by K. J. Parker
Guifres grinned. “It says, he has red hair.”
“Oh.”
“We’d been given a description of you,” Guifres went on, “but it said, look for a very tall, big man with blue eyes, nineteen years old, and that applied to practically all your lot we came across, dead or alive. When I first saw you, no offence, I thought you were younger than nineteen, so it couldn’t be you. A courier rode eighty miles in a day to bring me this bit of paper, and by the time we got it we were on our way back. Soon as I read it, I knew it had to be you we’d shot. Luckily for us both, you were still alive.”
Teucer frowned. “Why am I so important?”
Guifres shrugged. “Don’t ask me. Apparently, I don’t need to know the reason. All I was told was, bring him in alive or don’t bother coming back. Somebody wants you for something.”
“Why did you spare my friend?”
“You keep asking me that.”
The next day, he asked, “What sort of thing do you think someone would want me for?”
“Ah.” Guifres smiled. “Actually, I’ve been giving that a certain amount of thought myself. I’ve more or less narrowed it down to three possibilities: a template, a specimen, or a gift for the man who has everything. I’m just guessing, though.” He paused, and looked at Teucer with his head slightly on one side. “Would you like to learn how to read?”
Teucer felt as though he’d just walked into a low branch he hadn’t known was there. “Yes,” he said, “very much. Why?”
“I’ll teach you, if you want.”
“Thank you. Why?”
Guifres shrugged. “We’ve got a long way still to go. Anything to pass the time.”
Which wasn’t a credible answer. Still. “Can we start now?”
“Why not?” Guifres opened his satchel and took out a long, thin, flat rectangle of wood. It was coated on both sides with beeswax, and there was a hole drilled down into it to hold a nail. With the nail, Juifrez scratched a symbol in the wax. “Right, then,” he said. “This is Amma.”
It looked like a wall with two poles leaning against it. “Amma.”
“Very good. This—” two triangles, one on top of another “—is Bose.”
“Bose,” Teucer repeated. “What are they for?”
Guifres’ face had a look-at-me-being-patient look. “Each letter stands for a sound,” he said. “Amma is the a sound. Bose is the bu sound. Writing and reading is where you take a word and break it into the sounds that make it up. So.” He made more scratches. “Here’s your name. Tamma, Eis, Umma, Ceir, Eis, Ro.” More scratches. “Here’s me. Jao, Umma, Ins, Ferth, Ro, Eis, Sim. Any word you like, all the words that exist in the world, you can break them down into twenty-seven little pictures. It’s really easy once you understand how it works.”
“I see,” Teucer said. “It’s pictures of sounds.”
Guifres frowned. “If you like,” he said. He turned the wooden rectangle over. “I’ll write out the letters for you, and you can learn them. Now, watch closely. Ferth, Umma, Thest, Amma, Ro, Ceir—”
“Just a second,” Teucer said. “How am I meant to remember which picture goes with which sound?”
“You just do.”
Musen appeared to have made friends with the soldier who carried the trumpet, and four or five others who generally sat with him in the evenings. They’d found something to talk about, and Teucer heard them laughing together, several times. I’m not a spy, Musen had said. Teucer believed him. After all, what was there in Merebarton anybody in the outside world could possibly care enough about to recruit a spy? Except, he reflected, me. And that made no sense whatsoever.
On the day when Teucer first wrote his name on Guifres’ wax tablet, they rode up to the top of a hill, and there was a strange-looking plain in the distance. It was dead flat and dark grey.
The horseman riding on his right said, “That’s the sea.”
Teucer looked at it again. “That is? That there?”
The horseman laughed. “A bit of it, anyway.”
“I’ve heard about it,” Teucer said. “But I thought it would be—”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” Teucer said. “Different.”
“Quite right,” Guifres told him that evening. “To be precise, that’s Beloisa Bay, and what you’re looking at is the North Mese.” He smiled. “Moir, Eis, Sim, Eisma. On the other side of that is where I come from. If there’s time, I’ll show you a map.”
