by K. J. Parker
The old man brushed aside the buttons. “Don’t want them.” He picked up the ring, put it down again; unfolded the knife and tried to wobble the blade, but it was sound in its bolsters; sniffed the handkerchief and dropped it; didn’t even look at the razor, which meant he knew what a good piece it was. Thought so. “Ten rials.”
“Oh, please.”
“Nah.” The old man covered the stuff with the cloth. “Ten rials. I’m not bothered.”
He was so good at it that, for a moment, Musen almost believed him. He felt desperately provincial, but managed to keep his face straight. “No worries,” he said. “Thank you so much for your time.”
He’d got to his feet and was actually walking away when the old man said, “Fifteen,” in such a sad, weary voice that Musen couldn’t help feeling guilty for imposing on him so. He stopped, counted to three under his breath and said, “I don’t think so.”
“Twenty.”
Musen had no idea what a rial was. It could be tiny, like a fish scale, or big as a cartwheel. He was guessing it was silver, but he didn’t know. “Oh, go on, then.”
Money changed hands. A five-rial turned out to be silver, about the size of his thumbnail but surprisingly thick. “That silk thing,” the old man said. “Got any more?”
“I know where I can get some.”
“Four rials each.”
“Five.”
“Four.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” He closed his fist around the coins. “Army stuff any use to you? I can get stirrups, horseshoes, pliers, spare plates for breastplates, that sort of thing.”
“Wouldn’t touch it, son. You neither, if you got any sense.”
Worth knowing. Clearly the Imperial army took a dim view of pilfering official stores. “Cheers,” Musen said. “You here tomorrow?”
“I’m always here.”
Depressing thought. He turned away and walked quickly till he was out of sight. Then he opened his fist. Four fat silver coins. He pulled off his boot, wedged the coins between his toes and pulled the boot back over them. Then he walked a couple of steps, stopped, removed the boot and the coins and put them in his pocket. Better poor than a cripple, his uncle used to say.
He walked back to the barn where Guifres’ men had stabled their horses. A soldier he’d talked to once or twice was sweeping the yard. “How much is a loaf of bread?” he asked.
“Rial. Why?”
Oh well, he thought. But quite possibly bread was dear and luxury goods were cheap right now. It’d be different, surely, if he could get to a proper town, somewhere where there wasn’t a war. The razor would’ve been useless in Merebarton. Nobody could have afforded it.
He thought about taking a quick scout round the hayloft where the men slept. There’d be nobody around; they were all out doing whatever soldiers do, and they were so trusting—Before he could make up his mind, a soldier he knew by sight came up to him and said, “Been looking for you.”
“Me?”
Nod. “Captain wants you.”
Surely not, Musen thought. And anyway, how could he prove anything? The razor was long gone by now. “Where is he?”
“I’ll take you.”
Didn’t like the sound of that. Still, he couldn’t let it show. “Thanks,” he said.
The captain wasn’t alone. There were two men with him, one Blueskin, one normal-sized man with red hair (for an instant, he’d seen Teucer; but it wasn’t him) in ordinary clothes, not army. They both had little hammer brooches on their collars. “That’s him,” Guifres said.
The Blueskin frowned. The redhead stood up and smiled. He was about thirty-five, with long hair and a short beard, and clothes that had been cut to look much cheaper than they actually were. Boots to last a lifetime.
“I’m Oida,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”
Musen had absolutely no idea what to say. Fortunately, the red-headed man was just leaving. He smiled warmly at the two soldiers, nodded to Musen and left. When he’d gone, Guifres said, “Do you have any idea who that was?”
“No.”
Guifres and the other soldier looked at each other. “Fine,” Guifres said. “You’ve just met one of the most important men in the empire, that’s all.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Still, no harm done, let’s hope. This is Major Pieres, garrison commander. I’ve told him about you.”
Pieres was what Guifres would look like in ten years’ time, if he got plenty to eat. “He’s a craftsman.”
“Yes, believe it or not,” Guifres said.
