How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It

by K. J. Parker

  She sighed. “It’s just,” she said, “every time my life starts to smell, there you are. Not your fault, maybe, but it’s a fact. Can’t argue with facts.”

  She was starting to get on my nerves. “It’d be better if we were on the same side, just this once,” I said. “For both of us.”

  “True.” She smiled. “I forgive you. Right, let’s start again. What are you going to do?”

  A thought had just crossed my mind. “Did you tell those clowns how to find me?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t know where you were.”

  “No, but you knew where they could start looking.”

  She closed her eyes, then opened them; she was being patient with an unreasonable man. “They’d closed my theatre,” she said. “I had wages to pay. And there wasn’t much I could tell them. And if I’d known who they were or what they wanted you for—”

  “Fine,” I said. “Just clearing the air. Anything else you’d like to tell me?”

  “No.”

  “That’s all right, then.”

  There are times when it’s good to claim the moral high ground; remarkably few of them, in my experience. “How’s business at the Gallery?”

  “Packing them in like dried figs. The script’s lousy, but they don’t seem to mind. And you never did deliver that curtain raiser you owe me.”

  “All right,” I said. “So what do you think I ought to do?”

  Her face changed. “Now just promise you’ll hear me out, all right? Only I know you. You can be so quick to fly off the handle sometimes.”

  “I promise.”

  She paused, and I knew a Big Speech was coming. “Just ask yourself this,” she said. “Precisely what has this city ever done for you?”

  I wasn’t sure if I was expected to reply. “In what sense?”

  “In any bloody sense. Think about it, Notker. Everybody keeps banging on about our Robur heritage and our place in the sun and our manifest destiny, but what does this city mean to you? Because to me it’s just a place where I happen to live, that’s all. And the people here, they’ve done nothing for me. I’ve done it all myself. I’ve fought like a tiger to get what little I’ve got; nobody’s ever given me anything.”

  “I wasn’t aware anyone was supposed to.”

  “Maybe not. Proves my point. They don’t owe us anything, fine. We don’t owe them anything. Oh, and one small detail. At some point, in the course of some enterprise we didn’t know about and had no say in, the glorious Empire pissed off the savages so badly, they swore to wipe every last Robur off the face of the earth. Don’t know if you keep abreast of the news, but on the other side of the wall there’s a lot of people wanting to kill us. Now that makes me uncomfortable.”

  I grinned at her. “You don’t say.”

  “Not a joke, Notker. And one of these days, they’ll come for us. And I don’t want to be here when it happens.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I agree with every word you’ve said, as it happens. So what are you still here for? Get on a ship. Go somewhere else.”

  She shook her head, and there was something about the gesture. “Last time I saw you I gave you a stick of whiteface,” she said. “Trouble is, I don’t think greasepaint’s going to be enough, when the time comes. Use your brain, Notker. If the City falls and everybody dies, any Robur that’re left are going to stick out like a sore thumb. And it’s all very well saying, go a long way away, but I don’t know how far is far enough.”

  “You may be right. Not sure where this is leading, though.”

  “Oh, don’t be stupid. If the savages are bound to win anyway, why not be on their side? Why not help them?” She paused, but only for a moment. “Do a deal. Personal immunity, in return for valuable assistance. You can do it. You’re him, for crying out loud.”

  You think you’ve heard everything. “You’re crazy,” I said.

  “I’m serious. It’s the only way out of this.”

  I remember one time I was cornered by this dog. Bloody thing was obviously mad, it was foaming at the mouth and its eyes were fixed on me; if I’d made the smallest movement it’d have had me. So I kept very still and deadly calm, until its owner came and called it off me. Sorry you were bothered, chum, he said, leaving me sprawling against a wall with pee running down my leg. But nothing is ever wasted. Thanks to that dog, I knew how to handle this situation.

  “I think you’ve got the wrong idea about how things are fixed,” I told her. “I may look like him, but I’m me, and those three know it. I can’t wipe my arse without their permission, let alone borrow the keys of the City gates and take them for a midnight stroll.”

