The Two of Swords, Volume 1

by K. J. Parker

  “You’re not coming on the ship.”

  She shook her head. “Too much to do here,” she replied. “I expect I’ll see you at Beal Defoir, I don’t know. Cheer up,” she added. “Smile. You’re going to get out. You’re going to paradise.”

  He woke up and assumed it had all been a dream. Then he saw the toes of two pairs of boots.

  “You coming, or what?”

  His mouth tasted of mud. Sleeping with his mouth open. “The ship?”

  He’d said something amusing. “Yeah, the ship. You coming?”

  Musen scrambled to his feet, not so easy on a dead-smooth marble floor. “I’m right behind you,” he said.

  They were both short, broad men, very dark but not Blueskins; black curly hair and beards that made them look much older than they sounded. “I’m Loster and that’s Coif,” one of them said. They both wore long coats, bilberry-stain blue. He couldn’t really tell them apart.

  “Musen.”

  “Yes, we know.”

  They were going west, towards the docks, but he’d never been down these streets before. Didn’t look like anyone had been that way for a very long time. They walked until Musen’s feet began to hurt. “Is it much further?”

  Another joke; he wished he could be that amusing on purpose. “Nearly there.”

  They stopped. By the looks of it, a carpenter’s shop; the shutters had been stripped, the planks prised out, and the workbench was open to the air; tools lying everywhere, as though someone had gone through them in a hurry, looking for something in particular. “Wait here,” Loster said. He went inside, and Musen heard his feet on stairs. Coif grinned at him, as though they were co-conspirators in some mildly antisocial venture. “Won’t be long,” he said.

  “We are going to the ship, aren’t we?”

  “Oh yes.”

  Two pairs of feet coming down the stairs. He’d hoped it would be the woman. Instead, it was a man. He had a hood drawn round his face, but Musen recognised him immediately.

  “Hello,” he said. “It’s Musen, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “The thief. You’re on your way to the Priory at Beal Defoir.”

  He wondered if Loster and Coif knew who the red-headed man was. “That’s right,” he said.

  “Splendid,” Oida said. “We’ll be shipmates as far as Tirres.”

  Wherever that was. “That’s nice,” Musen said. He felt such a fool.

  13

  Poverty

  She watched the ship until it was out of sight, then clambered down the bell-tower ladder. The flowing skirts of the ridiculous red dress hampered and obstructed her, like bored, hungry children. Number-one priority, change into something else.

  The panic was still there, it was always there these days, like a faithful but unfashionable dog, but she pretended she could ignore it. The side buttons were tight in the buttonholes and she ended up tearing two of them off: small, satin-covered buttons, unique, she couldn’t be bothered to look for them in among the junk and rubbish on the vestry floor. She pulled on her smock and apron, her cloak of invisibility. That made her feel a little bit better.

  Not to worry, she ordered herself. True, she’d given up her place on the last ship but one out of Beloisa to someone she personally regarded as almost certainly worthless, but there was still one ship to go; her chances of getting on board it, objectively assessed, about forty per cent. Not good odds, but not the worst either. She tried to squeeze her feet into the horrible wooden shoes. What am I doing here? she thought.

  She left the twenty-angel silk dress draped over a broken chair. The door was wide open, but she didn’t feel like going that way. She climbed out through the vestry window, tearing her hem. In the street, the water was up over her ankles. It flooded her clogs and made her toes squirm. Thank you so much.

  There were no clocks in this horrible city. Not that they’d have been any use today—the sky was low, black cloud, so no sun—but even so. A clock isn’t the end of the world, technically speaking. It’s a brass disc with numbers on and a thing sticking out the middle to cast a shadow. You’d have thought even these people could’ve got the hang of that. A city with no way of telling the time can by no stretch of the imagination be called civilised. It’s just a mob with walls.

