How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It

by K. J. Parker

  “What the hell do you look like?” she said.

  I looked over my shoulder. “Keep your voice down, for God’s sake.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You’re in trouble again.”

  “Yes.”

  “How much?”

  “Actually,” I said, without thinking, “it’s not money.”

  I had her attention. “What have you done?”

  “Can we go inside, please?”

  “You look absolutely ridiculous, do you know that?”

  The Gallery of Illustration used to be a warehouse, with a high roof and a loft for storing bales of cloth or whatever. The loft was perfect for a gallery, with an outside staircase going up to it. Backstage is one poky little room, with hampers of old costumes, two or three tables where you can make up, a big old trunk with three padlocks where she keeps her money and a couple of rickety old chairs. “Well?” she said.

  “Has anyone we don’t know been here asking after me?”

  She knows I don’t drink during the day so she didn’t offer me one, but her hand shook slightly as she poured her own. “No. Why?”

  “People I don’t know are asking after me,” I said.

  She raised her eyebrows. “Why would anybody want to do that?” she said.

  “Don’t ask me.”

  “You’re not in the habit of pissing off strangers,” she said. “Only your friends and colleagues.”

  “Exactly.”

  She drank her wine, looking at me over the rim of the glass. It’s a mannerism that has made her very popular with men over the years, and I guess it’s like the violin: you have to keep practising even when you’re not performing to an audience. “What’s any of that got to do with me?”

  “I need a favour.”

  “Of course you do, why else are you here? Not to see me, bet your life.”

  Well, yes, we were sort of good friends once, and then we weren’t friends at all. “I’ve got a play for the Rose.”

  “So I heard. Any good?”

  “Garbage,” I said. “Good part for Einhard, and Andronica fighting a sword duel in skin-tight chainmail. Anyway, it’s finished, and I need someone to deliver it for me.”

  “And collect the money.”

  “Quite.”

  She nodded. “Ten per cent.”

  I gazed at her. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “It’s you I’m thinking of,” she said, butter wouldn’t melt. “I go into a manager’s office, hand him a manuscript, fine, I’m just the messenger. But he’s not going to hand over cash money to me unless I’m your duly accredited agent. And the going rate—”

  “Hodda, I need that money. I may have to be invisible for quite some time.”

  “Take it or leave it.”

  “Fine.” I stood up and grabbed my hat. That’s all I did.

  “Well?”

  I sat down again. “Hodda,” I said, “In the past I may not have been strictly honest with you.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “About – well, things that happened long ago and far away.”

  She has this nasty sceptical streak. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “Really you’re the crown prince of Olbia in disguise.”

  I scowled at her. “Something like that. The point being, for all I know these people might be very unpleasant indeed, and obviously while they’re on the scene I can’t work, so I really do need that money. All of it.”

  She pursed her lips. “I could do with a two-handed curtain raiser,” she said.

  “I could do with a hundred per cent of what I’m owed.”

  She smiled. “Deal,” she said. “You write me fifteen minutes of cheerful froth, I’ll go and get your money for you.”

  Like I said, I’m not a writer. “Usual terms?”

  “We can discuss that later,” she said. “And I tell you what. I’ll throw in a stick of whiteface absolutely free. Just to show there’s no hard feelings.”

  I hung around just long enough to patch up the worst of the damage to my codbelly complexion, then stomped off in a huff back to the docks. I really didn’t fancy another three days or so cooped up in that loathsome smelly room, writing light comedy for free, but that’s what happens when your oldest and dearest friends help you out.

  4

  While I was gouging myself inside out trying to be amusing in my dockside hutch, things were happening in the outside world, although nobody saw fit to tell me about them. There was another trebuchet bombardment, which hit a dancing academy for daughters of the nobility; no survivors. There was a riot – not Blues against Greens but Blues and Greens against the government, and some clown sent in the cavalry and there was a horrible mess. I very much doubted that the two were related, since the Themes don’t tend to send their kids to learn the pas de deux, but it all went to add to my general sense of gloom and unease. I like a quiet life, with money and things to spend it on, and clean clothes, and soap.

  No point trying to find out what the riot was supposed to be about, since a foreigner wouldn’t be interested; couldn’t really eavesdrop effectively because people have that tendency to clam up if they think a milkface is listening. All I gathered was that there were now soldiers on the streets as well as on the wall – oh, and all the theatres were closed until further notice. That made me grin, until it occurred to me that Hodda might not have been round to the Rose yet; in which case I was screwed. So, I reflected a moment later, was she, not to mention the whole profession, but probably not nearly as screwed as I was.

  Trouble was, I had no idea where to find her. Presumably she lived somewhere, in the sense of an enclosed space containing a bed, as and when she needed one of her own, but under normal circumstances that would be none of my business. Nobody knows where anyone lives when they’re not at, in or fluttering moth-like around the theatre; it’s not relevant. The Gallery would be locked up, and I daren’t show my face in any of the usual places, not even covered in pink grease. I couldn’t even stay where I was for more than a day or so, unless I wanted to exhaust my tiny treasury. I counted my blessings and found that I had a hundred and six trachy, nowhere to sleep, a two-handed curtain raiser with original songs to popular melodies that I couldn’t sell, boots with holes in them and strange men looking for me, and all because a bunch of idiots felt like tearing up the pavement and throwing things. I do wish people would have more consideration.

