by K. J. Parker
“All right,” Furio said with a sigh. “Don’t tell me.” He got up to leave the room, but Gignomai called him back. “Furio.”
“What?”
“If the world is a book, are you the hero, or just a walk-on part?”
Furio opened his mouth, then closed it again. “You’ve read a lot more books than me,” he said.
“All right, not a book, a story. Is it about you, or are you just in it?”
Furio was standing with one hand on the door latch. He stayed still and quiet for a surprisingly long time. “I think I can see where you’re making your mistake,” he said. “You think people’ve got to have a purpose. You’re getting people muddled up with things. Which is odd, coming from you.”
“Furio—”
“Things have a purpose,” Furio went on, not letting him interrupt. “Some of them, anyhow. Things made by people, at any rate. People…” He shrugged. “You don’t agree.”
“I don’t think I was put here to be a means of turning wheat into shit,” Gignomai said.
“You see? Even when you’re trying to argue your side of it, you can’t help thinking in terms of purposes. “Why do you want to set up a factory, Gignomai? Just for mischief, or is it because you’ve got some big deep idea in the back of your head somewhere?”
“What else is there to do around here?”
The news that the youngest met’Oc boy had run away from home again led to a mild, slow-moving panic. Some farmers drove their cattle home from the outlying pastures; others, figuring that Lusomai would attack homesteads as he’d done the last time, put their stock out, boarded up their houses and moved their families and possessions into remote shepherds’ huts and sheilings. There were several angry meetings. Some farmers wanted to fight, the way the Dravis had done, while others pointed out what had happened to Azo Dravi and maintained that fighting was the worst possible thing they could do; much better to clear out and let Luso burn a few hayricks if he felt he absolutely had to. Nothing was decided, and the fighting faction stormed off to barricade themselves in their houses. In town, where many people anticipated Lusomai would attack, there was rather more enthusiasm for coordinated resistance. Gimao the corn chandler announced the formation of a Committee for Public Safety, with himself as chairman, and signed up a dozen householders, but when he tried to organise a sentry-duty roster, he found that nobody could spare the time from their other commitments. He did manage to persuade the town clerk to give him permission to block the three main approaches into town with overturned wagons, but since nobody was prepared to lend the Committee so much as a dog cart, the initiative came to nothing, and the clerk absolutely forbade Gimao to use rocks, chains or barrels instead of carts, on the grounds that such obstructions couldn’t readily be cleared away when not in use, which would lead to obstruction of legitimate traffic.
Lusomai didn’t attack. Pickets posted to observe activity near the Gate (two poor-relation cousins of the Dravis and their friend from town) reported hearing several shots in the woods and may have seen a man moving about up there. Their observations were of limited use, however, since they were all under age and had to promise their parents to be home before nightfall.
Instead, Gignomai’s father sent him a letter. It appeared one morning nailed to the front door of the store.
Phainomai met’Oc to Gignomai met’Oc; greetings.
You will find enclosed with this letter a formal notice of disinheritance.
I have prepared and will, in due course, forward to the Court a duly notarised copy for registration in the Temple Register. I have also made the necessary alterations to my will. Kindly accept this letter as proper notice of such alterations, pursuant to section 46 of the Wills and Testamentary Dispositions Act AUC 897.
In consequence of the said disinheritance:
1. Notwithstanding any trusts, benefices, appointments and settlements already made (all of which are hereby declared void in respect of you), you will receive no family property at my death.
2. You will forfeit membership of the College of Augurs, the College of Arms, the Noble Brotherhood of the Invincible Sun, the Worshipful Guild of Knights Domestic and Errant, the Order of Agesilaus and the Order of the Headless Spear, together with all rights, privileges, rents and properties appertaining to such memberships.
3. You are hereby dispossessed of the priesthood of St Sergius Without the Gate, and the stipends and honours relating thereto.
