by K. J. Parker
Which left Bardas Loredan, once colonel, now sergeant; the hero of Ap’ Escatoy, the last defender of Perimadeia, the angel of death as far as the plainspeople were concerned. Poliorcis frowned in the dark, trying to remember what little he’d understood of basic causality theory. In the end, he gave it up; he was a diplomat, and the Empire had plenty of professional metaphysicians without needing any input from him on the subject. But even he, relying on the scrapings of his memories of a two-week foundation course at the Ap’ Sammas military academy, could tell that there was work to be done in this area before any long-term plans could properly be made; and the data he was gathering here would probably be important at that stage. The thought comforted him; it had been a maxim of his division tutor that the first and most essential stage in doing useful work is finding out what work it is that one is supposed to be doing. Well, now he knew. He was here to study the pathology of Bardas Loredan. So that was all right.
Eventually he fell asleep; and if he had bad dreams sleeping in that bed in that house, it was most likely because of the cheese.
Vetriz Auzeil sat on the front step of her house, watching a small boy in the street below. He’d gathered a substantial hoard of small stones, and he was throwing them, with great deliberation, into a clump of raggety, neglected ornamental shrubs that grew in the front yard of the house opposite. Nobody had lived in that house for years – it was only still empty because Venart, bless him, was trying to buy it (and, being Venart, was going about it in a counterproductively devious way, using phantom intermediaries supposedly undercutting each other’s offers and pulling out just before an agreement was due to be sealed – it was costing him a fortune, but it made him feel cunning, which was the main thing); nevertheless, Vetriz had a feeling that small boys throwing stones were a bad thing on general principles, and that as (gods help her) a grown-up, she was invested with all due authority to tell him to stop – except that she couldn’t make out for the life of her what he was throwing the stones at, with such care and deliberation.
Finally her curiosity reached torture levels, so she went down the steps and asked him.
‘Spiders,’ he answered.
‘Spiders?’
‘That’s right.’ The boy pointed; and, sure enough, just inside the tangle of bushes was a veritable city of spiders’ webs, most of them with a big fat brown spider in the middle; they hung so still and moody that they reminded Vetriz of stallholders in a market on a quiet day, gloomily poised for the onset of any customers who might eventually appear.
‘Any luck?’ Vetriz asked. She detested spiders. When she was a little girl, it had been an entirely passive loathing, but now she was an adult, it had evolved into something more militant.
‘Four so far,’ the boy replied proudly. ‘It only counts if you kill them dead; if they just fall off and run away you don’t score anything.’
That was as much of an invitation (a challenge, even) as she needed; she selected a pebble from the munitions dump, made her best guess at elevation and windage, and let fly –
(- Like the trebuchets at Perimadeia. In a way.)
‘Missed,’ the boy said, perfectly expressing by tone of voice alone the eternal contempt of the male at womankind’s ineptitude at missile warfare. ‘My go.’ He picked up a stone, looked at it between his fingers, looked at the spider of his choice, and launched.
‘Missed,’ said Vetriz.
‘I never said it was easy,’ the boy replied, scowling.
This time, Vetriz tried to be more scientific in her approach. She pictured in her mind the trajectory of the stone, the decay of its arc as its mass overcame the initial momentum of launch. With the picture clear in her mind as if it had been scribed on the back of her eyelids, she cocked back her wrist and let go –
‘We shouldn’t be doing this anyway,’ she said huffily. ‘It’s cruel. Those spiders never did us any harm.’
‘They’re poisonous,’ the boy replied. ‘If they bite you, you swell up and go black and you die.’
‘Really?’ Vetriz said. ‘I never heard that.’
‘It’s true,’ the boy assured her. ‘My friend told me.’ ‘Oh, well then,’ Vetriz said, sneaking another stone. ‘In that case, I suppose it’s our duty – there,’ she added. ‘Direct hit.’
‘Doesn’t count,’ the boy said. ‘It wasn’t even your go.’
Vetriz smiled. ‘And you’re just a rotten loser,’ she said. ‘Now stop doing that at once, before I tell your mother.’
