by K. J. Parker
A while later Feron Amathy came back. He looked unhappy. 'I've sent thirty light cavalry up the old drovers' trail, so if the Lihac's fordable they ought to get there an hour or so before your assassins. Still, it's cutting it fine.'
He sounded like a senior officer briefing a delinquent subordinate, not one enemy telling another how he'd frustrated his plans and made the sacrifice of his life to the cause meaningless. It wasn't cruelty, Monach figured, just a busy man thinking aloud, as busy men so often do. Probably he found it useful having someone to talk to, even if it was only a defeated, humiliated opponent. Monach could feel his weariness, the tremendous weight of responsibility clamping down on his shoulders. 'Now then,' he said, flopping back into his chair and letting his arms hang down. 'What are we going to do with you, I wonder? My instinct says send your head back to Deymeson with an apple stuck in your mouth, to let them know I'm perfectly well aware of what they're up to. On the other hand, why give them any more information than necessary? So long as they aren't sure whether I've worked out that they're involved, they'll have to cover both contingencies, which'll slow up their planning. In which case, I can either have you strung up here, make a show of it, issue double rations, give the lads something to cheer them up; or I could keep you for later, assuming you survive. God only knows what sort of useful stuff you've got locked up in your head, but will prising it out of there be more trouble than it's worth?' He sighed. 'Truth is,' he went on, 'nobody else is fit to interrogate you; even in the state you're in you're probably too smart for them, and I can't afford to let you muck me about with disinformation. I haven't got the time or, let's face it, the energy. Besides, you've caused me a real headache, and until those cavalry troopers get back from Selce I can't be sure you haven't really screwed everything up.' He sighed. 'I think I'll knock you on the head now,' he went on. 'Anything else is just wasting valuable time.' As he said that, he stood up, drawing a short knife from the sash round his waist. One step forward, finger and thumb tightening on his face, a sharp twist sideways, the knife starting to slice the skin of his neck Poldarn woke up, his right hand pressed hard against his neck. Usually the dreams didn't bother him once he'd woken up; they slid away, like ducks launching themselves on to a pond, and left nothing behind. But this dream had been different, much more real and immediate, so that the pain had hurt. He'd already forgotten what had caused it, but the memory of the pain was still with him, an uncomfortable twitch every time it burst into his circle.
'You do that a lot,' Copis said.
He'd forgotten she was there. 'Do what?' he mumbled.
'Sleep with your hand under your ear like that,' she replied. 'I wish you wouldn't, it makes you snore.'
He frowned. 'I don't snore, do I?'
'When you sleep with your hand under your ear, yes.'
'Oh.' For some reason, that bothered him a lot. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'Did I wake you up?'
She shook her head. 'I'm used to people making noises in their sleep,' she explained, with a slight narrowing of the eyebrows that made it clear that the subject wasn't to be pursued further. 'It's fairly moderate snoring, actually; cutting-damp-wood-with-a-blunt-saw snoring, not monsoon-winds-in-Morevich snoring. Are you going to lie there all day, or would you care to get up so we can go and earn a living?'
He remembered where he was: an inn called the Divine Moderation, a third of the way from Sansory to Deymeson. They were on the road, selling buttons. Yesterday had been a good day; they'd sold fifteen dozen buttons at four hundred and fifty per cent mark-up, and all the women in the village had told them how reasonable their prices were.
'This place we're going to,' Copis said, as he sat down beside her on the box, 'ought to be pretty good. Never been there myself, of course, but I've heard quite a bit about it. Apparently they've got wonderful soil, so they grow garden stuff for Sansory-fruit and vegetables, mostly, and a lot of flowers. Should mean there'll be some money about.'
The name of the place turned out to be Mestory, and it was almost large enough to be a town. The Sansory road brought them in on the south-west side, where there was a sprawl of new houses and fences that were hardly weathered at all, with the gates still hanging straight and held closed by their latches rather than lengths of fraying twine. The thatch on the roofs was still nearer yellow than grey, and all the buildings looked pretty much the same.
'Interesting,' Copis observed. 'New building. Definite sign of prosperity. We could do well here.'