  “You’re him,” she said. “Everybody thinks so.”

  “Your point?”

  She stretched out her arms and fingers downwards, as far as they would go. Very nice gesture, which I hadn’t seen before. “You appear in the market square,” she said, “all over blood. There’s a conspiracy, you tell everybody: Nicephorus and Artavasdus and Faustinus just tried to kill me. Ten minutes later, there won’t be enough of them left to fill a pie. Then you’ll be in charge. Then you can do what you damn well like.”

  Didn’t I tell you she’s smart? Smarter than me, anyhow, by a long mile. “I couldn’t do it,” I said. “I haven’t got that sort of nerve.”

  “We could do it,” she said. “We could’ve done it tonight: it would’ve been easy.”

  I nodded slowly. “Yes,” I said, “we could.”

  “So next time, we do it.”

  “Let me think about it.”

  She was that close to hitting me. “What in God’s name is there to think about? Let’s just do it. Say you’ll do it.”

  First time I met her, I was a shepherd and she was a shepherdess, and we had these appalling fake lambs, on wheels, which we had to drag along on bits of string. It wasn’t supposed to be funny. We had a little dance; I could do the steps now, if you asked me to. Now, though, all I could think of was the old proverb about holding a wolf by the ears. You can’t hold her; you daren’t let her go.

  “Fine,” she said.

  It was as though I’d woken up; and there was Hodda, my oldest friend in the business, kneeling in front of me with her hands in her lap and that you-clown-Notker look on her face. “Think about it,” she said. “I wouldn’t want you to rush into anything, God knows.”

  Which must have had the desired effect; because immediately I thought: hang on, though. We could do it. Between us we could pull it off, because actually it would be pretty straightforward, certainly not much harder than what I was already doing. And the difference would be, I’d have her to help me, and say what you like about Hodda, she’s smart, really smart, and cool as an icicle when the heat is on. And, if she hadn’t beaten me to it, it’d only have been a matter of time before I’d thought of it myself.

  “We’d have to be careful,” I said.

  I was a shepherd and she was a shepherdess; I was sixteen, she was a whisker under a year older. She’d been on the stage for ten years at that point; it was my first job. They didn’t actually throw things at us, but probably only because they were saving their ammunition for the low comedians.

  It was an old-fashioned extravaganza; it had a technical meaning back then, sort of a cross between a fairy play and a burlesque. You were supposed to take an incident from myth or folktale, or you could just about get away with a scene from Saloninus; add a crowd of pretty but irrelevant young people singing and dancing, the comics doing their bits, with lots of colourful costumes and clever stage effects and always ending with a dance ensemble. As a genre it went the way of all flesh years ago, and no great loss. Everybody started off in extravaganza, and everybody got out of it and into something better just as soon as they possibly could.

  Anyway, at some point during the run (I think we lasted fifteen performances) Hodda and I promised we’d be true to each other until the stars went out and the sky came crashing down. That was some time ago, but the stars still shine and the
sky’s still up there somewhere, and a promise is a promise, at least as far as I’m concerned. I remember that when I made that promise, my back was aching and my feet were killing me, stuffed in worn-out pumps two sizes too small, and the sweat was running down my face, and we both stank to high heaven. You never forget your first kiss, they say. Mine tasted of pig-fat and rouge.

  Of course, a lot depends on your definition of the word true.

  12

  The conspirators were vexed and unhappy. Admiral Sisinna was insisting on seeing all four of us, and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  “He’s a great man,” Nicephorus said grudgingly. “He’s rebuilt the Fleet so it’s practically back to where it was before the siege, and he sorted out the Eldat pirates, and he’s practically never here, which is a blessing in itself.”

  “But you don’t want me to meet him.”

  “Hardly,” Artavasdus said. “He’s sharp as a needle.”

  “Does he know me?”

  “I think he’s met you maybe half a dozen times, at council meetings. Makes no secret of the fact he doesn’t like you.”

  “We have something in common,” I said. “That’s nice.”

