The Proof House

by K. J. Parker

  ‘Ah,’ Athli interrupted, bright red in the face, ‘but that was different. The Empire’s going to win this war, and they never sell off equipment, they just put it into store. And once they’ve won and got control of the City – sorry, the place where the City used to be – everybody west of the straits is going to start wondering who’ll be next, and there’ll be a demand for armour and weapons like you can’t imagine; not that it’ll do them any good, but that’s none of my business. Next to shipbuilding, armour’s the best possible area to invest in at the moment.’

  Venart lifted his head slightly. ‘Shipbuilding?’ he said.

  ‘That’s right,’ Athli replied, looking out over the Wharf. ‘For when they realise the armour won’t help and they start evacuating.’

  Dassascai the spy (so called to distinguish him from another man with the same name who repaired tents) sat beside his fire next to the duck pen and sharpened a knife. It had a long, thin blade with a clipped back, the sort used for cutting meat off the bone. He’d finished with the oilstone and the waterstone and was stropping it slowly on the untanned side of a leather belt.

  He was possibly the only man sitting still in the whole camp; Temrai had decided to move the clans south-east, towards the Imperial army approaching from the direction of Ap’ Escatoy. After nearly seven years in one place, the plainsmen were moving stiffly, like someone getting up in the morning after too little sleep.

  Half the workforce had left at first light to begin the awkward job of rounding up the herd. After seven years of continual grazing, there was barely a blade of grass left in the immediate vicinity of the camp. Instead of being close at hand, therefore, as it always used to be in the old wandering days, the herd was split up and scattered across thousands of acres of the eastern plain. Many of the boys riding with the herding party had never seen a full-scale roundup and weren’t quite sure what to do; for the most part, they were sensibly treating the whole thing as an adventure, and their enthusiasm was enough to stop the men from thinking too hard about the implications of Temrai’s decision. Each rider had his goatskin provisions bag over his shoulder, a bow and quiver on either side of his saddle, his coat and blanket rolled up and stowed behind the crupper. A few of the men wore helmets and mailshirts, or carried them wrapped in waxed cloth covers or wicker panniers; nobody knew for certain where the enemy might suddenly appear – they’d already taken on many of the attributes of fairy-tale sprites and demons, who lurk in dark woods and pounce unexpectedly from the shadow of tall rocks.

  The other half of the clan were busy breaking the camp; uprooting tent-poles, folding felts and carpets, trying to stow seven years’ worth of sedentary life into panniers and travoises designed to hold only the essentials. Many people were discarding the wondrous but useless treasures they’d looted from the sack of the City – up and down the rapidly vanishing streets of the camp there were bronze tripods and ivory tables, huge bronze cooking-pots, an incongruous assortment of bits of bronze and marble statue (a head here, an arm or a colossal booted foot there; not a single complete piece anywhere, so that the camp field looked like the aftermath of a battle between two tribes of giants). Wherever possible, they were dismantling the machines and tools they’d built over the years, sawbenches and lathes and water-powered grindstones, trebuchets and mangonels, presses and winches and treadmills and watermills, dismembered like carcasses in a butcher’s store and loaded on to flat-bed carts, but far too much would have to be left behind, either for lack of transport or for sheer size and weight. The enormous butter-churn, for example, that Temrai himself had helped design and build, was set in brick foundations to keep it from toppling over. They had already stripped the giant looms and dismantled the shed they’d stood in for the lumber; now the frames stuck up from the ground like the bones of dead men buried in thin soil, while women cut up the huge carpets that had been woven on them into small, practical squares. They’d tried to salvage the fish-weirs, but most of the main timbers were already too badly rotted to be worth taking; and on the high bank where they’d built permanent butts for archery practice, the great round woven-straw target-bosses lay on their faces, too big to carry, their frames broken up and used to make improvised rails for the carts. Already, the camp looked as if it had been overrun by an enemy; on all sides lay spoil and waste, disregarded wealth and broken equipment, while the banked-up fires where they’d burned off the surplus hay and provender added an evocative stench of smoke.

  ‘You’re not going, then,’ someone said, as Dassascai flicked his blade backwards and forwards across the strop.