  She hurried down Coppergate, splashing water up her legs. Oida had offered her his place on the ship, but he hadn’t meant it, she could tell. Oida, of course, was about the only man in the world with nothing to fear in a city about to be taken by storm. Our Father, she prayed, whip up a gentle storm halfway across, just enough to make him chuck his guts up. She composed a mental picture of Oida bent double over the rail, making retching noises. It was a good picture. It made her grin.

  There were two kettle hats on the main door of the Prefecture, but either they didn’t know about the side door in Longacre or they didn’t have the manpower. It wasn’t locked; it couldn’t have been, because she’d stolen the key. She clumped up the back stair, squelch squelch, let herself into Major Pieres’ office, sat down in his chair and pulled her clogs off. A cupful of water drained out of them into the floorboards. I want to go home, she thought.

  Pieres had locked his despatch case, bless him. That held her up for as long as it takes to boil a pint of water. Nothing new since this morning. She closed the case and locked it, breaking a fingernail in the process. One of those days.

  “Hello,” he said, when he finally showed up. “That’s my chair.”

  She gave him a look and stood up. “You’ve got it all wet,” he pointed out.

  “I’m so very, very sorry.”

  He sighed, took off his cloak and draped it over the seat before sitting down. “Well?” he said. “Did you get them off safely?”

  Pointless question. “Now, then,” she said. “About me.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about that.” Bare-faced lie. She could tell from his face, it was the last thing he wanted to talk about.

  “You’ve given my place to someone else.”

  He had the grace to avoid her eye. “Not my decision,” he said. “It’s one of Division’s damned politicals, turned up this morning at the South gate, we had to lower a basket on a rope and haul him up. Bloody fool was wandering about in the bush somewhere on a fact-finding mission—” (She loved the way he said that.) “Got separated from his escort, somehow managed to get back here, and now he’s bouncing up and down pulling rank on me, so I’m really sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.” He paused. He always paused when he was about to tell a lie. “There’ll probably be one more ship after this one, though obviously I can’t guarantee it. But I promise you, the first available place—”

  She gave him the sweetest smile she could manage. “That’s perfectly all right,” she said. “I quite understand.”

  “Don’t be like that,” he called out after her, but she didn’t turn back. Instead, she ran down the main staircase, only realising when she was halfway down that she’d left the clogs behind and had nothing on her feet. Not to worry, she’d gone barefoot often enough. Just one shot at this, she told herself, so for crying out loud guess right. Now then, where would he be?

  She went to the guardhouse of the Fifteenth, on Rook Street. Good guess. Poor little Captain Jaizo was there, surprisingly sober. “I need to see your political,” she said. “Now.”

  “I’m not sure—”

  “Now,” she repeated. “I need to give him a top-priority message to take back to Central Command. The ship leaves in an hour.”

  Jaizo gave her an agonised look. “Give me the message, I’ll make sure he—”

  “You’re not cleared,” she snapped. “Fine. I’ll go and drag Pieres away from his lunch, and he can order you. I’m sure he won’t mind.”

  The political officer was a big man, tall, built like an athlete. He’d got on one of those marvellous vests of small steel scales that overlap like fish scales; light enough so you hardly notice you’re wearing it, but proof against everythi
ng below light artillery. Not that it mattered, because she stabbed him in the ear.

  “Bad news,” she told Jaizo. “Your political won’t be going.”

  He gave her a hazy stare. “What, after the fuss he made?”

  “Dead,” she said. “Someone got to him.”

  “Dead? You mean killed.”

  “Quite. Wonderful security you’ve got here, Captain. Might just possibly cost us the war, but there you go.” Jaizo opened and closed his mouth, but no sound came. “You do realise, if that message doesn’t reach Command—”

  Jaizo was one step away from tears. Was I ever that young? she wondered. “What are we going to do? The ship sails in—”

  She nodded at the sand clock on his wall. “Twenty minutes.”

  Despair; then sudden, wild hope. “Can’t you go?”

  “What?”

  “You’ll have to go. On the ship. Take the message yourself.”

