by K. J. Parker
Axeo thanked the sergeant politely, the sergeant saluted and Axeo walked slowly back to the mail coach in the middle of the glacier of halted traffic. “Get the bags,” he told Musen. “Can you swim?”
“No.”
Axeo shrugged. “Guess I’ll have to be resourceful, then,” he said. “I hate being resourceful, it gives me a headache.”
A few enquiries along the waterfront revealed that all boats had been requisitioned by the Prefect for the duration of the emergency. Since the Prefect paid half as much again as the usual tariff, the watermen were grimly resigned to doing their patriotic duty, which meant the cost of an unofficial ride across the lake was now more than Axeo was prepared to spend out of the limited war chest at his disposal.
“We steal a boat,” Musen said.
“You steal a boat. I’m a brigand, not a thief. Tell me when you’ve got one, I’ll be under that tree, sleeping.”
In fact, although his hat was pulled down over his eyes and his feet were propped up on the luggage, Axeo was wide awake. He’d learned quite a lot from his conversation with the sergeant, much of it reassuring. The City was clearly a shambles, with the military and the civil authority getting under each other’s feet, mostly on purpose. Reasonable to assume, therefore, that nobody knew who anybody was, and the usual security protocols surrounding the emperor’s person were probably coming apart at the seams. Between those parted seams a clever man could insert a sharp instrument and press down hard. What they could really do with, of course, was a dog.
“Yes,” Axeo explained, when Musen came back, “but not just any old dog. It’s got to look plausible. Some tripehound you find hanging round the back door of the butcher’s shop won’t fool anybody.”
“Fine,” Musen said. “What sort do you want?”
Axeo looked blank. “I don’t know, do I? There were always hundreds of the wretched things around the place when I was a boy, my father was mad keen on them, but I could never be bothered to take an interest. I know there’s one called an alaunt, and there’s lymers and brachets and grazehounds. They’re all hunting dogs, of course, and I don’t think that’s the sort His Majesty goes for. Little tubby things like overgrown rats are more in his line, so I gather. Just use your common sense, all right? So long as it’s neat and tidy and you can’t see its ribs. I don’t suppose the Watch know any more about it than I do.”
A surprisingly short time later, Musen came back leading a small, skinny fawn and white object on a bit of string. It had a face like a very small mule and ears that folded down like the corner of a page in a favourite book; if memory served, it was a kennet, the go-to dog for persecuting hares. Ideal. “Is that the best you could do?”
Musen shrugged. “You want me to find something else?”
Axeo shook his head. “Life’s too short. Where’s this boat of yours? And did you remember the cheese?”
Musen had hidden the boat under the sprays of a trailing willow. It must’ve been a smart piece of work taking it, and not in Musen’s usual line; you can’t just tuck a twelve-foot tender under your coat and stroll away looking gormless. They waited till dark. Fortunately the dog curled up and went to sleep, while Musen went back to steal it a collar.
“I don’t suppose you know how to row a boat.”
Musen shrugged.
Axeo climbed in carefully, then held out his arms for the dog. “It’s been a while,” he said, “and I was never very good at it. Still, we weren’t expecting to win any prizes.”
Musen didn’t like getting in the boat; he staggered badly when it shifted, and sat down heavily on the oars. “Shift,” Axeo said, “I need them to make it go. You sit at that end and steer.”
“I don’t know how to.”
“Fine. Grab hold of the dog and keep it quiet.”
There were lanterns burning all along the quay; but Axeo had made out other mooring places on the east side of the island, used by sawmills, tanneries and the like, where he reckoned they could put in without attracting undue attention. The one he chose was the landing stage of a foundry, working a night shift. Inside the sheds was a blaze of white light, which would dazzle anyone looking out, and the noise of the drop-hammers would mask any sound they made, even if the dog decided to bark.
“Have you been here before?” Musen asked, once they were safely on dry land.
“Once,” Axeo replied. He gave the boat a shove and it drifted out of the light. “Nice place if you’ve got money, a bit grim if you haven’t. Like most places, really.”