More surprising still was the marketplace; that was all new, too. There was a small but handsome corn exchange in the middle of the market square, so new that the edges of the stone blocks were still sharp and clean. Opposite the corn exchange there was even a temple-a miniature temple, with a toy portico and one self-conscious-looking half-life-size statue outside, but a temple nevertheless. The scaffolding up the side of the east wall suggested it wasn't finished yet.
'All right,' Copis said, 'I'm impressed. So where is everybody?'
As soon as she said it, Poldarn realised that that was what was wrong with the place: no people. There was a fine market, but no stalls. There were temple steps, but nobody sitting on them. Half the shops in the pristine-looking traders' row had their shutters up, and there were no more than a dozen people standing outside the shops that were open. The few people he could see appeared to be acting normally-drifting, chatting, window-shopping-but there was only a sparse handful of them, and it was an hour before noon.
'There's probably a simple explanation,' Poldarn said. 'Maybe everybody's out fetching in the asparagus harvest or something.'
'Fat lot you know about asparagus,' Copis replied accurately, but she was clearly just as bewildered as he was. 'Maybe they're all indoors. Could be a seasonal thing,' she added. 'Maybe, because they grow different stuff to most places, they have their midday meal at a different time.'
Poldarn hadn't thought of that, mostly because it wasn't a very convincing explanation. The place felt empty.
'We'd better ask somebody instead of guessing,' Copis said. 'Quick, ask that woman over there.'
Poldarn pulled a face. 'You ask her,' he said.
'Oh for… Excuse me.' The woman stopped and looked round. 'Excuse me,' Copis went on, 'but where is everybody?'
The woman looked at her. 'Where's who?' she said.
'Everybody. The people who live here.'
The woman shook her head and walked away. 'Just my luck,' Copis said, not lowering her voice. 'I have to ask the village idiot.'
'Maybe they aren't used to strangers,' Poldarn suggested, without any real enthusiasm.
'Maybe they're just ignorant,' Copis replied sharply. 'Anyway, we're here; we might as well set up the stall, just in case. They've got a temple, perhaps they're all in there, singing hymns.'
Poldarn listened for a moment. 'Pretty quiet singing if they are,' he said.
The stall was little more than the side of the cart, which was hinged and swung down; two posts for the awning went in the canopy-rod holes, with two more rods leaning forward at forty-five degrees to support the front. All that was needed after that was a trestle table and trays for sample buttons. The rest of the stock was in jars and barrels in the back of the cart. They took their time setting up, to give the word a chance to spread. When they couldn't spin it out any longer, they sat on the bed of the cart and surveyed the empty streets.
'If we're quick,' Copis said, a short while later, 'we could be in Forial by early evening.'
'Where's Forial?'
'Next village down the road from here. I don't know anything about it except the name, but it's got to be better than this.'
Poldarn shook his head. 'I can't be bothered,' he said. 'Besides, you never know, it could pick up. I've always fancied running a stall must be a lot like decoying rooks-you know, where you find where they're feeding, hunker down out of sight and put out a few dead birds stuck up on sticks to draw the others in. Then when they pitch you pick them off with a sling.'
Copis clicke
d her tongue. 'So far,' she said, 'I don't get the similarity. Or are you saying we should kill and impale the next person we see? The idea does appeal to me, I'll grant you, but not on commercial grounds.'
Poldarn grinned. 'The point is,' he said, 'you can sit there in your ditch or under your tree for the best part of the day and never see anything; and then, just when you've finally decided to give it away and go home, suddenly the sky'll turn black with rooks, and next thing you know you've run out of slingstones. Patience is the key to this lark, you wait and see.'
Copis turned thoughtful for a while, as Poldarn fiddled with the trays of buttons. Eventually she looked up and said, 'Where do you get the dead ones from?'
'Sorry?'
'The dead ones you put out in sticks, for decoys,' she said. 'Where do you get them from?'
'They're the ones you killed the previous day,' Poldarn explained.
'All right,' Copis conceded. 'But in that case, how do you start off? I mean, if you need a dozen dead rooks before you can start killing rooks, how do you kill a dozen rooks in the first place?'
