Academic Exercises

by K. J. Parker

  I know I must’ve slept like the proverbial log, because I distinctly remember being woken up. There were soldiers, two of them, in those shiny coal-scuttle-on-backwards helmets that only the Kitchen Knights are allowed to wear. They were looking at me as though I was something they’d found in an apple.

  “Saloninus,” one of them said.

  “No,” I replied.

  “You’re with us.”

  Actually, I’m not sure if one of them wasn’t one of the men who arrested me the time before last, when I tried stowing away aboard the avocado freighter. Soldiers in tall shiny helmets all tend to merge together in my memory and besides, I’ve never been that special with faces.

  They let me dress, which was nice of them. I hate being arrested in the nude. But while I was dressing, one of them stood between me and the door, and the other one guarded the window. Well done, boys, I thought. It always pays to read the file first.

  “What time is it?” I asked. They didn’t answer. Warning; do not allow the subject to engage you in idle conversation. He has the ability to suck men’s souls out through their ears. I wish.

  All in all, I was fairly relaxed about it. Being arrested by the scuttlehats was probably the best thing that could’ve happened to me at that point. It meant prince Phocas had been told, and had decided to have his goons arrest me before the real law did. I had absolutely no interest in explaining my recent past to the Knights of Equity, thank you very much. Phocas, bless him, would make sure that wouldn’t happen.

  Soon as I’d pulled on my shirt and pants and laced up my boots and put my coat on, they herded me to the door, like stockmen guiding a pig with a board. There was a third one outside on the stairs, which I found impressive and almost flattering. I did that palms-wide-open gesture that tells them you really don’t intend to give them any grief, and allowed them to sandwich me down the stairs into the bar.

  My friend the innkeeper was there, next to the fire, moving grease around the plates with an old rag. He gave me the look that means he’d known all along it was just a matter of time. I grinned weakly at him. Then I stopped dead in my tracks. The two guards behind me froze in time not to cannon into me. “It’s all right,” I said. “I just need to pay the innkeeper for my room.”

  There was a slight worried edge in the guard’s voice when he said, “Don’t worry about it.”

  “No, please,” I said. “I hate owing money. Look, if you don’t trust me, I’ll give you the coins, and you can give them to him. All right?”

  He looked at the innkeeper, who shrugged. “How much?” the guard said.

  “Two bits.”

  I smiled. “I’m going to put my hand in my coat pocket,” I said. “Nice and slow.” Which was what I did. Then I took it out again nice and fast, and threw the walnut-sized nugget of compressed pulveus fulminans that I never leave home without straight into the heart of the fire. What can I say? I have amazing hand-eye co-ordination. One of the very few gifts I was born with.

  People have the wrong idea about pulveus fulminans, presumably because they believe what I wrote about it when I discovered it. They think that when ignited it goes off with a devastating roar, blowing out windows and cracking rafters. Not at all. What you get is an enormous whoosh, rather like a giant drawing in breath and sneezing, and a ball—often a perfect sphere, which intrigues me—of white smoke, and sometimes a sort of core of condensed fire, depending on how much of the stuff you use. Also depending on quantity, you can get a blast of hot air that’ll knock you sideways and singe your eyebrows if you’re too close. My standard getting-away-from-people nugget doesn’t do that. Last thing I want to do is risk hurting someone and getting myself in even worse trouble. I use five drachms of the stuff, pressed wet between two empty nutshells and allowed to dry on a windowsill for a day. That’ll more or less guarantee you three seconds when nobody’s looking at you, without trashing the place or setting light to the thatch.

  To their credit, the three scuttlehats were after me pretty quickly. Running away from people, however, happens to be another of the very few gifts I was born with. It’s not the quantity, I always maintain, it’s the quality.

  You may think, basing your opinion on what I’ve told you so far, that escaping from prince Phocas’ guards at this stage in my career was a stupid thing to do; shortsighted, also tinged with ingratitude. There’s Phocas, you’re thinking, going out on a limb to rescue his old college chum from the proper authorities—not for the first time, according to the subtext. All right, I may not have deliberately killed my wife (an unwarranted assumption on your part, I should point out) so maybe it wasn’t murder, but didn’t I just say the last thing I wanted was to get myself arrested by the civil authorities? Damn fool should’ve gone quietly, you’re thinking, and I can’t fault your logic.

