How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It

by K. J. Parker

  “I think we got away with it,” Faustinus said, as I tottered away from the window, still in sick and feeble character. “You look awful,” he noticed.

  “I’m fine,” I said, but it took me a moment to pull myself together. “Just acting. Now what?”

  “Let’s not get carried away,” Nicephorus said. “Thirty seconds at an open window is one thing. Besides, we don’t actually need you for anything just now.”

  Nor he did. One thing I’d found out about the First Citizen and Father of his Country: he didn’t do much. Hardly anything. It was more a case of keeping him on a leash, to stop him interfering in things he didn’t understand and screwing them up.

  “He was a clown,” Artavasdus confided in me the next day, over Lysimachus’ favourite breakfast of barley rolls, fermented cabbage and green tea. I despise fermented cabbage. “He worshipped the old man, but once he was gone, the fool started believing what we said about him. He forgot he was nothing but the old man’s minder, started thinking he’d actually done it all. To tell you the truth, he was starting to get out of control.”

  They made me do exercises. Lysimachus had been an arena champion, so at that time naturally he was amazingly lean and fit. Once he quit the sand and found himself with access to unlimited food, he started eating with a sort of savage passion. His arena metabolism burned most of it off, but they told me he was starting to get blurred round the edges at the end. But that wouldn’t do for me. Everyone expected Lysimachus to have the physique of a heroic statue, and that was non-negotiable.

  “Actually,” Faustinus told me, as I lay on my back lifting some ridiculous weight on a bar, “you were about right when we caught you. About the same build as him, I mean. But people wouldn’t believe that, you see.”

  I could accept that. A friend of mine who used to make a living cutting dies for counterfeit coins told me once: a forgery’s got to be better than the original.

  And then there were the scars. Everybody knew Lysimachus had scars, because he’d been an arena champion, and then he’d been speared in the back saving the General’s life one time. Actually, they told me, while Nicephorus was stropping the razor, he had remarkably few scars for a sand fighter, because he was good, therefore he didn’t get himself all cut up, but that’s not what people expect to see, is it?

  We’d negotiated a bit on this issue. I’d started off from the position that I was a wizard with sealing wax and greasepaint. They weren’t having that. It shows how much I’d managed to please them that they were prepared to modify their ideas at all; they’d figured on leaving me deckle-edged, like a worn-out saw. Instead we compromised on a relatively small number of well-documented scars, which Nicephorus executed himself with a surprisingly light touch for such a big man. They had to be packed with saltpetre to get them to age quickly. It hurt like hell and I had to dig deep into character to stop myself yelling the house down.

  Time out, while I make a point that’s probably occurred to you already.

  Lysimachus was an arena fighter and, until he heard the call to a higher destiny, Blue to the core, the way my dad was Green. The sand boys say: you only get really good at fighting if you enjoy it. A bit like my theory of acting, I guess. You have to take it seriously. Well, yes, obviously you take a fight seriously if you want to stay alive. But that, according to the sand boys, isn’t the point. If you fight just to stay alive, sooner or later you’ll lose. You need to fight to win. You need to enjoy winning, more than anything else in the whole world. To get that enjoyment, you need to relish your opponent’s defeat, and his pain, and his death.

  Which maybe explains why my dad was so good at what he did. He wasn’t the biggest man ever, he didn’t have muscles like – well, Lysimachus, or (come to that) me. He was pretty nimble on his feet but he couldn’t do back somersaults or jump his own height. But every time he went into a fight – I don’t think I can do better than his own favourite simile. It’s like going to meet your best girl, he said. Paraphrase that for clarity. It’s not just a case of liking to hurt people. You need to be in love with it.

  Am I in love with what I do? Maybe I wouldn’t go that far. Married to it would be closer to the mark. But, yes, a chip off the old block, to that limited extent. I go about my craft with the same – I’m reaching for a word here – the same whole-heartedness that he went about his.