If there’s time. “I’d like that,” Teucer said. He looked at Guifres, trying not to be obvious. “How far are we from where I come from?”
“You don’t want to know,” Guifres said. “And I’d try and forget about that, if I were you. No point dwelling on things that’ll only upset you.”
Ah. “Where are we going?” He’d never asked that before.
“Beloisa,” Guifres said. “Which is fine,” he added, “if you like that sort of thing.”
He smelt the city before he saw it. “What’s that?” he asked the horseman on his left.
“Fish,” the horseman replied. “Fish, drying in the sun.”
It wasn’t a foul smell, exactly; just different, and very strong. “You get used to it,” the horseman said.
The city itself was extraordinary, at least until you got up close, and saw that it was really just lots of small, badly looked-after houses, stacked together like logs in a pile. The plaster was cracking off the walls, and the windows were bowed and drooping, only held square by the shutters. Lots of houses, and no people.
There were sheds, rows and rows of them, identical, with huge doors you could drive a cart through. Still nobody to be seen. Small tufts of grass were starting to grow on the crests of the ruts cut by cartwheels. He guessed it wasn’t supposed to be there. Tall, thin plants with grey stems and yellow flowers had taken root in the walls of the stone-built barns at the far end of the row of sheds. He knew all the plants round Merebarton, but he didn’t recognise these. The roofs were mostly tiled, not thatched. He realised he was missing a sound he expected to hear, one that went with houses. It was some time before he figured what it might be. No chickens. He saw water bubbling up out of the ground and swirling away down a channel alongside the road. The flat stones on either side of where it came out had been cracked open. There was probably an explanation, if you knew about how houses were built. It looked all wrong.
“Whose city is this?” he asked the horseman.
“Ours,” he replied. “Now.”
He felt cold. He’d grown to like Guifres and some of the horsemen. They’d been kind to him, for no reason he could see except that it was in their nature to be kind unless there was a valid reason to do otherwise. Perhaps war constituted a valid reason. He wouldn’t know about that. “Who’s drying the fish?” he asked.
The horseman shrugged. “It takes a while to cure,” he said. “We haven’t been here that long.”
The previous day, the same horseman had told him about his home. They lived in houses carved out of solid rock, he’d said, like caves, only on purpose; you could stay cool that way, and the sun was so very hot all the day, and at night it could be bitter cold. He had two sisters; his father had died in the war. There were only women and old men left in his village now.
They turned a corner, and there was the sea again, a sheet of rippled slate, unnaturally flat. Teucer could see things like rounded sheds, with trees growing straight up from them. So that’s a ship, he told himself, but it was hard to work up any enthusiasm.
“They left before we got here,” the horseman said.
“Where did they go?”
Another shrug. “A long way away, if they had any sense.”
The city wasn’t completely deserted; about a dozen soldiers appeared from somewhere, important-looking men, dressed like Captain Guifres, some but not all of them Blueskins. Guifres talked to them for most of a day, sitting outside in the sun with several jugs of wine, but they didn’t seem to be enjoying themselves very much. T
he rest of Guifres’ men kept themselves busy with domestic chores, polishing boots, darning holes, patching new links and plates into their armour. They worked steadily, with an air of mindless confidence, tackling jobs that would always need doing. They reminded Teucer of his mother.
That evening, Guifres came to see him as usual. He brought with him a small rosewood case with a brass handle, which he put down on the ground at Teucer’s feet before sitting down. “Go on,” he said. “Open it.”
There were two brass catches, beautiful delicate work. The box was full of brass tubes.
Guifres leaned forward and picked one up. “Like this,” he said, and stuck his finger in one end. From the other end emerged a tightly coiled roll of paper. “Go on,” Guifres said.
Teucer took it and unrolled it an inch or two. All covered in writing; the letters were tiny, but so clearly formed that Teucer could make them out. “Well?” Guifres said.
Teucer concentrated. He was getting good at this. He took his time, not opening his mouth until he was quite sure he’d got it right. “The art of shipbuilding,” he said.
