How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It

by K. J. Parker

  “And that’s how you steal the civil service.” She grinned at me. “Everything’s got to go through that office, and your people control the logjam. You’ll never get away with it.”

  I shrugged. “Vorderic and the giant,” I said. “The giant traps Vorderic in his cave and says he’s going to eat him at sunrise. During the night, Vorderic blinds the giant. The giant is very big and strong, but he can’t catch Vorderic because he can’t see him. If you want to tame a giant, put out his eyes.”

  “Actually, that is quite clever. Whatsisname thought of it, presumably.”

  “Yes. He’s smart. And I’m smart, for recognising that.”

  “Of course you are, dear. Out of interest, though, why are you bothering?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You just stole the civil service. Why? What do you want it for?”

  Trouble is, so many people are smart, and not necessarily the ones you want to be. “There are two people in a room, and one knife. Who would you rather had it, you or him?”

  “Throw it out the window.”

  “There is no window.” Trust me, there’s never a window. “Either we control it, or it’s a threat. That’s why I’m collecting things: the throne, the Senate, the army and now the service.”

  “And the Themes.”

  “Yes, them, too.”

  “But they’re all irrelevant,” she said. “You know that. So long as he’s out there.”

  “Fine.” I got up, walked over to the window and looked out. From our tower, you could see the sea. “Here’s an idea. We get hold of a couple of big winter coats and fill the pockets with—”

  “Small items of great value.”

  “Yes. When nobody’s looking, we slip out of the palace disguised as jobbing musicians. We stroll down to the docks and get on the first ship that’ll take us out of here. After that, our lives will be nothing but sheer uninterrupted pleasure.” I paused. “Why haven’t we done that?”

  She looked at me. “We’d never get out of the palace.”

  “Exactly. The two most conspicuous people in the City can’t just slip out of anywhere.”

  “In the middle of the night—”

  “Past all those guards. And don’t say, give them the night off, it doesn’t work like that. It’s the price we pay for not getting our throats cut in our sleep.”

  She lifted her head and gave me her best look. “Let’s try it.”

  “You what?”

  “Right now. A dummy run. Let’s see how far we can get. Bet you we make it out into the street.”

  “It’s broad daylight.”

  “Well, then. If we can make it out of here in the middle of the day, we’ll know that the middle of the day is a good time.” She paused and looked at me again. “You do want to go, don’t you?”

  “Are you crazy? Of course I do.” Pause. “Actually, I was going to ask you the same question.”

  “Me?”

  “You.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Being empress,” I said. “Best job in the world.”

  “Balls.” She smiled at me. “I’ve been here, what, two months—”

  “Less than that.”

  “I really don’t know, time just sort of all runs together in this place. It feels like two months. It feels like twenty years. I’ve never been so bored in all my life.”

  “Yes, but even so—”

  “If I have to stay in this place much longer, I’ll kill someone. You know what I do all day?”

  I’d asked myself that, certainly. “Nothing?”

  “Exactly.” Her eyes were blazing. And when they do that, you really can see them from the back of the gallery. “Beats me why anybody with half a brain would ever want this job. Makes no sense. What do people see in it? Dressing up in quaint costumes? Sitting still looking regal? I can do that at the Gallery of Illustration and get paid for it. Dear God.” She picked up a tea bowl, blue and white porcelain, very old and rare, dropped it and ground it into dust under her heel. “If I wanted to be an empress, I’d hire a writer to write me a play with an empress in it. That way, at least I’d be centre stage. I’d have something to do and people would listen to me. Being one for real—” Words failed her, never a good sign. “You can stuff it.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Same goes for me, too.”

  “Oh, you,” she said irritably, “you’ve got it easy compared to me. You get to leave the Imperial apartments. You don’t have to spend all day banged up with a mob of silly rich women.”

