The Two of Swords, Volume 1

by K. J. Parker

  “Probably all right, then.”

  Pleda nodded. “Unless it’s aconite.”

  “I’d taste that, surely.”

  “Be too late then.”

  Pleda was one of those slow eaters. Some people bolt their food; there’s a blur, and then there’s an empty plate. Pleda ate slowly, steadily, like a cow. Not a problem most of the time, but right now Glauca was hungry. “I’ll risk it.”

  “Your funeral.”

  The finest, most discriminating palate in the empire; there had been a grand competition, with cooks from the great noble houses preparing special dishes crammed with the rarest and most abstruse ingredients, prepared in such a way as to mask or subtly alter the flavours. Pleda had identified ninety-seven out of ninety-nine; his nearest rival had only managed seventy-six. In a somewhat grimmer trial, he’d also identified forty-two of the forty-seven known poisons, from samples served to him on the tip of a pin. The job paid exceptionally well, but Pleda maintained (and Glauca believed him) that he wasn’t interested in money. So why do you do it? Glauca had asked a thousand times, and Pleda just shrugged.

  “Give it here,” Glauca said, and snatched the bowl from his hands. Then he hesitated. “Aconite?”

  “Can take up to twenty minutes,” Pleda said, through a gag of porridge. “Quite a strong taste, fairly distinctive. But you will insist on salt on your porridge, and that might just mask it. Probably not, but—” The trademark shrug.

  “I like salt on my porridge.”

  Pleda didn’t need words to express what he thought about that. Glauca put the bowl down on the table. “I’ll get them to warm it up for me,” he said.

  “Ah.” Pleda grinned at him. “Morsupeto.”

  “You what?”

  “Morsupeto,” Pleda repeated. “It’s a fourth-degree distillate of your basic Archer’s Root. Clever old stuff. Completely inert and harmless raw, lethal when cooked. So, you bung the stuff raw in a thick soup, say, or a stew. I taste it, nothing happens, but we wait twenty minutes anyway. Then they heat it up again, that cooks the morsupeto, it turns to poison, you eat it, two minutes later you’re rolling on the floor screaming. Bloody clever.”

  Glauca stared at him. “Morsupeto, you say.”

  “That’s right. Blemyan for Sudden Death.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Ah,” Pleda said. “That’s because it’s new; it’s not in your old books. Only been two cases so far. That we know about, I mean.”

  “Dear God.” Glauca looked at the bowl. “I can’t be doing with cold porridge,” he said.

  “What you want,” Pleda said, “is a nice fried egg.”

  Translated: what Pleda wanted was a nice fried egg. Also, eggs are notoriously hard to poison while the shell remains unbroken—it can be done, but the shell is distinctively stained—so if the egg is prepared in your presence, while you watch the cook’s every move like a hawk, you’re probably all right. “A boiled egg would be all right,” Glauca said, but without much hope—a certain white crystal, dissolved in the boiling water, penetrates the shell without staining and kills in thirty seconds. As anticipated, Pleda shrugged. Glauca sighed and rang the bell.

  “Three fried eggs,” he told the footman.

  There was a little spirit stove in the corner, next to the window. Glauca hated fried eggs.

  “You do it on purpose,” he told Pleda, as he cringed at the feel of runny yolk on his lips. “Everything I like, there’s some damned new poison. You take pleasure in torturing me.”

  Shrug.

  “I know what it is,” Glauca went on. “It’s the power. You enjoy bullying your emperor.”

  “It’s for your own good,” Pleda replied placidly, and Glauca noted the absence of denial or contradiction. “Anyway,” he went on, “you were saying. About this Rhus lad.”

  “Oh, him.” Glauca had to make an effort to redirect his mind. “I don’t trust him.”

  “So you said.”

  “But I believe him.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  Glauca nodded. Yes, there was a difference. Talking to Pleda often cleared his mind, though rarely because of any astounding flash of insight on Pleda’s part. Amiable enough fellow, and he quite enjoyed his rudeness. There has to be someone who’s allowed to be rude to you, or what would become of you? An intellectual, though, Pleda definitely wasn’t. “Well,” he said, “what’s the worst that can happen? Fellow goes off and we never see him again. On the other hand, he might just come back with the goods.”

