by K. J. Parker
‘I think so. What else do you make besides trebuchets?’
‘You name it,’ the engineer said proudly. ‘This year so far I’ve made catapults, oistoboles, onagers, scorpions, mangonels, all that sort of bloody stuff. Doing a nice simple treb’s a pleasant change, I can tell you.’
As he sat at his bench, carefully wiring hardened edges to a soft steel core, Temrai couldn’t help thinking of his uncle Tesarai; how once, many years ago, he’d managed to capture a Perimadeian artilleryman, and set about torturing him with tremendous ingenuity and enthusiasm in an attempt to wring from him the secrets of building war engines. The harder Tezarai tried the less he achieved, until the time came when the prisoner died with his secrets intact, leaving the clansmen with a deep sense of baffled respect. At this point Tezarai declared that it was plainly impossible for the city ever to be taken, since its people were prepared to face the ugliest forms of death rather than betray it. Whereupon Temrai, who was twelve at the time and only just old enough to be allowed to attend councils, tentatively suggested that they’d gone about it in the wrong way. Trying to extort information out of these people was obviously futile; wouldn’t it have been a good idea simply to have asked nicely? To which he’d added quickly (for fear of being sent straight to bed) that these people who were so puffed up with pride in their city that they preferred to die rather than let it down might very easily tell an enquirer everything he wanted to know, so long as he asked the questions in a way that allowed the Perimadeians an opportunity of showing off in front of ignorant savages.
And now, five years later, here he was; and it was proving even easier than he’d imagined. He now knew the dimensions and construction details of the siege tower, the long ladder, the scorpion, the gravity-operated ram and the trebuchet. He’d learnt the art of sapping and undermining walls simply by going to the library and reading a book. He’d been given a tour of the walls and watchtowers by a member of the guard he’d met in a tavern, and had sat drinking with him while he timed the intervals of the watch and counted the number of men on duty. His job in the arsenal meant that he knew more about the city’s stocks and production capacity of arrows than the guard commanders. There was even a book, which the librarian had promised to find for him, that described ten perfectly feasible ways of breaching the defences and storming the city; it had been a prescribed text at the military academy twenty years ago, and since then had been largely forgotten about. It was wonderful; like everything about the city, wonderful, unsettling and deeply sad.
He finished wiring up and put the assembly into the fire to heat up for brazing. He’d make a good job of it, never fear; the least he could do, in the circumstances, was make sure that they had a few decent swords to defend themselves with when the moment came.
Among the large crowd who paid their copper quarter and stood in line to see the Alvise-Loredan case were a tall, thin young man and an equally tall, rather more rounded girl. They were wearing matching cloaks of an unfashionable colour and cut-
(‘How was I supposed to know? The last time I was here was five years ago.’
‘And it didn’t occur to you that fashions might have changed?’
‘To be honest, no.’
‘Men!’) -and when they whispered together, their dialect, although more quaint than barbarous, was enough to make the people behind them in the queue nudge each other and wink. Islanders, they muttered to each other, and made a show of checking that their purses were still there.
‘I’m not sure I want to see this,’ the girl muttered as the ticket clerk took from her the little bone counter she’d been handed at the door. ‘Where on earth’s the fun in seeing two grown men killing each other?’
Her twin brother shook his head. ‘They probably won’t do that,’ he said. ‘Extremely difficult, for one thing. Much more likely that one’ll kill the other and that’ll be that.’
‘Don’t be obtuse,’ his sister replied. ‘You know perfectly well what I mean. And I think it’s barbaric.’
Her brother shrugged. ‘I’m not defending it,’ he said, ‘it’s just something you ought to see if you ever hope to understand these pazze.’
‘Shh! They’ll hear you.’
‘Ah, but they don’t know what pazze means. Look, you want to join the firm and do business here, one thing you’ve got to get your head round is their paz ’ legal system. Which is,’ he added, ‘the finest in the world if anyone asks you, all right?’