'No idea,' Poldarn said. 'I suppose I must know the answer, since I seem to be pretty well clued up about the subject, but I can't remember offhand.'
'Fine,' Copis said. 'In that case, let's change the subject. The thought of dead rooks really isn't one I want to hold in my mind for very long.'
Noon came and passed, during which time two old women walked past the stall, apparently without noticing that it was there. Copis made a point of standing up and staring at them as they passed, explaining that she wanted to see if they were wearing any buttons. 'They were, too,' she added. 'Which makes it odder still. Unless there's a special tree in these parts that grows buttons instead of nuts.'
Not long after that a young woman with a baby in her arms walked by the stall, stopped and leaned over to look at one of the trays. Poldarn and Copis snapped to attention like a couple of farm dogs hearing a bowl scraping on the cobbles.
'Can we help at all?' Copis cooed.
'I was just looking,' the woman replied, taking a step backwards as though she'd been caught out doing something wicked. 'Very nice,' she added.
Copis smiled at her. 'Anything in particular you liked the look of?' she asked.
The woman hesitated and glanced down at the baby, which was fast asleep. 'Well,' she said, hesitating. 'Those ones there, the quite big ones with the rim on them.'
'Gorgeous, aren't they?' Copis replied, exaggerating rather. 'Made in Sansory, Potto house. You won't find better this side of the bay.'
It was clear that the woman was tempted, and that she was fighting the temptation. 'Those other ones,' she said tentatively, 'the little ones on the bottom row. Are they cheaper or dearer than the big ones?'
'All the same price,' Poldarn said quickly before Copis frightened her off. In his mind he had a picture of a black bird putting its wings back and circling in a glide towards him. 'Two quarters a dozen.'
'I don't know,' the woman replied. 'Shouldn't the smaller ones be cheaper?'
Poldarn shook his head. 'If anything they should be more expensive,' he said. 'Harder to make, you see. Fiddly.'
'Oh.' The woman rubbed her cheekbones thoughtfully with thumb and forefinger. 'If I take two dozen, would it be cheaper?'
'No,' Copis said. 'Sorry.'
'Oh. Have you got any others, or is this everything?'
That took Poldarn rather by surprise, since he couldn't begin to imagine what need there could possibly be for the two hundred and forty different styles of buttons mounted on the display board. 'Sorry,' he said, 'but that's the lot. What sort of thing were you looking for?'
The woman shrugged. 'I won't know what it is till I see it,' she replied. 'Thanks very much.'
Poldarn was too bewildered to persevere, and let it go with a smile and a dip of the head. Copis waited till the woman was about fifty yards away then stuck her tongue out in her general direction. 'Time-waster,' she explained.
'She never had any intention of buying any buttons,' Poldarn said.
'Of course not. Just passing the time. Lots of people do it, I have absolutely no idea why.' She sighed. 'This is completely pointless. Let's fold up and get out of here.'
Poldarn glanced up at the sky. 'You know,' he said, 'we've left it a bit late if we want to reach that other place by dark.'
'I'd rather sleep in the cart than stay here.'
Poldarn could see her point. But packing up would mean having to get up and exert himself, and he was feeling lazy. 'No,' he said, 'let's stick to the original plan. Stay here the rest of the day and push on to Forial tomorrow.'
'Suit yourself,' Copis said. 'But you can mind the stall on your own. I'm going to take a nap in the cart.'
Poldarn couldn't see any objections to that, so he nodded. Copis climbed up behind him, laid a blanket in the corner of the cart bed, and went to sleep. She had a knack of being able to sleep at will that he found both remarkable and enviable.
Some time later a little girl, perhaps nine years old, wandered up and stood staring at the buttons as if they were six-headed goats. Apart from the time-waster's baby, she was the first child he'd seen in town. There was something about the way she was standing and gawping that told him she was neither willing nor able to buy buttons, but Poldarn could see no reason why she should be a complete dead loss.
'Hey,' he said.
The girl looked at him and said nothing.
'Come here,' he said. 'I want to ask you a question.'