  I can imagine what you’re thinking – not telepathy, just a process of logical deduction. For a start, you’re reading this, so you can read, so obviously you’re educated, therefore you belong to the better sort – and I know you people like the back of my hand. You’re thinking: if he’s starving it’s his own stupid fault, because there’s always work in this man’s town; not the sort he’s used to, maybe, drooping around theatres and rich men’s drawing rooms for a few hours in the evening parroting someone else’s words (he doesn’t even have to make up what he says, for pity’s sake: a writer does that for him). No, proper hard work, toting barges, shifting bales, fetching, carrying, digging holes in the ground and filling them up again. But that wouldn’t occur to him; he’s too proud. Nobody to blame, therefore, except himself.

  Couldn’t agree with you more, except for one thing. Not pride, because someone who spends day after day trudging from one audition to another, to be politely told he’s no good nohow, doesn’t have much of that commodity left. Not mortal terror of breaking into a sweat – try rehearsing a dance number, full costume in midsummer heat for five hours straight, because we open tomorrow and it’s still not right; and show me the bricklayer who could do that without passing out and being carted off in a wheelbarrow; and bear in mind, you’ve got to smile nicely the whole time, and be graceful – no, it’s not that. It’s simply that if you want to do casual work in this city, you need to be paid up with a Theme; and I’m not, and never have been, and won’t ever be if I can possibly help it. And before you ask, it’s none of your business. Family stuff. Private. So, you see, my o
ptions were somewhat circumscribed; jump off a bridge or starve. Or—

  5

  Actually, it sort of follows on from my earlier rant, because if I hadn’t spent my entire adult life in the profession, I doubt very much whether I’d have had the necessary skillset and physique for burgling houses. Years of song and dance have made me fit and agile; I can run from Cornmarket to Eastgate non-stop, and arm-wrestle stonemasons. And what’s the very essence of the burglar’s craft? Not being seen or heard. That’s something I know all about. There are times on the stage when you want everyone to look at you – your big speech; and other times (her big speech) when you’re actively deflecting the audience’s attention, unless you want her down on you like a ton of bricks the moment the curtain falls. Or when you’re waiting in the wings to come on, or when you’re lying dead; you don’t last five minutes in the trade unless you can keep perfectly still and quiet for a very long time, and be practically invisible.

  Translate all that into mundane accomplishments, such as shinning up drainpipes and walking quietly across dark rooms. You’ll realise, if you think about it for a moment, that I left something out.

  Something I happen to have, in fairly good measure, because of my theatrical training; but maybe not quite enough. It definitely takes nerve to walk out onto a stage in front of a hundred or so strangers; chills your blood, catches your breath, crimps your guts, see above under hearts and icy fingers. But there’s fear and there’s fear. Climbing up the side of a house, you can so easily get into trouble. Your foot can slip, or the drainpipe can come away in your hand. Then you reach the window, only to find the shutters are locked, so you try and go back down; only going down is a hell of a lot harder than going up, you’re scrabbling for your footholds in the dark and you wrenched the retaining nails half out of the wall on your way up, you felt them go. Or maybe the shutter’s not locked, in which case you have to hang by one hand while you fool about with it with the other (and by now your fingers are mortally weary, and maybe you sprained one or two of them, so they really can’t be relied on) and then arch your back to wriggle over the parapet before sliding on your gut with nothing to hang on to – and then suppose you actually make it inside, whereupon someone smashes your head with a hammer or a huge great dog tears your throat out. But the worst an audience can do is not like you.

  Which is why I chose the theatre, I guess. But there you go. I chose – well, remembered, a house; I’d entertained a select gathering of the best people there with impressions of leading personalities from politics and the arts, only a few weeks earlier. They’d shunted me off into a sort of scullery on the ground floor to get changed and made up, and I distinctly remembered noticing that the shutter didn’t close properly, and from the scullery to the drawing room you only had to walk down one corridor and open one unlocked door. No climbing up walls like a crane fly, no floundering about in the dark in unfamiliar surroundings, and I knew there was something worth having, and where to lay my hand on it.

  I didn’t bother with the whiteface. It makes your hands slippery. I went to bed, hoping to get an hour or two’s sleep, but that wasn’t going to happen, so I stared at the ceiling until I reckoned it was about time; then I muffled myself up, crept quietly down the stairs (good practice for the main event) and slipped out into the street. I hadn’t heard any footsteps while I’d been lying awake, and the street was empty. I made myself inconspicuous all the way down Fish Lane to the wall, then turned right and took the back alleys, eventually coming out at the foot of Hill Street. My house was one of the big villas clustered at the bottom, where the new money lives.

  The house was easy to recognise, because some clown with an unfortunate money-to-taste ratio had thought twin gateposts in the form of winged horses was a good idea. I traced round the western edge of the garden wall until I reached the house proper, then started counting windows. There wasn’t a glimmer of light to be seen.