4. You are hereby deprived of the benefices and advowsons of the subdiocese of Athanasia Foreign.
5. You are hereby deprived of your seat on the Greater Council, the Lesser Council and the Council of One Hundred, and of all privileges, rights and expectations thereto pertaining.
6. You have forfeited all real and personal property held or situated at the premises usually known as the Tabletop, and you are forbidden to enter the said premises at any time and for any purpose whatsoever.
7. You are hereby deprived and relieved of all rights and duties of Attendance, Audience, Fealty and Judgement pertaining to your rank as a hereditary knight of the Imperial Court.
8. You will within seven days of receipt of this notice pay in full the cost of your induction and registration in the aforementioned Colleges, Orders, Priesthoods, Councillorships and other said offices. Should the said debt remain unpaid at the expiry of the said term, the sum in question will be registered against you as a statutory debt in the ledgers of the Imperial Court.
You have dishonoured your family, offended your brothers and gravely disappointed me. As a last act of forbearance I have decided to take no action against you in truancy under the Families Act AUC 907. I have forbidden the mention of your name in this house.
Kindly acknowledge safe receipt and due service of this notice.
“I didn’t know you’re a priest,” Furio said.
Gignomai took the letter back, folded it and tucked it inside the front cover of Onesander. “Was a priest,” he replied. “Yes, we all are. Or were. It’s like all that other garbage; stuff from Home. We lost it all, of course, when we got thrown out and came here, but naturally Father acts as though it’s still all real; he…” He paused. “He refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the confiscation order, is how he puts it, I think. Anyway, none of it matters.”
Furio wasn’t sure he believed that. “What’s an advowson?”
“The right to appoint a new priest to a temple when the old one dies or retires,” Gignomai replied promptly, as if he was being tested. “The incoming priest pays you money, so it’s worth having. Also, you can appoint someone who’ll do as you tell him, so it’s valuable politically. I think I had four of them.” He grinned. “Lucky me. Actually, that’s one of the less obscure ones. I never did find out what the Order of the Headless Spear’s supposed to be about, and it wasn’t in any of the books. What you’ve never had you never miss, right?”
Furio didn’t want to say anything, but he felt he had to. “Your father’s a nasty piece of work,” he said. “All that stuff about—”
“He’s not, actually,” Gignomai said mildly. “Back Home, he’d have either been a great and distinguished scholar or First Citizen; both, quite likely. Here, he’s an eagle in a chicken coop. I’d feel sorry for him, but he’d think that was degrading.”
Furio knew he’d said the wrong thing, but it was too late to do anything about it. “You never told me his name,” he said.
“Didn’t I?” Gignomai was looking out across the porch, to where the Tabletop would be. “It’s a family name, of course. They all are. Also a joke at his expense.”
That was meant to be a cue. “Is it?”
Gignomai nodded. “All our names mean something, in the old language. Like, Sthenomai means ‘I am strong.’ Lusomai means ‘I will be set free’ or else ‘I will be unleashed.’ I’m ‘I become,’ which I hope I’ll live up to one day, though the way things are going I’m inclined to doubt it. Phainomai means ‘I seem.’ ”
“Oh,” Furio re
plied. It was the best he could do.
“The joke,” Gignomai went on, still staring at the skyline, “is that it’s ambiguous. Phainomai followed by the present participle means ‘I seem to be and I really am.’ Followed by the infinitive, it means, ‘I seem to be but I’m not really.’ There’s even a little verse to help you remember which is which.”
He took a breath, and recited, “Phainomai on quod sum; quod non sum phainomai einai. Which everybody learns with their grammar when they’re seven, or at least they do back Home if they’re people like us. Anyhow, Grandfather must’ve called him that on purpose, because when he was pleased with Father he called him On, and when he wasn’t he called him Einai. Father told me that himself when he was teaching me reflexive verbs.” He lowered his head, looked down at his hands, moved his left hand so he wasn’t looking at the stitches. “Just the sort of thing that’d really screw you up as a kid, I’d have thought, but it’s what passes in our family for scholarly wit.”
