by K. J. Parker
Bullshit, he thought. But Forza would have stayed and watched.
Alone on the turret, he watched the sun set. He tried to project the tactical grid into the blue darkness, but he couldn’t see the lines. It was almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that Oida, Oida’s friends, the lodge, wanted him to win; whether or not Forza was dead, they had more or less given him Forza’s apparently leaderless and shambling army, wandering lost in the wilderness, trying to limp home like a wounded animal. Furthermore, they’d sought to bribe him to accept this amazingly generous gift by telling him where Lysao was.
All right; take it at face value, just for a moment. Why now? Because of Blemya and the mad prophet; a million fanatical nomads unleashed on the civilised world, and only the best soldier alive can stop them, save countless lives, preserve the true Faith from extinction. Forza is dead; or Forza is, in the opinion of the competent experts of the lodge, not quite as good as his brother. It was plausible. You’d probably forgive a young second lieutenant on his first tour of duty for believing it.
Oida answers to someone. That someone answers to someone else. Above that, nobody knows, and that’s how it works. That he was prepared to believe; practically an antidote to politics, a magnificent idea, where applicable. But what did the lodge want? Either she didn’t know or, more likely, she was prepared to risk the torture chamber rather than tell him. But that was crazy. The lodge wasn’t just half a dozen old men in a chapter house; it was huge, vast, the biggest open secret in history. You can’t have an organisation to which ten per cent of the population of the empire belongs, and where only three or four men know what it’s actually for.
He caught his breath. He was suddenly aware of all the soft, ambiguous noises of the twilight: animals, birds, the wind slapping the stays of the flag against the flagpole. Couldn’t you, though; couldn’t that be exactly what the lodge really was? Imagine—purely for argument’s sake—that in a thousand years’ time the empire has fallen and sun-worshipping savages pasture their sheep on what was once the Forum of the Tribunes. Look east from the Forum, and you’ll see the ruins of the Great Baths. Go inside, and there you’ll see shepherds watering their flocks from the natural mineral springs. Ask them about this place, these twelve-foot-thick walls, the shattered shell of the Great Dome; probably they’ll tell you that once upon a time there were giants, and that they built it to water their sheep, which stood fifteen feet high at the shoulder and drank a hundred gallons each a day. That was why the arches were so high and the floors were paved with slabs of basalt, because otherwise the sheer weight of the sheep would have cracked the paving.
Precisely. They’d use the Baths for their own purposes, enjoying the convenience and the readily appreciable benefits, and never need to know what it had really been built for; and the mere size and splendour and glory of it would make them need to believe in the existence of giants, who once lived and knew better than the little people of today—but never mind, no matter, not to worry, because the water here is clean and it’s nice and cool at midday, dry when it rains.
Now suppose that there really were giants, and they built the Baths for some other purpose beside a place for senators to wash their feet, and the senators were as gullible as the shepherds who came after them—
Now suppose that the President of the Senate reports directly to the Master of the Rolls, and the Master reports to the Lord Chamberlain, who reports to an emperor that nobody knows about except him—
A moment later, he’d snapped out of it because, when all was said and done, who were the lodge, anyway? What could they actually do? Most of all, how many divisions could they put in the field? Answer, none. No army? Screw them. Likewise, screw the two Masters of the Rolls, east and west, the Lords Chamberlain, and their majesties the emperors. All power—all real power—in the two empires was actually vested in the army, therefore in the hands of the two Belot boys, who’d been using it for as long as anyone could remember to try and kill each other—
Two empires, two armies. Two brothers—
Oh, he thought. Now that’s clever.
It took two weeks to get the army back to Bohec. Unexpected late rain flooded the estuary and washed away all three bridges north of the mountains, turned the south road into a slow-moving river of mud and made the short cut through the marshes impassable. For the first time in years, Senza Belot was reduced to trudging, a long, weary, sticky trek round three sides of a square, just to get home.