“What for?” Pieres gave Musen a long, sad look. “What did you join for? I don’t suppose it was an unquenchable thirst for esoteric knowledge.”
“My dad was a craftsman,” Musen answered. “And my uncle.”
“He can read and write,” Guifres said, “after a fashion. I thought maybe you could use him in the stores.”
“What stores? They’re empty.” Pieres shrugged. “Oh, go on, then.” Musen managed not to smile at that. “What can he do?”
“Farm labourer,” Guifres said. “But he’s quite bright.”
“Doctrine and works,” Pieres sighed. The phrase was familiar. “Mind you, I reckon this ought to do me for works for the next five years.”
Doctrine and works, anvil and hammer; of course. Musen was to be Pieres’ good deed for the half-decade. Thank you so much. “Thank you,” he said.
Pieres flexed his left hand, a cursory hammer and tongs. “Quite all right,” he said. “Get over to the mess tent and have something to eat.”
Musen had already done that, without asking, some time ago. “Thanks,” he said, and got out of there quickly.
“Who’s a man called Oida?” he asked.
The sergeant stared at him. “Seriously?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking.”
The sergeant was a craftsman. He put down the chunk of bread dipped in gravy he’d been about to eat. “You’ve never heard of Oida.”
Musen found a grin from somewhere. “I’m the enemy, remember?”
“He’s famous on both sides,” the sergeant said. “Only musician in the world who’s played for both emperors. Great man. Great man.”
“A musician,” Musen said.
“Don’t say it like he’s just some fiddle player.” The sergeant was angry and amused at the same time. “Know what? Four years ago, something like that, he reckoned it was time to stop the war, right? They actually had peace talks. They actually sent ambassadors, both sides, just because he said so. Not just some fiddle player.”
“But the peace talks—”
“It was because your lot kept asking for stupid stuff. Wasn’t his fault. Kept asking for stuff they knew we couldn’t give them. Deliberate, like sabotage.”
“Oh,” Musen said. “What kind of—?”
“I don’t know, do I? Anyway, that’s beside the point. You said, who’s Oida. That’s who Oida is. Right?”
“I see,” Musen said. “Only, he was here.”
“What?”
“Here,” Musen repeated. “Just now. I saw him, in with the captain and Major Pieres.”
For a second or two, the sergeant was so stunned he couldn’t breathe. “You’re pissing me.”
“No, straight up. That’s why I asked who he is.”
“You saw Oida?”
Musen nodded. “He said he was pleased to meet me. Only because we’re both craftsmen, of course.”
“I’m a fucking craftsman,” the sergeant protested. “Here, you sure it was him?”
“The captain seemed to think so. You’ve just met one of the most important men in the empire, he said. That’s what made me curious.”
The sergeant tried to speak, but his feelings were beyond words. He shook his head, stood up and walked away, then and for ever a man who had been so near and yet so very far. He was so preoccupied that he went all the way back to his tent before he realised he’d left his horn and silver drinking cup (for ten years’ go
od service) behind in the mess tent. He hurried back but someone must’ve taken it away by mistake.
I don’t suppose it was an unquenchable thirst for esoteric knowledge, the bastard major had said. Which showed how much he knew.
As always, raw materials were the problem. Back home he’d tried wood first of all: birch bark, carefully flattened over time under flat stones, but it split; then thinly sawn oak, fifty years old, cut from the heart of an ancient gatepost, but the ink just drained away into it, and there was nothing to see. Then he’d hit on the idea of thick rawhide, and that was just right, once he’d smoothed it right down with brick dust. The only way was to pour the dust into the palm of his hand and rub. Brick dust cuts skin. Fine, because rawhide is skin, but so were the palms of his hands. He had a devil of a job explaining why his hands were always raw and bleeding. But before very long, he had twenty-six identical rawhide rectangles, a palm long and an index finger wide. Ink was just oak apple gall and soot; everyone knew that, but nobody had actually ever made any, so he had to figure out the proportions by trial and error. It took an amazingly long time to get it right. For a brush, he used the pin feather from a woodcock’s wing—tiny little thing, hardly bigger than a needle, and he had to keep rinsing it out in water to keep it from getting clogged.