  And now the chip stands back and considers the block, by means of a mirror, called Lysimachus. One way of looking at it, it makes the job easier, because I know what makes this man tick. Easy-peasy. Take my dad, and then imagine that, through some inconceivable intervention of the Invincible Sun, he comes across a cause he genuinely believes in, which comes to inform and motivate his every thought and action. That would be Lysimachus.

  On the other hand, I told you my trick with the imaginary mirror. I look into it and I see Lysimachus. I look into it and I see my father. I look into it and I see me.

  Not a pleasant thought.

  9

  Once the scars had healed up, I met an ambassador.

  No big deal, they told me, because this clown never met the real Lysimachus, but he insists on talking to the top man, and they’re prepared to give us credit, and we need the grain shipments. It’ll be good practice for you, and we can show the two of you on a balcony, and everyone will know where their next meal’s coming from.

  I didn’t like the idea. The one aspect of Lysimachus I was still having trouble with was his arrogance. That came from me growing up in Poor Town, where everybody knows his place, like in every pack of predators. In the Themes, your place is your most valued possession, because it guarantees that you’ll always eat something and sleep somewhere, and it takes much of the stress and anxiety out of life. You know who you’re allowed to beat up, and who’s allowed to beat up on you. It’s only the highest echelons, the big boss men in each Theme, who have absolute freedom of thought and action, and even they’re nominally subject to the law and the emperor and stuff like that – very nominally, but I guess it’s the difference between having a sky and no sky at all. And to achieve the status that teaches you how to be arrogant, you need to pass through a lifetime of very vivid and powerful experiences, mostly getting beaten up and beating up other people. I have a fine imagination, but I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to extrapolate all that.

  Don’t be such a prima donna, they told me. Get on with it.

  They dressed me up in a senator’s gown and trotted me down about a million miles of corridor to the Shell Chamber, so-called because its walls are tiled with mother of pearl, one of the wonders of the City and unbelievably vulgar. I did my entrance, quickening my step as I walked through the door to make sure I was a clean stride ahead of the other three.

  The ambassador was a big man, broad-shouldered, fat in that almost elegant way – he bulged all over but nothing wobbled – with a shiny bald head; very dark for a milkface, with a snub of a nose like a thumb and eyes the colour of a clear sky in winter. He wore plain unbleached linen, beautifully tailored, over a yellow silk vest and stockings, and dainty sequinned slippers on his tiny feet. They’d briefed me on his people. They lived a long way away – six weeks across the open sea, which they were able to cross because of their amazing long, low, clinker-built ships, which zipped along at an amazing speed and rode out storms that would send anything we’ve got to the bottom. Their country was a very big island, by all accounts the earthly paradise. It had a ridiculously long growing season, and the north was flat and temperate, the south was hot with monsoons. Grain was stupidly cheap, grown on slave-worked plantations. What they wanted from us was the better things in life; decorated furniture, quality ceramics, tableware, and most of all books, which they’d recently heard about and thought sounded like a really nice idea.

  “Sure,” I said to him. “And everything we send you, you’ll copy, and then you won’t need to buy from us any more. That’s not good business.”

  His translator toned it down a bit, presumably, but I saw his fa
ce stiffen. Still, it was what Lysimachus would have said. At the edge of my peripheral vision, Faustinus had that taut look, but I ignored him.

  The translator turned back to me. “And why not?” he said. “When we buy something, surely we buy the right to use it as we see fit.”

  “No, you don’t,” I said. “You buy one copy, that’s all. Look, you’ve come a long way and I’m sorry to disappoint you, but there it is. Our stuff’s the best in the world, that’s why you want it so badly. We can find buyers for it any day of the week, and they won’t rip us off like you’re planning to do. Nice to have met you, enjoy the rest of your stay in our fair city.”