When he got there, having been out of contact for ten days, there was no news; nothing had happened while he’d been isolated from the rest of the world, and, in particular, there was no word as to whether Forza was alive or dead. He sat impatiently through the usual debriefings, was rather ungracious about receiving the Order of the Headless Spear for his part in defeating the nomad threat, and went to the chariot racing at the Hippodrome, where he bet seventy angels on a rank outsider at thirty-three to one. It won, needless to say. He gave the money to the orphans’ fund.
Then a summons; an audience with the emperor. For crying out loud, Senza thought, and sent for his dress uniform.
The New Palace had taken three hundred and eighty-four years to build. Originally planned as a modest ninety-acre site, scheduled for completion in a mere seventy-six years, it had grown in size, scope and ambition with each successive emperor of the Fourth and Fifth dynasties; the civil wars, military coups and foreign occupations that followed the collapse of the Fifth dynasty did little to interrupt the trend, as each new ruler sought to legitimise himself by adding his own personal touch to the palace complex; very few of them lived to see ground broken on their contribution, but, once an addition had been entered on the architects’ Supreme Overall Plan, there appeared to be no official mechanism for removing it. As a result, usurpers and dictators spent fortunes they couldn’t afford building monuments to the glory of the men they had betrayed, assassinated or driven out, while large parts of the original core design, such as the outer walls and gatehouses, remained in abeyance while the newer projects were given priority. Because the outer perimeter was therefore not defined and restricted, it was easy for the next new emperor to decree a further extension, wing or colonnade, often involving the clearance of several blocks of valuable City real estate, and the demolition of other parts of the palace complex already completed or still under construction. Only when Rheo III achieved the throne and decreed that no alteration to the design would be considered until the walls and gates were completely finished did the palace take on its final shape; which proved to be a rambling, ugly and wildly inconvenient assembly of hopelessly heterogeneous styles and forms, in which a man could walk for three hours, climb well over a thousand stairs, and only cover half a mile. Tapheon IV loathed the palace so much that he decided to abandon Bohec completely and relocate the seat of empire to a new site on the southern shores of the Mare’s Head, and it was only his untimely death that prevented the move. Eventually, after nearly four centuries of scaffolding and hoardings, the palace was declared finished by Eucreon II, and there was a magnificent, if slightly ridiculous, opening ceremony. It’s one of history’s prettiest ironies that Eucreon’s death led directly to the civil war, the partition of the empire and the establishment of another capital city, with another New Palace, on the other side of the Gulf of Sinoa.
Legend has it that it was among the blacksmiths employed for generations on the manufacture of hinges, nails, railings and the like for the New Palace project that the Order first came into being. As thousands of decorative-ironwork specialists from all over the empire travelled or were drafted to Bohec, they formed a trade guild—necessarily clandestine, since guilds were outlawed on government works—to protect their interests and safeguard the trade secrets on which their value to the project depended. As senior guildsmen evolved from mere artisans into artists and project managers, so the guild increasingly extended its interests and activities into areas rather more refined and socially acceptable than the shaping of hot iron; in
particular (inevitably, during the successive waves of religious fervour that accompanied and followed the troubled Interregnum after the fall of the Fifth dynasty), guild members found themselves attracted to spiritual and philosophical issues, the pursuit of esoteric learning and religious arcana. At this point it became fashionable in Society to be a craftsman, and the lodge achieved the unique place in the established order which it enjoys to this day.
All the guards on the Sixth level knew Senza by sight. They should do; they were all distinguished veterans of his campaigns, assigned to the palace guards on his personal recommendation. Accordingly, there was a bizarre class reunion feel about walking from the Lion Gate to the foot of the Barbican tower. Every face he passed was familiar, someone he’d once known well and not seen for ages; instead of grinning, shaking hands and asking after wives, sons and old comrades, however, he had to march briskly across the endless marble floor (that rather nauseating shade of sunburn pink) without catching any eyes or saying a single word to his old friends, for fear of breaching the most sacred laws of protocol. The guards themselves knew the score, of course. By now, they were masters of silent communication and perfectly capable of conveying, Hello, sir, how are you, great to see you again, best of luck, without making a sound or moving a muscle.