The girl nodded. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But I still don’t see-’
‘Shut up. Here’s the judge. Stand up when I do.’
‘Barbaric,’ the girl sniffed.
Three days in the Triple City had cut a huge swathe through the fine romantic notions that had filled her head when the white crown of Perimadeia had poked up above the sealine. The smell still bothered her, and she definitely didn’t hold with the streets. It was one of the crazy contradictions that made up this place; every market stall seemed to offer ever more astoundingly lovely clothes and fabrics, with colours and textures beyond the dreams of the Island, but if you wore them in the street they’d be ruined inside five minutes. The buildings, even in the lower city, were as tall and majestic as the Prince’s own lodgings back home, but the streets outside were squelchy with mud and muck, the roadways rutted and crowded with carts and wagons that splashed the passers-by with foul water and tried to run them down even if they stayed inside the gutter-lines. Everyone she saw in the streets looked prosperous and well-dressed, but she noticed that her brother wore his sword openly on his belt all the time and avoided doorways and dark alleys. It was a fine place to visit, she’d decided, but you wouldn’t want to live here.
‘There’s the advocates, look,’ her brother hissed, jabbing with the knuckle of one finger-
(And that was another thing; at home it was rude to point; but here, everyone did it. She’d spent the first day and a half with her face permanently red with embarrassment.)
‘That’s the plaintiff’s man, and that’s the defence,’ her brother continued. ‘I think the famous one’s the plaintiff.’
‘I shan’t look. You’ll have to tell me when it’s over.’
‘Please yourself.’ He leant back, trying to find a comfortable place on the stone bench, and looked around to see if he could spot anybody he recognised.
It hadn’t been his idea bringing Vetriz on this trip; but now she was here and had proved not too much of a liability, he had changed his mind. True, it made the evenings rather dull; but in consequence he was saving money hand over fist, in spite of having Vetriz’s expenses to pay, so that was all right. It was also undeniable that she was good for business. Back home a pretty face got you precisely nowhere, but for all their vaunted canniness the Perimadeians could be snared by a smile and a flash of ankle as easily as hungry pigeons with grain in winter. Not a tactic he’d ever consider using at home; there was a word for men who didn’t immediately cut the throats of strangers who ogled their sisters, and it wasn’t very polite. Different here, of course; and fairly harmless too, provided Vetriz didn’t find herself getting used to it…
At this rate, he’d be all done here in record time. Four-fifths of the wine and oil had already gone, and for good money. The flax, timber and spices had made nearly half as much again as he’d expected (which more than made up for his embarrassing mistake with the two thousand oil lamps in the shape of hedgehogs; might as well dump those in the harbour and make space for more return cargo). As for buying, he had pretty well everything he’d wanted, and the prices hadn’t gone up too much. The only commodities he still needed were padlocks and threaded bolts; just his luck to make the trip at a time when there was a freak shortage of both…
‘What’s happening?’
‘Hm? Oh. Sorry, miles away. This bit’s called the pleadings, it’s where the-’
‘Ssssh!’
He cringed, turned his head and apologised. ‘This bit,’ he went on in a low whisper, ‘is where they go through the
facts of the case. It’s usually a bit technical-’
‘Why?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Why bother? I mean, if it’s going to be decided on the basis of who can bash whose brains out first, how can going through the facts help?’
Venart shrugged. ‘I don’t know, it’s not my legal system. Look, I’m not asking you to approve of it, just to know how it works. You want to be in business, you’ve got to know at least the basics of commercial litigation.’
Vetriz sniffed. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I think it’s silly.’
‘Ssssh! ’
Eventually the pleadings ground to a halt and Vetriz, who would probably have fallen asleep if the stone seat had been slightly less uncomfortable, yawned and squinted down at the two men in white shirts who were now tentatively dancing round each other in the centre of the courtroom floor. The tall blond one was, apparently, the favourite; accordingly, she decided she wanted the other one to win.