The first attempt was all right, but he wasn’t satisfied with it, so he made another one, and then two more, before he ended up with something he felt happy with. The problem was that you only got one shot at drawing the pictures. In theory, you could grind out your mistakes with brick dust, but he’d tried it and ended up with a horrible mess. He’d never drawn anything in his life before, went without saying. He tried practising beforehand, scratching on slates with a nail, but that was a totally different thing, it didn’t prepare you worth a damn for brush and ink. The fifth try, though; not perfect, for sure, nothing like the real thing the Master had shown him, with colours; but good enough. The first time he’d used them had been the happiest moment of his life.
That pack was somewhere by the river, in his abandoned rucksack, unless one of the savages had taken a fancy to it. Now he had the whole job to do again.
Instead of rawhide he used parchment. Not a problem. The city was full of the stuff. He broke into a merchant’s house and helped himself to a beautiful new roll, unused, milk-white. While he was there, he took two bottles of ink—black and red, for crying out loud—and three brushes, horsehair, and a stick with a fine steel blade shaped like a cut-off goose feather; a pen, he guessed. Wonderful thing.
Time wasn’t a problem, either. The less he was visible, the happier everyone was. He appropriated a hayloft over a stable in the yard of an inn. If he half opened the door there was loads of good light, particularly in the morning. He sat on a barrel of nails, with the work on his knee. So this is happiness, he thought.
Part of him wanted the pack finished as quickly as possible; part of him wanted the drawing to last for ever. Instead of starting at the beginning, with one, the Crown Prince, he began with the easiest: nine, the Gate (which is just a closed gate in a wall; arch, the boards of the gate itself, four ornate hinges, the bricks of the wall; nearly all straight lines, which he ruled with the back of a knife which some fool had left lying around in the barracks dormitory). That gave him the confidence to move on to seventeen, the Table—mostly straight lines, the legs and flat of the table itself, but with the hills and the city in the background, and the dog and the fox on either side. He got the dog more or less right, but the fox came out looking a bit like a polecat.
He got a bit overambitious after that and went straight on to eight, the Castle of God. The castle ended up looking like it was falling backwards. He thought about that, and decided it probably wasn’t a bad thing. He spent a whole day on the besieging army, now that he had a rather better idea of what soldiers actually looked like. The defenders were Rhus archers, of course, and the attackers were Blueskins, though he decided not to try shading them in, because that would just look strange. The figures were too big for the castle, but they’d been like that in the Master’s pack, so that was probably all right.
Eventually, the day came when there was only one left to do, the one he’d been putting off. Five, the Drowned Woman. Well, yes; but it had to be done.
In the event it came out really well. He drew her floating on her back (not as he remembered), with a flower in her left hand, her eyes closed, her hair spread out round her on the surface of the water. Properly speaking, the sun-in-glory should’ve been overhead—for noon, the Great Noontide—but he put it well over to the right, for mid-afternoon, the only personal concession, but he felt it was the least he could do. As he drew the last strokes and inked in the number he was almost shaking. He told himself it was because he was scared of dropping a blot off the pen and ruining the whole thing at the last minute. When he pulled his head back to look at the finished article, he simply couldn’t say if it looked like her or not. It was too long ago, after all, and he’d pictured it so often in his mind, he no longer had any idea what he was remembering.
Then he hung them up to dry from a string, each one fastened by a peg of green hazel, and went out to find a suitable box. Luckily, the major had one; he kept pens in it. The old man gave him three rials for the lot.
And then, after all that, he found out that the quartermaster-sergeant had a pack. They were coloured, just like the Master’s, and drawn on the same light, not-wood stuff, and the box was rosewood with a brass clasp. But for some reason Musen preferred his own, and let him keep them.
“The Moon reversed,” the quartermaster-sergeant said. “That means you’re going on a long journey.”