Furio felt an urgent need to change the subject. “What’s this notice of disinheritance thing he mentioned?”
“It’s on the back of the letter,” Gignomai replied. “Supposed to be on a separate sheet, but we can’t spare the parchment. Which sort of sums the whole thing up, really.”
“And you can really do that? Cut someone out of your family, like they never existed.”
Gignomai nodded. “I don’t think it’s been done for about two hundred years,” he said. “But I think it’s nice to keep these quaint old traditions going.”
Gignomai insisted on acknowledging receipt, as his Father had asked him to. He asked for a sheet of paper and the loan of Furio’s hunting bow and an old, cracked arrow. Then he trudged out to the Tabletop, waded across the river, walked up to the foot of the Gate and shot the arrow as far as he could make it go, with the paper tied to the arrowshaft.
(“So what does your mother’s name mean?” Furio asked him.
“Oh, nothing. Girls don’t get names that mean anything, they’re just to sound pretty.”
He was lying, as it happened. His mother’s name meant “loyal.” His sister’s was “gift from the sun,” because she nearly died at birth.)
Furio slept on the ground floor, in what had been a stockroom in his father’s time. Teucer had his old room now, up at the top of the house, under the western eaves. One thing about his new room (sometimes an advantage, sometimes not) was that every time someone battled with the front door, which stuck badly in wet weather, he woke up.
He jumped out of bed, grabbed the long stockman’s coat that Uncle Marzo had taken in part settlement of a bad debt, dragged it on and ran out onto the porch, just in time to see Gignomai setting off down the street. He ran after him and caught him up at the livery corner.
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
Gignomai looked at him. “Hello,” he said. “You’re up early.”
It was just starting to get light. “So are you.”
“Long way to go,” Gignomai replied. “See you this evening.”
Furio scowled at him. “Would it kill you to wait three minutes while I put some clothes on?”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“You’re going to meet the savages, aren’t you?”
Gignomai froze for a moment, then nodded. “There was a man in the store last night saying they’re back at their camping ground by the lake. Seemed too good an opportunity to miss.”
“I know,” Furio said. “I heard him too. Stay there. I’ll just be a few minutes, I promise.”
“What makes you think…?” Gignomai started to say, but Furio had run off. He walked on, quickly, as far as the little bridge across the mill race, then stopped.
Furio was a quick dresser; he could do most things quickly, if he had to. He ran home, threw on yesterday’s clothes and ran back, pausing just for a moment at the corner (he’s noticed, Gignomai noted, that I walked on and then stopped). “Right,” Furio said briskly. He had a scarf wrapped round his neck and his hands were thrust deep in his coat pockets. Gignomai, who never felt the cold, found that mildly amusing.
“There’s no need for you to come,” Gignomai said.
“I’m interested,” Furio replied. “I’ve never even seen a savage before.”
There’s a degree of merit, Gignomai thought, in the graceful acceptance of the unavoidable. “Now’s your chance, then,” he said. “Just be polite, that’s all.”
It was a long walk, but mostly on the flat, for which Furio was grateful. He belonged to the school of thought that holds that a walk is at best the result of a foul-up in the transport arrangements, and he ran out of breath quite quickly on hills. There was no reason why Gignomai should be aware of that, and he wanted to keep it that way. “You’re serious about this factory idea,” he said.
“Of course.”
“I thought it might just have been, you know, thinking aloud.”
“I do that too. But yes, I’m serious.”
Furio shrugged. “You never told me why.”
“Didn’t I?”
Conversation dried up after that, and they reached the river in silence. Then Gignomai said, “It’s all right, we don’t have to cross it. We can just follow the bank, and there’s a bridge just before we reach the lake.”
Furio blinked. “How do you know?”
