How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It

by K. J. Parker

  When the bell goes, everyone knows what to do. You drop everything and run to the Theme house, where the boss tells you where to go. Only, I remembered, there wasn’t a boss. People would be flocking in and nobody to meet them. Idiot.

  By the time we got there, the little square was crowded. They saw the guards and made way to let us through. I jumped up on the top step and took a deep breath. I couldn’t remember my lines – it was a long time ago, for pity’s sake, and I only heard it once. But I opened my mouth, and thank God it all came back to me.

  “You lot—” (points) “—housebreaking tools. Two rows need to come down right away; the soldiers’ll show you where. Women to the well, we’ll need a bucket chain to damp down the firebreak. You lot, firehooks and drag the thatch off, four rows back from the fire on all sides, then work backwards from there. The soldiers will tell you what to do as we go along. That’s all. Let’s get to it.”

  It was only when they’d all run off to do what I’d told them that I realised, I’d been doing my father: voice, gestures, body language. Worked, though.

  It was a long night, and I wasn’t actually doing anything, just rushing about yelling orders and getting under people’s feet. It didn’t seem long at the time, because I was too busy thinking to notice. That’s what you’ve got to do, if you’re the boss in a situation like that. You need to form a picture in your mind and see all the pieces on the board, not just where they are now but where they ought to be and where they might get to if things start going horribly wrong, and where everything needs to be to counter that – all at the same time, seen from all angles. I coped because I’d seen my dad doing it, and because I’ve watched real professionals – Hodda and Momas and Olethria – staging a play. I asked Olethria how she did it once, and she said, you need to see it all in your head; oh, and back home she’d got a little toy theatre, and blocks of wood, three inches tall for the men, two and a half for the women, and she worked out every move to the inch the night before. I didn’t have that luxury, but I could visualise the Tanneries as a stage, with Prompt and OP, wings and front and centre; not really very close, but close enough. All the world’s a stage, according to Saloninus; that’s not actually true, but if you pretend it is, it helps, when you’re managing a fire.

  As to the outcome, opinions differ. I think I made a pig’s ear of it, because forty-six people died, seventeen of them because while we were scrambling about like blue-arsed flies ripping down Glory Row, the wind turned and sent the fire roaring like a furnace down Greenside, which I hadn’t had time to evacuate. Also there was a godawful jam in the bucket chains because I had three teams drawing from one well, when there was a perfectly good conduit we could’ve punched a hole in only fifty yards up the street; and there were other things, too, which I’m too ashamed to mention. I distinctly remember standing on the steps of the Poverty & Silence, gazing hopelessly at an advancing wall of flame and watching bundles of dragged-off thatch on the ground bursting alight from the sheer heat, even though the fire was fifteen yards away; at which point, Captain Very came bounding up, drenched to the skin, and telling me it was all over—

  “No it’s not,” I said, lying to myself. “If we could only get more buckets up here—”

  “No, it’s over,” he said. “It’s under control. We did it.”

  I pointed at the fire. “You call that—” and then it occurred to me that in front of that fiery wall was a wide-open space, just rubble and dirt and muddy pools of water, and that the captain might just possibly be right.

  He was drenched to the skin because every few minutes he’d poured a bucket of water over his head before rushing back to where the action was; if he hadn’t, he’d have been roasted to death. As it was, his hair and eyebrows were gone and the skin on his cheeks and hands was all blistered to hell; about the only visible part of him that wasn’t burned raw was his smile.

  As I said, opinions differed. Just before dawn I realised I was too tired to think any more and I was doing more harm than good, so I handed over command to a couple of random Themesmen who’d been the real heroes of the hour and limped back to the palace with Captain Very, Usuthus and two guardsmen. All five of us were in a real mess and I was wondering aloud, in an abstract sort of way, how the hell we were going to prove to the sentries who we were.

  “Don’t worry about that,” the captain said quietly. “I know a back way.”