  ‘Of course I’m going,’ Dassascai replied. ‘But my stuff won’t take long to get ready. No point rushing to pack everything away and then sitting on my hands for a couple of days waiting for the rest of you.’

  ‘Won’t be a couple of days, if Temrai’s got anything to do with it,’ the man replied. ‘We’re out of here at dawn tomorrow; anybody and anything that isn’t ready, stays.’

  Dassascai smiled. ‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘I think he’s forgotten exactly what’s involved in moving this camp. It’s not like we’ve only been here a week; you can’t just bundle seven years in a bag and sling it over your shoulder.’

  ‘That’s what he said,’ the man answered. ‘You want to take the matter up with him, you go ahead.’

  ‘No need,’ Dassascai said. ‘All I’ve got to do is fold the tent, catch up the ducks and I’m ready to go. You get practice moving on at a moment’s notice when you’re a refugee.’

  The man grinned. ‘I’m sure,’ he said. ‘Here, is it true what they say? About you being a spy?’

  Dassascai inclined his head. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Pulling feathers off ducks is just a hobby.’

  The man frowned, then shrugged. ‘Ah, well,’ he said. ‘If you really are a spy, stands to reason you wouldn’t admit it.’

  ‘Do you think I’m a spy?’ Dassascai asked.

  ‘Me?’ The man thought for a moment. ‘Well, people say you are.’

  ‘I see. So who am I spying for? The provincial office? Bardas Loredan? The Bad Tooth pixies?’

  ‘How should I know?’ the man replied, irritated. ‘Anyway, whoever it is, won’t do them any good. Temrai’ll keep one step ahead, just you see.’

  ‘So I should hope, if he’s supposed to be leading the way.’

  When the man had gone, Dassascai carefully wrapped the knife in an oiled cloth and put it away in his satchel. Then he pulled out a little brass tube, tapped the roll of paper out of it and spread it over his knee. There was nothing written on it. Having first looked about him to make sure nobody was paying him any attention, he reached down and fished a thin piece of charred wood out of the dead edge of the fire. He tested it on a corner of the paper. It wrote well.

  He didn’t start off with the name of the person he was writing to; only one person would ever see it, and that person didn’t need to be told his own name. Instead, he wrote, For gods’ sakes, tell me what you want me to do, rolled the paper up again and stuffed it into the tube. Then he reached into the duck pen, pulled out a large, fat drake and broke its neck by gripping it just below the head and whirling the body round fast, like a man with a slingshot. When it was dead he picked a little folding knife out of his sash, opened it and slit the duck from just under the ribs down to the vent. With a sharp turn of his wrist, almost gracefully easy from long practice, he flicked the stomach and intestines out through the slit, slipped the message tube in their place, and quickly stitched the slit up with horsehair and a steel needle that lived buried in the fabric of his coat collar. That done, he walked away from the camp towards the mouth of the river, where a single ship was tied up to the remains of the old Perimadeia wharf. He was just in time to intercept the two people he wanted to see.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said.

  Gannadius looked up. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Sorry to trouble you,’ Dassascai said, ‘but I need to send someone a duck. Would you be kind enough to take it to the Isla
nd for me?’

  Gannadius looked at him. ‘You’re sending somebody a duck?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Alive or dead?’

  ‘Oh, dead.’

  Gannadius frowned. ‘But that’s silly. You can buy a duck from any poulterer’s stall.’

  ‘Not like this duck you can’t. It’s a sample. Special order.’ He smiled. ‘Got the delivery instructions today. If he likes the sample, he’ll take them a thousand at a time. You’d be doing me a real favour.’ Dassascai smiled pleasantly and pulled the duck out from inside his shirt. ‘See?’ he said. ‘Now admit it, that’s a real honey of a duck.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Gannadius said doubtfully. ‘But won’t it have gone – well, you know, bad?’

