by K. J. Parker
That remark cost Gignomai a night’s sleep. He lay awake, listening to a rat busy in the thatch, and tried to come up with something. At all costs, he had to have a viable proposition to put to Father with which to pre-empt any suggestions Luso might make. He was confident Father would give him an opportunity to do so. Father was a fair-minded man on those occasions when he was prepared to take official notice of his children.
He shook his head, as if trying to throw off something horrible climbing all over his face.
What, though?
The undeniable truth about Stheno was that he was big. Luso was tall, slim and frighteningly strong, but he only just came up to Stheno’s rock-like shoulder. Luso could punch a hole in a door, but Stheno could catch a six-month-old bull calf, wrestle it down and carry it on his back.
The other thing about Stheno was that he was worried. Regardless of what was happening, rain or shine, good season or bad, Stheno lived in a state of permanent anxiety, torn between the aftermath of the last difficulty and the looming prospect of the next disaster but one. When you talked to him, you knew his mind was on something, or many things else. He was gentle and kind and never lost his temper, but you were never in any doubt but that you were the least of his concerns.
Finding Stheno wasn’t easy, unless you’d studied him carefully over many years. The trick was to keep your eyes open as you went around the farm and figure out where the next calamity was likely to be: a weak point in the fence where the cattle could get through; a bridge on the point of collapse; a field of corn over heavy or just starting to be pulled apart by rooks. If you wanted Stheno for something, you’d go to where the breakdown and the failure was likeliest to be, and chances were, there you’d find him.
On this occasion he was out at one of the more distant cattle sheds. One of the door-pillars, which had been giving notice for at least five years, had finally slithered out of true, and the unsupported wall had dropped, snapping the roof-tree, so that from a distance, the shed looked as though it had fallen from a great height. Stheno had got his shoulder under the lintel and was slowly, agonisingly heaving the shed upright with his right arm wrapped round a massive post which he was hoping to use as a temporary prop. If he managed it (and Stheno always managed, somehow), it’d stay propped up like that, with its broken roof and burst walls, for another six months or so until it disintegrated for good, because there wouldn’t be time or resources to come back another day and do a proper job. Another disaster would have intervened by then, clamouring for Stheno’s attention like a hungry child.
“Need a hand?” Gignomai called out.
“Gig?” Stheno couldn’t look round. He was wrestling with the shed like the hero in the fairy tale who wrestled with Death for the life of his mother. “Get hold of this post, and when I say push…”
(It was, Gignomai decided, rather like Luso and fencing, or Luso and Stheno and strength. He had no idea if he was a good fencer or physically strong. All he knew was that he was a worse fencer than Luso and not nearly as strong as Stheno. No absolutes, just comparatives.)
It was mostly a determination not to fail that made it possible for him to drag the bottom of the giant post onto the flat rock Stheno had put there for a base, and then jam the top under the lintel, while Stheno heaved on it like someone trying to tear the sky off the earth with his bare hands. They managed it, and for quite some time afterwards, neither of them could spare any breath for talking.
“Remind me,” Gignomai said, “what we use this shed for?”
“Haven’t actually used it for a while,” Stheno replied, “but we stored hay for the upper pastures here when I was a kid. Saved having to drag it all the way down to the yard and back again.”
Gignomai did the calculations in his head: man-hours wasted, productivity squandered. “We ought to fix it up,” he said.
“I will, when I’ve got five minutes.”
(And the chances of Stheno having five minutes were about the same as Gignomai learning to fly like a bird, or the met’Oc ever going Home.) Stheno took a few steps back and gazed at the shed with sadness and loathing. “Right,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
They’re sorry for him, Furio had said, and they look down their noses at him. “Have you got a minute? I wanted to ask you something.”
“Sure,” Stheno replied. “I’m heading down to Pitland.”
