The Two of Swords, Volume 1

by K. J. Parker

  “Good question,” Senza replied. “In fact, I’d welcome a suggestion.”

  He’d said the right thing. The old man went all still and quiet for a while—the Pillar of the Earth, deep in thought—then leaned back a little in his chair. “Here’s how I see it,” he said. “There’s this new trouble in Blemya.”

  Senza nodded.

  “Blemyans can’t cope. You and Forza go in and save their skins, but they’re still damned weak. Forza, alive or dead? We don’t know. Without Forza—” He made a falling-over gesture with his hand. “Invade Blemya,” he said. “Reclaim the province for the empire, crucial strategic position and rich as fig sauce, so I gather. Men and money. Just what we need for a final push. The nomads—” He closed his eyes, then opened them again. “They’re the problem, aren’t they? Phraxantius, seventh book of the Universal Geography—two hundred years ago, but I don’t imagine anything’s changed very much out there. Fascinating people, very much a force to be reckoned with, underestimate them at your peril. The question is, if we ignore them and spend all our resources taking back the empire, will they pounce on us while we’re weak and overwhelm us? That’s it, isn’t it? Herulius and the Sashan, fall of the Twelfth dynasty. Fifteen years of bitter war wiping out the Sashan so they’d never be a threat ever again, and then realises that it was only the Sashan standing between him and the entire Auzida confederacy. Savages overrun the empire. Result, a dark age lasting ninety years. All there in Phraxantius, and pray God it doesn’t happen again. Well?”

  “Quite,” Senza said. “I’m glad you see the problem so clearly.”

  The old man grinned. “Not such a fool as they say I am,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve had them all in here, you know, last couple of weeks. Do this, do that, annexe Blemya immediately, ripe for the picking and all that. Half of the damned fools have never opened a book in their lives. No, all they’re interested in is the copper mines and the linen trade and the spot market in charcoal and palm oil futures and God knows what. And then there’s your lot, any excuse for a fight, killing my soldiers and spending my money. For two pins, it’d be the galleys for the lot of ’em. Present company excepted,” he added graciously, “of course.”

  “Thank you,” Senza replied. “So, what you’re saying is, we don’t invade Blemya.”

  “I don’t know,” Glauca said, rather disarmingly. “On the other hand, you see, what if Forza isn’t dead, and he invades Blemya? Worst of both worlds. Same ghastly mess, only we don’t even have the initiative. Or even if he is dead, if you see what I mean. If my bloody fool of a nephew takes it into his head to invade, by way of showing he’s still a force to be reckoned with even without your damned brother—And so he blunders in there, stirs up the nomads, them at our throats, war on two fronts, exactly what we don’t want. Answer: get in there first. If the bloody stupid thing’s going to be done by one of us, better it’s you than my imbecile nephew. Better still if it’s not done at all, but do we have that option? You can see the problem, I’m sure.”

  Senza’s head was beginning to hurt. “Precisely,” he said, and waited. Not for long.

  “I think the best thing,” the old man said, “would be for us to agree a diplomatic rapprochement with the nomads, leaving us free to annex Blemya and then take the fight to my nephew. Not sure that’s possible, mind you; the nomads aren’t fools, last thing they want is a united enemy instead of a divided one. Still, you’ve just given them a bloody nose, so they wouldn’t mind a bit of breathing space, and that prophet fellow’s got his own position to think of, major military defeat and the insult to the god still unavenged. Don’t suppose he’d object to a little peace and quiet so he can sort out his domestic enemies. Question is, do we want to give him that? Wouldn’t it be better to make his life as miserable as possible, so that one of his own people cuts his throat for us and saves us all a lot of bother? Plenty of parallels for that in history, and you don’t need to go very far back. You know,” he went on with a sad sigh, “I never could understand why so many people want my job. Hell on earth, sometimes, trying to figure out what to do. What I wouldn’t give for it all to go away, so I could have some peace and concentrate on my work.”