  I was almost too tired to appreciate the significance of that. “Don’t be silly,” I said. “There’s no back way into the palace, everybody knows that.”

  “Ah.” He gave me a big grin. “Wait and see.”

  Interesting. Meanwhile, Usuthus was jabbering in my other ear about a triumph, and how it couldn’t have come at a better time. “The emperor,” he was saying, “leading the firefighting in person. Actually literally saving the City. No other emperor in living memory could’ve done that. He wouldn’t have known how. He wouldn’t have wanted to. This time tomorrow you’ll be a god. We’ll be able to do anything we want and nobody will be able to stop us.”

  “That’s all right, then,” I said.

  “It’ll have fixed the Theme question absolutely once and for all,” he drivelled on. “Whose job is it to fight fires? The local Theme officer. Who fought the fire? The leader of Purple Theme. Perfect. It really couldn’t have been better if we’d arranged it ourselves – only they won’t be able to accuse us of setting the fire deliberately, because everybody saw the fire-pots whistling through the air. I can’t think of anything that could’ve consolidated our grip on power better than this; it’s what legends are made of. Lysimachus and the Great Fire. We’ll have to see about a statue, of course.”

  If I hadn’t seen Usuthus an hour earlier dragging an old woman out of a burning house, I’d have smashed his teeth in.

  “And the coat,” he went on, “the coat was just perfect. If you’d shown up in dalmatic and lorus, it’d have been a flop, you can bet. But the emperor in an old docker’s coat, directing the rescue efforts—” He stopped. “So that’s what you wanted it for. How did you know?”

  “Shut up,” I told him. “You’re making my head hurt.”

  “We’ll have to get it carefully cleaned and mended,” he said, defying a direct order, “so you can wear it whenever you address the people. It can be your signature garment. It’ll be how everyone visualises you, the old coat over the silk gown, that’s an amazing metaphor.”

  “Captain, make him shut up. He won’t listen to me.”

  But the captain only grinned at me. Apparently he’d stuck like it, just like his mother warned him. “It certainly won’t have done you any harm,” he said. “You were popular before, but now—”

  “It’s the best thing that could possibly have happened,” Usuthus said.

  I managed to forgive him for that, just about, eventually. Meanwhile, we’d fetched up outside a long grey stone building, with massive oak double doors. “I know where this is,” I said. “This is the east side of the cavalry barracks.”

  Captain Very nodded. “Follow me,” he said. “Probably best if we kept the noise down. We’re not really supposed to be here.”

  He counted seven doors down, gave the eighth a shove and it swung open. Up a narrow flight of stone stairs, pitch dark, to a landing with a door on the left; through that. “We’re in the roof space above the main stables,” he whispered, as we trod warily on uneven wooden planks that creaked horribly with each step. “Watch out for the rafters, they’re quite low.”

  I was trying to picture the layout in my mind. The cavalry barracks back onto the palace, but where, and next to what? It felt like it took an hour to get from one end of the roof to the other, but eventually the captain stopped and groped around for something; the latch of a door I couldn’t see until he opened it and let through a shaft of pale yellow light.

  We followed him through, and came out in a wide attic, illuminated by a slit in the roof covered over with parchment. “And this,” the captain said, “is t
he roof directly above the laundry room in the east wing of the palace. That’s why it’s so hot in here.”

  He was right about that. Standing close to the flames had made my skin raw all over, and the heat was making it tingle like hell. “You mean to tell me,” I said, “that anyone who can get into the stable yard, like we just did, can walk right into the palace.”

  Captain Very went all solemn. “It’s a scandal,” he said. “I’ll get it seen to straight away.”

  “No,” I said, “don’t do that. After all, nobody knows about it except us.”

  “That’s not quite true.” He looked sheepish. “Actually, it’s common knowledge for us, the Lystragonians, I mean. The fact is, we knocked that door through, about forty years ago.”

  “Is that right?”

  “I’m afraid so. Back then, I don’t know the details, but the emperor wasn’t exactly popular at the time, and he wanted a bolt-hole only he and us knew about. And there it’s been ever since.”