  “No,” I said, “I spend my days a couple of lengths ahead of getting killed, like the deer in a stag hunt. I tell you what, this job brings out the best in a person. I never realised quite how smart, imaginative and resourceful I am. And if I stopped being supremely all three for two minutes, my head’d be nailed up on a door somewhere. Bored? God, how I wish I could be bored. It must be sheer bliss.”

  We looked at each other.

  “We’ll need costumes,” she said.

  Thoughtful moment. It seemed like a lifetime since I’d last had any clothes of my own. As things stood, I didn’t even know where my clothes were kept; they were brought to me, several times a day, and whisked away again as soon as I stepped out of them. Even if I knew, it wouldn’t help. Apart from sheer silk underwear and linen shirts so fine you could barely feel them, my wardrobe consisted of dalmatics and divitisia, about a dozen of each, all identical, plus the buskins and lorus, both unique, which almost certainly hadn’t been washed for three hundred years and which stank. She was better off; they let her wear pretty frocks under the uniform, substantial enough that she could go out in the street in them without getting stared at. But inconspicuous, no. Even round the palace, cloth of gold embroidered with seed pearls gets you noticed.

  “We could make some,” I suggested, “out of blankets.”

  She gave me a don’t-try-my-patience look. “Really?”

  Good point. Our bed linen was only marginally less gorgeous than the Imperial regalia. “Don’t ask me to knock out a couple of guards so we can steal their kit,” I said. “I’m in enough trouble as it is.”

  “There must be servants in this building,” she said. “I mean proper servants, not Lord High Groom of the Chafing Dish servants. People who work for a living.”

  “There are,” I said. “I’ve seen them.”

  “So,” she said, “we sneak out, find where they sleep, and steal their spare clothes.”

  She hadn’t said it with any real conviction, so I didn’t bother answering. Instead, I pulled the red bell-rope. I had six bell-ropes, all colour-coded. The red one brought me Usuthus.

  “For purposes of our own,” I said to him, when he materialised scarily quickly, “Her Majesty and I need two battered old overcoats, the sort of thing the grooms in the stables wear.”

  “Master.”

  “I want you to fetch them. Don’t send anybody else. Don’t tell anyone who you want them for.”

  “Master.”

  “Quick as you like. And thank you.”

  He bowed and withdrew. “I don’t like that,” she said.

  “Nor me,” I told her. “He now knows that we’re up to something. I think I can trust him. By the same token, Gelimer thought he could trust his boyhood friends in the Senate, and Nicephorus thought he could trust Gelimer. Probably for much better reasons.”

  She sat down wearily on a chaise longue and put her feet up. “That screws that, then.”

  “For today,” I said. “But if we act normally for the rest of the day, maybe he’ll forget about it.”

  “Is that likely?”

  “No.”

  When Usuthus came back with the coats, I told him to leave them on the bed and go away. Then we examined them. Hiding them would be a problem in itself, because the royal bedchamber was painfully short of storage space. We tried lifting the mattress, but it was far too heavy, and the bed was boarded in (with exquisitely carved reliefs of scenes from scripture and pastoral fantasy) rig
ht down to the floor. Finally, by standing on a chair and tiptoe, I managed to stow them on top of the canopy over the bed.

  “We put them on under the divitision,” she said, “and take them somewhere where there’s a cupboard.”

  “Great idea. Where?”

  She thought, then pulled a face. “We sneak out and find somewhere with a cupboard.”

  The coats slid down off the canopy and landed in a smelly heap on the floor. I picked them up and threw them in the corner of the room. She gazed at them with utter distaste. “Saloninus says,” she said, “that the unexamined life is not worth living. Our lives are so examined we can’t even hide a coat. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  I sat down next to her, reached out and took her hand. She pulled it away. “I agree,” I said. “But it’s going to take some thinking about.”

  “Think quickly.”

  I always do. Quick as a flash, me. I can come up with something truly stupid in the time it takes you to blow your nose.