  “Which are probably fakes.”

  “Oh, almost certain to be. In which case, this lad Musen doesn’t get any money.”

  “And the army gets paid, quite. And if it’s not a fake? If it’s real?”

  Glauca closed his eyes for a moment. “Let’s not tempt providence,” he said.

  Pleda did the shrug. “The eggs are fine,” he said. “You have my word.”

  Glauca stared down at the plate the footman had put in front of him. He didn’t feel nearly as hungry as he had a while ago. “Splendid,” he said, without enthusiasm. He picked up his spoon. “Meant to ask you, by the way. That young fellow Raxivas.”

  “Raxival,” Pleda amended.

  “Yes, anyway, him. How’s he coming along?”

  “Very well indeed,” Pleda said. He was picking his teeth with a little ivory and silver toothpick. Tooth-picking in the presence of the emperor was quite definitely treason, but Pleda had never quite grasped that. “I’d go so far as to say he’s got the makings. In five or so years, if anything happens to me, you’ll have nothing to worry about.”

  “Five or so years.”

  Pleda frowned. “Are you thinking of getting rid of me or something?”

  “My dear fellow, no, of course not. My fault, didn’t think what I was saying. No, absolutely no question of that. No, what I was wondering was, do you think he’s up to covering for you? Just for a month or so. No longer than that.”

  “Why would anyone need to cover for me?”

  Glauca turned himself round in his chair so he could look Pleda in the eye. “I want you to do something for me,” he said.

  “Of course.” No hesitation whatsoever. “Such as what?”

  Glauca took a deep breath. But it’ll be fine, he told himself. After all, old Pleda’s from those parts originally, he won’t mind. Might actually be pleased at the chance. “I want you to keep an eye on this boy Musen,” he said.

  Pleda frowned. “What, you mean taste his food?”

  “Not that specifically,” Glauca said. “I meant, when he goes home to get the silver pack for me, go with him. Find out what’s going on, that sort of thing. Because something is going on,” Glauca continued, unable to stop his voice getting louder and higher. “Damned sight more to this than meets the eye, I’m sure of it.”

  “You think so.”

  “There has to be,” Glauca said. “I mean to say, even if it’s all just the usual thing, trying to cheat me out of money. That means there’s a scholar out there, someone I’ve never heard of, who knows as much about the silver packs as I do. That’s not possible.”

  “I see what you mean,” Pleda said quietly. “Yes, that’s a thought.”

  “You see what I’m getting at? It’d be like saying there’s a top-flight university out there somewhere that nobody knows anything about. And that’s mad. Makes no sense. But if there’s this mysterious scholar, he must have books, rare books, special books; so there’s got to be a library, and who’d have a library like that that I’m not aware of? I don’t mind telling you, it’s bothering me to death. Makes no sense at all. A secret university. Completely insane.”

  “Who has universities?” Pleda said.

  “Exactly, my dear fellow, exactly. Have you any idea what the Academy costs to run? An absolute fortune, bleeds me white. Who’s got that sort of money? And if you’ve got your own private university—well, the question arises, what else would you be likely to have? You answer me that.” />
  Pleda was nodding slowly. He looked like a clown. “So you want me—”

  “Yes,” Glauca said. He made an effort, and added: “You’re the only one I really trust.”

  Silence. Pleda was embarrassed. Well, he would be.

  “Well?”

  “Of course,” Pleda said. “If that’s what you want.”

  When he’d gone, Glauca unstoppered his ink bottle and started to write out warrants. To any into whose hands this warrant might come, and so forth. Yes, but it was true; nobody else in the world he trusted half as much. He had to. It was all in Exinas; eleven of the forty-seven poisons—if you took a tiny dose of them every day for a long time, you became immune; so that, if you then swallowed a full, lethal dose, it wouldn’t hurt you at all. A food taster held the power of life and death over his master. Three times a day he had means and opportunity. After all, why had all the emperors since Azalo worn beards? Because nobody could be trusted to hold a sharp edge to the emperor’s throat.

