The Two of Swords, Volume 1

by K. J. Parker

  Pleda took a deep breath. “What war?” he said. “Tell me.”

  But Musen shook his head. “You don’t know,” he said. “So I can’t tell you. Don’t ask me any more. In fact, you’d better go away. I don’t know what I’m allowed to tell you, or anything.”

  “Eight of bloody Swords,” Pleda said, in a low, harsh voice. “You’ll tell me what I ask, understood? What war?”

  There was nothing on Musen’s face but contempt. “You don’t matter,” he said. “I’m home now; you can’t touch me. You’re not allowed to ask me questions. You might as well go and do what you’re here for, get those stupid cards. I don’t want to see you again, do you hear me?”

  Pleda found the strength to smile at him. “Screw you, then,” he said. “And get well soon.”

  He headed for the door, half expecting someone to stop him. What war? What war, and who against, for crying out loud? Clearing the way? There were the desert nomads, yes, the idiot Blemyans had stirred up a hornets’ nest there, and it would take the combined efforts of both empires to deal with them once and for all. Glauca knew that, and Senza Belot must realise it, too; and he imagined they weren’t stupid in the West, either. But the war, the one that this one’s clearing the way for— This war was certainly clearing the way; it had cleared sheep and men off every hillside from here to Beloisa, and from what he understood things weren’t much better anywhere else. But the war; for a war, you had to have armies. The way this war was going, it wouldn’t be long before there was nobody left. The Blemyans? That’d be a campaign, not a war, a paragraph in the official history. What war?

  You don’t matter, the boy had said. You’re not important. Now there was a thought. Eight of Swords, and not important enough, a card you throw away when you’ve bought something better.

  The light outside was painfully bright after the cool shade of the hospital. The fancy carriage, he noted, wasn’t there any more. In his pocket was the plenipotentiary warrant. He needed to talk to someone in authority.

  (Because a run of low cards, two, three, four, will beat a pride of tens; if you’re holding three and four, two is important, two matters. You’d run through the whole damned pack to get a two if you needed one, and dump your eight, nine, ten without hesitation. The wild cards, the boy had said, it’s what they’ve been collecting us for. Thief School? Were there other schools like it—covered cards, face down—he didn’t even know about?

  Anything that’s face down you have to pay to see. Fine, so long as you can afford it.)

  A man stepped out of a doorway. He wore a robe that looked vaguely ecclesiastical but belonged to no order Pleda had ever heard of over a regulation Western scale cuirass, and Eastern issue boots. Of course, you could buy anything you wanted from the battlefield clearance contractors. “You’re Pleda,” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you think you could possibly spare a moment? They’d like to talk to you.”

  “Why? I’m not important.”

  “Please?”

  Well, he’d always been a sucker for politeness, especially when it wore armour. “Go on, then,” he said, and followed him round the side of the hospital. There was a paved yard, probably left over from the smithy, and there was the long building that had once been the forge. The armoured man led him to a door, then stood aside to let him pass.

  It was dark inside, and he recognised the smell as damp plaster. He heard the scratch of a tinderbox; a little red glow, as someone blew on smouldering moss, followed by a bigger yellow one, as whoever it was lit an oil lamp. Before that, he supposed, he’d been sitting there in the dark.

  Correction: they. Three men, and a woman in a long black veil. The men wore the same robes as the man who’d brought him here, but no armour. One was bald and middle-aged, one had a bushy head of grey hair, and the third was very old indeed, with little white wisps, like sheep’s wool caught in brambles. There was nothing in the room except for five plain wooden stools and a small round table, on which lay a tarnished silver box. The walls and ceiling were off-white; freshly applied plaster, still wet.

  “Pleda,” said the old man. “Please, sit down.”

  You paint frescoes—masterpieces of religious and esoteric art—on wet plaster. He sat. The old man smiled.

  “Glauca sent you,” the old man said.

  Not the emperor. “That’s right.”

  The old man laid a finger on the lid of the box. “Thank you for coming. I trust the journey wasn’t too arduous.”