  That, from the cause and author of the civil war. But Senza had heard it many times before. “People just don’t understand,” he said sympathetically. “So, going back a bit, we don’t invade Blemya.”

  “Not at this time, no.” The old man frowned. “No, I don’t think so. Really, we need to know about your goddamned brother before we can do any damned thing. That’s what it comes down to, isn’t it?”

  Out of the mouths of emperors. “I guess you’re right, sir. When you put it like that.”

  One of these days he’d go too far; and it’d be a bad day, and that would be the end of Senza Belot. Not today, though. “Stands to reason, really,” the old man said. “Oh, I know what they say about me behind my back, nose always stuck in a book, armchair tactician, doesn’t know a damn thing. Truth is, though, it’s all there in the books, if only you can be bothered to look. Atriovanus of Pila, eight hundred years ago; he said, the ideal form of government is the rule of the king who is also a scholar, a poet and a philosopher. Read that first when I was six years old, always stayed with me. Of course, back then it never occurred to me that one day I’d be in a position to put it into practice, not with three healthy brothers all older than me. Wish it hadn’t been that way, of course. Still, you never know, maybe it was all for the best. When I stop and think what might’ve happened if one of those boneheads had had the running of things, it makes me shiver. Utter disaster, no other word for it.”

  As opposed to, say, the civil war. Well. The sad, dreadful thing was that he was probably right, at that. Senza didn’t dare get up, not until given a clear sign to do so, but he did his best to look like a man who was just about to stand up, in case the emperor was inclined to take the hint. Apparently not.

  “My didrachm,” the old man said. “You mentioned there was a provenance. Good God, man, you’ve hardly touched your tea, it’ll be stone cold. I’ll send for another pot.”

  “Please don’t trouble, sir,” Senza said. “Really.”

  “No trouble to me,” the old man said accurately, and rang the little silver bell. “So, where exactly did you come across it?”

  Senza told him, and what he couldn’t remember he made up. Then, as flippantly as he could, he added, “Talking of coins.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d rather like some. Modern ones. For my men.”

  Puzzled frown; then a click of the tongue and a grin. Amazing what you could get out of the old man if you could make him laugh. “Pay for the troops, well, of course you must have that. Tricky, though, money’s damned tight. Those idiots troop in here, morning, noon and night; the Treasury is empty, the people won’t stand for more taxation, the money simply isn’t there. Don’t be so stupid, I tell them, go and read Varian on economic theory. All you need is a slight adjustment of the gold-to-silver ratio, suddenly you’ve made two million angels out of thin air. Can’t overdo it, of course. You can only go so far, playing about with the coinage. Take Euthyphro V, for example. Old Coppernose. They called him that because he drank like a fish, but also because he added so much copper to the silver coins, quite soon it wore through, and the nose on his portrait was the first bit to show up red. Cost him his throne, and all because of a nickname. Still, we’ve a fair way to go before we reach that point. Don’t you worry about money, I’ll find it for you. Thank God nobody reads Varian these days except me, so they don’t know what I get up to.”

  “I read the copy you sent me,” Senza said, remembering just in time. If the old man sent you a book, God help you if you didn’t read it. “Mind you, I’m not sure I quite follow all the stuff about money of account. I got a bit lost somewhere around Ezentius’ reform of the gold standard.”

  The old man’s eyes shone. “Oh, it’s perfectly simple,” he said, and launched into an explanation that (to do him credi
t) almost made sense, at times. “Basically, it’s just the old, old rule,” he concluded: “bad money drives out good. Really, so long as you remember that, economic theory is child’s play.”

  So that was all right. “Thank you, sir,” Senza said, “I’ll bear that in mind. So, if I send a requisition to the Treasury—”

  The old man shook his head. “Better let me have it,” he said, just as Senza had hoped. “Can’t trust those idiots with anything important; if they don’t lose it they’ll quibble over it for months while the soldiers starve. Pay them first, find the money later. That’s what Herulius did, during the insolvency crisis. I mean to say, that’s the whole point of having an emperor, it means things can actually get done.”