  “It can be our secret,” I said.

  “Yes, but anyone could find it.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said firmly. “Let’s leave it as it is. You never know when something like that could come in handy.”

  If he’d been a dog, he’d have put his head on one side. Instead, he nodded. “Understood,” he said. “Now, to get to the state apartments from here, we go this way.”

  I tried not to look as though I was committing every turn and distance to memory. When we came to a big horseshoe-top door, he sent the two guardsmen ahead to make sure the coast was clear. It was a while before they came back. We crossed a wide corridor, like a cloister, with about fifty doors on each side.

  “The Exchequer offices,” Usuthus explained. “Always a lot of people about at this time of day.”

  Noted, I thought. After that, we went up a lot of narrow spiral stairs and in and out of a lot of narrow passages, and I realised that my sense of direction, which has never been my best point, had given up entirely. Still, I had a fixed point – the Exchequer – from which I was fairly sure I could navigate my way to the laundry room. Or I could just ask one of the maids.

  “And here we are on the top landing,” Captain Very announced, opening a door for me. “Now we just go through the servants’ door there, and they’ve got a straight run to the bottom of your tower.”

  I was exhausted: all those stairs after a long night. The backs of my calves were killing me. “I need a bath,” I said. “I stink of smoke.”

  “I’ll see to it,” Usuthus yawned.

  I’d forgotten. It takes sixteen people for the emperor to have a bath. “Don’t bother about it,” I said. “Send someone up with a bowl of water and a towel. Then go and get some sleep, for crying out loud.”

  I went into the bedroom and sat down on a chair.

  “What the hell did you think you were playing at?” she said.

  I turned my head. “Now what have I done?”

  “Rushing about being the hero. I ask you.”

  I let my head loll onto my chest. “We put out a fire. What’s the big deal?”

  “You’re not a hero.” Real hissing, like a snake. “You’re just an actor playing one. If you’d fucked it up—”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “But you could have, so easily. And it wasn’t necessary. You could’ve ordered the soldiers to go and deal with it. Not our soldiers, the real soldiers, the army. But, no, you had to go charging off—”

  “They wouldn’t have known what to do.”

  “Are you kidding me? They’re the army. Of course they can put out a fire.”

  And she was quite right, as ever. That was what the emperor would have done. Even Lysimachus. We pay their wages, it’s what they’re there for, et cetera. But going out there myself, taking charge, playing at being a Theme boss like my dad always wanted me to be; that was what I would have done. Did. Go figure.

  “God, you smell bad. Go and have a bath.”

  I’d been meaning to tell her all about the secret way into the palace, which could so easily double as an exit. But you know what it’s like, when you can’t get a word in edgeways.

  Usuthus was right. By late afternoon, a huge crowd had gathered in front of the palace, and they made it clear they were staying there until I came out and waved to them or something. So I did that, and the noise—

  Old actors I’ve talked to tell me that the applause is what they miss. You think you can live without it, they say, when you quit the stage, but you can’t. It’s what the profession is all about; every night, hundreds of people tell you that you’ve done good, or at the very least you’ve done all right, and so you don’t have to ask yourself that question. In no other walk of life do you get that affirmation and reassurance, they tell me, and really, how can a human being be expected to live and carry on living without it? How could you possibly tell if you’re doing all right or not?

  To which I tend to reply: have you ever actually looked at the sort of people who go to the theatre? The idle rich; the fat, complacent tradesmen; the scum of the earth; do you really value their opinions so very much? To which they reply: the audience is the people, the community, Mankind. What other opinion could possibly matter?

  I know exactly what they mean. There’s that moment, when you’re taking your bow at the end of the show. It’s done, of course, in strict reverse hierarchical order, starting with the walking gentlemen, then the minor support, then the soubrette, the comic, the stars. You stand there grinning while your immediate inferior goes up and bows, and then it’s your turn. You can tell by the weight of the noise; does it go down, or up, or does it stay the same? If it goes up when you go forward, there’s no better feeling. In scripture, one or two of the prophets are occasionally permitted to talk to the Invincible Sun face-to-face and find out what He thinks of them. In the theatre, we get to find out every night.