He’d be short if he was an Islander, she decided; about average for these people. From what she could see this far back, he was older than the other man, shorter and slighter; but she still couldn’t understand why everybody thought he was going to lose. As far as she could judge, it was the other way about. Not, she reassured herself, that she knew the first thing about all the technical stuff – Venart had tried to explain some of it; she’d put up with a few minutes of fleches and mandrittas and Zweyhenders and the like before announcing that it all sounded rather like hockey, only sillier and slightly more dangerous. No; if she was going to place a bet it’d be on the shorter man. She asked herself why, and finally decided that it was because the other man looked brash and arrogant, which meant he was more likely to get careless.
I hope the short man wins, she said to herself. Because.
Then it all started to get rather violent; they stopped dancing round and began lunging at each other, and in the excitement Vetriz forgot for a while how silly it all was and leant forward in her small seat. She wanted to shout encouragement, as if it was a horse race; but everyone else was sitting absolutely still and quiet. A strange lot, these; where’s the fun in going to a show and not being allowed to yell?
‘Won’t be long now,’ Venart whispered, with the calm assurance of an old hand. (He’d been to precisely three of these performances, as she well knew, but that was Venart for you; probably what made him such a good merchant.) ‘He’s getting tired, look.’
Vetriz looked, and briefly wondered if they were watching the same fight. Not that she knew or cared to know the first thing about it; but she guessed that what her brother took for exhaustion was actually the short man cleverly moving into the centre of the floor, making the other fool do all the moving about. That, she reckoned, was experience over arrogance. The tall man was also starting to slash with the edge rather than lunge with the point, which she took for desperation. Yes, she agreed; probably won’t be long now.
The tall man aimed a terrific blow at his opponent’s head, which the other man blocked neatly and with a graceful economy of movement. Vetriz decided that she approved of the man; in a silly situation he was trying to be sensible. Now, wouldn’t it serve the other idiot right if, next time he tried one of those melodramatic slashes, his sword were to snap in two?
Loredan felt his chest tighten, and knew it could only be a matter of time. He sensed that Alvise had already won the fight in his mind; his intellect had lost interest in the matter, and he was no longer bothering to fence, relying on his superior speed, reach and strength and using the edge rather than the point. Quite safe; he knew as well as Loredan did that his opponent was too tired to do much by way of a convincing counterattack. It had all been over from the moment Loredan had allowed himself to be forced into the centre of the floor.
He wasn’t even reading the cuts any more, he realised; instead of anticipating them and trying to work out where the blow was going to fall, all he had time for was the instinctive parry, too much of a reflex after so many years to fail him completely, but merely prolonging a fight that could only have one outcome. Sooner or later Alvise would deceive him with a feint, and that would be that.
Alvise feinted high left, drawing Loredan into a backhand parry off the back foot. As he moved into position, he knew he’d got it wrong; the true blow would be directed at his knee and he didn’t have the time to do anything about it. Damn, he thought calmly, observing Alvise’s sword move as if he was watching from up in the gallery and not down here on the floor. A despairing reflex jerked him round, his left shoulder going forward as his right leg scraped back. The sword missed his knee by the thickness of a shoe-sole; and ten years in the business made him realise that Alvise was now out of position and vulnerable. He couldn’t spare the time to look where he was hitting; he cut at where he remembered Alvise’s neck to have been, and hoped he wasn’t making an even bigger mistake himself.
He hit something.
First, get out of danger – footwork, body movement, distance between him and the other man, sword back into guard, and then spare the time to see if the other man’s still got his head on.
Yes; but there was a fat bubble of blood swelling out of the side of his jaw, and he was stepping back, making time and distance. Immediately, Loredan lunged; a defensive move, more a prod than anything else, just to push him back a little further. Alvise turned the blow, but clumsily. He doesn’t like the pain, Loredan realised. Fancy that. He lunged again, this time rather less half-heartedly. The reply was somewhat more proficient, but still defensive. Alvise was now in the middle of the floor.