Guifres grinned. “By Iosarius of Tianassa,” he said, “in twelve volumes. And a little extra something as well, but I won’t spoil the surprise. Hope you enjoy them. It was all I could get.”
It took Teucer a moment. “They’re for me?”
“Of course they are. Something to read on the journey.”
“What journey?”
“And relevant, too. If anything breaks on the ship, you can tell them how to fix it.”
Teucer looked at him. “What journey?”
Guifres took a deep breath. “You’re going to Rasch Cuiber,” he said, “you lucky sod. Wish I was.”
“Where?”
“Oh for—Rasch Cuiber, the capital city of the Western empire. Centre of the known universe, best place on earth.”
“Across the sea? On a ship?”
“Well, you wouldn’t want to walk.”
“No,” Teucer said. “I can’t.”
Guifres was still grinning. “Sorry,” he said. “Orders. We’re soldiers, we do as we’re told, right?”
“I’m not a—”
“You’re a prisoner of war, and you’re going to Rasch Cuiber.” Guifres stood up. “Read the books,” he said. “It’ll be good practice and you might learn something.” He hesitated. “Trust me,” he said; “you’ll be better off there. It’s a civilised place: they don’t just kill people out of hand in Rasch.”
“What do they want me for?”
Guifres looked unhappy. “I don’t know,” he said. “But whatever it is, it’s worth their while going to a hell of a lot of trouble to get you. You’re valuable. People take care of valuable things.” He smiled: an apology. “So long,” he said. “Look after yourself.”
“Thank you,” Teucer said.
Guifres shrugged. “If they make you a duke, put in a good word for me.” Then he walked away.
The ship was much smaller than it looked from a distance. Teucer had been in bigger barns. “Get used to it,” one of the men said. He wasn’t a Blueskin, but he wasn’t like the Rhus people either; he was short and skinny, with long brown hair, like a girl’s. “The crossing takes twenty days, if we’re lucky.”
“What if we’re unlucky?”
“You don’t want to know.”
The planks were slightly warped; he could see down through the cracks between them. Barrels, mostly. “Where do I go?”
“Where you like,” the man said, “so long as you don’t get in the way.” He paused, and looked at Teucer. “You been on a ship before?”
“No.”
“They tell you anything about it?”
“No.”
“Right. Nothing to it, really. Just remember, no matter how bad it gets, you won’t actually die.” He grinned. “Unless we sink, of course.”
“Is that—?”
“Who knows?”
The ship kept moving slightly, but nobody else seemed to think anything of it. He found a space next to the tail, sat down and opened the box, which was his only possession. The Art of Shipbuilding. Well. He closed the box carefully, lay down and rested his head on it.
He must have fallen asleep. When he opened his eyes, the ship was in the middle of the sea.
6
The Thief
Captain Guifres watched the sail until it was hard to see. Then he turned to Musen.
“Well now,” he said. “What are we going to do with you?”
Musen’s mouth felt dry, as though he’d been working in the sun all day. “How about you let me go?”
Guifres shook his head. “Can’t do that,” he said.
“Oh. What can you do?”
Guifres pulled a face. “It’s depressing how little discretion I’ve got, actually,” he said. “Well, that’s not strictly true. For instance, I could have you killed, right now, and nobody would say a word; it’d come under general expediency in the field. But if I let you go, they’d have me up in front of a board of enquiry and I’d be lucky to keep my commission. And if you can make any sense of that, please enlighten me.” He scratched his chin. He’d lost his razor. Actually, Musen had taken it, the day before yesterday, while the captain was talking to Teucer; it had an ivory handle, and could at a push serve as a weapon. He’d hidden it in one of the troopers’ saddlebags, wrapped in a spare scarf. “No, as I see it, I’ve got two options. I can turn you over as an ordinary prisoner of war, or I can find someone on the staff here to take you off my hands.”
“A craftsman.”
