitary.

  “You can come in,” she said, loud enough to be heard on the other side of the door.

  The latch clicked, the door creaked, Büber stepped in.

  “I … hello. Is this a good time?”

  “Peter. It’s always a good time.”

  “I can come back later,” he said, halfway out of the doorway.

  “Peter. Come in. Close the door.”

  He did so, albeit reluctantly. He looked as if this room was the last place on earth he wanted to be, and she the last person he wanted to be with. She sympathised with that, and wondered if he knew just how much she shared those sentiments.

  He’d scrubbed up. If it hadn’t been for the scars, the part-missing ear, the shaved head and the stubbled cheeks, he’d almost be handsome. Not that she cared any more, but she cared on his behalf, because he was always so painfully aware of how he looked. Of course, she had her own scar now, a reminder of a time that could have ended so very differently. His clothes were clean, if tired, and she wondered if he’d ever owned anything new.

  “You look—”

  “Like a pile of shit,” he said. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that.”

  “I was going to say respectable. They – whoever they are – seem to believe I have to wear something suitable for the occasion. I should, perhaps, have let them fight to the death as to what suitable means.” She raised her arms to show that her sleeves were slashed to show the material underneath, and her intricately embroidered cuffs were shot with gold thread. “Black and yellow really isn’t my colour.”

  She let her arms fall back, and he shuffled his feet. She seemed to blind him, and he looked away.

  “I won’t be there when they, you know…”

  “Make me provost?” She nodded, and almost choked on the dryness in her mouth. “I’d guessed you might not be. You can change your mind, whenever you want. Up to the moment they do it, of course. After that, it’s too late.”

  “I …” he said, and he appeared to be having as much difficulty with his words as she was. “I’m not a ceremony sort of man.”

  “Neither am I,” she said, and she managed to get a wry smile from him, even though he was staring at the toes of his worn boots. “But we do what we have to, Peter.”

  “I wanted to wish you luck. Do you believe in luck?” He scratched the back of his down-turned head. “I don’t know.”

  “We don’t. Not really. Mazel doesn’t mean …” She stopped, and walked across the room towards him. When she was close enough, she cupped his chin and got him to actually look at her. “You can wish me luck if you want. I won’t be offended.”

  He stepped away from her, just out of reach. He put the back of his hand to his jaw as if she’d burnt him with her touch.

  “Good luck, then. Not that you’ll need it.”

  “HaShem orders everything except our choices,” she said. “Peter, what are you going to do?”

  “I had thought about running away. When I took Felix’s message to Farduzes, I intended to keep going. Reach the ocean. I’ve never seen the sea before.” Büber took the opportunity to move further from her, towards the window where he’d be able to see the snow covering the mountains. “This is all I’ve ever known. I should really go and have a look for myself at what else is out there. Vulfar the Frank wants to try his latest river barge out before the rivers ice up. I might even get all the way down the Donau.”

  “There’s a sea there,” said Sophia. “And another beyond it.”

  “Then perhaps that’s what I’ll do. Go and explore for a while.”

  “For a while? How long?”

  Büber’s breath condensed white on the cold glass of the window. “I don’t know. How long were you thinking of being provost?”

  “Five years? They should be bored with me by then.”

  “Five years. It’s a long time to be away from home. Long enough to lay some ghosts to rest, for certain.”

  “We both have things we need to forget. Things we need to be forgiven.” She hadn’t told him what she knew about Ullmann. She wasn’t going to, either: that was one of the choices she’d made. She didn’t need any other explanation than Ullmann’s cowardice on the battlefield for what she’d done, and, unsurprisingly, no one thought to dig an
y further. “Will you need anything? Money? Letters? Weapons?”

  “I’ve got a good sword. And I want to see the world, not find new things to kill. I’ve got money.” He shrugged. He was now staring at the window, rather than through it. “Letters are a bit of a waste of time for me. I’ll manage without.”

  “So there’s nothing I can give you?”