The boy looked at her savagely, his eyes accusing her of treason in the first degree; then he kicked over the pile of stones and slouched away. Vetriz, unaccountably delighted with her prowess, went back to her step, where she’d been supposed to be double-checking the stock ledger. She was trying to puzzle out a double-looped squiggle (Venart was a sucker for fashionable new abbreviations, but he tended to forget what they meant the day after he started using them) when a shadow fell over the page. She looked up.
‘Vetriz Auzeil?’
She nodded and looked away quickly, trying desperately not to stare. But it was hard; too hard for her. After all, she’d never seen a Son of Heaven before.
‘I’m looking for your brother, Venart,’ the man said. ‘Is he at home?’
Vetriz shook her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘he’s away on a business trip. Can I help you?’
The man smiled, as if the offer had come from a six-year-old child. ‘Thank you, but no. It’s business.’
It was well known among her friends that you only ever patronised Vetriz Auzeil once. ‘Then it’s me you need to see,’ she replied, smiling sweetly. ‘Please come in. I can spare you a quarter of an hour.’
The man looked at her, but followed. She led him into the counting house, which she knew would be empty at this time of day, when the clerks were either at the warehouse doing the stock reconciliations or in the tavern. ‘Please excuse the mess,’ she said, indicating the immaculately neat desks with a sweeping gesture. ‘Now then, what can I do for you?’ She sat down behind Venart’s desk, the one he’d been lumbered with as part of a mixed lot of Perimadeian war loot, bought sight unseen; it was huge, ornate and unspeakably vulgar, and Venart hated it. ‘Sit down, please,’ she said, knowing full well that the stool on the other side was so low that you had to sit on a cushion just to see over the desktop. Disconcertingly, the Son of Heaven didn’t seem to have that problem; were they all this damnably tall? she wondered.
‘Thank you.’ She watched the man trying to squirm himself comfortable; impossible on that stool. ‘My name is Moisin Shel, and I represent the provincial office. We’re interested in chartering a number of ships.’
Vetriz nodded, as if this sort of thing happened every day. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘What sort of ship, how many, and how long for?’
Moisin Shel looked at her, raised an eyebrow. ‘You have a ship called the Squirrel,’ he said. ‘We understand it’s a twin-masted square-rigger capable of sustaining six knots with a following wind, and that you’re used to sailing a close-hauled course with the wind abeam, on coastal runs. It should be suitable for our purposes, if the capacity is adequate. Am I right in thinking the Squirrel is at least a hundred and thirty tons?’
‘Oh, easily,’ Vetriz replied, not having the faintest idea what the man was talking about. ‘What cargo do you have in mind?’
Moisin Shel didn’t seem to have heard her. ‘A few technical points, before we go any further – I’m sorry if this sounds fussy, but we have to satisfy ourselves that your ship conforms to the provincial service specifications before we can enter a charter agreement. Are you able to answer such questions, or should I wait until your brother comes home?’
‘No problem,’ Vetriz replied firmly. ‘Ask away.’
‘Very well.’ The man steepled his fingers. ‘Are the garboard strakes mortised to the keel rabbet, do you know?’
To her credit, Vetriz managed to keep a straight face. ‘The Squirrel is a working merchant ship, Mr Shel, no
t a pleasure yacht. I can assure you, you need have no worries on that score.’
The Son of Heaven nodded again. ‘And presumably the stempost and sternpost are scarfed to the keel,’ he went on. ‘As I said, I’m sorry to have to trouble you with this sort of detail, but we have had some rather unfortunate experiences in the past when dealing with civilian shipowners.’
‘I . . .’ Vetriz took a deep breath. ‘Offhand,’ she said, ‘I can’t quite recall. I would imagine they are. After all, my father was ferrying bales of cloth from Colleon to Scona in the Squirrel when you were still learning to walk; if she’s stayed in one piece that long, chances are she’s not held together with waxed paper and glue. However,’ she added quickly, as the Son of Heaven drew his breath in sharply, ‘I can get confirmation of that as soon as she gets in; or you’re welcome to look her over for yourself. I suggest we proceed on the assumption that she meets your requirements. What was it you said you wanted her for?’
The corner of Moisin Shel’s lip twitched slightly. ‘I didn’t,’ he replied. ‘Well, I think it would be best if I do as you suggest and inspect the ship myself when she gets back. Can you give me any idea when that might be?’