“Well, yes, obviously. But that wouldn’t be a problem. Plenty of them.”
Musen relaxed a little. They might be savages, but they took the craft seriously; far more than anyone had done back home. He wondered, not for the first time, what he’d have done in Guifres’ shoes. Kill them both, probably, and spared himself all the inconvenience. After all, who’d ever have known?
“Do that, then,” Musen said.
“It’s not as simple as that.” He was getting on Guifres’ nerves. “For a start, what would anyone possibly want you for? Sorry.” He smiled. “No offence. But really. You aren’t a skilled man, you don’t have a trade, and I can’t see any of my brother officers wanting you as a servant.”
“I can read.”
“Yes. So can every soldier in the army. I’m sorry,” he repeated, “but you can see, it’s a problem. Even for a fellow craftsman, there are limits as to what can be done.” He thought for a moment. “You could always escape.”
“But I thought you said—”
A sort of give-me-strength look. “Yes, that’s right. I can’t let you go. But if you escape, I can quite legitimately take a command decision that I can’t spare the manpower to chase after you and catch you. Once you’re two miles from here, what the hell difference will it make if you’ve escaped or I let you go?”
“I wouldn’t have a safe passage.”
“Well, no,” Guifres conceded. “There’s that. But you’re a smart fellow: you can look after yourself.”
“I’ll get caught again. By your lot.”
“Not necessarily. You only got caught the first time because I was looking for your friend. But for him, you’d probably be home free and clear by now.”
“I’d have starved to death on the moor.”
“God, you’re hard to do favours for. All right, you don’t want to escape and I can’t let you go. You suggest something.”
Musen gave him a flat, stupid look. It was one of his best: versatile and effective. “We’re craftsmen,” he said. “You’ve got to look after me.”
“Actually, that’s not what it says in the rules—” Guifres stopped. “All right. I can leave you here in the custody of the garrison commander, who just happens to be a craftsman, too. Then you can be his problem. How about that?”
Musen thought for a moment. The sad fact was, he wasn’t really sure what he wanted any more. Going home to Merebarton, alone, the only man under f
ifty in the village; be realistic, no future in that. At first, after the slaughter at the river, he’d had such visions—all the unclaimed land, the huge estate there for the taking; then the sober thought, as they’d crossed so much empty space, that land is useless without men to work it, and by the look of it there were no more people; because he knew for a fact, ten years ago the country they’d crossed, from Merebarton to Spire Cross and then on towards Carney, had been a settled, prosperous network of hill farms and small villages, all duly marked on the maps, and where the hell were they all now? So, no labour to be hired in from outside, no value, no point in all that land that should have been his for the taking. Waste; useless. In which case, why the hell go back? Nothing there but hard work and sorrow. But if he didn’t, what was he supposed to do?
And the answer, coiled seductively round the base of his mind like a fat snake; these people obviously have far more things than they need, and plenty of money—
“Fine,” he said. “After all, I wouldn’t want to be a burden to anyone.”
The city was a miserable place, hostile, empty and miserable, but eventually he found a buyer, a short man (they were all so short), in a coat even older than he was, sitting in a doorway. The man had called out, “Hey, want to buy? Good stuff, very cheap.” He hadn’t bothered looking up.
“Not buying,” Musen said. “Selling.”
“Uh.” The man looked up at him. “You’re not a soldier.”
“No.”
“What’re you doing here, then? You’re not from these parts.”
“I ran away from home to seek my fortune.”
That got him a grim look. “What you got?”
Musen dropped down beside him, looked round and fished in his pocket. “Here,” he said, and unrolled the cloth bundle.
“Where’d you get that from?”
“Family heirlooms. Been handed down from father to son, twenty generations. Where do you think?”
Sixteen bone buttons, various. A small folding knife, bone handle, some pitting, the blade missing the tip. A man’s ring, small, almost certainly gilded bronze, the blue stone slightly chipped. A man’s razor, best quality, ivory handle. A silk handkerchief, some slight bloodstaining. “Well?”