Musen nodded towards where the boat had been. “Won’t we be needing that?”
“It would’ve been nice,” Axeo replied. “But we can’t rely on it staying there. Chances are some evil bugger would’ve stolen it before we got back. There’s a lot of thieving goes on in this town, I don’t know if you’ve noticed.” He wrapped the dog’s lead twice around his hand. “I plan to walk back, across the causeway. Unless we can hitch a lift, of course. I don’t believe in walking if you can ride.”
Finding a soldier was easy. They walked towards the noise; at first a gentle hum, almost soothing, like distant bees on a hot afternoon; then jagged with unintelligible shouting, banging and breaking sounds. There was a cordon of the Household Guard around the head of the causeway, their gilded armour flashing in the disturbingly bright light of burning shops.
It had been a while since Axeo had actually commanded regular official troops. Some things, though, you don’t forget.
“You,” he snapped, as soon as he was in earshot. “Yes, you, soldier. Get the duty officer, quick as you like.”
Some people can do it with horses and dogs; it’s all to do with confidence, knowing you’re a superior form of life. “Sir,” barked the nearest guardsman, and turned and ran.
The duty officer – praise be! – was tall, thin, painfully young, transparent down on his upper lip like the hair on a girl’s forearm. He came striding up, struggling with the straps of his helmet (they can be a bitch, Axeo sympathised, until you get used to them). Before he could open his mouth, Axeo snapped, “Let’s see your commission.”
The young officer stopped as if he’d put his foot in a rabbit hole. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t carry it with—”
Axeo allowed himself a tiny but eloquent gesture. Crammed into it was the certainty that he’d have seen to it that the officer was broken to the ranks and sent to guard convicts, if only the business in hand wasn’t so urgent. “All right, what’s your name?”
“Ethizo, sir. Second lieutenant—”
“See this?” Axeo gave the bit of string a fierce jerk, and the dog stumbled forward into the light. “Well?”
Lieutenant Ethizo looked at the dog, desperately trying to understand what was wrong and why it was his fault. “Sir?”
“I found it roaming the streets out on the dark side,” Axeo said, his voice heavy with quiet, suppressed rage. “And I want to know who’s responsible.”
A look of utter helplessness on the lieutenant’s face; then a tiny ray of illumination, to spotlight his peril. “Is that one of the emperor’s—?”
“For God’s sake, man, pull yourself together,” Axeo snapped. “This is a seal-point sand kennet, these buggers were gods in Blemya when your ancestors were still running around in goatskins. Don’t you know anything?”
Maybe he’d overdone it slightly there. The lieutenant frowned. “I don’t think I’ve heard of—”
“Your ignorance isn’t at issue here, lieutenant.” (There, that was better.) “The point is, what do you think will happen if His Majesty finds out one of his precious dogs has got out and was found roaming the streets? Well? Answer: he’ll overrule the Prefect and send us in to clear out the protesters, there’ll be a massacre and then a proper riot, not this peely-wally stone-throwing, and come morning we won’t need Senza Belot, we’ll have done it all ourselves. Well?”
Mirrored in the lieutenant’s eyes he caught a fleeting glimpse of himself, fifteen years earlier, surrounded on a
ll four sides by Major Blepharo concerning the matter of an illegal still in the harness sheds. He felt a pang of remorse and crushed it. He was, after all, about to save this young idiot from the disastrous consequences of his negligence. “What we need to do,” he said, lowering his voice to strained calm, “is get this wretched animal where it’s meant to be, out of harm’s way and off our slop chit.” He paused to let the significance of the first person plural sink in; the lieutenant wasn’t going to have to face this crisis alone; this godlike stranger would help him, and everything would be fine. “Agreed?”
“Sir.”
“Splendid.” Axeo glanced down at the dog, which was scratching its ear with its hind leg. “Now obviously we can’t get it back across the causeway, and we haven’t got a hope in hell of finding a boat.” No explanation, just a statement of fact. “So our only option, would you agree, is to get the dog inside the State Apartments without anybody seeing, dump it in an anteroom somewhere and fuck off out of it quick before anyone asks what we’re doing there. Questions?”