  Sadly true, Senza thought. At least with an emperor things get done, even if they’re catastrophically bad. Last time, or was it last time but one, he’d had one of these summit conferences in the Blue Chamber, the old man had told him all about the rise and fall of the Blue Sky Republic. Much to his regret, he’d had to take the point: autocratic rule by a succession of incompetents and lunatics was bad enough, but government of the people by and for the people had been a disaster, from which only a handful had been lucky enough to escape alive. Moral (the old man had said), government of any sort is the art of putting out fires with lamp oil; the less you do it, the less you make things worse. All there in the books, as His Majesty hadn’t failed to point out—

  Senza tried not to relax, now that he’d achieved the one thing he wanted out of the meeting. Victory is, after all, a rose; hard to acquire without getting pricked, harder still to preserve once achieved. Time, therefore, to attack. “There was one other thing.”

  The emperor blinked at him. “Oh yes?”

  “The savages on the northern frontier,” Senza said. “The Jazygites and the Hus and the Tel Semplan, out in the badlands beyond Beal Escatoy. Doesn’t it strike you that they’ve been quiet for an awfully long time?”

  The Imperial hand stroked the Imperial chin, rasping on the Imperial bristles. Glauca was a martyr to razor rash. “They’ve been quiet, certainly. Ever since you gave them that thrashing five years ago.”

  “Five years is a long time,” Senza said. “To be honest with you, I’m a bit concerned. You see, if I was Forza, right now I’d be looking round for something extra, some new piece to bring in to the game. Actually, if I was Forza, I’d have brought in the nomads, on my side, nine months ago; luckily, he’s not quite as smart as me in some areas. But the Northerners—well, they’re just sitting there, of no real use to anyone. If I was Forza, I’d think that was a real waste.”

  The old man nodded slowly. “Like Meshel and the Bechanecs,” he said.

  Who? What the hell. “Exactly. Classic case in point. Now I’m guessing that Forza hasn’t just overlooked them, that’s not him at all. Nor, up till now, did he want to go to all the bother of sweet-talking them on to his side. He was happy for them just to be there, worrying me to death, interfering with my long-term plans. Now, though, with the nomads suddenly involved on nobody’s side, and Blemya the obvious logical next big thing, what better time to open a second, sorry, third front, up there where it’s a real bitch doing anything, just to make my life truly wretched? So—”

  “Forestall him,” the old man said.

  “Exactly.”

  “If he’s still alive.”

  Senza nodded swiftly. “And even if he’s dead. After all, what’s it going to cost us, compared with war on three fronts, to see if we can’t patch up some sort of deal, neutralise them if we can’t bring them in on our side? Get there first with more resources; that’s the only way I know of doing business.”

  The old man nodded. “Meshel and the Bechanecs,” he repeated. “Seventy years of peace. I couldn’t agree more.” He paused and thought of something. “So why haven’t you done it?”

  “Ah.” Senza did his owl impression. “Because they’re not stupid,” he said, “they don’t dare be seen negotiating openly with us or them. If we sent an officially accredited embassy, more likely than not they’d cut their throats and stick their heads up on poles along the frontier.”

  “That would be awkward.”

  “Wouldn’t it ever. Which means,” Senza went on, “we have to find an intermediary, someone who isn’t us, but will do what we want him to.”

  The old man looked at him blankly. “I see,” he said. “Who did you have in mind?”

  Senza paused and checked the grid he’d superimposed on the old man’s face. “I was thinking,” he said, “of Oida.”

  17

  The Scholar

  When the boy had gone, Glauca rose stiffly to his feet, stopped for a moment until the stabbing pain in his knees had subsided a little, and hobbled slowly across the tessellated gold floor until he reached the wall. In front of him a great bank of cabinets, gilded to match the walls and floor, stretched away in either direction until they were swallowed up in the blaze. Glauca didn’t need to look for the number stencilled on the door. He could have found cabinet thirty-seven blindfold.