The little girl scowled at him. 'My mummy says not to talk to strange men.'
'You should always listen to your mother. But I'm not strange.'
The little girl assessed him. It didn't seem to take her very long. 'Yes you are,' she said. 'You're old and ugly and you look like a crow.'
'Thank you,' Poldarn replied. 'Now, if you don't mind, please stop looking at my buttons. You'll look all the polish off them.'
The little girl frowned. 'You can't do that, silly.'
'Of course you can.'
'No you can't. Looking at things doesn't hurt them.'
'Want to bet?' Poldarn leaned back a little. 'You know how if you leave something out in the sun for a while, like a piece of cloth or something like that, all the colour fades out of it? Same thing. The sun looks at it too long and it fades.'
The girl thought about that. 'But I don't look as fiercely as the sun.'
'Maybe. But you're much closer, so it's as broad as it's long. Go away.'
She shook her head. 'No,' she said. 'I can stay here and look at your stupid buttons if I want to.'
Poldarn rubbed his chin thoughtfully. 'All right,' he said, 'but don't come any closer.'
He made a show of fiddling with the display, shifting the boards around, rearranging the buttons, turning some of them over. When he'd been doing this for a while, the little girl said, 'What was the question you wanted to ask me?'
'Doesn't matter,' he replied, not looking up. 'You probably wouldn't know the answer anyway.'
'Bet you I would.'
He laughed. 'No point betting you, you've got nothing to bet with.'
'Yes I have,' the girl replied, annoyed. 'I've got a brass ring and a rabbit-fur hood at home.'
Poldarn shook his head. 'They wouldn't fit me,' he said. 'All right, you can push off now. I'm busy.'
'What's the question?'
He made an exasperated noise with his tongue and teeth. 'If I ask you the question, will you go away?'
She shook her head. 'You've got to bet me.'
'Oh, for crying out loud. All right, then, what do you want to bet?'
'My hood and ring against a dozen buttons,' she replied. 'Those ones,' she added, pointing. 'They're nice.'
In Poldarn's opinion the ones she'd chosen were the most hideous of the lot, although they had some pretty stiff competition. 'If you insist,' he said. 'All right, here's the question: where is everybody? Why's this village got so few people in it?'
The littl
e girl put on a sad face, as if pulling on a glove. 'They went away,' she said. 'The grown-up men had to go and join the-' She said something that sounded like merlicia. It took Poldarn a second or so to work out she meant militia. And then the raiders came and killed them all,' she added casually. 'Mummy said they aren't dead, they just went on a long journey, but I know that's not true because I saw where they got buried, in a big pit, hundreds and hundreds.'
Ah,' Poldarn said, feeling a little rattled. And what about the lady grown-ups? Did they go away too?'
'Some of them were killed,' the girl said, playing with a pulled thread on her sleeve, 'and some of them got sick and died. But a lot of them just went away. My mummy went away and I've got to live with my aunt. I don't like her very much. She smells.'
Poldarn nodded absently. 'That's dreadful,' he said. 'Where did they go? The ones who went away, I mean?'
'Don't know. Do I get my buttons now?'
'In a minute,' Poldarn replied. 'What do you know about religion?'
The girl looked at him. 'What's that?'
'Gods and stuff.'
'Oh,' the girl said, 'that. Well, there's lots of gods, and some of them live in the sky and some of them live under the ground or at the bottom of the sea, and the rest just sort of wander about. What do you want to know about them for?'
'Have you heard of a god called Poldarn?'
'Poll what?'
'Or a god who rides around in a cart, bringing the end of the world?'
'Oh yes, of course,' the girl said, her face relaxing as she addressed something familiar at last. 'Everybody knows about him.'
'What do they know?'
The little girl gathered her thoughts for a moment. 'Well,' she said, 'nobody knows what he's called, and he goes around from village to village, and wherever he goes gets burned down or invaded and all the people die; but it's not his fault, it's bad men like the raiders who do the actual burning and invading. He just sort of goes in front. Oh yes,' she added, 'and there's a silly bit, too, but I don't believe it.'