The Two of Swords, Volume 1

by K. J. Parker

She had no idea what to say. “I loved the music” sort of slipped out before she could stop it, like a bad dog after a cat.

  Procopius frowned a little, as though she’d said something in slightly bad taste. “Thank you,” he said. “How about you?” he went on, turning a few degrees to the left. “A bit staid and academic for you, I imagine.”

  “I loved it,” Oida said. “If you don’t get the Crown this year, there’s no justice.”

  “I can guarantee I won’t get the Crown. I’m on the panel of judges.”

  Oida clicked his tongue. “You shouldn’t let them take advantage of you like that,” he said. “Every year you put yourself out of the running, and some kid gets it who hasn’t got a tenth of your ability. Result: people stop hearing your name, and next thing you know they stop playing your stuff. Next year, you really ought to tell them, enough’s enough.”

  Procopius nodded slowly. “You haven’t entered for the Crown for five years. Not since you won it.”

  Oida shrugged. “I guess I’m not competitive by nature. As someone very wise said to me recently, it’s not a fight to the death. But there’s such a thing as proper recognition.”

  “Oh, people recognise me,” Procopius answered quickly. “That’s not a problem.”

  A very short but intense pause, then Oida laughed loudly. “I guess not,” he said. “But you know what I mean. It’s different for someone like me, churning out junk for the masses. For you—”

  “Not nearly as many people like my music,” Procopius said. “Quite.” He turned back to her and smiled. The scar stretched. “I’ve always taken the view that the best music is what people like the most. What do you think?”

  She opened her mouth. Her mind was a complete blank. They were waiting for her. “You’re asking me which is best, lamb or honey. I love both.”

  Procopius sighed. “Born diplomat,” he said. “Let’s go and have dinner.”

  The dinner at the Vetumnis house, to which she’d refused an invitation. Oida said, “Are you sure you won’t join us?”

  But then, you wouldn’t want to have dinner with the fire god; you’d be all burned up before they’d finished clearing away the soup. “I’d love to but I really do have to get an early night. Otherwise I’ll be useless in the morning.”

  “Another time, then,” Procopius said. “So nice to have met you.”

  By her standards, she slept late. There were broad red stains in the eastern sky when she closed the side door of the Old Cloister behind her, put the key (she’d cut it herself, from an impression taken in a pat of butter) safely away in her sleeve and started to climb the long hill up to Cyanus Square. A tune was going round and round in her head, the way tunes do; nothing from the Procopius last night, but, rather, a theme from one of his earlier pieces in the same vein, the second movement of the Sixth Symphony. It fluttered around inside her head like a trapped bird, until she could barely think.

  “Oh,” said the duty priest at the Golden Light. “It’s you.”

  She nodded. “Is he in?”

  “In body. His soul will be along in an hour or so, after he’s had his breakfast.”

  Clearly the priest knew him well. She went up the narrow spiral staircase to the top of the tower, knocked on the door and went in.

  Dawn was a good time to visit. During the Bonfire of the Images, three hundred years ago, nearly all the pre-Republican stained glass in Rasch had been smashed by the mob. According to the story, Precentor Argantho and his monks, canons and deacons had crowded into the staircase she’d just come up, literally filling it with human bodies, to keep the rioters from getting up into the tower. Three quarters of the way up—four turns of the spiral—the rioters had grown sick of killing monks and heaving them out of the way; they’d given up and gone and burned down the Gynaeceum instead. Ever since, art historians had argued whether Argantho’s sacrifice had done good or harm, the Macien glass in the Prefecture tower versus the neo-Mannerist frescoes of the Gynaeceum. Contemporary sources, which she’d bothered to dig out and read, tended to suggest that Argantho wasn’t actually there that day, and a couple of dozen monks had tried to barricade themselves in the tower and failed. That was probably why she’d always preferred theology to history.