  From inside his plain cotton shirt he drew a bunch of keys nearly the size of a man’s fist, hung on a stout steel chain; these days they bruised his chest, but he didn’t feel safe unless he was constantly aware of them pressing against his skin. He peered at them through the rock-crystal magnifying lens that was always folded inside his clenched left hand—it was unique, and the sum he’d spent on it was more than Senza would need to pay his army—until he saw the number 37 on the barrel of a slim brass key. He scrabbled it into the cabinet’s lock (his hands shook badly these days), turned it, pulled it out again and let the bunch go. It swung against his chest like some piece of siege equipment.

  Most reliable sources state that the first pack was designed and executed by the silversmith Ebbo, to the orders of Tandulias of Pyrrho. As is well known, the first pack and the imitations made of it for the next ninety years were not wood or planed bark but silver, each card being made in two parts: the generic back, embossed with a generic stylised abstract design, and the face, on which was embossed the image specific to that card. The two parts were then soldered together and carefully fettled so that, when placed face down, they appeared identical.

  Fortune-telling as it is practised today was never a part of Tandulias’ intention. In his writings, now lost, he stated that although the dealer should not be able to see the faces of the cards as he laid them out, it was both inevitable and desirable that the fingers of an experienced dealer would come to recognise—not consciously, perhaps, but on a subconscious level—the feel of the embossed designs of each card. His idea was that the dealer would be guided by what Tandulias called his inner eye to select the cards appropriate for the sitter; most certainly, he never believed that some directed chance or supernatural agency operated to pull the right cards seemingly at random from the pack. Later, however, as the pack became more widely known outside the inner arcana of the Order and the demand for affordable packs for private owners grew, painted copies began to be made, and naturally these could not be read with the fingers in the same way as the silver embossed versions. Tandulias’ original intentions were ignored or forgotten, and the practice of fortune-telling, which all right-thinking men so properly despise, became widespread among the ignorant and profane …

  Thus Felician, in the introduction to the Mirror of True Wisdom. These days, only twenty-seven genuine silver packs survived; nineteen of them were secured in cabinet thirty-seven, the other eight were in the Western empire, in the hands of rich individuals; that hateful boy his nephew had decreed that any attempt to offer them for sale would be construed as treason. All of the nineteen were unspeakably precious, but it was always the Five Oak Leaves Pack that his fingers reached for; supposedly (the provenance was good but not unshakeable) the fourth pack ever made, by Ebbo’s apprentice Vecla, and briefly owned by Tandulias’ son-in-law Panchion, the worthy, prosaic dentist of Lauf Barauna who founded the first ever lodge.

  G
lauca shuffled back to his seat and laid the pack on the table. The cards scared him; not just the usual proper awe, but a definite, palpable feeling of disquiet, the sort of thing he used to feel when he hunted boar with his father in the woods, and they’d dismounted and started to walk up through dense undergrowth; the same feeling that something close by was waiting for him, and when it burst out of cover and headed straight at him he simply wouldn’t have the time or the presence of mind. Silly old fool, he thought; he closed his eyes and walked his fingers up the table until one fingertip encountered the cold silver.

  Damn idiots nowadays, fortune-tellers and frauds and cheats, smooth cards and pretending there was a precise, fixed meaning to every card and every sequence and combination of cards. He slid his thumb between the top card and the one underneath, then hinged the top card sideways until it fell into the palm of his hand. In Rhaxantius’ day they favoured blind men as dealers, because a blind man couldn’t see to cheat; idiots, because a blind man can read with his fingertips far better than a sighted one. He let the pad of his middle finger drift across the metal, following the contours of the embossed relief. Eight of Arrows. He supported its weight as he spread it on to the table, like laying down a woman who’s fainted in your arms. Done that once or twice over the years, of course. Ah well.