by K. J. Parker
Question: why didn’t we evacuate the City years ago? Answer: because we’d never have got people to agree to it; because nobody in their right mind would try and organise something like that; but mostly because where on earth are you going to find enough ships to transport a hundred and sixty thousand people, all at once?
But, just like the rats, we’ve got to go. But, unlike the rats, we aren’t going to die, just because our faces don’t fit. Bricks and stones don’t make a city, people do. The only way to save the City, therefore, is to leave it behind. Or, looked at the other way round, to take it with us.
As soon as I read about the stone barges, in the course of finding out everything I could about granite, I knew they were our last and only chance. There were these amazing ships; what’s more, they were built to sail across the open sea, and the docks were made to suit them. If I could somehow kid the City into getting on board those ships—
And then (I told her) I remembered that fire at the Gallery of Illustration, four years ago, or was it five? You were amazing, I told her. You stood at the front of the stage and you told the audience, in a clear, calm voice; ladies and gentlemen, a fire has broken out, here’s what to do and it’ll be fine. And you did it so well, they all got up and filed out quietly, no running, screaming or people being trampled into mush; no hesitation, nobody turning round and asking, hang on, is there really a fire or are we being taken for a ride? And that, I thought, is how you evacuate a city.
Was there a fire? Bless you, there’s always a fire. There was a fire in Poor Town and I saw how the Theme came together and handled it. Just because the fire’s still a couple of blocks away doesn’t mean you can be complacent. You bet there’s a fire. It’s leave now or stay and burn.
Lie and run away, my mother told me. Good advice.
There’s room, I told her. Each one of those barges can hold six hundred and fifty people, I know that because I worked it out. If x is the number of granite blocks of dimensions y that a barge can hold – six hundred and fifty people with room to lie down. It won’t be luxurious, but it’s a lot better than death. Once we’re out of the bay we go west, clear out of the Middle Sea. There are islands out there; we know about them because they send us fruit and vegetables. On an island, we’ll be safe, because of the Fleet. Even Ogus can’t dig a tunnel sixty miles long under the sea. On the way there, the Fleet can feed us – wholesale piracy, robbing and burning and leaving people to starve; it’s all Ogus’ territory, if that makes any difference. And the barges will be safe, because they don’t have to put in to shore. We’ll reach the islands in five weeks. It won’t be fun, but people can hold out that long, if they have to.
What if they find out? They won’t find out. Nobody will know except us, and after a very short time the past will have changed to suit us.
“And one day,” she said, “we’ll come back.”
I didn’t answer.
“We’ll come back,” she said. “And we’ll drive out the milkfaces and take back what’s ours. Won’t we, Notker? One day?”
“One day,” I said.
She nodded. “We’ve got to,” she said. “We can’t let him win. Even if it takes fifty years, or a hundred. You can’t let the bad guys win. It’s not acceptable.”
For Hodda, life is drama. It falls into a set number of clearly defined categories: tragedy, comedy, romance, burlesque, farce. If it’s a comedy, the good guys win and everybody gets married. If it’s a tragedy, the good guys win but everybody dies. But you can’t let the bad guys win. Nobody’s going to pay to see that.
Me, I don’t care about the bad guys, so long as they keep the hell away from me. When they get too close, in my face, I tell lies and run away. That means I’ll never be a hero, but I don’t mind that. I do character parts and impersonations.
They wanted us on board the Imperial flagship, but I wasn’t having any of that. Our place is with our people, I said. We’ll be on the last barge out. So we waited, while the first hundred barges loaded up with people and pulled out and the next hundred came in. It was extraordinary to watch: people moving slowly in long lines to where they were supposed to be going. They looked sad and anxious and a lot of them were crying, but in spite of that they had – hope. That old thing. But, just for once, it made itself useful.
The last barge was ready to leave. Two hundred and fifty massive ships, loaded with frightened but hopeful people, en route to Out Of Harm’s Way; most of them were already out of the harbour, and there was still half an hour of daylight.
The last barge left. My mother was on it, carried aboard on a litter and bitching like hell. We weren’t. Instead, we scrambled into a little pinnace, property of Captain Very. He’d had enough of being a mercenary, he’d told me; time to go home and settle down. I asked him if he’d mind giving Hodda and me a lift. With pleasure, he said, and I do believe he meant it.
“It’s the only way I could be sure of getting away,” I told Hodda. “Send the entire City on ahead.”
We settled ourselves into the stern of Captain Very’s boat. Crew of three, and three passengers; the crew were Lystragonians, all ex-guards. Both Hodda and I found it hard to get comfortable, partly because it was small and cramped, partly because it’s murder sitting on a coat lined with icons. The captain’s share of the haul was a duffle bag stuffed with diamonds, rubies and pearls. They aren’t great art lovers where he comes from, he told me, but diamonds are diamonds wherever you go. You’re welcome, I told him. Take as much as you want. He lifted the bag, feeling its weight. This’ll do, he said. Doesn’t do to be greedy.
“I wonder what they’ll do when they find out we’ve gone,” Hodda said.