  Father Icadias sat on a low stool in the exact centre of the Rotunda, as he always did at this time, marinading in the reds and blues streaming in through the windows. The tower builders had placed it so that the first light of dawn seemed to come in from all round, three-sixty degrees. Provided the sky wasn’t overcast, a man sitting dead centre in the Rotunda would appear to be bathing in flames that illuminated but did not consume; a graphic if somewhat literal illustration of the fundamental miracle of the faith. Among other miraculous properties ascribed to it, the dawn light in the Rotunda was supposed to cure all bodily ailments, provided the soul was ready. Icadias made a point of telling people this when they came there for confession for the first time. He’d been the incumbent for thirty years, and he had chronic rheumatism.

  “Hello, Telamon,” he said. He had his back to the door. She’d taken pains to tread as lightly as possible, so he wouldn’t hear her, let alone be able to identify her by her footsteps. She had no idea how he always knew it was her, no matter how hard she tried, though she suspected there was a perfectly good mundane explanation.

  “Father,” she said.

  “Close the door, for heaven’s sake. You’re letting the draught in.”

  She did as she was told and sat down on the floor. He turned round slowly and faced her. “How was the Procopius?” he asked. “I had a seat, but something came up.”

  “Glorious,” she said. “One of the best thing’s he’s ever done.”

  “Ah.” Icadias nodded, so that the reds and blues seemed to flow up his face like tears. “I miss all the good ones, but when Zembra premiered his Sacred Cantata I was there in the front row. About halfway through I remember praying for death, but no such luck. What can I do for you?”

  “Hear me, Father, for I have sinned.”

  “Oh, right.” He pulled his hood down over his eyes. The gold overstitching on the hem blazed like beacons. “In the name of the Five and the One I absolve you. What’ve you been up to this time?”

  “I killed someone.”

  He sighed. “Yes, you did, didn’t you? Still, he was a political, so I imagine the All-Seeing will turn a blind eye. Anything else?”

  She paused for a moment. “I have lied, stolen, betrayed a trust. I have inflicted pain, not through necessity. I have neglected appeals for help from fellow craftsmen.”

  “Well,” Icadias said. “Five solemn indemnities, and don’t do it again. That’s it?”

  “Yes.”

  “No luxuries, adulteries, immodesties or unnatural fleshly practices.”

  “No.”

  “You should get out more. No, really,” Icadias went on, “I’m a bit worried about you. I mean, you’re still a beautiful young woman, but time’s getting on. You ought to find a nice steady young man and settle down.”

  “Yes, Father. Is that it? Five indemnities?”

  He grinned at her. “Telamon, I’ve known you since you were six; you’re a craftsman to the bone. I think you can take it from me that your immortal soul is the least of your worries. I heard you saved the life of that enemy surveyor. There’s not many in your position that would’ve done that.”

  “It seemed such a waste. He was a clever man.”

  “Not a craftsman.”

  “One day the war will be over. They’ll need people who can build roads.”

  “Or find vast new deposits of silver. Quite. About that,” he added. “Do you think it’ll change things?”

  “It’s got to,” she said.

  He nodded. “Would it surprise you to learn that we have also found silver? A very large amount of it, on the flood plain just below Hyperpyra?”

  That was news. “Really?”

  “Really and truly. Oh, you didn’t hear it from me, of course.
No, by all accounts it’s a truly significant strike. They were rather hoping it’d be enough to buy victory, but now the other side have got one that neatly cancels it out, and we’re back where we were.” He hesitated for a moment. “Very neat,” he said. “A sort of divine symmetry that suggests to me that our heavenly Father has a wicked sense of humour, at the very least. At the worst, He wants us to carry on slaughtering each other till there’s nobody left. Blessed be the name of our god,” he added serenely. “And you can see His point. But it makes you think.”

  She thought of the moors above Beloisa: empty land, abandoned farms. “They’ve kept it very quiet,” she said.

  “Believe it or not, they can keep a secret, when they really want to. So,” he went on, “it was a good concert. Many people there?”

  “Everybody,” she said. “And you’ll never guess. I actually met him.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Director Procopius,” she said. “Oida introduced me, of all people. He was so amazingly—” She tailed off. Icadias smiled.