  Instead, I ran like hell for about five minutes, at which point I’d used up my emergency turn of speed and had to stop for a bit. Fortunately, it looked like I’d done the trick. Paraprosdocia’s the sort of town where people look the other way when they see someone running like hell, and it’d never occur to anyone who lives there to give a truthful answer to any question along the lines of which way did he go? Just to be on the safe side, I sneaked in behind a big stack of barrels, sat down and emptied my mind of harsh, stressful thoughts.

  Free and clear, then, for now. Net assets; what I’ve got in my head and my pockets. Net liabilities; everything not listed under net assets. First time I’ve been in this position? No.

  I was born with all the advantages and had a good start in life. It was scrupulous honesty and clarity of thought that made me end up in this mess. Really and truly.

  I had five bits cash and a stack of barrels to hide behind. On the other side of the barrels it was daylight, which made moving about the city a dangerous indulgence. If I could only make it to Choris Seautou, of course, everything would be different. In Choris I had another name, twelve thousand angels in the Catholic & Apostolic Bank and at least one business associate I could trust; also, there’s no extradition treaty between Choris and the Empire, and the mayor of Choris was an old college chum. But Choris is seventy-nine miles from Paraprosdocia, any day of the week, no matter how you measure it, and the first thing the Knights would’ve done would’ve been to put men who knew me on all five City gates. Also, there were still things I had to do here before I could indulge in the luxury of escape. Considering my situation dispassionately and in depth, I was forced to the conclusion that I’d have to be brave, resourceful and imaginative. Depressing. I hate situations that bring out the best in me.

  In my mind, I drew a map of the city. Luckily, I had a rough idea of where I was, because over the top of the barrels I could just make out the spire of the Early Day Temple, with the sun more or less behind it. That put me in Coppergate; not a bad place to be. For a start, it’s pretty much the centre of town, about as far from the gates as you can get, so they wouldn’t expect me to be there. Also, it’s a maze of yards, alleys, passages, roads that go nowhere. I’d probably hear a methodical search coming well in advance, because of all the yelling and swearing from the snarled-up traffic. Having reviewed all the data (scientific method, you see), analysed it and considered the various inescapable conclusions, I closed my eyes, stretched my legs out and went to sleep. It’s what animals do, and when it comes to being hunted by predators, they’re the professionals. Conserve energy, make yourself small and quiet in a dark, hidden place.

  When I woke up, it was just starting to get dark. I could see the glow of lanterns on the far side of my wall of barrels, and a middle-blue sky.

  Generally speaking, I don’t like sleep much. I tend to wake up with all the symptoms of a hangover—fuzzy head, furry tongue, sometimes a sharp pain in the temples, bitterly unfair when you consider that I very rarely drink strong liquor—and it takes me several hours before I’m human again, let alone intelligent. But sometimes, just occasionally, when I go to sleep with a really bad problem on my mind, I wake up with the
answer suddenly there, fully-formed and perfect, like a chicken’s egg in the straw.

  It says a lot about me that the answer to my problems was the first thing that came to me when I opened my eyes. There was an appreciable delay before the memory of the other big thing I’d done the previous day caught up with me. Killed my wife. Oh, that.

  There are things you carry around with you wherever you go, like a snail’s shell; they slow you down and crush you, and you live in them. The image that came bounding to greet me was of my hand holding the cup—glazed pottery, because the sort of substances I work with do the most appalling things to metal, even gold and silver—and her hand taking it; and she said, “Are you sure it’s safe?” and I said, “Don’t be bloody stupid, of course it’s safe.” And she tilted the cup and swallowed twice and said, “God, that tastes revolting,” and put it down, and then there was a moment of dead silence, and then she said, “So now what?” and I said, “You’ve got to let it work, it’ll take a moment,” and she said, “Will I, you know, feel anything?” and I said, “Well,” and then she screamed.