‘Hard to say,’ Vetriz said. She’d decided that she didn’t like Mr Shel very much. ‘A week, maybe two. It depends on several things, you see—’
‘Of course.’ Moisin Shel stood up. ‘I shall be here for another three weeks at least; as and when the Squirrel gets in, I’ll be in touch again. Thank you so much for your time.’
‘Um.’ Vetriz jumped up too. ‘If you’d just like to let me know where you’re staying, so that when she does get in—’
‘That’s all right,’ Shel said. ‘I’ll know. And I’ll be back then. Good day.’
When he’d gone, Vetriz leaned back in her brother’s chair and swore, something she didn’t often do. As a merchant and a natural daughter of the Island, she knew, she should be thrilled at the thought of a good deal like this (at least, she assumed it would be a good deal; now she thought of it, the subject of money hadn’t actually cropped up); but there was something about Moisin Shel that made her teeth ache. Not, she quickly assured herself, that Venart would have handled things any better – oh, he’d have smiled and fawned like an idiot, but she knew for a fact that her brother wouldn’t know a garboard strake if it bit him on the nose. Well, if the wretched man did call back, Ven could have the pleasure of closing the deal, and welcome. She shook her head, left the counting house and went through into the small room that had been her father’s office. There, if she remembered correctly, fifteen years ago there had been a small, fat, scruffy book with a name like Vesano On Shipbuilding; she might not have a clue right now what a garboard strake was, but by gods she’d know all about the wretched things by the time Ven got home; whereupon she could tell him, as if explaining to a small child – you know, Ven, the garboard strakes. I thought everybody knew that.
And find out she did; and remarkably boring it proved to be. But at least it meant that when Venart got home (the very next day, oddly enough) she was able to say, ‘the long planks on either side of the keel,’ as if she’d known that since before she’d started eating solid food.
‘Oh,’ Venart replied. ‘Then why not call them that, instead of having some bloody stupid fancy name? And what about “mortised to the keel rabbet”? No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. If I really need to find out I can look it up in Dad’s old book, same as you did.’
Vetriz frowned. ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’
Venart’s look of annoyance faded into a smirk. ‘Money for old rope,’ he replied. ‘Good money for old rope, come to that; if they’re paying a quarter a ton per week, it’d be like finding a silver mine under the kitchen floor.’
Vetriz’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Goodness,’ she said, ‘that sounds like an awful lot. Is it?’
‘The Squirrel’s two hundred and fifteen tons,’ Venart answered gleefully, ‘do the sums. And you can forget about all that complying-with-specifications garbage. They’re taking on anything that can float, down to and including upturned barrels. Why the hell do you think I came scurrying back here in such a hurry?’
It was (he explained) all over everywhere, from Ap’ Imatoy to Colleon: the provincial office was getting ready to make its move against King Temrai, and the main invasion force was going to be carried round the Hook and through the Scona Straits to Perimadeia by sea, thereby avoiding a long and dangerous march overland and denying Temrai the chance of breaking up the attack with hit-and-run tactics. One consequence was that they’d patched up their quarrel with Shastel, whose waters they’d have to go through – aggravating, since he was now stuck with a shipload of overpriced Nagya cornmeal that he’d bought entirely on the assumption that the Shastel chandlers wouldn’t be allowed to ship the stuff to Berlya, but undoubtedly good for business in the medium and long term. ‘I’ll just dump the stuff in the harbour if I can’t offload it in the market,’ he added. ‘After all, with what we’ll be getting from the imperials, the cost of a few sacks of flour is neither here nor there. Although I suppose I could offer it to the brewers on South Quay; they do use the stuff, and—’
‘The Empire’s going to attack Perimadeia?’ Vetriz interrupted. ‘Since when?’
Venart grinned and poured himself another drink, ladling in a second spoonful of honey by way of celebration. ‘You should follow these things if you really want to be a trader,’ he said insufferably. ‘Think about it, will you? It’s all to do with Ap’ Escatoy, as anybody with half a brain ought to have worked out years ago. Thanks to our friend Bardas, bless his heart, the Empire’s finally managed to do what it’s been trying to do ever since we were kids – break through on to the western coast. Now they’re here – well, the sky’s the limit, really. Ironic,’ he went on. ‘Even if Bardas and the City people had managed to beat off Temrai and his lot, now they’d be facing the prospect of a full-scale invasion from the Empire – foregone conclusion, obviously.’