  “I knew his father,” he said. “Charming fellow, fine draughts player. I suppose I should say it came as a terrible shock, but it didn’t. Like so many charming people, he had a vicious streak. Were you surprised? At being introduced, I mean?”

  “God, yes. Sorry,” she added, and he grinned. “Yes, of course. And the strangest thing was, he’d heard of me.”

  “Strange indeed,” said Icadias, who didn’t seem the least bit surprised. “Your explanation?”

  “I haven’t got one.” She thought for a moment. “I mean, I sort of suspect that Oida’s after me. Who knows why, considering the sort of women who’d be only too glad—”

  “I think he wants the complete set,” Icadias said solemnly. “Like the coin and medal collectors; the one you want most is the one you haven’t got, regardless,” he added kindly, “of condition. That wouldn’t account for Procopius knowing who you are.”

  “No,” she said. She waited. Then: “Any ideas?”

  He stretched his legs out with a faint groan. “Doctrine states,” he said, “that the clergy, duly anointed through the chain of apostolic succession reaching back in an unbroken line to Medra himself, are the mortal conduit for the divine flame. When I speak, provided I’m wearing the right bits and pieces and I haven’t got them on back to front, the voice that issues from my lips is the voice of the fire god, my thoughts are His thoughts and my wisdom is His wisdom.” He paused, took the heavily embroidered scarf off from around his neck and laid it reverently across his knees. “Sorry,” he said. “Not a clue.”

  “Oh.” She frowned. “But you know everything.”

  He laughed; genuine pleasure. “By no means,” he said. “I only know everything that matters. Therefore, by implication, the reason why Scar-face has heard of you can’t be terribly important. I hope that’s some comfort to you.”

  She looked at him. “You didn’t seem terribly surprised, that’s all.”

  “I’m eighty-one years old, and I’ve been a priest sixty-two years. Surprise is just one of the faculties that atrophies with age. Actually, it’s the one I miss most, I’m ashamed to say. What exactly did he know about you?”

  “That I’d been at Beloisa.”

  “Ah.” He nodded. “He’ll have read your report. The name at the bottom will have stuck in his memory, since not many women file war despatches. Next miracle, please.”

  “I suppose so,” she said. But then: “Why would he be reading third-level classified despatches? He’s an academic.”

  “I would imagine he’s something high up in the craft. Not the main line, perhaps, one of the side orders. If he’s sixteenth or seventeenth degree, he’d get to see everything, if he wanted to. And before you ask why would he want to, there’s all sorts of possible explanations. Maybe he has family in those parts. A surprising number of people keep up their connections across the boundary, particularly in the older families. And the Procopii are old Imperial, right back to Carnassus and the First Ships. That’s a guess,” he added, pointing to his unadorned neck. “You can probably come up with half a dozen more, equally plausible. Or you could ask him.”

  “Me?” She felt a sudden wave of panic. “Don’t be—”

  “Why not? You’ve been formally introduced. People tell me he’s very approachable. Write him a letter.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  Icadias was mightily amused by that. “So you do know the meaning of fear after all. What’s this, hero-worship?”

  “And then some.”

  “I don’t blame you. There’s only half a dozen men in the two empires I genuinely respect, and Director Procopius is one of them.” He smiled. “Did you know, my lodge archdeacon was on the panel that assessed him when he applied for the priesthood, what, twenty-five years ago. Turned him down. Said it’d be a crime against gods and men to have a fellow with his talent wasting his time in the ministry when he should be writing music. I remember being deeply shocked, but the old devil was perfectly right, of course.”

  “Procopius wanted to be a priest.”

  “Yes.”

  “And your archdeacon stopped him. That’s dreadful.”

  “Oh, come on. Think of the effect it’d have had on his work. No secular music whatsoever.”

  “If he wanted to be a priest, you should’ve let him.”

  Icadias looked at her, head slightly on one side. “Spoken with true feeling.”

  “You know it’s all I’ve ever wanted. And it’s impossible.”

  He was silent for a while. Then he lowered his voice. “You do know,” he said, “they’re ordaining women in the East.”