He was making it up as he went along. Fortunately the lieutenant of engineers wasn’t a craftsman and knew no better. “Does that mean I’m going to get posted back home?”
“Let’s see, shall we?” The quartermaster-sergeant turned up the next card. Number three, Shipwreck, natural. “Oh dear,” the quartermaster-sergeant said. “Well. Speaks for itself, doesn’t it?”
Musen made himself stay quiet. Shipwreck, natural is best interpreted as resourcefulness in the face of adversity, an opportunity disguised as a misfortune; that’s if you believe the pack is for fortune-telling, which only fools do.
The lieutenant looked miserable. “So if I get offered a posting back home I should turn it down, is that it?”
The quartermaster-sergeant gave him a wise look, and turned up the last card. “Well, that’s good,” he said. “Number twenty. True Love.”
The lieutenant cheered up at once, and Musen looked away. Number twenty, the Wedding, not True Love, coming after the Moon and the Dragon reversed, could only be bad; the forced marriage, unhappiness, disaster, coming at the very end of the sequence quite possibly death. Musen, who really didn’t believe in fortune-telling, couldn’t help shivering a little. Still, it served them both right, for abusing the Mystery. “That’ll be three rials,” the sergeant said, and Musen heard the sound of coins on wood. Then again, he thought, if someone’s stupid enough to pay money for a load of old rubbish, why not? And he had his own pack now—
No, couldn’t do that, it wouldn’t be right. The lieutenant went to the bar and paid, his tab and the sergeant’s. Musen got up to leave, but the sergeant was between him and the door.
“So,” the sergeant said. “What’s your game, then?”
“What?”
“I saw you,” the sergeant said, “sitting there pulling faces the whole time, like you’d got the runs. I’m doing a bit of business here. What’s your problem?”
It doesn’t matter, Musen thought. And I’m here on sufferance, I need for these people to like me. Most of all, I need not to make life difficult for the major. And then he heard himself say, “You shouldn’t be doing that.”
“You what?”
“You’re a craftsman. You’re using the pack to take money off people. That’s wrong.”
“You what?”
I really need to stop now, Musen
thought. “The pack’s special,” he said. “If you do that stuff, you shouldn’t be in the craft.”
The sergeant was a head shorter than Musen, and not much above half his weight. The first punch—solar plexus, inch-perfect—drained all the breath out of his body. The second one landed Musen on the floor. It was some time before he realised where the sergeant had hit him: the point of the chin, for the record. A boot in the pit of the stomach came after that, but by then he was too far out of it to care.
“Arsehole.” The sergeant stepped over him and left.
Later, when the world came back and stopped moving, Musen took proper note of the fact that no one came to help him up or see how he was, though that seemed to be the usual etiquette after fights. Curiously, none of the twelve or so men in the place seemed to have noticed that he’d been knocked down, or that he was making a pretty poor job of walking to the door. You didn’t need to be a Master to interpret those signs. Pity about that, Musen thought. He got out into the air, sat down with his back to the wall and concentrated on his breathing.
That’s what an unquenchable thirst for esoteric knowledge gets you, said the voice in his head. He disagreed. It wasn’t the unquenchable thirst, it was the being too stupid to keep his face shut. The question was whether the damage he’d done could be put right, or whether it was permanent, meaning it was now time to move on. Probably the latter—he wasn’t sure how he knew, but he was pretty certain. In which case, where to?
Merebarton. Across the moor to the country of the walking dead. Merebarton wasn’t an option any more. There was no guarantee it’d even be there. What if he were to make it back across the moor, only to find the houses empty, the roofs dragged off or burned, the people dead in the street? He wasn’t sure he’d be able to overlook that, and it made sense not to do anything that would force him to hate the enemy; not if they were winning. The trouble was, thanks to the war, he couldn’t rely on anywhere still being there—just empty land, from sea to shining sea.
When he felt well enough to stand, he got up and made his way back to the barracks, weaving and staggering like a drunk. As soon as he closed his eyes, he was fast asleep.