by K. J. Parker
There were cedarwood tablets, hinged and inlaid, with the creamy yellow wax as inviting as sand on the beach after the tide has just gone out, crying out to be marked. There were styluses of breathtaking beauty and nauseating vulgarity, pens cut from the feathers of eagles and peacocks, so long that you wouldn’t be able to use them without wiping your eye with every stroke. There were counters (counters beyond number; joke) of silver and gold, tiny counters for the secretive, huge counters like saucers that probably took two men to lift, fancy counters with every conceivable kind of decoration, including some that were hastily whisked away before Athli could look at them (spoilsports!), plain counters on which your name, titles and favourite platitude could be engraved by our highly skilled craftsmen while you wait, counters that cost more than the sums they’d be used to calculate.
There were cuff protectors and eyeshades, magnifying lenses for the short-sighted, lamps and candle holders, abacuses and tiny sets of portable scales that came in the most delightful little ivory boxes. There was parchment – was there ever parchment! How could there be enough sheep in all the world to supply so much parchment – and every square inch of it scraped and pumiced smooth, thin and softly translucent, so that it glowed like a cloud at sunrise.
There were little jars of powdered ink in every colour you could dream of; turquoise and cobalt, crimson and purple, coroner’s green and government black, chamberlain’s azure, works orange, army blue, shipyards brown, even the incredibly expensive and highly illegal imperial gold – in theory, a clerk could have his hand cut off for using it without express authority; the way round that was to dilute it with a tiny amount of silver in vitriol, which cost as much as the gold ink and burnt you to the bone if you splashed it. There were tiny knives for trimming pens, their blades as thin as leaves and ten times sharper than the average Perimadeian razor; bigger versions, too, that swaggering young clerks liked to display on their belts as a way of getting round the prohibition on carrying arms in the council building.
There were enamelled ink stirrers and gold-wire ink strainers, parchment stretchers and beautifully wrought pumice scrapers for scraping parchment clean of old letters to use again. There were seals, seal-cases, sealing-wax cases, tiny chafing dishes and miniature spirit burners for melting wax, tiny thin blades for unlawfully lifting seals without breaking them, little pots of specially fine clay for taking impressions of seals for the purpose of forgery. There were portable writing chests and little cabinets to hold all your gear (the lid folding out into a writing and counting board, with little hinges and fine silver chains) that stopped your heart with the glory of the workmanship and cost slightly more than a fully equipped warship.
After a while, Athli had to stop looking and sit down, her eyes dazzled by so much glitter and sparkle. One of the things city people loved to boast about in front of foreigners was that in Perimadeia almost everybody could read and write. What she’d seen today made Athli wonder whether literacy wasn’t in fact some kind of vice.
Once she’d got her breath back she moved on to the bookstall, where you could buy any number of manuals of forms and precedents; letters for every occasion, every possible vicissitude of human life. She lifted down a small, squat volume and squinted at the minuscule writing on the title page:
Letters from creditors to debtors
Letters from debtors to creditors
Letters from superiors to juniors
Letters from juniors to superiors
Letters from poor students to rich uncles imploring
assistance
Letters from rich uncles to poor students refusing
assistance
Letters from lovers (male) to married women,
beseeching
Ditto, despairing
Letters from married women to lovers (male),
ambiguous
Ditto, encouraging
Letters from tradesmen respectfully demanding
payment
Letters from gentlemen to tradesmen tactfully
postponing payment
Letters from tenants of state farms to district
commissioners requesting leave to transport pigs
to winter pasture on public commons
Letters from district commissioners to tenants of
state farms declining leave to transport pigs to
winter pasture on public commons and reminding
said tenants of their obligations to provide said
pigs with adequate fodder during winter
Letters proposing marriage
Letters declining marriage
Letters to a beloved (female) threatening suicide
Letters to an unwanted suitor (male) encouraging
suicide
Letters from military officers informing parents of
death of a son
Other sundry letters.
– All with the first word of the title picked out in red, the page number, the appropriate cross-references, and the occasional scribbled addition where the previous owner had added in a few well-favoured precedents of his own; the whole thing for only one and a half gold quarters, guaranteed to make it so you’d never again have to think what to say, no matter how bizarre the circumstances. Athli couldn’t resist that, so she bought it, having first negotiated half a quarter off the price and bullied the stallholder into throwing in the carrying case for nothing.
She sat down on a stone bench in the shade of an awning and was just about to see what her guide recommended for Letter to unmarried niece politely declining request for contribution to dowry when a shadow fell across the page and she looked up.
‘Hello,’ said a voice coming out of a black shape silhouetted against the sun. ‘Excuse me, but aren’t you Master Loredan’s clerk?’
The voice was female, foreign and quite pleasant; Athli blinked and squinted a little. ‘I know you, I think,’ she replied. ‘You’re the na-’ She recovered in time and swallowed the rest of natural. ‘You’re the merchant’s sister, from the Island. We met in the tavern the day Loredan fought Alvise. Vetriz?’
‘That’s right,’ Vetriz nodded and sat down on the bench beside her. ‘Fancy you remembering.’