  … afford to the said Pleda any and all goods, monies, service, assistance and facilitation whatsoever that he may require of you notwithstanding any contrary orders and provisions, express, statutory or customary …

  His hand ached from writing—clerk’s job, but he couldn’t trust those damned fools to get it right; the wording had to be exact. If a thing’s worth doing, do it yourself. Everyone had always agreed, even his enemies, even his father, that he had exceptionally good, clear handwriting. Should’ve been a clerk, they sneered, more use in the scriveners’ office than on the throne. Well; they had a point.

  Pleda dropped in to say goodbye. He was a sad sight. He’d wrapped himself up in coats and scarves and mittens until only his eyes and nose were visible (it was an unusually warm day, as it happened). He looked like a child’s toy.

  “Look after yourself,” Glauca said. “I need you back here in one piece, understood?”

  “Same to you,” came a voice from deep inside the insulation. “I told Raxival, you take bloody good care, and don’t listen to him if he says it’s all right, he’ll chance it. Let him know who’s the boss, I told him.”

  Glauca laughed. “That I believe,” he said. He dug in the pocket of his gown and pulled out a purse. Fifty angels. “Buy yourself a few decent meals,” he said. “Keep out the cold.”

  Pleda took the purse, glanced at it and shoved it away in a pocket. “I don’t like foreign food,” he said. “Doesn’t agree with me.”

  Eight of Swords

  A nice inconspicuous four-wheeled cart, chipped paintwork, the sort of thing nobody notices; an elderly, massive black mare, just the right side of dead, and a stocky piebald gelding. “You’ll be fine,” the groom had assured them both. “They know what to do, even if you don’t.”

  “You’re not a horseman, then,” Musen said as they rolled slowly down Foregate towards the Land Gates.

  “Me? God, no.” Pleda shifted uncomfortably on the driver’s bench. “My dad kept horses, but I never got to drive. Fuller, he was. Him and me, we used to go round the City first thing and empty all the piss-pots. Dad drove, I did all the running around. Filthy bloody job.” He looked at the boy, then added, “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

  “Sorry.”

  Pleda shrugged. “Don’t suppose they have fullers where you come from. How do you bleach your fine cloth, then?”

  “We don’t.”

  Pleda nodded. “Figures,” he said. “Anyway, it’s a foul job, that’s all you need to know about it.”

  “We had horses on the farm,” Musen said. “I steered clear of them, as much as I could. Got kicked in the head when I was six. Been scared of them ever since.”

  Not true, Pleda thought. At least, not true about being frightened of horses, he could tell by the way the horses had reacted to him, right from when they were led out of the stable. Horses know, and the black mare had recognised a horseman. Odd lie to tell, though he could think of half a dozen perfectly good reasons. “Still,” he said, “beats walking. I hate walking. Tires you out and makes your feet hurt.”

  Foregate was busy today. Tomorrow was the first day of the Old and New Fair, and the country people had come to town. They were setting up stalls and pens for livestock—at one point the cart had to negotiate its way through a couple of hundred geese, waddling like a tired army, filling the street like floodwater. It was a long forced march from the poultry-keeping villages that straggled alongside the South road, so every single goose had been shod—wooden pattens with leather straps; Pleda remembered that job from his youth, struggles and feathers and goose shit everywhere, the smell got into your hair and stayed with you for days. The marching geese made him think of Senza’s army, herded efficiently along other roads to a slightly different kind of fair. And as well as geese there were escaped rams, too fast and nimble to catch, too terrified to bribe, and the sticking-out back ends of carts, and sudden unexpected lengths of scaffolding pole, thrust out into the carriageway like pikes by men not thinking about what they were doing. Busy, stupid, thoughtless people, with work to do and a small but entrancing possibility of getting their hands on some real money, just for once; five donkeys loaded till their legs buckled with rolls of good coarse hemp matting; an old, thin man carefully arranging two dozen blue duck eggs on a mat of straw in the middle of a very big trestle table; two cheerful women tipping the last of last year’s store apples out of buckets into a sawn-in-half barrel, not giving a damn if the apples got bruised; a splendidly dressed fat man and his splendidly dressed fat wife, laying out a huge stall of the shabbiest second-hand clothes Pleda had ever seen. Two men, so dark they might almost have been Imperials, dragging a long wooden crate overflowing with nails, that grey and purple colour that tells you they’re fire salvage, no good, soft, bend double at the gentlest tap. A very big stall of kettles and fire pots made out of soldiers’ helmets; and, a few yards further down, hundreds of faggots comprised of suspiciously straight, planed inch-and-a-half round poles, broken spear shafts, only the best five-year-seasoned cornel wood. They’ll sell quick, Pleda told himself, and plenty more where they came from; someone had got hold of a good thing there, assuming the carriage costs were manageable. Boots, of course, one thing the war had done for the common man was ensure a plentiful supply of good, cheap footwear. And gilded bronze finger-rings, the sort the Southerners wore, you couldn’t give those away; some optimist had set out two great big tar barrels full of them, at a stuiver each or six for a quarter, but mostly they went straight into the melt and came out as candlesticks or buttons for the military, and each ring represented a dead soldier’s hand; not so good if you had a tendency to mental arithmetic. All in all, it was a good day to leave the City. The noise would be intolerable, and the smell, for a man with a delicate palate—