Pitland was a joke. It was a fifteen-acre field on a slope like the side of a house, but the soil was good and inexplicably deep—one of the few cultivable places where drainage wasn’t an issue. Therefore, Stheno ploughed it every year, balancing on the edge like a fly on a wall and, when the inevitable happened and the plough toppled over, broke the traces and went tumbling down the slope, he hauled it back up again, one monstrous step at a time. Now, however, the corn was green and hopeful, and the problem was the branch of a great oak that had come down on top of the fence, shattering the rails and skewing the posts, allowing access to deer, boar and every other relentless enemy of agriculture lurking in the woods. Gignomai had been waiting for the branch to fall for years.
There wasn’t time to go back for axes and saws, so they lugged the branch off in one piece, then did the best they could for the fence by tamping stones down into the post holes and binding up the fractured rails with about a mile of string. “I don’t know,” Stheno said, cutting round a knot with his knife. It was astonishing that fingers that big could make something as delicate as a knot. “I’d have thought it was up to you. What do you want to do?”
“I know what I don’t want to do,” Gignomai replied. “I want to stay well clear of the family business.”
Stheno grinned. “Which is?”
“I don’t want to get mixed up with what Luso does,” Gignomai said. “It’s not right and it’s stupid, and one of these days he’ll get himself killed.”
Stheno looked the other way. “And I take it you don’t want to work on the farm, either.”
“No.”
“And who could possibly blame you for that?” Stheno said cheerfully. “Not sure what else there is, though.”
Gignomai took a moment to prepare himself, as though he was about to challenge God to a duel. “Ask yourself,” he said, “what’s the one thing we need around here and haven’t got?”
“Just one thing?” Stheno shrugged. “Enlighten me.”
“Money,” Gignomai said forcefully. “Well, it’s true, isn’t it? Father talks to you. How much money have we actually got?”
Stheno frowned. “You know,” he said, “that’s a good question. I haven’t got a clue. I know there’s that rosewood box in Dad’s study, I think there may be some in there, but I’ve never actually looked.”
“Luso did,” Gignomai replied quickly. “He told me. There’s thirty gold angels, a dozen or so thalers and some copper. That’s it. And that was ten years ago, and I’ll bet you that money came from Home, when we first moved here.”
“There’s your answer, then,” Stheno said, matching the two parts of a splintered rail. “We’ve got on for seventy years without it, so we don’t need it. And we don’t, do we?”
“That’s like saying the donkey doesn’t need feeding,” Gignomai said, “which it doesn’t, until it dies. Well, think about it. I don’t suppose Grandfather came here with no more than thirty angels. I bet that box was full, and others like it. If there’s only thirty angels left, it means we’ve nearly run out.”
“False premise,” Stheno said. “Start wrapping the string, will you? You’re assuming we use money. Tell me what we use it for.”
“I don’t know,” Gignomai confessed. “But that’s because nobody tells me anything.”
“You have your own ways of finding things out, so I’m told.”
“Well, not about that. But anyway,” he went on, “think about what we could do if we had some money. Stuff we could buy. New tools, materials. Can you think of anything we’ve got that’s not flogged out and patched up?”
Stheno shrugged
, like a cow dislodging flies. “What’s that got to do with you?”
“We could trade,” Gignomai said.
“Really.”
“Yes. The Opellos would pay us a quarter a dozen for squirrel pelts. More, probably. And rabbits and hares.”
“I see,” Stheno said slowly. “So basically, you want to go into business as a rat-catcher.”
“That’s just an example,” Gignomai said, making himself stay calm. “We’ve got a seam of top-grade clay. They haven’t got anything anywhere near as good down on the flat. And have you got any idea what lumber goes for down there? Or charcoal? They’re shipping in charcoal from Home, it costs them an absolute fortune, and we could supply them for a fraction of what they’re paying and still make out like bandits.”
Stheno raised his eyebrows. “Do what?”
“Sorry,” Gignomai said, with a grin. “It’s one of my friend Furio’s expressions. It means we could make a lot of money.”