The lieutenant looked petrified. “Won’t they wonder how it got there, when all the rest of the—”
“Of course they will,” Axeo snapped. “There’ll be an almighty row about it, some poor sod will take the blame and probably end up with his head on a spike, but it won’t be us and there won’t be a massacre. Have you got a better idea?”
“No, sir.”
“Sorted, then. Oh, and one other thing. If you ever mention my name in connection with this, I’ll have you court-martialled. Got that?”
“Sir.”
“Splendid.” Axeo handed the dog’s lead to Ethizo, who swallowed hard and took it. “Right then,” he said. “What we need is a back way into the Capitol. Lead on, lieutenant.”
They had to pass four sentries, all of whom snapped to attention like components in a machine as soon as they caught sight of the nodding red crest of the duty officer’s helmet. Ethizo didn’t like that one bit, but Axeo told him to get a grip and look like he was supposed to be there. He felt bad about that, too, but it served the lieutenant right for being stupid, as he himself had once been, and look where it had got him.
They found an empty bedroom on the third floor of the east wing of the Inner Capitol. Axeo untied the string from the dog’s collar; it jumped up on the bed, curled itself into a ball and went to sleep. They backed quietly out of the room and closed the door.
“Right.” Axeo grabbed the lieutenant by the wrist and squeezed till it hurt. “I’ve never seen you before in my life, got that? None of this ever happened, you never left your post all night, and your men will back you up on that. Understood?”
“Sir. Thank you, sir.”
“Get lost,” Axeo said. “Come on, Sergeant,” he snapped to Musen, and strode off down the corridor without looking round.
“Well, we’re in,” Axeo whispered. They’d ducked into some sort of dressing room off the main passageway. Probably a woman’s room, but with the Court you just couldn’t tell. Axeo sat down on the spindly legged chair, which probably wouldn’t have taken Musen’s weight. “Pause, catch our breath and regroup. You might as well know, I haven’t got a plan for the next bit.”
Musen accepted that in silence. Axeo looked at him. “Put that back,” he said.
A slight hesitation; then Musen took a silver-backed hairbrush out of the front of his shirt and put it on the dressing table.
“When I say I haven’t got a plan,” Axeo went on, as though nothing had happened, “I mean I don’t know where we are or where the stuff is likely to be. That’s not as much of a disaster as it sounds. We’ve got plenty of time, no need to rush. We just search this place from top to bottom. If we meet anyone, just keep your face tight shut. You’re good at that, it shouldn’t be a problem. All right.” He stood up. “Onwards.”
On the way out, once Musen was through the door, he grabbed the hairbrush and slipped it into his coat pocket. Well, why not?
They wandered about for a while, but there seemed to be no obvious logic to the place. Axeo vaguely remembered that before it was an Imperial residence the Capitol had been a monastery, built by a large and affluent order, long since disbanded. That helped. “We should be going up, not down,” he muttered to himself. “If this was a Sky monastery, there ought to be a Dawn chapel, east and central and very high up. Logic dictates—” He stopped and frowned. “This is no good. We need camouflage. We won’t get very far just hitting people.” He thought for a moment, creating stories, doing the geometry. Then he punched Musen in the face, as hard as he could.
“Sorry,” he said, helping him up and inspecting his lip, which was bleeding well. “Now, here’s the idea. I just caught you snooping around, I have reason to believe you’re a thief, after the Imperial regalia. I’ve been wandering around for hours looking for a guard to hand you in to, but there’s never one about when you need one. Got that?”
Musen scowled at him and nodded. A bright boy, just as he’d always thought. Axeo glanced down at his knuckles and was pleased to see he’d skinned them. “Teeth all right?”
“Mphm.”
“Good, no harm done, then. On we go.”
They climbed stairs whenever they encountered them and tried to keep bearing east. They met people, but only footmen and chambermaids; no need to explain, just stay in character. “Remember,” Axeo muttered in Musen’s ear as he frogmarched him down a long, wide gallery, “if we meet anyone, you’re the desperado, I’m the peace officer. Got a knife on you?”