  I’m not proud of one of my greatest achievements. I’ve learned to lift certain things out of my mind, at least for a while. Let’s not think about that, I told myself. Instead—

  My brilliant idea, which came to me in a dream (which sounds better than came to me in my sleep). I got up off the ground, didn’t stand up straight, kept hunched and low so I could peek over the top of the barrels. The yard was empty, but someone had been to the trouble and expense of lighting three lanterns and hanging them on hooks on the wall. There’s a common misconception that bright lights scare away thieves. Really, it just gives us, I mean them, light to see by. I straightened up and walked slowly and wearily (not acting; stiff neck) round the barrels, out of the yard, down an alley and into Coppergate.

  I may have committed a lot of crimes, but I’m not a criminal, as such. Wish I was. Criminals, at least the ones I’ve known over the years, have a wonderfully instinctive way of doing difficult things, like walking unobtrusively down a street. A good thief is practically invisible. A basically honest man like me trying to walk innocently is the most suspicious sight you’ll ever see. Just as well there was nobody about—well, there wouldn’t be; day shift had just gone home, night shift not yet started. The ideal time to be out and about in Coppergate, and I wish I could claim credit for astute tactical thinking.

  Walked up Coppergate, left into Old Street, right into The Mile; fifth left, second right. No reason whatsoever to assume he’d be at home. I stood under his window and looked up. A light burning behind the screens. I tried the door; open. Sometimes, you get bursts of good luck, for no perceptible reason.

  I went up the stairs, which were dark and smelt of burnt tallow and urine. His door actually has his name on it. I knocked and pushed it open in one smooth movement.

  Astyages, my old college chum, is a writer. He writes stuff. He’ll write you a bill of lading, a chancery pleading, a letter home enclosing two angels, a letter to a rich uncle begging for money, a deed of partnership, a will, a pretty good sonnet (five bits extra if he has to make one up from scratch). The joke is, he has lousy handwriting. But he does really pretty initial capital letters, with loops and scrolls and even gold leaf, if you’ve got the money. He says he only does scrivening to keep himself fed and clothed while he’s finishing off his great thesis, Some Aspects of the Caesura in Late Mannerist Minor Lyric Poetry. Really, he’s a spy for the government. At least, that’s what he tells everybody.

  “You,” he said, twisting round in his chair and glowering at me over his spectacles (his dearest and only valuable possession; inherited from his father, a senior lecturer at Elpis before the War. Astyages actually has perfect eyesight, in spite of his trade, but he wears the things because they make him feel scholarly). “Actually, I’m not surprised. You lunatic.”

  I smiled. “Mind if I sit down?”

  He shrugged. “What do you want?”

  “Message to Phocas,” I said, and he sighed.

  “Tell him yourself,” he said wearily. “I had the scuttlehats here, earlier.”

  “Of course you did,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

  “That’s all right,” he said. “There’s beer in the jug, probably some cheese in the cupboard.” Astyages practically lives on cheese; he gets it cheap from the dairy on Ropewalk, but you’ve got to scrape the green bits off. “And I suppose you’ll be wanting money as well.”

  I felt guilty. “I still owe you from last time,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “I can let you have two angels, but that’s it.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Will you—?”

  He shook his head. “Go and see him, no,” he said. “Write him a note, yes. What do you want me to say?”

  I thought for a moment. “Well, sorry’d be a good place to start,” I said. “And then, please don’t come after me. And it doesn’t work.”

  Astyages frowned and adjusted the position of the glasses on his nose. They’ve worn a sort of slot half-way down. “Is that true?” he asked.

  “Of course it is,” I said. “Come on, nobody can turn base metal into gold. It’s not possible.”

  “That’s not what—”

  “It can’t be done,” I said. “All my assurances to the contrary notwithstanding. So tell him, really sorry about the lies and the false hopes, and I’m going abroad, indefinitely. Usual best wishes, Saloninus.”

  Astyages laid down his pen and looked at me. “You’ve cracked it, haven’t you?”