“Who cares?” I replied. “I expect Usuthus will take charge, or Admiral Sisinna. Personally, I never want to see any of them as long as I live.”
She smiled. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “It’s actually happening. For real.” Then the boat dipped and rose again, and she swung her head over the rail and threw up like – for want of a better comparison – a volcano.
One other thing. Ours wasn’t the only small boat fooling about in the harbour after the barges pulled out. There was one more, crewed by the bravest men I’ve ever met. They were true heroes, and they should have got the girl. But they didn’t. Real true heroes never do.
They were Lystragonians; I asked for volunteers, with the proviso that their families back home would be compensated with wealth beyond imagining, a promise I made sure would be kept. I sent them to the island where Hodda and I had met Ogus, and where I later directed the Synaean plague ships. There were six men in the boat; each one carried a little wicker cage and a bag of breadcrumbs. Their job was to go to the little hut on the island and round up as many rats as they could lay their hands on, then take them back to the City and turn them loose in the palace. Rats – I read it in a book – are what spread the plague.
I had no idea if it would work but I thought, what the hell, it’s worth a go. Actually, it worked out rather well. It’s hard to get accurate information about faraway events in Octiana, which is the city in the far east of the Sashan empire where Hodda and I wound up, at least for a while, but according to what we heard, the death toll among Ogus’ army was somewhere between a hundred and two hundred and fifty thousand. Enough, at any rate, for half of his empire to break away inside eighteen months.
Ogus, however, wasn’t among the dead. He caught the plague, but he survived. Now there’s several different kinds of plague, apparently; this sort attacks the nervous system and the brain. Ogus caught the plague and survived but he didn’t make a full recovery. It left him blind and deaf, with no feeling in his fingers and toes. Last I heard, he’s still alive. Long live the emperor. I hope he lives for a very long time.
These are the histories, as I think I may have mentioned earlier, of Notker, the professional liar, who told lies and ran away, thereby saving the City. Please accept my apologies if I’ve inadvertently made myself out to be the hero. I can’t help trying to w
rite a good part for myself, and, as my mother once told me, I do like to have the last word.
But why did you cut and run, you ask, when your people needed you? Seriously? Because when I looked into that mirror in my head, I saw Lysimachus, except that – call it a trick of the light – he looked just like Ogus. Anyone who thinks killing inconvenient people and sending soldiers to burn down cities is a good idea is Ogus, sooner or later. I wasn’t him, not yet, just a man doing impressions, but that’s the risk with staying in character. Sooner or later, the character stays in you. Or, as my mother used to say, don’t pull faces, you’ll stick like it.
I know I’m not the hero, because the hero always gets the girl. She left me in Octiana, taking most of the money with her, though what she left me with will be plenty. She said she was going to go to Sagbatan – that’s the Sashan capital – and see if she could interest the people there in Robur-style theatre. If they have any taste whatsoever, she’ll succeed; and I’ll be there on opening night. I don’t know if Princess Toto will translate well into Sashan. I’d love to watch her play it again. She was the best, ever, and it was worth being alive, worth being Robur, just to see her.
One day, perhaps.
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extras
meet the author
K. J. PARKER is a pseudonym for Tom Holt. He was born in London in 1961. At Oxford he studied bar billiards, ancient Greek agriculture and the care and feeding of small, temperamental Japanese motorcycle engines. These interests led him, perhaps inevitably, to qualify as a solicitor and immigrate to Somerset, where he specialised in death and taxes for seven years before going straight in 1995. He lives in Chard, Somerset, with his wife and daughter.
For a comprehensive guide to the unreliable world of K. J. Parker, go to http://parkerland.wikia.com.
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if you enjoyed
HOW TO RULE AN EMPIRE AND GET AWAY WITH IT
look out for
THE LAST SMILE IN SUNDER CITY
The Fetch Phillips Archives: Book One
by
Luke Arnold
A former soldier turned PI tries to help the fantasy creatures whose lives he ruined in a world that’s lost its magic, in a compelling debut fantasy by Black Sails actor Luke Arnold.
Welcome to Sunder City. The magic is gone, but the monsters remain.
I’m Fetch Phillips, just like it says on the window. There are a few things you should know before you hire me:
1. Sobriety costs extra.
2. My services are confidential.
3. I don’t work for humans.
It’s nothing personal—I’m human myself. But after what happened to the magic, it’s not the humans who need my help.
Walk the streets of Sunder City and meet Fetch, his magical clients, and a darkly imagined world perfect for readers of Ben Aaronovitch and Jim Butcher.
1
“Do some good,” she’d said.
Well, I’d tried, hadn’t I? Every case of my career had been tiresome and ultimately pointless. Like when Mrs Habbot hired me to find her missing dog. Two weeks of work, three broken bones, then the old bat died before I could collect my pay, leaving a blind and incontinent poodle in my care for two months. Just long enough for me to fall in love with the damned mutt before he also kicked the big one.
Rest in peace, Pompo.
Then there was my short-lived stint as Aaron King’s bodyguard. Paid in full, not a bruise on my body, but listening to that rich fop whine about his inheritance was four and a half days of agony. I’m still picking his complaints out of my ears with tweezers.