“Yes.”
“Give it here. I don’t want you getting carried away.”
Axeo recognised the knife. It had been his once, and he’d been sure he’d dropped it. “Do you ever steal from anyone else apart from me? Just out of interest.”
“Yes.”
With a pang of regret he dumped it on a window ledge. “Next good knife you steal is mine, all right?”
“All right.”
“Deal. The thing is, I’m a very materialistic person, I like my things. Rather more than I like people, as it happens. You might want to bear that in mind.”
Round the next bend they ran into a pair of sentries, flanking a closed door. There was no time to say anything to each other; nothing but mutual trust would save them now, the sort of faith Axeo generally reserved for the Great Smith. “I caught this one sneaking about in the—” he began to say, and then Musen hit him.
It worked because he really hadn’t been expecting it. No time or capacity for acting his part; the world went soft around him, he tried to breathe but couldn’t, and sank to his knees. By the time he could breathe again it all appeared to be over; Musen was bending over him helping him to his feet.
“Sorry,” Musen said with a grin.
“That’s fine,” Axeo whispered. “Oh, hell, you didn’t kill them, did you?”
Musen shook his head. Axeo looked for himself. They seemed secure enough. “Did they teach you to punch at Beal Defoir?”
“No, I’m just strong.”
Fair enough. “You’d better put them away tidily,” Axeo said. He didn’t like the way one of them was lying, but it could just be a broken leg. But how do you break a man’s leg by punching him on the jaw? “I think we passed a laundry room a little way back.” He searched them for keys, found none. “Dump them in there and cover them with sheets or something.”
The lock was actually quite simple; four massive great wards that turned back easily, a credit to the locksmith for the quality of his filing and stoning, if not his imagination. Axeo turned the handle and opened the door a crack, slipped the lock pick back in between the seams of his boot top and waited for Musen to return. He was gratified by the brief look of surprise on Musen’s face. “Teach you to do that one day, if you’re good,” he said.
“Thanks, I’d like that.”
“I bet.” He put three fingertips against the door and gently wafted it open. There was light on the other side of it. “Here goes,” he whispered, and walked through
.
He was at the foot of a staircase. There were two chairs and a brazier, but no guards. Bless the Household regiment for its self-confidence.
It was a long staircase, but Axeo knew they hadn’t gone high enough to be there yet. At the top was another of those damned wide galleries, with tapestries on the walls and rush matting (thank you, someone) on the floor. Whoever used this part of the building believed in being snug. His throat was sore from reflux and his knees were still weak, but he’d felt worse. “My guess is there’s a priest’s cell of some kind, and the stairs to the chapel are in there. Our tough luck if someone’s sleeping in there.”
There were nine rooms leading off the corridor, all unoccupied. At the back of the ninth was a door that had no rational explanation. It opened on to more stairs.
“How did you know?” Musen asked.
“Every Dualist monastery had a Dawn Chapel.” Axeo was breathless on the stairs, but he told himself it was just the after-effect of Musen’s punch. “The abbot went there every morning to greet the rising sun. They kept all their best stuff in there, so it had to be tight as a drum. Logical place for a temporary strongroom.”
The staircase ended in a steel door. The only light came from a lantern Musen had thought to bring with him from the gallery. “Hold it still, for pity’s sake,” Axeo said, scrabbling around the lock plate with his lock pick. “I need to see what I’m doing.”
“I thought it was all by feel.”
“It helps if you can actually see the keyhole.”
Five wards; four flipped easily, the fifth was stiff and nearly bent the pick. “That was so easy, you could’ve done it,” Axeo said, as the door moved under his hand. “Cover the lantern, you idiot. We’re not in the lighthouse business.”
They blanked off the windows as best they could with Axeo’s coat and Musen’s cloak and hood. When Musen unmasked the lantern, they saw a stack of steel strongboxes, floor to ceiling, each one with at least one padlock. Axeo groaned. “How long does a man stay put out when you thump him?”