Stheno nodded slowly. “Charcoal,” he said, “is one of the monopolies. They’re obliged to buy it from Home, it’s the law.”
“Right. And who’s going to tell on them? And there’s more to it than that,” he went on, unable to control himself now that someone was actually listening. “The way Luso’s carrying on, it won’t be long before they’ve had enough of us and they come for us with weapons. But if we start selling them stuff, things they actually want, then they’ll need us. It’s not just about trade and money, it’s about survival. You do see that, don’t you?”
Stheno trimmed another knot. “So basically,” he said, “you want to be Minister for Trade and Industry, so you won’t have to muck in with your brother or me. It’s an idea,” he added, before Gignomai could protest, “but Dad won’t have it.”
“It’s a good idea.”
Stheno laughed. “Listen,” he said. “There’s a shitload of good ideas. I’ve had them, so has Luso. But selling them to Dad is another matter entirely. You’ll never do it. Believe me, I’ve tried often enough.”
It had never occurred to Gignomai that his brothers talked to their father. He’d assumed they just listened, received their orders and carried them out. He was, therefore, encouraged rather than put off. “I’ll talk to him,” he said.
He talked to his father.
That was an experience. First, there was the summons. It was delivered by his mother, who left the sewing room specially for the purpose. All she said was, “He wants to see you.” No commentary or interpretation. She’d have made a lousy priestess, he couldn’t help thinking. Then she went back to where she belonged and shut the door.
Next, the climb up the stairs to the library. When Grandfather built the house, he must have had their old house back Home in mind. There were three floors—five, if you counted the cellar, which was huge and these days full of Luso and his weapons, and the attic, where the servants lived in small, warm, tidy boxes (he always thought of them as being put away at night like a good child’s toys). The bedrooms were on the third floor. The ground floor consisted of the kitchen, which was enormous and the only part of the house where anybody could go, the dining room and the Hall, where the family assembled once a day like a parliament in session. The middle floor was the library, with Father’s study separate in one corner. Two servants went there to clean—it took them the whole day, every day—and Father lived there, often sleeping in the magnificent, rather terrifying chair that had come from the old house. What he did there all day was nobody’s business. Mother had told him once, when he was young, that Father was writing the history of the family, but Gignomai was inclined to doubt that, because they made parchment so rarely. It was an acknowledged fact that he sometimes wrote letters to important people at Home, which had to be unofficially conveyed to ships’ captains in town, a commission that Stheno undertook, most unhappily. If all he did was read the books, there were enough of them to keep him busy for the rest of an unusually long life. A servants’ legend had it that when the met’Oc came here in three ships, one whole ship was full of nothing but books. Gignomai got into the library by the servants’ stairs at noon, when Father retired to his study to eat.
Today, though, he entered the library from the main stairs, through the double doors. The last time he’d been here officially was when Father had made him burn Furio’s present. He’d hated the place since then, though he still came to steal books (which always found their way back onto the shelves, no matter how carefully he hid them). Father was sitting in the Chair, his head flopped onto his chest, asleep. For the first time in his life, Gignomai wondered how old his father was.
The head snapped up as soon as Gignomai closed the doors. “You sent for me.”
“Sit down,” Father said. There was a book open on his lap. He marked the place with what looked like a glove, closed it and put it on the table, next to the rosewood box. “Lusomai tells me you’ve got nothing to do.”
“That’s not strictly—”
“There’s an important difference,” Father said, “between leisure and indolence. In our society, not working is a state shared by the very rich and the very poor. Both sections of society live, you might say, off the labour of others; by rents and dividends and by charity. You, I fear, presently live on the charity of this household. It’s time we found you something to do.”
“I work on the farm,” Gignomai said. “Only this morning I was helping Stheno—”
His father raised three fingers of one hand, a total prohibition on speech. “Sthenomai has taken over from me the day-to-day running of the estate,” he said. “That’s his duty, as the eldest son. Lusomai, as second son, pursues a military career. Were we at Home, you would be reading for the House or the Temple. Unfortunately, that isn’t possible, but we have all the necessary texts. You can read them here, and then, when we go Home, you can be admitted straight away without having to go through seminary.”