  Of course, there’s always the remote possibility that they’re applauding the play, not you; but really, that’s a meaningless distinction, like saying I didn’t steal the money, it was the evil part of me. Particularly meaningless when you’ve written the script – though, as I think I’ve said (see above), I’m not a writer.

  Anyway, whatever it was they were cheering, didn’t they ever cheer; my fellow citizens, my countrymen, my brothers. They cheered, they waved bits of purple cloth, they shouted my name and purple, purple, purple (she was right; it did sound very silly). I stood there with my arms spread wide, basking in it like a salamander; and somebody shot me.

  11

  I don’t remember much about it. I remember looking down and thinking, hello, there appears to be a small tree growing out of my thigh; and then I noticed the blood soaking through the divitision (hard to spot blood against a purple background, but it caught the light and sparkled). Captain Very noticed it, too, and dragged me out of the way, and I was hustled inside. I missed the riot and the bloodbath that followed. I always miss the exciting bits.

  Fruit and the occasional egg you learn to take in your stride. Arrows are something else. You don’t get shot at in the profession, except possibly at the Rose, on a bad night. I vaguely recall being manhandled into a chair and held down by four Lystragonians; I assumed I was being assassinated and they were in on the conspiracy, and as far as I can remember I wasn’t particularly upset by that; oh well, I thought, probably I’ve asked for it, so what the hell. But instead of slitting my throat, Captain Very knelt down beside me and had a good look at the arrow – surely he’s seen an arrow before, I thought, in his line of work – then he looked up at the four guards who were holding on to me and nodded, and then there was this moment of sheer agony as he pulled the nasty thing out. Then he sniffed the arrowhead, and then – it was all a bit surreal but I really didn’t expect that – he yelled, “Get me a chicken, now.” I assumed he’d gone off his head, but the other guards seemed to think it was a perfectly reasonable thing to say, and where they got a chicken from at such short notice I really don’t know bu
t they did; a live one, upside down, clucking and not happy. Then Captain Very stuck the point of the arrow into the poor thing’s foot and started counting aloud, one, two, three. Nobody was looking at me, just the chicken. Then the captain got to ten and the chicken turned its head and clucked (instead of dying from the poison, of which there wasn’t any, as I later figured out) and everybody relaxed. Where’s that fucking doctor, someone yelled, and then I sort of drifted off into sleep.

  Act 3

  1

  She was sitting next to me when I woke up. “Hello,” I said.

  “You were born lucky,” she said. “A quarter-inch to the left, it’d have cut the artery and you’d be dead.”

  “What happened?”

  She scratched her nose. “We don’t know. The City prefect thinks it was a disgruntled Themesman, so he’s been rounding up the little that’s left of the old Blue and Green hierarchies; not a big job, since the mob evidently shares his view and they’ve torn all the old bosses they can find into tiny bits.”

  “Did somebody try and kill me?”

  She scowled at me. “Yes,” she said. “The army thinks it must’ve been a hired killer in the pay of the enemy, and apparently there’s lots of technical stuff about the arrow and the type of crossbow used to support that, and they’re arresting any foreigners who came in recently who survived the riot, not that many of them are left, but they say if it really was a trained assassin he’d have planned his escape route carefully in advance, so quite probably he got away.”

  “Since when did we have a City prefect? Didn’t he get killed by the senators?”

  “That was ages ago. There’s a new man now, your pet clerk chose him. I’m a bit concerned about that man, to be honest with you. I think he’s getting above himself.”

  “The prefect?”

  “Your clerk, whatsisname.” It’s a point of honour with her not to remember the names of people she doesn’t like. I made a big effort and decided she must mean Usuthus. “Too big for his boots, if you ask me.”