  The boy, he noticed, was fascinated by it all; first sight of the big City doing what it does best. So many things, so much property—cities do things very well, never quite got the hang of people; where the boy came from, no doubt, a man could probably list all the man-made things in his village—an easily estimated quantity of ploughs, axes, spades, knives, spoons, ladles, pairs of boots, straw bonnets, work shirts and best shirts, you’d be able to compile a tolerably accurate inventory. He must think we’re rich, Pleda thought; stupidly rich, with all this stuff. Then he remembered the boy was a thief, a profession which gives you a slightly different perspective on material objects, especially the readily portable kind. Actually, more like a vocation; classified along with priest, artist, philosopher, actor, it’s something you do because you’re made that way, and, no matter how hard you try, that’s what you are, and always will be. A different way of seeing the world, he guessed. Add soldier to that list? Maybe. But thief, definitely.

  A country thief, seeing his first City market. Definitely a spiritual experience. “Bit different from what you’re used to,” he said.

  “What? Oh, God, yes. It’s amazing.”

  Pleda tried straightening his bac
k, stretching it a little. Didn’t help. “Can’t have been easy for you, back home.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Stands to reason,” Pleda said. “In a small place, something goes missing, people notice.”

  The boy didn’t like that. “You learn to be careful,” he said.

  “Must cramp your style, though. I mean, how do you get rid of the stuff? Nobody’s going to buy something off you if the moment the real owner sees it, he yells out, hey, that’s mine, what’re you doing with it?”

  For a moment he was sure the boy was going to get angry with him. Then a sudden grin, and the boy relaxed. “Like I said,” he replied, “you learn to be careful. Like, if I stole your billhook, I’d knock the handle off and whittle a new one. Or, more likely, I’d wait a couple of weeks, then give it back to you and tell you I found it in a hedge somewhere. You’d be so pleased you’d give me something, or do something for me. That’s better than money, where I used to live.”

  Pleda nodded. “And no harm done,” he said, “and everybody’s happy.”

  “Exactly.”

  Not just a liar, Pleda thought, a special kind of liar—like the actors who prepare for a role by pretending to be the man they’re going to portray on stage; don’t think, just be. That’s why he lies all the time, even when he doesn’t need to. He likes to practise. That was why it was so hard to tell the boy’s lies from the truth. They were jumbled in together, like beans and peas in a casserole, and because he lied for no reason it was almost impossible to catch him out. Someone who lies with no immediate intent to deceive, who steals not for money or gain but because he wants to, needs to; oh yes, they’d been quite right about this one. A collector’s item, like the Sleeping Dog.

  Even so. He waited until they’d passed through the Land Gate, and the traffic had evaporated, and they were to all intents and purposes alone on the road. Then, as casually as he could, he said, “Hold on a minute, I need to take a leak.” He slid off the bench and handed the boy the reins to hold. Under cover of a roadside thorn bush, he took the pack of cards from the inside pocket sewn into his robe, palmed the three top cards, put the rest away. Then, as he scrambled back up and took back the reins, he slipped the cards into Musen’s hand.