  He was quiet for a while. She watched him reach his hand to his mouth and chew at one of his knuckles.

  “Peter?”

  “Will you …” he said, “…will you wait?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He nodded, and left the room, leaving nothing but his breath on the window pane.

  She shivered, even though the room was more than warm enough.

  The door was still open, and a hand reached out to tap on it.

  “My lady?”

  She steeled herself. “Master Thaler.”

  He stepped in uneasily, and she realised that she wasn’t the only one uncomfortable with her costume.

  “Is that what they’re making you wear?” she asked.

  “Yes. Yes it is. Apparently, it’s traditional for the master librarian to look like a pig trussed up for the Yule roast.”

  “We should really find out who they are and banish them from the palatinate for crimes against comfort and utility.”

  “I’d vote for that.” Thaler glanced behind him at the open door. “Was Peter all right? He seemed” – and he frowned – “almost happy.”

  “I told him I wasn’t going to insist on him coming to the investiture.” She realised that she had that lost inflection to her voice. She glanced to the window, to the diamond-shaped pane that was now perfectly clear.

  “Ah, that would do it.” Thaler seemed content with the explanation. “They were going to send someone to get you. I said I would come myself.”

  “Is everything ready then?”

  “People are making their way down to the field. By the time we get there, yes. If you’re still going to insist on walking, that is.”

  “I can’t ride in this, so I’ll walk. It’s not far.”

  “I meant a carriage,” said Thaler, looking disappointed.

  “A cup of wine before we go?” she said.

  “Gods, yes.”

  The wine was kosher, and the cups had been tovelled in the new mikveh. She poured them both out a decent measure, enough to stave off the cold and make all the standing that lay ahead of them bearable.

  Thaler raised his cup to her. “A toast, my lady provost. Carinthia. Long may we be at peace.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” she said, knowing that she had every incentive to work hard for that peace: not just in the palatinate, or between her neighbours, but further afield – Italy, Byzantium, the wild northlands. Because that was where Peter Büber would be for the next five years.

  She drained her wine in a most unladylike fashion. “Shall we go?”

  “I suppose we should.” He finished his own drink, and carefully placed the cup on the table. “I’ve a present for you. I want to give it to you now, rather than later, because this is for Sophia, not for the provost.”

  “I’m intrigued, Frederik.”

  He patted himself down in order to find it, and eventually discovered it in a pocket of his ceremonial robe. It was a padded bag, velvet with a drawstring. He handed it to her, and she was surprised by the weight of it.

  She frowned, and, on his urging, started to pull the bag open.

  “It’ll break if you drop it,” he warned, “but it’s meant to be used. I thought – we thought – that you might not spend so long in so many interminable meetings.”

  It was like a flattened brass egg, circular in circumference and as thick as a thumb-width. The surface was plain, and gave no hint as to what it might be.

  “We were going to have it engraved, but we ran out of time. Making it proved just a little bit more difficult than we thought.”

  She turned it in her hands. There were two catches on the rim, and she pressed one of them.

  The whole of one side popped up, with a hidden hinge allowing it to be pulled upright. Inside were fine brass cogs, a coiled ribbon of metal like a snail’s shell, and some tiny rods and shafts.

  “Sorry, that’s the wrong side,” said Thaler. He reached forward and pushed the lid down until it clicked, and turned it over. “Now try it.”

  Sophia pressed the other catch, and this time when the brass case popped up, it revealed a white horn disk with numbers written in a circle around its edge, and a tiny metal finger which pointed to them.

  “It’s very fine,” she said. “What is it?”

  “There’s a key that goes in that little hole in the face of the dial.” Thaler shook the bag, and a little brass key tied with a scrap of velvet fell into his palm. He supported her hand underneath while he inserted the key and gave it a few turns. Then he took the key out. “Listen to it,” he said.

  She brushed the hair away from her ear and held the device next to her head. She could hear a distinct clicking sound coming from it.

  “The finger moves to mark out the hours, as long as the spring is wound. Good for cutting insufferable windbags, like myself, off in their prime.”