Once he was past the threshold of the Dice Chamber, however, it was all quite different. Beyond that was the territory of the Household, recruited exclusively from the Northern and Eastern savages, whose only loyalty was to the emperor who paid them such a very large amount of money. Even if he’d been allowed to talk to them, it wouldn’t have done him any good, since they wouldn’t have understood a word. It was treason punishable by death to learn their languages or possess a relevant dictionary or grammar book, unless you were a linguistics officer accredited to the Chamberlain, on the grounds that it’s hard to conspire with someone you can’t talk to.
No guards, not even Household, north of the Pearl Chamber; from there on, security was the responsibility of the Gentlemen Doorkeepers, an order of chivalry founded in the Seventh dynasty and confined to twelve ancient families whose loyalty to the emperor was proverbially fanatical. That was the paradox. If you could somehow slip or fight your way past them, get to the emperor, cut his throat and cram the diadem on to your head, you were then the emperor and they would defend you to the death. The only known exception had been the pretender Phormia, who had managed to grab the crown before the Gentlemen reached him, but who, in his haste, put it on back to front. This was deemed to be procedurally incorrect, and he was cut to pieces on the spot.
The Captain of the Gentlemen knew Senza Belot, of course. He opened the Blue Chamber door without a word, and Senza walked in.
“Senza.” The voice, high and frail, came from somewhere in the blinding gold light, but the echo effect made it hard to place. “Dear boy. Thank you so much for coming. Do sit down. What’ll you have to drink?”
The Blue Chamber was so called because Eita II had had it painted blue; to be precise, a perfect reproduction of the night sky over his home town of Gumis on the night he was born, the constellations picked out in diamonds and freshwater pearls. Five years later Eita was stabbed to death hiding in a latrine in the Guards barracks, and Lanceor IV had had the Chamber redone in gold mosaic, hence the bewildering glare when you first walked in; the Blue Chamber, however, it had remained. Although the mosaics were by Perperis and one of the ten finest artistic achievements of the human race, their purpose was coldly tactical. Dazzle an assassin for five seconds, and you have a much better chance of summoning the Gentlemen in time.
During his previous visits Senza had mapped the Chamber in his mind. He could’ve walked to where the chairs and table were with his eyes shut; not that having them open made much difference. His one fear was that he’d blunder into the old man along the way. If the emperor was in a bad mood, colliding with him would be treason, the noose or the block. If he was in a good mood, it’d be, My dear fellow, how clumsy of me.
“Tea, please,” Senza called out into the blaze. It would already be there, of course. There’d be slightly too much jasmine in it for his taste; which would please him, because it would prove that Imperial intelligence didn’t know absolutely everything about him.
He found the back of the chair by feel, waited until his eyes were accustomed to the glare (treason, on a bad day, to sit down while the emperor was still standing). He could make out a golden glow reflected in the smooth top of a bald man’s head. It was all right to sit down.
“Thank you so much for the Paleostrate didrachm,” the old man said. For a split second, Senza hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about. Then he guessed it must be the old coin he’d sent him. The emperor collected ancient coins, among many, many other things. “Do you know, there’s only five of them in existence? And your one’s got to be the best specimen yet. You can make out nearly all of the obverse inscription.”
“My pleasure,” Senza replied. The chair was like being eaten by a monster with no teeth. He wriggled as he went in, but the back cushions got him all the same. He could barely move for softness and give. “There’s a what’s-its-name, provenance, that goes with it. I’ll have it sent round.”
“Thank you.” True gratitude: far more so than if he’d just added a new province to the empire. “As you know, provenance is everything with antiquities. It’s criminal the way some dealers blindly ignore it. They’re destroying the past. It’s as bad as burning books.”
There the old man was exaggerating. In his view, nothing was as bad as burning books. Well, almost nothing. With great effort and difficulty, Senza leaned forward, found the little blue and white tea bowl and sipped. Perfect; just right. The thought made him shudder.