  The translator had trouble with that, I could tell. I made a point of keeping my peripheral vision tight, because Artavasdus was pulling faces at me, I don’t know what the other two were doing but presumably something similar. The ambassador stopped to think about it. I waited, looking bored.

  “Surely,” the translator said, “we can find a compromise.”

  “Ah,” I said, “now you’re talking. Fine, here’s the deal. You buy what you like, but on the understanding that what you’re paying for is the right to copy. That’ll be expensive.”

  I paused. No point going on too long, or the translator would’ve forgotten half of what I’d said.

  “You’re thinking: screw him, we’ll buy Robur goods elsewhere on the open market. And, yes, you could do that, so I’m prepared to be reasonable. I’ll charge you double what the stuff is worth at home, which still works out cheaper for you than getting it from the Aelians. Wheat and oats cost you practically nothing, so it’s no skin off your nose. Or we can forget the whole thing, I really don’t mind. Up to you.”

  The ambassador frowned, then stuck out his hand. I grinned and shook it. “How much does he want?” I asked the translator.

  “How much can you supply?” the translator replied, without needing to confer.

  I was in trouble after that. What the hell were you thinking of, are you out of your tiny mind, you realise you nearly jeopardised, et cetera. I didn’t need all that; I was shaking and drained after half an hour of running on sheer nerve – it’s a bit like crossing a wide expanse of ice that you know won’t bear your weight: you can only do it if you go really fast and keep going.

  “It worked, didn’t it?”

  Yes, they told me, but that’s beside the point. No, I told them, it’s not; and I realised I was still in character, and they’d stopped yelling and were listening to me.

  That was scary. “Look,” I said, back to being little contemptible Notker from Poor Town. “It’s what he would’ve done. I know it was, I could feel it in my marrow. If I’d been nice and polite and accommodating it wouldn’t have been right. And we’d have got half of what we’re going to get.”

  “It was supposed to be a dry run,” Nicephorus said. He was the least upset of the three of them. “That was the whole idea. That man didn’t know you, you didn’t have to be convincing.”

  “It’s not like that,” I said. “It’s all or nothing. Either I’m him or I’m me. Otherwise it’ll just fall to bits.”

  “We never used to let Lysimachus see ambassadors until the deal was actually signed,” Faustinus pointed out. “But this one insisted.”

  “Proves my point,” I said.

  “Be that as it may.” Nicephorus was being the boss dog of the pack, but it wasn’t the role he was cut out for. “All right,” he went on, “you were right, as it happens. But you didn’t do as you were told.”

  “Fine,” I said. “So, if you could just clarify. Which is more important, doing it right or doing what you tell me to?”

  “He thinks he knows better than we do,” Artavasdus said.

  “As far as my job goes,” I said, “I probably do.”

  “Smart, though,” Faustinus put in. “I hadn’t thought of it like that. Them copying our stuff, I mean. You were right about that,” he said, actually talking to me, not the others.

  “It’s the difference between buying a ticket to the play and buying the play,” I said.

  They looked at each other.

  “All right,” Artavasdus said, “so he’s smart. In the tiny, specialised segment of life in which he has knowledge and experience, he’s no fool. But we can’t have him making policy decisions.”

  “That’s up to you,” I said. “You decide what I do. But I have to do it my way. His way. And would you please talk to me occasionally, not each other.”

  “Our fault,” Nicephorus said, “for running before we can walk. And it hasn’t turned out so bad, and we got away with it, so no harm done. But Arta’s right,” he said, turning to me. “You do not run this city. Got that?”

  “He didn’t,” I said, “so there shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “I’m beginning to wish we’d never embarked on this,” Artavasdus said. “Still, I’ll hand it to you,” he went on, addressing me. “You’re just like him. I hated the man, just so’s you know.”

  “I can’t say I like him much,” I replied.

  To what extent am I justified in making myself the hero of the piece?