“Luso has maps. I should think they’re accurate; he drew most of them himself.” Furio noticed he kept looking at the scarf. “He sends men out to walk from one landmark to another, counting their strides as they go. He read about it in a book, but it seems to work.”
Sure enough, there was a bridge. Who had put it there, or why, Furio couldn’t imagine. It was right on the edge of the colony’s land, much too close to the savages’ country for any of the local farmers’ taste. They hadn’t seen cattle grazing for quite some time.
For some reason, Furio had been expecting a visible indication: a wall, a fence, something of the sort, but there wasn’t anything like that. It was only when he stopped and looked back towards the bridge that he realised they must be outside the colony by now. Quite suddenly he felt uncomfortable, a sort of fear of heights feeling. Gignomai was walking slightly faster.
“What are we looking for?” Furio asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine. Smoke would probably be our best bet, or recent wheel-tracks.”
In the event, it wasn’t either of those. Out of a dip in the ground that neither of them had suspected was there, two men suddenly stood up.
“I think we’ve—” Furio whispered.
“Quiet.”
They could have been identical twins. Both were tall and (to Furio’s eyes) painfully thin. They had dark skins, a deeper brown than ordinary sunburn, and wore long pocketless coats that nearly reached the ground, made out of some kind of felt. Neither of them was obviously armed. One of them was frowning slightly, as though what he was seeing didn’t quite make sense.
“I have no idea,” Gignomai said quietly, “what language these people speak.”
Furio felt a pang of anxiety. That point hadn’t occurred to him. Obviously, it hadn’t occurred to Gignomai either, and Furio was surprised about that.
Gignomai took a step forward. The two men immediately took an equivalent step back—like fencers, Furio thought—but they didn’t seem unduly alarmed. The one who’d frowned now had his head slightly on one side.
“All right,” Gignomai said softly. From his pocket he took a tin cup—Furio recognised it as part of the stock—and laid it slowly on the ground. Then he stepped back two paces, and Furio did the same. The men just looked at him. Nothing happened for the time it takes to gut a fish. Then the two men talked to each other in a low whisper, and one of them beckoned.
“I think he wants—” Furio said.
“Shh.”
The men turned their backs and started to walk away, quite slowly; Furio got the impression that that was their customary pace. He stooped to retrieve the cup before followin
g them.
They walked in dead silence for what seemed like a very long time, until they reached the shore of the lake. A large covey of ducks rose up in front of the two men, who took no notice. Maybe they’re deaf, Furio thought, because anybody normal would’ve jumped out of his skin.
From a distance, the camp looked like the docks on loading day. There were four or five huge pens, crammed with cattle—much smaller than the breeds Furio was used to seeing, and with long, curved horns that drooped below shoulder height before flicking upwards again. There were tents, not very many, and three neat rows of carts with felt canopies. As soon as they crossed the skyline, people came flooding out of the tents and stood watching, perfectly still and dead quiet.
“Well,” Gignomai whispered in his ear, “you wanted to come.”
“I did, didn’t I?” Somewhere, a dog was barking. It was the only noise. “What’s wrong with these people? They’re just—”
“Quiet!”
Their two guides didn’t say a word, and the crowd divided to let them pass, their faces all wearing the same bemused, quizzical expression. Not the slightest suggestion of fear.
They were only a matter of yards from one of the tents, whose flap was still closed, unlike all those around it. One of their guides cleared his throat, a most refined sound that reminded Gignomai uncomfortably of his father. After a moment the flap was lifted aside, and a very old man’s head poked round it. He was bald, slightly darker than anyone they’d seen so far. One half of his chin was smooth, the other half wet and covered with white bristles, suggesting he’d been interrupted in the middle of shaving. For a moment, he stared blankly; nothing like the uniform gaze of the crowd. Then his face split into an enormous grin.
“My dear fellows,” he said, and his accent and pronunciation made Gignomai’s father sound like a ploughman, “what a wonderful surprise. Do please come inside and have some tea.”