  The shutter practically flung itself open as soon as I got the point of my knife into the crack. I stopped, kneeling under the sill, and counted to fifty, just in case I’d woken anyone up with my tiny mouse-like scratching, but no sound and no movement; everything was perfect. I hopped up over the sill, felt the flagstones under my feet, crouched down and waited some more, almost as if I was hoping something would go wrong. But it didn’t, so I stood up, walked delicately on the sides of my feet (the quietest way and you keep your balance; tiptoe is asking for trouble in the dark) until my fingertips connected with the door latch. Now latches sometimes rattle like hell, but this one didn’t, bless it, and I was out in the corridor, lined with rush matting (because nobody likes to hear servants clattering about when they’re trying to have a civilised conversation). By rights I should have stopped and listened some more, but it was obvious there wasn’t any point; you can feel when a house is alive, and this one wasn’t. Fifteen paces took me to the drawing-room door, which didn’t creak, so I needn’t have bothered with the pat of lard in my coat pocket. Directly opposite that door, unless some thoughtless idiot had moved it, was a cabinet, and in that cabinet was a collection of antique rings, cameos and brooches – I knew that, because they’d been stupid enough to have it open when I was there entertaining.

  I found the cabinet by walking into it, very slowly and softly; I felt one of the brass handles against my kneecap. The top drawer squeaked ever so softly, but I took my time and I knew the sound wouldn’t carry outside the room. I filled my left pocket with small, cold things. Job done. There were at least five more drawers, but greed isn’t one of my many faults. The pocketful would tide me over for a good long time. Taking more than I needed would be the act of a criminal. Then back the way I came; careful not to rush, which is the classic beginner’s mistake.

  Nobody in the pantry. I opened the shutter, poked my head out, nobody in the alley; climbed through, taking care to close the shutter behind me. Deep breath, then I walked briskly down the alley, each step severing the connection between me and any crime that may have been committed. At the end of the alley I turned left into Hill Mews, where someone stepped out of the shadows in front of me and hit me with a shovel.

  6

  I think I may have mentioned in passing that my father was a Theme boss, and you may have got the impression that I’m not proud of that fact. I’m not.

  He came to the City (God knows how often I’ve heard this) with fifty trachy in his pocket, from a mining camp in the Paralia. He was fourteen years old and he’d already killed three grown men; one in self-defence (he asserted) and two for money. Not a great deal of money, because life was cheap in the mining camps though everything else was extortionately expensive. The idea was, nobody would suspect a child of being a paid assassin, but a kid can slip something nasty in a grown man’s soup or cut his throat while he’s asleep, just as well as anyone else. Which was true for a while, but then the authorities (such as they were) got wise, and another good idea bit the dust; rough on my father, because he nearly got caught – standing over the foreman’s bed with a knife in his hand, hard to explain your way out of that. He didn’t try. He ran, and he was as slippery as an eel, and he stowed away on an ore barge and arrived in the City, one more scrap of human trash to add to an already formidable accumulation.

  His idea was to pick up where he’d left off back home, and one thing he wasn’t short of was nerve. He sneaked into the bedroom of one of the Green bosses with a razor in his pocket, then woke him up. If I can get in here, he pointed out, after the Green boss had let go of his throat, I can get in most places, and out again, and nothing to connect me to you.

  The Green boss explained to him that they didn’t do things that way, or at least not often enough to support a profession; that said, he could always use young men with guts and imagination, and if he cared to call back in the morning, using the door this time, they could have a useful discussion. Then, when my father was nodding and smiling and thanking him for giving him a break, the boss punched him across the room. Taught you something you
haven’t learned yet, he explained; never assume you’ve got away with anything, and don’t you ever tell anyone you had me at a disadvantage.

  Which is how my father joined the Greens, starting very much the way he was to carry on. Bear in mind that this was before the Themes were made legal (which only happened at the start of the siege, because the provisional government desperately needed manpower). Back then, just belonging to a Theme was a crime that could land you in the stone quarries or the galleys – which was awkward, since the Themes made sure that nobody in Poor Town who wasn’t a Blue or a Green could earn a living, on either side of the law. Anyone who tried got his legs broken, and the leg-breaker-in-chief for the whole of the west side of the City was my dad.

  It was a good line of work to be in, he never tired of telling me. It was safe as houses, because anyone who gave you any trouble would be floating face down in the harbour within twenty-four hours; you’ve got to have respect, or what have you got? The pay was good, and everybody went out of their way to be nice to the man who could have their shops burned to the ground on his say-so alone. From time to time there was friction with the authorities, but that was true for all Theme members; and if my father ever needed an alibi, or someone to make a confession on his behalf, there were plenty of men with families who could be counted on to oblige.

  It’s a great life, he used to tell me. And he watched me grow up big and strong; he used to grab hold of me and pinch my biceps; plenty of meat there, he’d say. And for a while, that was fine. I relished the way the other kids went out of their way to like me, and if anyone was mean to me he’d be sure to apologise first thing the next day, with a sort of terrified look in his eyes, which I thought was just grand. The only thing I found a bit frustrating was that my dad had taught me to fight, really well, but I never got the chance, because none of the other kids would ever stand up to me.