  I told you earlier that I’m much better at writing parts for other people, and I imagine by now you’ll agree. Also, there’s a sort of unspoken law that the principal character has to be the hero; so much so that we use the two terms interchangeably. So, fine. I’m the protagonist of this story, because I’m the protagonist of my life. Hero, though, implies actions of heroic stature – great deeds, brave, clever, both. I’m telling you about bits of my story in which I did well, or I think I did well, and subsequent events don’t absolutely disprove my opinion; so, that makes me the hero. For now, anyway.

  But – I’ve glanced back, most uncharacteristically, at what I wrote at the beginning (I rarely read what I’ve written; usually there isn’t time) and I did use that word: history. That implies a commitment to the truth, whatever that may be. So. So what? I’m writing down what actually happened, not making anything up, not leaving things out.

  But there’s more to it than that, or I’d be able to play Sechimer every bit as well as Otho does, and obviously I couldn’t do that. It’s the bit extra that you put into the part. We both say the same words, but Otho is a genius and I’m not, so Otho’s Sechimer is a real live human being and mine isn’t. Also, Otho’s Sechimer is completely different from everyone else’s.

  Words, facts; it’s what I put into the facts that makes the subtle difference – between me being the hero, the villain, the comic relief, the guy who comes on to move the chairs at the end of Act 1 so nobody trips over them during the fight scene. And that’s all about how you see yourself.

  In my case, I see myself exclusively in a series of distorting mirrors, as someone else, see above. To which you naturally and reasonably reply, so what? I’m profoundly interested in myself, nobody else gives a damn, that’s how it should be. But not when it impacts on my capacities as a historian. I don’t know. Maybe I should’ve written this in the third person and confined myself to dates and battles.

  Three more public appearances: two were just balcony scenes, the third was laying a wreath on the tomb of the first Blue to die in the siege. They didn’t want me to, but I said a few words, which went down really well with the Themesmen; they cheered and stamped their feet and threw their hats in the air, which is quite a tribute when you think what hats cost these days.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Nicephorus said. “There was no need. He never usually makes a speech.”

  “He’s been sick,” I told him. “They’ve been worried about him, we’ve had riots because they were worried. So he’d have made a speech.”

  He had no answer to that, so he let the matter drop.

  Next day I was in my room lifting those horrible weights when all three of them came in, and Faustinus shut the door and wedged it with the back of a chair. I wasn’t sure I liked that.

  “Obviously,” Nicephorus said, “he wasn’t married.”

  I shru
gged. “Just as well,” I said.

  “Absolutely,” said Artavasdus. “Actually, he was more inclined the other way, if you know what I mean.”

  “I might have a problem with that,” I said.

  “Lucky for you, he kept it quiet,” Nicephorus said. “But he was definitely both sides of the fence, so we need to take care of that.”

  “Explain what you mean about taking care.”

  “There was a certain amount of gossip,” Faustinus joined in. “He was seeing an actress.”

  He made it sound so dreadful I couldn’t help laughing. “First I’ve heard of it,” I said.

  “I thought it was fairly common knowledge among you people.”

  “We have a first-rate internal intelligence network,” I said. “It’s vital to know who’s screwing who, to avoid unpleasant conflicts when you’re casting a piece. So, if one of us had been—”

  “But he was.” Artavasdus was about to enjoy himself, I could tell. “Pretty well everybody knows about it, except you.” He treated me to the nastiest sympathetic smile I’ve ever had the misfortune to share a room with. “Always the last to know, as the saying goes. Her name’s Hodda.”

  He could have kicked me in the balls instead, but, no, he had to be cruel. “I find that hard to believe.”

  I’d made his day. “You think you know people,” he said. “I imagine your friends kept it from you. Nobody likes to be the messenger.”

  I took a deep breath. Didn’t matter. Hardly anything does. “So,” I said. “What’s it got to do with anything?”

  Nicephorus gave me his steady look. “He’s been ill,” he said, “but he’s better now. If the affair’s suddenly broken off, it’ll look funny. So—”