Gignomai couldn’t be sure, but he had an idea who the glove had belonged to. That made him so angry that for a moment or so he couldn’t speak. But he pulled himself out of it, because there was a real and present danger to be dealt with.
“Would it be all right,” he asked, “if I suggested something else?”
His father looked at him as though he was an explorer who’d brought back some strange and improbable novelty from a distant land—a bird with two heads, or a deer with a pocket in its belly for carrying its young. “By all means,” he said, and rested his elbows on the arms of the chair, steepling his fingers.
“I thought,” Gignomai began, and he made his speech. It was more or less the same one he’d tried out on Stheno, but with more arguments and specifics, and presented with as much of the formal method as he could remember. His father didn’t interrupt and, when the speech was over, he sat perfectly still for a full minute before he spoke.
“You presented your case well,” he said.
Gignomai realised he hadn’t breathed for some time, but he didn’t dare, not until he’d heard the verdict.
“Tell me,” Father went on, “to what extent have you made a study of logical and rhetorical forms?”
Several seconds passed before Gignomai was able to figure out what his father was talking about. “I’ve read a few books,” he said.
“Specify.”
He scrabbled about in his memory for names. “Livius Secundus on Logic,” he said. “Regalian on Oratory. The first six of the Ideal Dialogues.”
“Excellent.” Father nodded his approval. “A solid foundation, and clearly you’ve taken the precepts to heart and thought about them. I would be inclined to say that you will do well in the House, or you might possibly consider a career in the Law. It’s not,” he added with a ghost of a smile, “the most distinguished of professions—a lawyer is, after all, essentially the employee of others, you might even term him a kind of servant—but there are certainly precedents, and a good start in the Law has often led to a fine, solid career in the House. In fact, I believe I shall start you on Pacat
ian’s Constitutional Paradoxes and see what you make of them. They’re unorthodox, but at your age I think you’re still young enough to be able to digest them without the risk of being led astray.”
“So…” There was, of course, no point in saying anything. But he felt he had to, just to be sure. It’d be a great shame to change his entire life out of all recognition on the basis of a misunderstanding. “So you don’t think much of my idea?”
Father looked at him and smiled. “My dear boy,” he said, “don’t be ridiculous. And I’m afraid I must insist that you put a stop to your forays outside the Fence. Quite apart from the danger to yourself, which is considerably greater than you seem to appreciate, there is the matter of perceptions. I would not want the people of the colony to get it into their heads that you could be, in any sense, a channel of communication between us and them. Please bear in mind the simple fact that they are trespassers on our property. I will not have their intrusion on our land in any way legitimised by your perverse curiosity.” He removed the smile, and went on, “I shall talk to Lusomai, and he will ensure that no further breaches take place. You will present yourself here after breakfast tomorrow, by which time I will have put together a selection of appropriate texts. I’ll have a chair and a table brought up for you to use.”
Gignomai left the library through the double doors, and walked up the main stairs to the third-floor landing. His room was on the east side of the house, overlooking the stable yard. He stripped a pillowcase off the bed and stuffed his spare clothes inside—two shirts, formerly Luso’s, two pairs of trousers (Stheno’s, when he was very young; even so, the legs were rolled up eight inches), two pairs of socks and the scarf his sister had made him. Into the pockets of his coat he loaded his knife, two handkerchiefs (from Home—they were his but he was expressly forbidden to use them) and three unread books he’d filched from the library a few days ago, chosen because they were small enough to be unobtrusive in a pocket. He changed into his heavy boots and jammed the lighter ones he’d been wearing into the pillowcase. That, and the sword, was everything. His snares and the roll of snare wire were in the small barn, which wasn’t on the route he intended to take. There’d be other rolls of wire, he told himself.