  “I just said, it can’t be—”

  “Don’t bullshit me, please. You’ve cracked it, and now you’re running away with the secret, before Phocas has you locked up in a tower somewhere for the rest of your life making gold. I know you,” he went on, overriding my attempts at protest. “You know, I always had this tiny sneaking suspicion at the back of my mind that one day you’d do it.”

  “Really, I—”

  He shook his head irritably. “So,” he said, “what was it? Sal draconis? Virtus aurei in a suspension of quick-silver?”

  “Not sal draconis,” I said, with feeling.

  “All right, then. It’s in the method, isn’t it? Something really obvious in the way you distil the—”

  “It can’t be done, Astyages. Everybody knows that.”

  “Fine,” he snapped, “don’t tell me. But when you’re obscenely rich and living in your palace in the Blue Hills, for once in your life do the decent thing and send me money. All right?”

  “If it ever comes to that,” I said, “I promise. On my word of honour.”

  He gave me a cracked grin, scrabbled for a fresh sheet of paper, and started writing.

  I sat down. He wrote about a dozen words—he’s left-handed, and it always amazes me, the way he writes—then paused and chewed the end of his pen. “How’s the thesis coming along?” I asked.

  “Oh, fine,” he said. “Another month and it’ll be finished.”

  I believe him. I always have. Which month he’s referring to is another matter. He wrote another dozen words, then turned round slowly and looked at me. “The scuttlehats said Eudoxia’s dead,” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  “They told me—”

  “That’s right too.”

  He stared at me; forgot to look over the top of his glasses. “God, Saloninus,” he said. “That’s—”

  “It was an accident,” I said.

  “Well of course it was a bloody accident,” he snapped at me, “even you wouldn’t deliberately poison your wife.” He paused. He’d run into that terrible impassable barrier we all come up against when trying to express sincere sympathy to a friend. “I’m sorry,” was the best he could do. Actually, it’s not bad.

  “Me too,” I said.

  “I always liked her.”

  I grinned. “You were nuts about her,” I said. “When I think of the exhibition you always made of yourself whenever she came to visit, back at Elpis—
”

  “Yes, all right.” He was actually blushing. “I knew I didn’t have a hope in hell.”

  “No,” I said, “you didn’t.”

  “She never liked you much either,” he said, and then realised what had just slipped past the gate of his teeth, and looked wretched. I smiled, to show it was all right. It wasn’t, but he was doing me a favour.

  “She liked you, though,” I lied. “Not that way, but she liked you. Told me so, several times.”

  A light came on in his eyes. “Really?”

  I nodded. “Thought you looked sensitive,” I said. “Misunderstood.”

  “Is that right?” he said, in a sort of stupid voice, and I nodded again. Actually, the only time I ever mentioned him to her, she said, “Who?”

  I spent most of the night drifting around Coppergate, too scared to go in a bar out of the cold or crawl in a doorway. I walked up and down, trying to look like I was on my way somewhere. Fortunately, the people in that part of town can practically smell trouble and keep well out of the way of anybody who looks like he’s in it. I think I ended up on the steps of the Nika Fountain, along with a couple of crying drunks and an elderly streetwalker who’d given up trying for the night. At one point, I tried to remember all thirty-six of Zeuxis’ propositions of paradigmatic symmetry, but I only got twenty-eight of them, and knowing I couldn’t simply drop in to the library in the morning and look up the other eight made me burst into tears. One of the drunks offered me his bottle, which I’m ashamed to say I accepted. It was empty, of course.

  Round about dawn, I knew from experience, the watch makes a tour of Nika Square and arrests anyone who can’t get out of the way, so I got up and headed back to Astyages’ place, taking my time. No sign of any scuttlehats but plenty of watch. I was sure they were going to pull me in, but they walked right past me, which made me wonder if Phocas had spoken to the City Prefect. One less thing to worry about if he had, but I couldn’t know that for sure. I made myself slow down, dawdle, the way I’d seen drunks and beggars do every day of my life, but suddenly I couldn’t quite call to mind the fine nuances of how they walk, how they stand, how their heads droop from their shoulders.