  She needed just the right pitch of exasperated fury. “Don’t be ridiculous; I can’t go. I’ve got far too much to do here.” She shook her head. “It’s no good, I’ll just have to write it out and give it to the captain, who’ll probably lose it or wipe his arse with it. Not to mention it’s a direct breach of standing orders.”

  “There isn’t time,” Jaizo wailed. “Not if it’s got to be ciphered: you know how long that takes.” He bit his nails, she noticed. Only weak people do that. “How the hell did they get someone in here? I’ve got guards on all the doors and windows.”

  She shrugged. “That doesn’t really matter much now,” she said. “Here, give me some paper.”

  “No.” Jaizo had made up his mind, what was left of it. “You’ll have to go. I mean it. I’m ordering—”

  “You can’t,” she pointed out. Then a sigh. “But you’re right, of course. Hell,” she added, with feeling. “It’s just one damn thing after another these days.”

  She made the ship with a couple of minutes to spare. She was wearing men’s boots; she looked like a clown. The captain looked at her. “Where’s the political officer?”

  “He’s not coming.”

  “I need to see a written—”

  She had her warrant ready, folded in her sleeve. She pulled it out, unfolded it and held it two inches from his nose. Hooray for melodrama. “Well?”

  “Fine,” the captain said. “Do you really need all that stuff?”

  “Yes.”

  The soldiers stowed it for her, wedged between the foredeck rail and a water barrel. It was only three sacks and a small steel trunk. On balance, she decided, she should’ve left a note for Pieres, to get Jaizo off the hook. It would’ve been the decent thing to do. But too late now.

  No disrespect to the fire god, naturally; blame it instead on His administration, presumably made up of officers of roughly the same level of ability as their terrestrial counterparts. That would explain why the mild storm she’d ordered for Oida hit her instead.

  Just as well she hadn’t eaten for two days. Even so, it was hell. The sailors, nervous enough already about having a woman on board, wisely gave her a wide berth, six feet of rail all to herself. It was inconceivable that any human being could retch so much and still have all their insides. By the time Cape Pinao appeared on the skyline, she was sure she weighed a stone lighter. She lifted her head and scowled at the scenery. In five hours’ time, she’d have to be in the General Office in Numa, looking beautiful. No chance.

  Amazing, however, the difference dry land can make. Also, she had a spoonful or two of the stuff left (you swallow it and it makes your skin positively glow, and your eyes shine, and you look like the moon goddess, and six hours later you’re as sick as a dog) and mostly it’s just mental attitude, anyway. In the end she coped just fine, and the evening was pretty bad but could’ve been worse. Anyway, she was home, which was rather more than she’d dared hope the same time yesterday.

  In the morning she felt fine, apart from a painfully dry throat that didn’t seem to respond to water, so she went to Temple, which made her feel a lot better. She caught the noon stage to Rasch Cuiber; three days in a coach, with two provincial moneylenders and an actuary.

  “Excuse me,” she said brightly, as the coach bounced painfully over the Saddleback hills. “What’s that game you’re playing?”

  The moneylenders looked at her. “It’s called Bust,” one of them said.

  “It looks like fun. Can I play?”

  The moneylenders looked at each other. “Don’t think so,” one of them said. “Man’s game, Bust. Also, you play for money.”

  From her sleeve she took her last two gold angels. “Oh, I’ve got money,” she said.

  The actuary turned away, as if he couldn’t bear to look. The moneylenders laughed. “Well, in that case,” one of them said.

  So that was all right. By the time they reached the inn, she had plenty of money: for a room, food; she could’ve bought the inn itself if she’d wanted. The moneylenders didn’t want to play cards the next day, but she’d got a book out of her luggage so it didn’t matter. She had a nasty turn in mid-afternoon—the stuff did that sometimes, came back at you for a second go—but she managed to keep it down until the driver stopped to water the horses. After that, she felt better than she had for weeks. The moneylenders left the coach that night and an elderly man and his granddaughter took their places. The man was a professor from the Imperial Academy at Fort Nain, specialising in moral philosophy; he was reading Eustatius on Transubstantiation, while his granddaughter looked at herself in the back of a small silver hairbrush. Once she’d broken the ice, she had a really quite invigorating discussion with him about the Six Degrees heresy, on which subject he was surprisingly well informed, for a provincial.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, after a while. “I don’t think I caught your name.”