  Pleda shrugged. “I’m here now.”

  The old man nodded and lifted the lid. “The asking price,” he said, “is one hundred and fifty thousand angels.”

  One million angels paid for the war for a year. “No,” Pleda said. “It’s too much. The emperor hasn’t got that sort of money.”

  “Then you’ve had a wasted journey,” the old man said. “But in any case, I don’t agree. In your pocket you have a plenipotentiary warrant. Do you know what that means?”

  “Yes.”

  “It means,” the old man said, “you can do anything. Including,” he went on, lifting something out of the box, “endorsing the back of the warrant with an order to pay the bearer one hundred and fifty thousand angels. I happen to know that exactly that sum of money will arrive at Beloisa in twelve days’ time, to cover arrears of pay and finance the rebuilding and fortification of the city. So you see, the emperor does have the money.”

  “Yes, but he can’t afford—”

  The old man lifted his other hand, a gentle but categorical gesture. “So let’s see what happens. You go back to Glauca and tell him you refused our offer. Glauca is furious. He sends you straight back again. Next time, the price will be two hundred thousand angels. He can well afford not to fortify Beloisa. He can afford for the troops who will shortly arrive here to mutiny because they won’t get their back pay. He can afford for them to defect to the enemy and hand Beloisa over to them. He has other provinces, and this one isn’t much use to him in its present deplorable state. The Westerners will occupy it; sooner or later Senza Belot will come and take it from them, and Glauca will be back where he started. And he’ll have these.” He put down what he was holding on the table, a block wrapped in red silk. It clinked. “And you will have lost his favour and trust, which you’ve worked so hard to gain, and the lodge will have lost a highly placed observer at a key point in the chain of command. Now, we’ll start again. The asking price is one hundred and fifty thousand angels.”

  Pleda breathed in slowly, then out again. It was supposed to calm him down, but all it achieved was to fill his lungs with the wet plaster smell, and make him want to cough. “What do you want the money for?”

  The old man laughed. “To decorate this room,” he said.

  Pleda looked at him. He was serious. “That’s a lot of money,” he heard himself say.

  “Loxida of Blemya, the greatest living painter of religious subjects, has agreed to paint this room with scenes of the Transfiguration of the Host. We’ve negotiated a fee of one hundred and twenty-five thousand angels, which we feel is entirely reasonable, given that his work will quite possibly be the supreme achievement of the human race. It will most certainly still be here, admired and valued and a source of immeasurable spiritual strength and energy, in a thousand years’ time. Or the money could be spent on building a set of walls, which siege engines will have battered into rubble within five years. Oh, in case you were wondering, the balance of twenty-five thousand angels will pay for the materials. Loxida has specified ninety-nine-pure gold from the mines in the Aradian desert; apparently, the colour is very subtly different. We’re exceptionally fortunate to be in a position to give him this commission.”

  Loxida of Blemya; never heard of him. “I’ll need to see them first.”

  “Really? What for? Only Glauca and three other men alive—I’m one of them, incidentally—know enough to be able to tell whether these are the genuine Sleeping Dog or an extraordinary skilful copy, made
by either Praxidas or Tariunno of Licynna. Please don’t be offended, but you’re completely incapable of forming any sort of valid judgement.” He smiled. He had six teeth. “You’re just going to have to trust me, I’m afraid.”

  Pleda could feel his brain melting and dripping down his throat. Even so; he needed to think. “Here’s the deal,” he said. “I’ll endorse the warrant in escrow. The paymasters at Beloisa will release the money once they hear from the emperor that the pack is genuine.”

  “Unacceptable.” The old man didn’t sound upset or anything. “Glauca will say that the cards are fakes. He’ll keep them, and refuse to pay over the money. He can’t be trusted. You, however, can trust us, because we’re all fellow craftsmen. This is the Sleeping Dog Pack. You have my word on it.”

  Pleda wanted to laugh. He also wanted, very badly indeed, to ask who the toothless old man was. But there’d be no point. Even if he got an answer, a true one, it’d be meaningless to him. Instead, he said, “Tell me about the war.”