  10

  So there you are (to revert to an image I’ve used earlier), living a life of luxury and ease in your mountaintop villa, with magnificent views over the valley below and all the piping hot water you could ever want—

  People do it, though. Fact is, I’ve never been outside the City in my entire life, but I’m given to understand that there’s a great big city somewhere in Sashan territory built all round the base of a huge volcano. It’s on an island, with the most amazing natural harbour, and the idea is that the moment the volcano starts playing up, everyone rushes down to the ships and gets well clear. They have a full dress rehearsal once a year, and everybody is taught from birth what to look out for, where to go and what to do; and the City does so well out of trade, because of its harbour, that everyone pays a half per cent tax, and with that money the City fathers have bought great big estates on the mainland so that the islanders will have somewhere to go when the big day comes. Not if, when; it’s inevitable, they know that for a fact, like death. But, unlike death, they can see no reason why they shouldn’t take it with them.

  I can see you could live like that, at a pinch, if you know what’s coming, what to look out for, where to go and what to do. By the same token, you could live like that if you thought you knew all that useful stuff, even if it turned out in the event that you’d got it dreadfully wrong.

  I guess we were a bit like that island, only in reverse. We were the mountaintop, and the volcano was living all round us on three sides. But we, too, have a magnificent natural harbour and make our livings from trade, and there’s loads of ships at the docks; and none of us know where to go or what to do, and there’s no plan. I guess it would all be different if the volcano on the island had tried to blow up, once years ago, and all the people had rallied round with human chains of buckets and put the horrible thing out.

  People get cocky is the truth of the matter. I think I neglected to mention that, in honour of my coronation, Ogus deployed his biggest trebuchet yet and launched a huge rock at the Yarnmarket district; not only did he miss, falling short and not even clearing the walls, but the throwing arm snapped, making the trebuchet overbalance and fall over, squashing its crew. The sentries saw the whole thing from the top of their tower, and it added just an extra smidgeon of joy to the municipal celebrations.

  “We’ve felt for some time that Ogus’ artillerymen have gone as far as it’s possible to go with trebuchet design,” the colonel of engineers told me, when I sent for him. “You can only make those things so big, and then they tear themselves to pieces. There’s a limit to the stress you can put on wood and rope and nails, and we believe they’ve reached it.” He gave me a cheerful smile. “I can show you diagrams and calculations, if you’d like to see them.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” I said. “But they can still build machines that can clear the wall.”

  “Yes,” he conceded, “but only just.”

  “Only just is enough,” I said. “I was—” Stopped myself just in time; nearly said, I was killed by one. “I was nearly killed by a trebuchet shot, only a month or so ago. I was due to go to a dinner at a house down by the walls. I was too busy and gave it a miss, and that night the house was flattened.”

  “Lucky for all of us that you changed your mind,” the colonel said. “But the solution’s pretty obvious. Evacuate the houses directly under the walls, and you’ll have no more trouble.”

  I gave him a look. “Good heavens,” I said. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  Later I made enquiries, but the chiefs of staff told Usuthus there was no suitable alternative candidate for colonel of engineers and they had full confidence in the present incumbent, so we were stuck with him.

  A few days afterwards, I happened to look out of my tower window. I remember thinking, that’s a particularly beautiful sunset. Then it occurred to me that it was later than that and, besides, the sun sets in the west.

  I grabbed the red rope and nearly yanked it out of the wall. I needn’t have bothered; a second or so later there was the most appalling hammering on the door. I asked who was there and got the all-clear signal: Captain Qobolwayo.

  Usuthus was with him. I pointed to the window. Usuthus nodded.

  “Fire,” he said, “in the Tanneries. The bastards are shooting fire-pots.”

  No need to ask who the bastards were, in context. Nobody’s tanned anything in the Tanneries for seventy years. Now it’s one of the districts where the people from the Old Flower Market settled; hundreds of little shacks with wooden walls and thatched or shingled roofs. Also not that close to the walls. Of course, a fire-pot is considerably lighter than a bloody great rock, therefore travels further.