Quite suddenly, Loredan saw how it might be done. He lunged a third time, deliberately opening his left side by leaning his left shoulder over. He lunged low, so that Alvise would counterthrust high, and when the other man’s lunge came, Loredan quickly crossed his back foot behind his front and swayed right, dropping his sword under Alvise’s and hoping he’d done enough to get out of the way. He felt something touch his flank, ignored it and swung his arm for a short cut.
And realised he’d been tricked.
Alvise had circled too, and here was his blade coming straight down, with nothing between it and Loredan’s skull except the possibility of getting the basket of the hilt in the way; pointless, because the next cut…
Never came.
There was a crack, not a loud one, and the topmost eighteen inches of Alvise’s sword flew past Loredan’s cheek. As he followed through, probably only half-aware that his sword had broken, Loredan turned his wrist and poked a short, weak thrust at Alvise’s face. A rather feckless and silly stroke, if Alvise had had a sword to parry it with. Since he hadn’t, the point of Loredan’s sword hit him in the eye, killing him instantly.
‘Do we applaud, or what?’ Vetriz hissed.
‘No.’
‘Oh.’
It hadn’t happened the way she’d expected; the other man’s sword breaking like that made it look like pure luck, which she was sure it wasn’t. No doubt all that meant was that he’d forced the other man to do something which was bound to break his sword, or else he’d have killed him anyway with the next thrust. She relaxed, and reached into her pocket for an apple.
The sight of a man being killed before her eyes hadn’t disturbed her, she realised; probably because she was too far away to see facial expressions or blood. From up here it was a game, and the dead man might just as easily not be dead at all, only shamming or acting. It had been exciting, she had to admit, and it was good that she’d spotted the winner from the very start. Nevertheless; she’d seen a Perimadeian lawsuit now, which meant that with any luck she wouldn’t have to see another one. As a means of settling a dispute over the late delivery of four tons of charcoal, it seemed excessive and in poor taste.
‘Can we go now?’
‘We should wait for the verdict.’
‘Verdict? But he’s…’
‘Well?’
Athli’s face, staring up at him out of a bloated dream of horror and incongruous detail
. She looked as white as snow.
He didn’t reply. As he handed her the sword, he realised that he hadn’t wiped it. So what?
‘Well? ’ she repeated.
‘Well what?’
Athli swallowed hard. ‘What happened?’ she demanded. ‘I thought-’
‘So did I,’ Loredan replied, collapsing into his seat. ‘Do you mind if we don’t talk about it? And for pity’s sake keep those bastards away from me. If they come over here, I swear I’ll kill them.’
Athli gave him a horrified look, and hurried away to fend off the charcoal people. Probably come to complain about the stress of watching him nearly get killed; good reason for docking twenty per cent off the bill.
He thought about Alvise’s sword breaking. Just my luck, he reflected; two-thirds of the takings were now just so much scrap metal, just as their owner was so much meat. Who’d have thought the hilt of an old army broadsword could snap the blade of a top-quality law-sword? It only went to show something he couldn’t currently be bothered with.
Interesting, though; a tiny flaw in the steel, a bubble or a speck of grit or crap that had somehow been missed by the smith’s hammer, can reverse the outcome and overturn justice. He could feel that there had been something there that shouldn’t have been; something small and not accounted for, something somehow unfair.
Probably, he decided, I cheated.
‘I got rid of them,’ Athli said, flopping down beside him. ‘They said-’
‘I don’t want to know.’
Athli nodded. ‘Quite right. Large drink?’
Loredan shook his head. ‘I think I’d like to go somewhere and lie down,’ he replied. ‘And then I’m quitting the business. Permanently.’
‘Large drink.’
‘Oh, all right then, large drink. And then I’m quitting the business.’