‘Necessary skill of the clerical profession,’ Athli replied, budging up a little. Ordinarily, of course, she’d have forgotten the dratted female completely by now; but Loredan’s account of his weird conversation with Patriarch Alexius in the Schools not long before the cavalry expedition had vividly refreshed her memory. Now, of course, she was filled with a strange mixture of instinctive revulsion and insatiable curiosity; unlike Bardas, she had no doubts at all about the existence and power of magic, and wasn’t this female somehow supposed to be the most powerful witch in the world? Something like that, anyway.
‘I came here to buy an inkwell,’ Vetriz said, with a trace of bewilderment in her voice. ‘But there’s such a choice I don’t know where to start. At home there’s plain inkwells and fancy inkwells, and that’s about it.’
Athli smiled politely. ‘So long as you remember never to pay the asking price, you won’t go far wrong,’ she said, and then remembered that this female was a merchant’s sister, probably a seasoned trader in her own right; certainly not the sort of person who needed advice on bargaining techniques from a fencer’s clerk. ‘How long are you staying?’ she went on.
‘I’m not sure,’ Vetriz replied. ‘We brought in a load of preserved fruit, and prices are extraordinary; because of the invasion, of course. If only we’d known, we’d have filled two ships. Anyway, we sold the fruit in no time at all, and my brother’s going round trying to decide what to take back. We spent all of yesterday and most of today looking at rope-’
‘Rope?’
Vetriz nodded. ‘Rope,’ she repeated. ‘And there comes a point where one shed full of coils of rope begins to look exactly the same as all the others, and Ven said that having me standing about looking bored and yawning wasn’t really helping him terribly much when it came to getting
the best possible price, so perhaps I should go back to the inn and wait for him there. So I came down here to buy an inkwell.’
‘I see,’ Athli said. ‘Well, don’t let me keep you.’ Foremost witch of the known world she might be, but she’s starting to get on my nerves. Go away, witch. ‘There’s cheaper ones on the stall over there by the fountain, or some really nice carved ivory stuff on the one with the purple and white awning.’
Vetriz turned and smiled at her. ‘You obviously know about this sort of thing – well, I suppose you would, in your line of work. Would you mind awfully advising me? Otherwise I’ll have no idea whether what I’m getting is a bargain or a piece of junk.’
If only she hadn’t been painfully aware that she had absolutely nothing else to do, Athli would have made an excuse and left. As it was, she could truthfully have pleaded a slight headache. Instead, she muttered that of course, she’d be delighted, and led the way to the cheap stall. Once she’d started advising, however, she slowly found herself getting carried away by the excitement of the enterprise. When asked roughly how much she had to spend, Vetriz had named a sum which immediately caused Athli to transfer the search to the purple-and-white-striped stall; and the quiet thrill of serious shopping with someone else’s money soon blanked out her vague dislike of the female herself. In fact, she listened so attentively and seemed so genuinely interested in the valuable information she was getting that Athli gradually revised her opinion. The revision speeded up considerably when Vetriz, having secured a terrifyingly valuable and desirable gold and pearl inkwell for a sum that was only moderately obscene, insisted on buying Athli a small present by way of thanking her for her help. In Vetriz’s terms, a small present consisted of a chiselled steel and walrus-tusk penknife whose value would have fed a family for a month.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It’s very nice.’
‘My pleasure,’ Vetriz replied, and she did seem genuinely pleased that her new friend liked the present. ‘Oh, aren’t there a lot of lovely things! I think we should get Venart down here and then you could tell him what to buy. You could name your own price for things like this back home; I’m sure they’d bring a much better return than mouldy old rope.’
‘Well…’ Athli started to say, visualising a new career as an assistant stationery buyer. ‘But I wouldn’t have the first idea about what’s saleable on the Island; I don’t know what they like.’ She massaged the side of her head with her fingertips; the headache was starting to annoy her. ‘I think that sort of thing’s better left to people who know what they’re doing,’ she said, realising as she said it that she was probably being insulting.
Vetriz shook her head. ‘If I’m to learn business, I’ve got to practise,’ she said. ‘Properly speaking, I’ve got a half-share in everything, and Ven’s only managing it on my behalf. I know I’ll never get the hang of sacks of flour and jars of oil and so forth, but there’s no reason why I shouldn’t specialise in fancy goods; that’s just as much trade as bulk commodities, after all, and quite possibly there’s more profit in it. The only thing that was putting me off, now I come to think of it, was not knowing the markets here.’ She stopped, turned to Athli and beamed. ‘You know, I think it was fate or something, bumping into you like that. What do you say? You advise me, I’ll do the buying and we split the profit three parts to one.’
‘I’m not sure,’ Athli said. It was getting increasingly difficult to concentrate, because of the pain in her head; in addition to which, she had the strangest feeling of being pushed, or rather of drifting on a current that wanted to go downstream when she was heading up. On the other hand, it did seem like a sound commercial venture (though she wasn’t sure about the value of her proposed contribution). ‘I suppose so, if you’re really serious. But won’t you need to get some money from your brother first?’