After a string of similarly useless jobs, I was in my office, half-asleep, three-quarters drunk and all out of coffee. That was almost enough. The coffee. Just enough reason to stop the whole stupid game for good. I stood up from my desk and opened the door.
Not the first door. The first door out of my office is the one with the little glass window that reads Fetch Phillips: Man for Hire and leads through the waiting room into the hall.
No. I opened the second door. The one that leads to nothing but a patch of empty air five floors over Main Street. This door had been used by the previous owner but I’d never stepped out of it myself. Not yet, anyway.
The autumn wind slapped my cheeks as I dangled my toes off the edge and looked down at Sunder City. Six years since it all fell apart. Six years of stumbling around, hoping I would trip over some way to make up for all those stupid mistakes.
Why did she ever think I could make a damned bit of difference?
Ring.
The candlestick phone rattled its bells like a beggar asking for change. I watched, wondering whether it would be more trouble to answer it or eat it.
Ring.
Ring.
“Hello?”
“Am I speaking to Mr Phillips?”
“You are.”
“This is Principal Simon Burbage of Ridgerock Academy. Would you be free to drop by this afternoon? I believe I am in need of your assistance.”
I knew the address but he spelled it out anyway. Our meeting would be after school, once the kids had gone home, but he wanted me to arrive a little earlier.
“If possible, come over at half past two. There is a presentation you might be interested in.”
I agreed to the earlier time and the line went dead.
The wind slapped my face again. This time, I allowed the cold air into my lungs and it pushed out the night. My eyelids scraped open. My blood began to thaw. I rubbed a hand across my face and it was rough and dry like a slab of salted meat.
A client. A case. One that might actually mean something.
I grabbed my wallet, lighter, brass knuckles and knife and I kicked the second door closed.
There was a gap in the clouds after a week of rain and the streets, for a change, looked clean. I was hoping I did too. It was my first job offer in over a fortnight and I needed to make it stick. I wore a patched gray suit, white shirt, black tie, my best pair of boots and the navy, fur-lined coat that was practically a part of me.
Ridgerock Academy was made up of three single-story blocks of concrete behind a wire fence. The largest building was decorated with a painfully colorful mural of smiling faces, sunbeams and stars.
A security guard waited with a pot of coffee and a paper-thin smile. She had eyes that were ready to roll and the unashamed love of a little bit of power. When she asked for my name, I gave it.
“Fetch Phillips. Here to see the Principal.”
I traded my ID for an unimpressed grunt.
“Assembly hall. Straight up the path, red doors to the left.”
It wasn’t my school and I’d never been there before, but the grounds were smeared with a thick coat of nostalgia; the unforgettable aroma of grass-stains, snotty sleeves, fear, confusion and week-old peanut-butter sandwiches.
The red doors were streaked with the accidental graffiti of wayward finger-paint. I pulled them open, took a moment to adjust to the darkness and slipped inside as quietly as I could.
The huge gymnasium doubled as an auditorium. Chairs were stacked neatly on one side, sports equipment spread out around the other. In the middle, warm light from a projector cut through the darkness and highlighted a smooth, white screen. Particles of dust swirled above a hundred hushed kids who whispered to each other from their seats on the floor. I slid up to the back, leaned against the wall and waited for whatever was to come.
A girl squealed. Some boys laughed. Then a mousy man with white hair and large spectacles moved into the light.
“Settle down, please. The presentation is about to begin.”
I recognized his voice from the phone call.
“Yes, Mr Burbage,” the children sang out in unison. The
Principal approached the projector and the spotlight cut hard lines into his face. Students stirred with excitement as he unboxed a reel of film and loaded it on to the sprocket. The speakers crackled and an over-articulated voice rang out.
“The Opus is proud to present…”
I choked on my breath mid-inhalation. The Opus were my old employers and we didn’t part company on the friendliest of terms. If this is what Burbage wanted me to see, then he must have known some of my story. I didn’t like that at all.
“… My Body and Me: Growing Up After the Coda.”
I started to fidget, pulling at a loose thread on my sleeve. The voice-over switched to a male announcer who spoke with that fake, friendly tone I associate with salesmen, con-artists and crooked cops.
“Hello, everyone! We’re here to talk about your body. Now, don’t get uncomfortable, your body is something truly special and it’s important that you know why.”
One of the kids groaned, hoping for a laugh but not finding it. I wasn’t the only one feeling nervous.
“Everyone’s body is different, and that’s fine. Being different means being special, and we are all special in our own unique way.”
Two cartoon children came up on the screen: a boy and a girl. They waved to the kids in the audience like they were old friends.
“You might have something on your body that your friends don’t have. Or maybe they have something you don’t. These differences can be confusing if you don’t understand where they came from.”
The little cartoon characters played along with the voice-over, shrugging in confusion as question marks appeared above their heads. Then they started to transform.
“Maybe your friend has pointy teeth.”
The girl character opened her mouth to reveal sharp fangs.
“Maybe you have stumps on the top of your back.”