  “I didn’t know if you’d want to be disturbed,” Captain Very said apologetically. “But he insisted.”

  Couldn’t be bothered to answer that: I was looking round for something to put on over my Imperial silk nightshirt. I caught sight of the mouldy groom’s coat in the corner. “You stay here,” I snapped at Hodda, who was just starting to surface out of deep sleep.

  “What’s going on?” she muttered.

  “Fire in the Tanneries.”

  “Right,” she said, and snuggled her head back into the pillows.

  I hadn’t tried on the coat before. It was too short and tight across the shoulders. “Let’s go,” I said.

  On the way, they told me that the captain of the City fire brigade was called Diocles, but he was under arrest for being a Senate loyalist; besides, the fire brigade never went east of the Butter Cross because they weren’t welcome in Theme territory. I know, I said.

  And I did, too. When I was a kid, there was a fire in the neighbourhood next door to Dad’s patch. It should have been up to the local boss to deal with it, but he had a bit of a falling-over-drunk problem and was completely useless after dark, so Dad was hauled out of bed and had to take charge. Which he did, very effectively; it was one of the things the Themes were genuinely good at, fighting fires. They had to be. And, of course, I went with him, and acted as his aide-de-camp and general runner, so I knew the drill. Under normal circumstances, I could’ve relied on the local Theme boss to take charge and see that everything was taken care of. But the circumstances weren’t normal, because some idiot, who wore my underwear and shaved with my razor, had had the boss of the Tanneries judicially murdered.

  “Excuse me,” Captain Very asked, as we hurried though the streets. “What are we doing, exactly?”

  “We’re going to put out a fire,” I said.

  “You mean you, personally?”

  I stopped, because I was out of breath. Shame on me: soft living. “Yes,” I said. “And while we’re at it, you—” I pointed at his sergeant, who’d been tagging along with us. “Go back and get the rest of the guard, all of them, and meet us at Tannery Stairs. No, don’t look at him, do it.”

  Captain Very nodded and the sergeant ran. “With respect,” Usuthus said.

  “Shut your face.”

  Because,
if not me, then who the hell? I knew what to do. Presumably there were other people who knew it too, but I didn’t know who they were or how to find them, and a fire in the Tanneries wouldn’t stop there. If the wind got up from the south the whole city could go up – I remember stopping dead and closing my eyes, trying to picture myself and seeing my father.

  You need buckets, naturally, and hooks on long poles, for dragging thatch off roofs – they’d be in the Theme house, ready – and picks and shovels and sledgehammers and axes, for tearing down houses to make a firebreak. When we got there – the smoke was as thick as stew and I could feel the heat sunburning my face – we found the guards had beaten us to it. “Where is everybody?” I yelled, over the crackling.

  Then I realised what I wasn’t hearing, and the penny dropped. “Get over to the Theme house and ring the bell,” I said. “And fetch the long hooks; they’ll be up in the rafters. You lot, start pulling down that row of houses there.” I pointed. The guards looked at me, and it occurred to me that maybe they didn’t know how to pull down a shanty-town house real quick. Specialist knowledge, though commonplace in the Themes. “All right, leave that and go and collect buckets. The nearest well’s over there, just behind the Pride & Endurance.”

  Usuthus and the captain were staring at me; how the hell did I know that? “If we take down these rows here,” I said, pointing, “it’ll stop the fire sweeping down south and getting to the lumber warehouses and the tar stores in Princesgate. If they go up, we’ve had it.”

  I heard a funny noise, a sort of swishing, and something flew over our heads. I thought at first it was some sort of bird. “They’re still shooting,” the captain said, and a fat orange bloom burst out of the ground about fifteen yards from where we were standing. Scared the life out of me.

  “Nothing we can do about that,” I heard myself say, and then I heard the Theme bell.