‘Actually,’ Vetriz replied, lowering her voice and smirking slightly, ‘no. For heaven’s sake don’t tell Ven, but I brought a bit of my own money with me on this trip, just in case I happened to find something to invest it in. I’ve been thinking along these lines for a while now, in very general terms. No, what I think I’ll do is pretend to Ven that all the stock I buy this time is things I want for myself. Then if I do make a loss getting rid of it when we’re back home, he’ll never need to know. And if I make a go of it, I can plough the money back in – less your share, of course – and buy more stock the next time we come over; which ought to be quite soon, with prices the way they are. Come on, let’s shake hands like proper business partners and call it a deal.’
‘All right,’ Athli said, and as they shook hands, she couldn’t help wondering what on earth she thought she was doing. And what’s this strange fascination Loredan and I hold for these people? Here’s this woman I’ve only met once before, and already she’s freed him from a curse and taken me on as a business partner. And didn’t Bardas say something about headaches? I could probably remember if my head didn’t hurt so much.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Loredan got the letter just as he was being led out of the cells to his first council meeting as Deputy Lord Lieutenant. He read it, felt vaguely guilty, folded it up and tucked it in his belt.
The chapter house was full this time, and there were scarcely any faces he knew. He hoped that was a good sign; even if the strangers turned out to be nothing more than stray passers-by they’d dragged in off the streets, they couldn’t help but be an improvement on the Committee for National Security.
To his extreme embarrassment he was led right the way up the steps to the bunch of seats that had arms and backs, instead of simply being stone shelves. This was where the high-ups sat; each place had the office of its customary occupant carved into the stone – Patriarch, Urban Preceptor, Dean of Offices, City Archimandrite, Archimandrite of Elissa and so on. There was an empty place marked Archdeacon of the Chapter that he was clearly supposed to sit in. He lowered himself into it, wondering vaguely who the Archdeacon of the Chapter was and what he did for a living, and waited for someone to say something.
The City Prefect stood up, looked around and nodded to the two sergeants, who closed the doors of the chamber and bolted them. ‘I think we’re all here at last,’ he said. ‘I’m pleased to be able to tell you that Colonel Loredan’s agreed to accept the post of Deputy Lord Lieutenant, so we can get started on the main business of the day, which is quite straightforward: what steps ought we to take to ensure the security of the city?’ He turned to Loredan and nodded. ‘Colonel,’ he said, ‘you have the floor.’
Loredan waited for a moment, just in case the Prefect had meant some other colonel, and then stood up. His knees felt a little shaky, until he considered that usually when he stood up in a place as crowded as this, there would be a man with a sword trying to kill him. The worst this lot could do was throw apples. He didn’t feel nervous after that.
‘Gentlemen,’ he began. Oh, gods, what am I going to say? ‘I suppose I should thank you for having faith in me; I’m not sure I agree with you, but let’s not bother with that now. The point is, I think, that you’re asking me, because of my knowledge of the clans, to suggest ways of improving the defences of the city. Well, I do have an opinion on that subject, if you’d like to hear it.’
He paused for a moment, took a deep breath and continued. ‘Everyone in this city,’ he said, ‘is brought up to believe that because we’ve got the walls and the harbour, we don’t really need to worry about attacks from inland. The people on the plains don’t like us much, maybe with good reason, but they’re just a load of savages with never a hope in hell of breaching the walls or scaling them, and a siege won’t work because all our supplies come in by sea anyway; the clans don’t know the first thing about ships, so all we have to do is sit tight and wait for them to go away.’
He looked round and nodded. ‘There isn’t much wrong with thinking like that,’ he continued. ‘That’s why we’ve never bothered much with a field army, at least not since we gave up any ideas of building a land empire
between here and the Salimb mountains. There was Maxen, of course; while he was alive, he kept the clans in a permanent state of terror and they never dared come within sixty miles of the city for fear of getting cut to pieces. We were pretty smug about that at the time, I seem to remember. Well, it’s easy to be wise after the event, but if it hadn’t been for Maxen and the Pitchfork, we wouldn’t be in this mess now. As it is, it looks like we’ve got a young fire-eater of a chief who wants to make sure nothing like Maxen can ever happen again by wiping us off the face of the earth. This wouldn’t be a problem, except it appears that he’s got city people with him who are teaching his people how to build heavy engines and siege equipment. Now that’s worrying.’
Nobody was moving, or whispering to the person sitting next to him, or even looking out of the window. Loredan was surprised and impressed; maybe they were going to take this thing seriously after all.
‘Now then,’ he continued, ‘I may not be a scholar of history, but I can’t call to mind any occasion when these magnificent walls of ours have ever been put to the test by a properly equipped assault force. Maybe they’re impregnable, maybe not; we just don’t know. I suggest we assume they aren’t, and try and get inside the other man’s mind. How would we go about attacking the walls of Perimadeia? Any suggestions?’
He folded his arms and waited. There was a long silence, as his audience tried to work out whether it had been a rhetorical question. Then a short, broad man with a beard stood up somewhere near the back, more or less opposite Loredan. The face was vaguely familiar; some kind of engineer, at a guess.