  She looked at him in surprise. “You know,” she said, “you’re the second person in two days to tell me that. Why is everybody so dead keen on me defecting? Is it something I said?”

  He shrugged. “It’s what you always wanted. And, no, it’s not impossible. I’m just stating a fact, that’s all.”

  She sat up straight. “Hear me, Father, for I have sinned. For a split second, I was tempted to betray my country, my lodge and my craft. Fortunately, I was able to overcome the temptation quickly and easily.” She looked at him. “What do I get for that?”

  “One lesser indemnity and light a candle in the chancel.” He shrugged. “I thought I owed it to you to mention it. Same god, after all. I’m not sure it matters to Him all that much which side you happen to be on in this stupid war. If He cared, He’d have done something about it by now.”

  “You’d have thought.” She stood up. He looked disappointed.

  “Are you leaving so soon?” he said. “I thought we might have a hand or two.”

  That made her laugh. “Oh, why not? It’s ages since I played.”

  He got up—it was distressing to see how much effort it cost him—and crossed to the wall. With practised ease, he teased a single loose stone out of the wall, felt behind it, retrieved a small rosewood box, replaced the stone. He handed her the box; she opened it and took out the pack. “With or without trumps?” she asked.

  “Without, I think. After all, we’re on consecrated ground.”

  She nodded and went through the pack, taking out the picture cards. They reminded her of the Rhus thief, Musen, and his home-made versions. Then she gave him the pack to shuffle. As always, his dexterity amazed her. “Do you cheat?” she asked.

  “What a thing to suggest.”

  “Well?”

  “Not against you.”

  He handed her the cards and she dealt: sixteen each, the remainder placed on the floor between them. Talk about a rotten hand; four of each suit, all high cards, including the dreaded Twelve of Spears. “Are you sure about that?” she said.

  “I don’t need to cheat against you. You’re a terrible card player.”

  Not true. She opened with five, which he immediately doubled. She felt in her sleeve and fished out some coins. “Excuse me,” he said. “Enemy money.”

  “What? Oh, sorry.” She scooped the coins u
p and put them back. “Souvenirs from Beloisa. Here we go, the good stuff. Come on, then, let’s see yours.”

  He smiled. “I seem to be a trifle short today. Instead, I wager two blessings and a conditional indulgence.”

  “Seems fair,” she said. “Thirteen with none.”

  “Call,” he said. “Confident, aren’t we?” he added, as more of her money hit the floor. “I’ll cover that with an act of grace. All right?”

  “Sure. I don’t think I’ve ever had one of those.”

  “Don’t hold your breath.” He smiled, and laid the Three of Arrows.

  “You do cheat.” She had the Four. He smirked as she gathered up the cards. One to her. The Four had been her lowest card, and the lead was now with her. Somehow she had to contrive to lose four tricks, with this load of rubbish. “Do you say penance afterwards, when nobody’s looking?”

  He played the Eight of Spears to her Ten. “Not to rejoice in a victory sent by the Almighty would be a sin,” he said. “To pretend to regret such a victory would be blasphemy indeed. Your lead.”

  She won all sixteen tricks; five over the line, in other words, which meant he could throw away five cards and draw from the pack. She dealt. No chance he’d draw an ace, because she had all four. Might as well concede now and pay the fine, while she was still nominally solvent.

  “It’s a shame,” he said. “You’d have been a good priest.”

  She looked at him. “What makes you say that?”

  “A special blend of piety, humanity and ruthlessness. I have two, but I’m rather lacking in the third.”

  “Which one?”

  “Your declaration.”

  She went six. Doubled. She called. No use. When the game was finally over and he was counting his winnings, she asked, “What do you do with the money?”

  “Charitable works,” he replied, not looking up.

  “Such as?”

  “With this lot, I might just endow an order of monks. Or I could rebuild the Grand Temple, only with solid ivory pillars.” He looked at her. “Do you need it back?”

  She shook her head. “Plenty more where that came from.”

  “I shall pretend I didn’t hear that.”