Vetriz frowned. ‘Except,’ she said, ‘if the City hadn’t fallen, Bardas wouldn’t have been there to take Ap’ Escatoy for them.’
‘Oh, well.’ Venart shrugged. ‘Broad as it’s long; if it hadn’t been him, it’d have been someone else. It’s always only been a matter of time. I mean, nobody beats the Empire, that’s a fact of life.’ He drank half his cupful and leaned back in his chair. ‘And now Temrai’s going to get a taste of his own medicine. Can’t say I’m heart-broken; he’s a bloodthirsty little brute, by all accounts. Still, you can’t help feeling just a little bit sorry for anybody who’s got the Empire snapping round their ankles. I guess it must be a bit like knowing you’ve got a fatal disease.’
‘Don’t,’ Vetriz said, with a slight shudder. ‘It’s rather horrid, when you come to think of it. I mean, all those people. And now you’re saying it was all pointless.’
‘I suppose you could see it that way,’ Venart replied. ‘Or you could say they were all for the chop sooner or later, so does it matter whether the plainsmen or the Empire actually do the business? Can’t argue with geography; if you’re mug enough to live on a strategically vital promontory, with the Empire bursting to get through a hundred miles or so to the south of you, it’s wilful blindness to imagine you’re going to live out your time in quiet and peace. I’m just thankful we live on a small rock in the middle of the sea.’
Vetriz looked up. ‘Really?’ she said.
‘Well, of course.’ Venart yawned. ‘The Empire hasn’t got a fleet; hence all this hiring ships business. Whatever happens, they’re never going to come bothering us. So that’s all right.’
‘Oh,’ Vetriz said, and changed the subject.
Alexius? Bardas called out, but he didn’t appear to have heard.
Bardas had been having his usual dream, the one about the mines; and then suddenly, for no reason he could see, when the wall caved in he’d been standing at the back of the main lecture hall in the City Academy back in Perimadeia
(a place he’d never set foot in, all the years he’d lived there; but he knew precisely where he was, and that he was actually there). On the rostrum at the front he could see his old friend Patriarch Alexius, wearing his best gown and academic robes; he was delivering a lecture to a huge crowd of students.
‘A case in point,’ Alexius was saying, ‘is the fall of Ap’ Escatoy, an incident with which you are all doubtless familiar. You will recall that in those days, the Empire had not yet penetrated to the western sea, let alone crossed the northern straits; hard to imagine, I know, but worth the effort nonetheless, since it’s vital to bear in mind that the whole world as we know it today was arguably shaped by the actions of one man, at one turning point in history.’
Bardas scowled, trying to understand. He knew beyond a shadow of doubt that this wasn’t a dream. He was standing in the Academy (which was fire-cracked rubble overgrown with bindweed now); but this was some time in the future, and here was Alexius, somehow not yet dead despite all his assumptions to the contrary.
‘One man,’ Alexius went on. ‘One quite unremarkable man, regarded objectively; certainly unremarkable enough to his contemporaries. A man who was never happier than when he was hedging and ditching on his father’s farm in the Mesoge, or building bows on Scona, or planishing breastplates with the other workers in the armoury at Ap’ Calick; hardly a man of destiny, you’d have thought. But consider; if Bardas Loredan hadn’t accidentally broken through into the enemy’s main gallery under Ap’ Escatoy and brought down the city walls, what would have happened then? Let’s imagine that the siege dragged on another year, or two years, even; then a revolt in a far province or a change in administration at the central finance office or a political squabble between factions at court – whatever – led to the siege being abandoned. So, Ap’ Escatoy hasn’t fallen – and the world is utterly different. One man. The different development of one moment in time. This, gentlemen, is the Principle. In that moment, in the darkness of the mines – and they were dark, I can vouch for that – everything changed. Everything was brought down, made small – so small that it fitted comfortably into a tiny cramped spur, hardly high or wide enough for a man to crawl down – and then enlarged again, made to expand like ripples in water. This is the action of the Principle for you; an effect that does away with all dimensions, a place where all places meet, a tiny pinhole at the end and the beginning, into which everything goes and out of which everything comes—’