“And the same goes for so-called restoration,” the old man went on. “Criminal. Worse than murder. If I had my way, anyone who restores old paintings or cleans the patina off genuine old bronzes would be strung up. Sheer vandalism, but they keep on doing it.”
If I had my way. But he did; that was the point … A good forty per cent of what the emperor said was curses and bloodcurdling promises concerning curators, art dealers, historians and musicians, but he’d never issued a single decree or arrest warrant for the sins he professed to detest so much. Plenty of decrees, ever so many death warrants, but none for offences against aesthetics. That was what he considered being a civilised man. “You wanted to see me, sir,” Senza prompted.
The emperor was a tall man, though these days a slight stoop made him look shorter; but his shoulders were still broad, and there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. He’d been a mighty wrestler in his youth, so they said—classical wrestling, of course, strictly in accordance with the rules set down by the Academicians nearly a thousand years ago. His high cheekbones and long, straight nose looked very well on the backs of coins, though in real life his eyes were small and just a bit too close together. But you wouldn’t know that if all you’d seen was his gold and silver profiles. Still, it was impossible to deny that he was a fine-looking man, very dignified and intellectual. It was hard to believe, just looking at him, that he’d murdered all four of his brothers.
“Now, then.” The old man put down his wine glass. “What’s all this about young Forza? Is he dead or isn’t he?”
The little glow of hope in Senza’s heart sputtered out and died. “Ah,” he said. “I’d been hoping you could tell me.”
Slight frown. “You don’t know.”
“I’m afraid not, sir, no.”
A grunt of disappointment. “Well, we don’t know either. Been trying our damnedest to find out, of course, but none of the usual sources can tell us a damned thing. Mardesian reckons they don’t know themselves, which I suppose is possible.” He paused, and peered at Senza with those sky-blue eyes. “I’d have thought you’d have known. First report that came in had it that you’d killed him yourself, single combat.”
Senza took a moment to reply. “That may quite possibly be true,” he said. “I
hit him pretty hard at one point, though he was still very much alive when I ran for it. If he’s dead, it’s my guess that that’s what he died of.”
The old man considered that for a moment—you could almost see his intellect and his instincts in conclave—then nodded briskly. “Quite likely,” he said. “Blunt force trauma to the head, entirely possible for death to follow sometime later. Ursinian, third book of the Medical Commentaries. Sulpicius disagrees, of course, but he was two centuries earlier. Blunt force trauma leading to internal bleeding inside the skull. You could be quite dead and still walking around. Question is, though, is he or isn’t he? Until we know that—”
“Quite,” Senza said quickly, hoping to forestall any further scholarship. “Meanwhile, acting on information received, I’ve sent cavalry to where what’s left of his army might be. If it’s where it’s supposed to be, we’ll soon find out if Forza’s alive and in charge of them. If he is, he’ll have our boys for breakfast, and then we’ll know.”
The old man grinned at that; thought it was funny. “Good idea,” he said. “What information, exactly?”
“I was hoping you weren’t going to ask me that.”
“Ah.” The old man thought about it. Good day or bad day? “Well, we’ll forget about the source, then, for now. How about the quality?”
Good day, evidently. “To be honest with you, sir, I have no idea. That’s why I sent the cavalry.” He paused. More was required. “My best guess is that it’s good information. I could so easily be wrong.”
His Serene Highness Glauca III was a clown but definitely no fool. “You’ll know soon enough, I imagine. It’s the same in my business, of course; intelligence and scholarship, it’s the source that matters. If your source is reliable and sound, you have facts.” He paused to nod approval, as though he was also the audience. “On the other hand, even a doubtful source is still information. If a man’s lying to you, you can learn ever so much from his lie. Why’s he lying, what for, is he lying so as to mislead you or because he doesn’t know? And lies, of course—It’s like astronomy, I always say. Clever fellows, the astronomers, they can tell ever such a lot about something they can’t see by the shadow it casts over something they can. Same with lies. The shape of a lie will often give you the truth.” He stopped for a moment, thinking about something else. “In that case,” he said, “what are you going to do next?”