  Dassascai shook his head. ‘Don’t you believe it,’ he said. ‘Four days is just about perfect to bring out the flavour. My friend’ll see you right for your trouble, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

  ‘Oh, no, that’s all right,’ Gannadius replied quickly. It was a matter of honour with Islanders that they always carried and delivered letters if they possibly could; an essential ethic for a commercial nation. Expecting a reward for doing so was considered extremely bad form, like asking a drowning man for cash in advance before rescuing him. ‘It’s just – well, all right.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Dassascai said, beaming. ‘That’s a great weight off my mind. I’ve been trying to close this deal for ages, but there’ve been so few ships going your way I was worried sick my man’d lose interest and the whole thing would fall through.’

  He handed Gannadius the duck, head upright. Gannadius looked at it with faint disgust. ‘No offence,’ he said, ‘but it looks just like an ordinary duck to me.’

  Dassascai nodded. ‘Exactly. But it’s a cheap duck. They’re the rarest and most sought-after variety there is.’>

  ‘Fair enough,’ Gannadius replied dubiously. ‘But wouldn’t it be better to send him a live one? Then he could kill it himself and there’d be no risk of it going bad.’

  ‘Ah.’ Dassascai furrowed his brow and grinned. ‘And suppose somebody else gets hold of it and starts breeding from it; that’d be the end of my business opportunity, for sure. If you knew ducks, you’d realise what you’ve got there.’

  ‘If you say so,’ Gannadius said, wishing he hadn’t got involved in the first place. ‘All right, who’s it to go to?’

  ‘I’ve written it down,’ Dassascai answered. ‘Don’t look so surprised,’ he added with a smile. ‘Some of us can read and write, you know.’

  ‘Of course. I didn’t mean to imply—’

  ‘That’s all right then.’ Dassascai pushed a little scrap of parchment into his hand and curled his fingers over it, squeezing so hard that Gannadius flinched. ‘I really appreciate this,’ he said. ‘Something like this could be good news for both our countries.’

  Nation shall send ducks unto nation, Gannadius thought. ‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘Well, I’d better be getting on board; I don’t want to miss the boat.’

  ‘What was all that about?’ Theudas asked as his uncle joined him on deck. Theudas had reserved a place for them both among the coils of anchor-rope at the stern. ‘And what are you carrying a dead duck around for?’

  ‘Don’t ask,’ Gannadius replied. ‘I’m delivering it. Apparently it marks the dawn of a new era.’

  ‘Really? By the time we get there it’s going to smell awful.’

  Gannadius dropped the duck into the hollow middle of a pile of rope and dumped his satchel down on top of it. ‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘Four days old is the prime of life for a dead duck. Well, prime of death. Whatever. Stop looking at me like that, will you? It’s just a perfectly ordinary commercial sample. If it was a bit of carpet or a bag of nails, you wouldn’t think twice about it.’

  Theudas sighed and squatted down on top of the rope. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Only this strikes me as a funny time to be sending trade samples from here to the Island, what with this war and striking camp and everything. You’d think they’d have other things on their minds.’

  ‘Apparently not.’ Gannadius leaned his back against the rail. He knew he was going to be seasick sooner or later, so being as close to the side as possible was a necessary precaution. ‘Nothing wrong with optimism,’ he continued, provided nobody expects me to invest money in it. It’s almost uplifting in a way, this faith in the future of his people.’

  Theudas shook his head. ‘Either your man’s as mad as a hare,’ he said, ‘or they’re playing a funny joke on you. Either way, if I were you I’d chuck the thing over the side now, before it stinks the whole ship out and we’re the ones who get put over the side.’

  ‘Don’t be such a misery,’ Gannadius told him. ‘We’re finally getting out of here, aren’t we? I’d gladly festoon myself from head to foot with putrescent ducks if it meant getting away from here and back to civilisation. Not,’ he added, ‘that it was anything like I expected – well, for one thing we’re still alive, which is considerably more than I expected when we were squelching about in that foul muddy swamp, being chased by the provincial office. Actually, they’ve been extremely decent to us, according to their lights. Lugging about the odd dead waterfowl is probably the least we can do in return.’

  ‘Decent?’ Theudas looked at him with disgust. ‘You really don’t care any more, do you?’