  “He needs your support,” Faustinus said. “He needs five thousand men for the Fleet, which means reintroducing the press gang, and you can imagine what the Themes think about that.”

  And quite right too. When I was a kid there was this young lad in the Greens, a quiet, pleasant boy most of the time, apprenticed to a violin maker and doing very well. But he had a secret vice: he liked to hang out in the dockside bars. He used to go there and sit in a corner, quiet as a little mouse, and wallow in all the raw life and energy (and I’ve been in those places, and you can have it), and one day the press-gang burst in. Their time-honoured method is to bash everybody’s heads with axe handles, tie them up and throw them in the back of a cart, and the next thing they know they’re on a ship, proud and fearless sons of the sea. The violin maker’s boy didn’t really take to the maritime life, and he died of scurvy somewhere off the Five Fingers. They threw his body over the side and sent home his coat and his socks to his mother.

  I don’t have much time for the Themes, but I’ll say this for them: they put a stop to the press, even before they got an official say in the running of the City. It took some doing, and it was all good honest reconnaissance work, no heavy stuff. They had kids watching the Fleet barracks, and when the press-gang set out they were followed every step of the way, with relays of runners to pass on the glad tidings; by the time they fetched up in the docks, there’d be nobody about except old men and a few cats. So the gangs started hitting the bars further inland, but what they mostly caught was drunks, thieves and no-goods, who caused the Fleet far more trouble than they were worth, so the raids gradually died out, and some genius suggested increasing rates of pay as a way of solving the manpower crisis, and, guess what, it worked. So if Admiral Sisinna wanted to start up that old game, no wonder he needed all the backing he could get.

  “Just a moment,” I said. “Is that actually necessary?”

  Artavasdus stared at me. “You what?”

  “Bringing back the press,” I said. “It’s barbaric.”

  Artavasdus rolled his eyes and Faustinus looked embarrassed. Nicephorus did his look-at-me-being-patient face. “I agree,” he said. “But it’s necessary.”

  “Is it?”

  “Absolutely. Sisinna’s building sixty more ships. He needs crews for them. But the Themes won’t let merchant seamen sign up, because Fleet men don’t pay guild dues. Therefore we need the press.”

  “Now look,” Artavasdus said. “This is policy. During the meeting, you keep your face shut. Got that?”

  I pretended I hadn’t heard him. “There must be a better way,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” Nicephorus said. “Trouble is, nobody’s thought of it yet. So we’ll do it this way. And you will not rock the boat, understood?”

  At this point I was still thinking it over – that stuff I’d talked about with Hodda, you know. And, by coincidence, the stage I’d reached was Admiral Sisinna.

  If you took a step back and thought about it clear-mindedly, it was Sisinna and his ships that kept the City safe and functional; not the soldiers on the wall, certainly not the council, the senate or the Themes. As noted above, he spent very little of his time in the City, which was good in one sense and bad in another: good in that he didn’t interfere in politics if he could avoid it, bad because he couldn’t be used by one faction against another – actually, that was probably good, but you get what I mean. Now, if Hodda and I were going to pull off our little conjuring trick, a great deal would depend on the view Sisinna took of the matter. If Lysimachus seized control, Sisinna was the only man who could bring him down. But if Sisinna decided he liked Lysimachus after all, he could make Lysimachus’ position effectively unassailable.

  The third option would be to include Sisinna in the plot against Lysimachus’ life, get rid of him and replace him with someone we could control, but I didn’t like that one bit. Point one: he was never there, and therefore couldn’t be torn to bits by a furious city mob. Point two: everyone knew that Sisinna didn’t get involved in that sort of thing, so it’d be downright suspicious if we tried to implicate him. Point three: for what it was worth he was the best admiral we’d had for a generation, and we needed him desperately if we wanted to survive. Not that I’d have tried arguing that one with Hodda; also, come to think of it, with myself. The City and the Robur were past saving, I thought we’d agreed on that. But still two valid points nonetheless.

  All right, then.