  “Telamon.”

  “Ah.” He clearly liked the name. “And which temple did you say you were—?”

  Well, she hadn’t actually told him she was a priestess, but she hadn’t denied it either. “The Poverty and Patience,” she said, “in Oudei Mavia. You won’t have heard of us,” she added, quite truthfully, since she’d just made it up. “This will be my first time in Rasch. I’m terribly excited.”

  No indication that the professor was a craftsman, which was more disappointing than surprising. It was becoming fashionable in academic circles not to belong; perverse, but no more so than most fashions. She tried not to hold it against him. “Do you know Rasch well?” she asked.

  “Reasonably well,” he said. “Where will you be staying?”

  “The Blue Spire,” she lied. “Can you tell me where that is?”

  The directions he gave her were almost but not quite accurate; if she’d followed them, she’d have ended up in Sixty Yards, a place which, if he ever went there, would freeze his blood. “Thank you,” she said gravely. “I must admit, I’m a bit apprehensive. Cities—”

  The professor raised a hand. “You have to be careful,” he said. “But the capital has so much to recommend it. The Old Library. The Opera.”

  She smiled. “You like music.”

  He had plenty to say after that. Seleucus, of course, and Scadia, and some of the Moderns; Avares, Procopius himself—

  “What do you think of Oida?”

  He paused; she could see him being scrupulously fair. “His sacred music is certainly charming,” he said, “and of course Caladon and the Wolf. But I find much of his recent orchestral stuff is sadly derivative, and of course he wastes so much time and energy writing for the popular stage. I believe there’s rather less to him than meets the eye.”

  “I do so agree,” she said, with feeling. “Terribly overrated. Very much a minor talent, if you ask me.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far.”

  Civilised conversation; before she knew it, they were rolling through the vineyards, with the Foregate dead ahead on the skyline. She felt a surge of joy which was hard to conceal. The professor was talking earnestly about
Carrana’s Winter Requiem. The girl must have noticed something; she looked at her and grinned, then went back to combing her hair. Through the Foregate and into New Town. Almost there.

  The professor was kind enough to point out objects of interest; that’s the Mausoleum, that spire is the Golden Hook, and if you look carefully you can just see the dome of the Offertory, and on our left is the Infirmary (No it’s not, you old fool, that’s the Guards barracks; that’s the Infirmary.) and we’re just approaching the Milk Cross now.

  The coach stopped. “We’re getting off here,” the professor said. “So very nice to have met you. I do hope you enjoy your time in Rasch.”

  She smiled and stood up to let them get past to the door. As she did so, her short knife dropped from her sleeve and clattered on the floor. She picked it up immediately, but too late. “Thank you,” she said, “I’m sure I shall.” She tucked it away under her bracelet. “Thank you so much for showing me the sights.”

  They stared at her and got out. An old woman in a blue silk dress got in, with a small white dog in a basket.

  “You killed a political officer,” the abbot said. “Just like that.”

  “He was in the way.”

  “You can’t do things like that.”

  The look on his face told her that actually she could, and that bothered him, quite a lot. She could sympathise. “It was him or me,” she said. “There was one place, on the last ship out. The garrison CO didn’t have the authority.”

  “He’s going to report you,” the abbot said gloomily. “And then we’ll have all sorts of aggravation. You know what people are saying about how we’re abusing benefit of clergy.”

  She shook her head. “No, he won’t,” she said. “If he’s not already dead, he soon will be. And don’t say he’ll have sent a letter, because he couldn’t have. Last ship out, remember.”

  He gave her a despairing look, which she stared down. “Fine,” he said. “I wish you hadn’t told me.”

  “I tell you everything,” she said. “Oh, come on,” she added. “A political’s no great loss.”