  The old man’s face didn’t change. “Excuse me?”

  “Not this one,” Pleda said, “the next one. The one this one’s clearing the way for.”

  “Now why should I do that?”

  To see a covered card, you have to pay. My entire life, Pleda thought, and raise you a stuiver. “Because if you don’t, there’s no deal. I’ll go home and tell Glauca that the cards were fakes. Such obvious fakes that even I could tell. The colour of the silver was all wrong. Too pure for the period. There were no copper tones on the raised areas.”

  The old man frowned. “Would you please wait outside?” he said. “I’d just like a private word with my associates.”

  Feeling slightly dizzy and light-headed, as though he’d been drinking, Pleda got up and walked to the door. It seemed a long way. The man in the cuirass was there to open the door for him. Outside, the air was dry and fresh. He rested his back against the wall. If his legs weren’t so weak, he’d have run away. The lodge, he thought; that man is a fellow craftsman. He’s supposed to be on the same side as me. He’s supposed to be my brother.

  Brothers, like Senza and Forza Belot.

  On the roof of a nearby house he saw two crows, the first living things apart from men and horses he’d noticed for days. He watched them for a while. Senza Belot reckoned you could learn a lot from watching crows, so he’d been told. His hands were beginning to get cold; he put them in his pockets and found his deck of cards. The temptation to lay out his fortune, there on the paving slabs, was almost too strong to resist. Nine of Shields; you will meet an influential stranger. Four of Spears; you will learn something to your advantage. Poverty, reversed; you will achieve your heart’s desire.

  Sometime later the guard called him back in. There were three men and a heavily veiled woman. Different men.

  “Please sit down.” The speaker was an elderly man, with a full head of short grey hair and a neat, pointed beard. “We’re sorry to have kept you.”

  Pleda sat down. “That’s fine,” he said. “I needed a breath of air.”

  “The asking price,” said the neat man, “is one hundred and seventy-five thousand angels. We have considered your request for information, but we have to refuse. The information is sensitive and you are not secure.”

  He felt as if his strength was draining slowly away, like oil from a cracked bottle. “The extra twenty-five thousand,” he said. “There’s no more money.”

  The neat man shook his head. “The garrison commander at Beloisa holds a thirty-thousand-angel contingency fund,” he said. “Our best information is that he still has nineteen thousand of it left. The balance will have to be raised by means of a forced loan from the soldiers of the garrison.” He held up his hand before Pleda could interrupt. “We appreciate that that will likely precipitate a mutiny,” he said. “But that’s going to happen anyway, so it really doesn’t matter. Meanwhile, we would encourage you to contemplate the repercussions of your actions.” He paused, and looked meaningfully at the little round table. On it, beside the silver box, was a small silver-gilt inkwell and a goose-quill pen. “It would probably be best if I dictated the wording of the endorsement,” he said. “These legal formulae have to be exactly right, you know.”

  Pleda took out the warrant, leaned forward and got hold of the pen. He wrote the words he was given, resting the parchment rather awkwardly on his knee. “Now sign it, please,” the neat man said. “One of my associates will witness your signature.”

  He handed the parchment to the neat man, who glanced at it briefly and gave it to the man on his left, a short, broad-shouldered Imperial. He had his own pen. Then he put the warrant down on the table, as if it no longer mattered.

  “And this,” the neat man said, “is yours.”

  His left hand rested for a moment on the silver box. Pleda looked at it, but stayed where he was. The neat man waited for a moment or so, then said gently, “You can examine it, if you wish.”

  “No thanks,” Pleda said. “I trust you.”

  The neat man smiled at the joke. “Well,” he said, “I think that concludes the formal business of the meeting. Now, perhaps you’d care for a cup of tea. Or something stronger, maybe.”

  Pleda nodded. “Something a lot stronger, please,” he said.