  Believe it or not, I’d never been able to imitate Sisinna successfully, and I gave up trying a long time ago. He’s a tiny little man, with small hands and feet and a head rather too big for his body, little narrow, sloping shoulders, small eyes, a lion’s mane of wavy white hair and a thin line of beard and moustache that looks like he drew it on with chalk. I’d give a fortune to have his voice; it’d be perfect for Saloninus, Theudric, all the classics. They say he was a fencing champion in his youth, though these days he walks with a stick; also, that he writes theological commentaries in his spare time, and possibly even poetry. He’s married into one of the great patrician houses, so naturally he keeps a mistress: a new one every five years, the current one being an actress I was in a revival of Charity with, about two years ago, and who’d worked for Hodda until she threw her out.

  The meeting went well. Sisinna stated his case briefly and lucidly, the three conspirators agreed with him, and then it was my turn. The Themes aren’t going to like this, I said. No, he said, probably not. Never mind, I said, you can count on my support.

  He looked at me oddly, sort of shrugged, thanked us for our time and went away. “Well done,” Artavasdus said to me, after he’d gone. “Glad to see you can do as you’re told at least some of the time.”

  The actress’s name was Auxentia. I managed to get a message to Hodda, who passed it on. The problem, naturally, was getting away from the three conspirators, and finding a place for a meeting.

  “There’s no need,” Nicephorus said. “You don’t have to see her again for at least a week.”

  “But I want to.”

  He looked at me. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  I tried to look embarrassed. “Look,” I said. “You probably know, Hodda and I had a sort of a thing once.”

  “Yes. So?”

  “Well, it’s come back.”

  He did his oh-for-God’s-sake sigh. “Have you any idea how inconvenient that would be? Arrangements. Making sure you’re seen and not seen. Guards’ duty rosters. You can’t just go flitting about the place—”

  “Please?”

  I learned how to say please from Hodda. She’s better at it, but I’m still very good. “Just make absolutely sure Arta doesn’t find out,” he said. “He reckons I’m far too soft on you as it is. He says, if you want a pet with substandard
intelligence and revolting habits, buy a dog.”

  So it was all arranged. I would be at the house where Hodda and I met, and Auxentia would bring Sisinna. From Auxentia we gathered that he liked black tea, honey-cakes and a straight, hard chair, because of his bad back.

  He looked at me when he walked in and for a moment I was scared stiff. But it wasn’t that kind of look. He sat down; the girls poured tea and left. I sat down opposite him.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said.

  “This is all a bit cloak-and-dagger, isn’t it?” he said. “I thought we settled everything at the meeting.”

  I nodded. “I’ve been thinking,” I said.

  “Is that right?”

  Everybody’s a comedian. Mind you, he had good timing. “I said I’d try and sell the idea to the Themes,” I told him, “and I’ll do that, if you want me to. But I don’t think they’ll accept it, even from me.”

  He frowned. “Maybe not. I know it’s an emotive issue.”

  “You bet,” I said. “And every time I support something and it turns out that people hate the idea, the respect they have for me goes down a notch, and I don’t like that.”

  He dipped his head very slightly to acknowledge a fair point. “So?”

  “So,” I said, “we need a better idea.”

  He treated me to a superior smile. “Speaking for myself,” he said, “I hate the press. It’s a crude and inefficient way of raising men and it causes a lot of ill feeling. Unfortunately, until someone comes up with a better idea we’re stuck with it.”

  “If the Themes let you recruit from the merchant marine,” I said, “it wouldn’t be necessary.”

  “Yes,” he said. “But they won’t. Every merchant seaman has to belong to the Sailors’ Guild, and gives a tenth of his pay to guild funds. In the Fleet, belonging to the guild is a court-martial offence, so they don’t make any contribution to Theme funds.” He sighed. “I know for a fact there’s a lot of men who’d jump at the chance of signing on with the Fleet just to get out of the clutches of the guild, but they daren’t: they’ve got wives and families at home.” He gave me another of those you-halfwit smiles. “I’d far rather have volunteers than pressed men, believe me. But if there’s one thing we both know about this city, it’s that you can’t fight the Themes. Isn’t that right?”