  “And you made this?”

  “No one can claim sole credit. A dwarf called Thorvald Icehewer did a lot of the internal work, but the principles go all the way back to a water clock we found in a drawing.” Thaler put the key back in the bag. “It’s very much a working model. The next one we make will be more accurate.”

  Sophia was captivated by its regular, mechanical heartbeat. “It’s perfect, Frederik. Thank you. Thank everyone.”

  He beamed. “Well, that’s good. We do have to go now, though, or they’ll be sending someone else to find the pair of us.”

  She closed the lid, and slid the disk back into its bag. “Yet again, I find myself without pockets.”

  “You won’t need it today,” said Thaler, “and it’ll still be here in the morning.”

  She placed the bag on the table next to the two empty cups before slipping her arm through his.

  “We can’t put this off any longer. No matter how scared I am.” She took a deep breath, and was glad of the extra space she’d insisted they allow for her bodice. Still she hesitated.

  “Sophia? What’s wrong?”

  “I’m unworthy of this,” she said.

  “Oh, we all are. If that’s the only thing that’s bothering you…”

  It wasn’t. Peter could be on Vulfar’s barge already, slipping down the Salzach and away from her. She chewed her lip.

  “I’m ready now. Why don’t we go and make the world a better place?”

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  ARCANUM

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  SHAMAN

  by

  Kim Stanley Robinson

  We had a bad shaman.

  This is what Thorn would say whenever he was doing something bad himself. Object to whatever it was and he would pull up his long gray braids to show the mangled red nubbins surrounding his earholes. His shaman had stuck bone needles through the flesh of his boys’ ears and then ripped them out sideways, to help them remember things. Thorn when he wanted the same result would flick Loon hard on the ear and then point at the side of his own head, with a tilted look that said, You think you have it bad?

  Now he had Loon gripped by the arm and was hauling him along the ridge trail to Pika’s Rock on the overlook between Upper and Lower Valleys. Late afternoon, low clouds rolling overhead, brushing the higher ridges and the moor, making a gray roof to the world. Under it a little line of men on a ridge trail, following Thorn on shaman’s business. It was time for Loon’s wander.

  —Why tonight? Loon protested. —A storm is coming, you can see it.

  —We had a bad shaman.

  And so here they were. The men all gave Loon a hug, grinning ruefully at him and shaking their heads. He was go
ing to have a miserable night, their looks said. Thorn waited for them to finish, then croaked the start of the good-bye song:

  This is how we always start

  It’s time to be reborn a man

  Give yourself to Mother Earth

  She will help you if you ask

  —If you ask nicely enough, he added, slapping Loon on the shoulder. Then a lot of laughing, the men’s eyes sardonic or encouraging as they divested him of his clothes and his belt and his shoes, everything passed over to Thorn, who glared at him as if on the verge of striking him. Indeed when Loon was entirely naked and without possessions Thorn did strike him, but it was just a quick backhand to the chest. —Go. Be off. See you at full moon.

  If the sky were clear, there would have been the first sliver of a new moon hanging in the west. Thirteen days to wander, therefore, starting with nothing, just as a shaman’s first wander always started. This time with a storm coming. And in the fourth month, with snow still on the ground.

  Loon kept his face blank and stared at the western horizon. To beg for a month’s delay would be undignified, and anyway useless. So Loon looked past Thorn with a stony gaze and began to consider his route down to the Lower Valley creekbed, where knots of trees lined the creek. Being barefoot made a difference, because the usual descent from Pika’s Rock was very rocky, possibly so rocky he needed to take another way. First decision of many he had to get right. —Friend Raven there behind the sky, he chanted aloud,—lead me now without any tricks!

  —Good luck getting Raven to help, Thorn said. But Loon was from the raven clan and Thorn wasn’t, so Loon ignored that and stared down the slope, trying to see a way. Thorn slapped him again and led the other men back down the ridge. Loon stood alone, the wind cutting into him. Time to start his wander.