  The man on the neat man’s right laughed. “I think we can manage that,” he said, and clapped his hands. From nowhere, apparently, someone in the same cut of gown appeared; he leaned forward so the Imperial could whisper in his ear. Then he nodded and went away. “Bearing in mind the fact that we’re playing host to possibly the most discerning palate in the East,” the Imperial went on, “I’ve had the cellarer find us something rather special. I’d like your opinion.”

  The servant was back again, with a silver tray. On it stood a dusty brown pottery pint bottle, its mouth stopped with beeswax, and four tiny, exquisite horn and silver cups. The servant produced a dear little silver knife, with which he cut and chipped away the wax; then he filled the cups. One each for the men; the lady in the veil wasn’t getting any. Pleda looked down at the overgrown thimble in his hand; an inch of a clear yellow liquid, very slightly paler than urine. “Your very good health,” the Imperial said, and didn’t move.

  Well, Pleda thought; and he nibbled a drop of the yellow stuff. It was without doubt the most delicious thing he’d ever put in his mouth, and it kicked like a mule. Oh, and none of the known poisons. “Not bad,” he said, and swilled down the rest of it. There was a brief war in his intestines. Like the other war, nobody won, but there was considerable damage.

  “Cheers,” the Imperial said; he took a sip, and then the other three followed suit. Pleda smiled and looked pointedly at his empty cup. “Care for another?” the Imperial asked.

  “Oh, go on, then,” Pleda said.

  The really good stuff, of course, gets better and better the more of it you drink. After the third cup (the others were still on their second) Pleda felt like he was briefly floating on a lake of burning honey, just before going down for the last time. “You know what,” Pleda said. “I wouldn’t mind a barrel of this.”

  The Imperial grinned at him. “No doubt,” he said. “Regrettably, that was the last known bottle in existence.”

  “Really.”

  “Oh yes. It’s a hundred and twenty-five years old.”

  “Keeps well, I’ll say that for it.” The Imperial laughed and leaned forward to top up his cup.

  “Sort of mead, I’m guessing.”

  “Sort of.”

  Pleda applied his wealth of technical knowledge, then gave up. “Beats me,” he said. “Basically mead but—well, different.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Ah well.” He smiled. “Another secret. And I’m not secure.”

  “Alas.” The Imperial pulled a sad face. “A lost secret, I’m afraid. A warning to us all, I think. Secrets too closely guarded can die of confinement.” He glanced at the other three, then added, “There’s a difference, of course, between telling a secr
et and giving a hint.”

  Quite suddenly, Pleda was stone cold sober again. He tried his very best not to let it show. “That’s right,” he said. “A little hint never hurt anybody.” He mimed slow, painful thought for a moment. “Tell you what,” he said. “Gamble you for it. If I win, you give me a little hint.”

  The Imperial had another quick telepathic conference with his colleagues. “And if we win?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. My head on a pike?”

  Next to the neat man, on his left, was a big man with red hair and a beard. “We could’ve had that already, if we’d wanted it.”

  Pleda shrugged. “That’d have been cheating,” he said. “Difference between fleecing a man at the tables and mugging him in the alleyway outside. Anyhow, it’s all I’ve got. Take it or leave it.”

  The Imperial nodded briskly and opened the silver box. Then he hesitated. “I forgot, these don’t belong to us any more. With your permission?”

  “Go ahead,” Pleda said.

  The Imperial took out the cards and shuffled them. “Let’s make it strictly chance,” he said. “Fairer that way. You cut, then we cut. Highest card wins all. Agreed?”

  Pleda waved vaguely. “You’re the doctor.”

  The Imperial fanned out the cards. Pleda leaned forward. He

  knew, better than anyone, how to force a card on somebody. He took his time, and picked from the left-hand edge of the fan. He

  looked at the card. Eight of Swords. He felt suddenly cold. Oh, he thought.

  “No, don’t show me yet,” the Imperial said; then he offered the fan to the veiled woman, who took a card and covered it with her other hand. The Imperial put the cards down carefully on the table and looked at Pleda. “Now,” he said. “You first.”

  Pleda turned over his card and held it up. “Ah,” the Imperial said. Then he nodded to the woman, who revealed the Nine of Arrows.