  Gannadius was silent for a long time. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure that I do. Probably it’s because I wasn’t actually there – for the Fall, I mean; I didn’t see the same things you did. Oh, I know what I’ve been told; I believe it too, in a way. But all that happened to me, personally, was that I moved from the City to the Island, then from the Island to Shastel – where I’ve got a good job, people treat me with respect, and damn it, yes, I’m happy. I thought seeing all this again –’ He waved his arm in the direction of the ruined City, without turning his head ‘- would make it all different, make me start hating them again. But it didn’t, somehow. When I look at them now, all I can see is a bunch of people who are so worried by the threat of being invaded that they’re packing up their lives in barrels and sacks and moving on. Exactly what I did. Somehow, I can’t hate people who’re so like me.’

  Theudas smiled grimly. ‘I can,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, but you’re young and full of energy.’ Gannadius shifted slightly; his back was getting uncomfortable, pressed against the rail. ‘When you get to my age, you’ll find it’s fatally easy to forget to hate all your enemies all the time; and once you’ve slipped up and not hated one of them, it makes it almost impossibly hard to hate the rest of them. You allow yourself to start thinking things like, The ordinary people are all right, it’s their leaders who’re responsible for all the evil stuff they do; and then one day you meet one of their leaders and he turns out to be almost human, and that’s a cruel blow, like a broken finger would be to someone who plays the harp for a living.’ He shifted his back again. ‘It was odd seeing Temrai,’ he said. ‘Reminded me of once when I was young and I saw a shark that had got itself caught up in some mackerel-fishers’ nets; they had it strung up by its tail, all stiff and dead, and they were cutting it up. It looked a whole lot smaller than I expected it to be.’

  Theudas closed his eyes. ‘Odd you should say that,’ he said. ‘I thought the same thing, seeing him again. Of course, when you see someone when you’re a kid and again when you’ve grown up, that’s often the way. Still, I wouldn’t mind seeing Temrai strung up. I think I could get to like him hanging by his feet.’

  ‘Your privilege,’ Gannadius replied, muffling a yawn. ‘I never said you should stop hating him; after all, you’ve got cause. All I’m saying is, I’m not so sure as I was that I have.’

  ‘You could hate him for my sake. Isn’t that what we’re taught, love your friends’ friends and hate their enemies?’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ Gannadius said. ‘For your sake I hate him and I hope his pet lizard dies.’

  (A curse, Gannadius
realised; I’m laying a curse on someone I don’t hate for the sake of someone young and soaked through with the lust for revenge. That’s what Alexius did once, and look what happened. Gods, I hope this headache I’m getting is just a headache –

  - And he saw behind his eyes the shark, the fat and flesh flayed away from the framework of its bones, like the frames of a ship before they start planking up the sides. A fine feast they were preparing, these cooks he could see; shark and bear steaks, and eagles cooked whole on spits like chickens, slowly turning in front of the heat of the fire, wolves roasted and stuffed with apple and chestnut, great snakes gutted and made into the skins of blood sausages, a flitch of smoked lion hanging from a hook in the ceiling, a whole dinner of predators – he could see them laying strips of tender-loin of leopard in the bottom of the pie-dish, and bottling giant Colleon spiders like fat plums –)

  ‘What do you mean?’ Theudas said. ‘Temrai hasn’t got a pet lizard.’

  ‘You see?’ Gannadius replied. ‘It’s starting to work already.’

  Bardas Loredan was sure he’d watched the arrow all the way, from the moment it appeared as a tiny speck in the sky until it actually hit him; an unbearably long time, but not long enough for him to move a foot to his right and get out of its way, although he did his best. Curious, he thought, at the moment of impact, how time can work like that. It’s enough to make a man believe in the Principle.

  When the shock of the arrow on the cheekpiece of his helmet pushed his head round – it was like being slapped hard across the face – he was sure he must have died (it’s customary to die first) but apparently he’d made a mistake (in your case we’ll make an exception). Instead, he could feel a sharp pain in his temples; and if he understood the rules correctly, the dead are excused pain, as a sort of consolation prize. As he turned his head back again, he was aware of the jagged edges of the small hole the arrow had punched in the steel slicing painlessly along the line of his jaw to the edge of his lip, and the hot trickle of blood inside the padded helmet, quite remarkably like the warm, wet feel of piss running down his leg when he was a little boy. Delayed shock; he staggered briefly, found his feet and stood up straight again.