Colours in the Steel

CHAPTER ONE

It was just a run-of-the-mill shipping dispute, nothing more; a disagreement over the interpretation of a poorly worded contract, some minor discrepancies in various bills of lading, coinciding with a notorious grey area in the mercantile statutes. Properly handled, it could have been settled out of court with no hard feelings. Not the sort of cause you’d choose to die for, if you could possibly help it.

Everyone rose as the judge, a short man resplendent and faintly ridiculous in his black and gold robes of office, made his way across the wide floor of the court. He stopped once or twice, pawing at the ground with the toe of his black slipper to check that the surface was even and true, and Loredan noticed with approval that he was wearing proper fencer’s pumps, not the fancy pointed toes favoured by clerks and deskmen. Not all the judges in the Commercial and Maritime Division were ex-fencers – there simply weren’t enough to go round – and Loredan never felt comfortable with a lay judge. It was hard to have confidence in a man whose experience of the law stopped on the edge of the courtroom floor.

The clerk – elderly, short-sighted Teofano, who’d been here long before any of the current advocates had been born – declared the court in session and read out the names of the parties. The judge nodded to the participants, the participants nodded back and everyone sat down. There were the usual comfortable settling-down noises from the spectators’ benches, the shuffling of buttocks on the stone seats, the rustle of straw as bottles were opened and snacks put handy where they could be reached without having to take one’s eyes off the proceedings for even a split second. The judge peered at the documents in front of him and asked who appeared for the Mocenigo brothers.

Loredan looked up. On the opposite side of the court a huge blond boy was rising to his feet, his head instinctively ducking from a lifetime of low ceilings. He gave his name as Teofil Hedin, stated his qualifications and bowed. There was an appreciative buzz from the spectators, and money started changing hands among those inclined to speculation.

‘Very well,’ said the judge. ‘Who appears for the defendants-’ he hesitated and glanced down at the papers, ‘-the Dromosil family?’

As usual, Loredan felt a twinge in his stomach as he stood up; not fear so much as acute self-consciousness and a great desire to be somewhere else. ‘I do, my lord,’ he said, a bit too softly. He raised his voice a little as he gave his name; Bardas Loredan, fencer-at-law, of the College of Bowyers and Fletchers, ten years’ call. The judge told him to speak up. He said it all again, detecting a slight hoarseness in his own voice. He knew it was the last stage of a mild cold, but the spectators drew their own conclusions and coins chinked softly on the stone.

The judge began to read the depositions. It was a stage in the proceedings that Loredan particularly disliked; it served no useful purpose and always left him tense and fidgety. The other man, whatever-his-name-was Hedin, was standing gracefully at ease with his hands behind his back, looking for all the world as if he was actually listening to what the judge was saying. Some men, particularly the older ones, had some little ritual worked out to fill this gap; a prayer of exactly the right length, mental checklists, even a song or a children’s rhyme. Loredan, as usual, stood awkwardly and shuffled his feet, waiting for the droning voice to fall silent.

Which, at long last, it did; the cue for Loredan’s hands to start sweating. At his side, Athli was fumbling with knots and buckles; if she’s forgotten the ash for my hands, Loredan promised himself, this time I’ll wring her neck.

Without looking up, the judge called for any last submissions, assumed (correctly) that there were none, and gave notice to the advocates. Loredan took a deep breath and turned to his clerk.

‘The Guelan,’ he muttered.

Athli frowned. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure. You have brought it, haven’t you?’

Athli didn’t bother to reply; whatever her faults, she was reliable when it came to equipment. He also knew that whichever one he’d chosen – the Boscemar perhaps, or the Spe Bref – she’d have said, Are you sure? in exactly the same tone of voice, one which never failed to irritate him. She put her hand into the kitbag and produced the bundle of soft grey velvet, tied at the neck with blue cord. He took it from her and flicked open the knot. Perhaps the Boscemar, after all? No. It was his rule never to change his mind once he’d chosen.

The Guelan. He let the cover fall away – he’d never dream of telling anybody, but it always made him think of a bride’s dress falling to the ground – and wrapped his hand round the plain grip, feeling for the slight grooves that marked the place for his thumb and little finger. Of his three swords it was the longest and the lightest, not to mention the most expensive, well over a hundred years old. Once there had been a design of vine leaves etched on the blade, but you had to hold it just right against the light to make them out now. It had seen him through thirty-seven lawsuits, nine of them in the Supreme Court and one before the Chancellor himself. Five nicks spoilt the edge (there had been others, but small enough to be taken out with a stone) and the blade was slightly bent a hand’s span from the tip, the fault of some previous owner. The Boscemar took a keener edge and the Spe Bref was supposedly better balanced, but in a lawsuit what matters most is trust. After a century of hard work in these courts, it ought by now to know what to do. Just as well one of us does.

The usher gave the order to clear the floor. Athli handed him the dagger – at least he only had one of those, which meant one less thing to agonise over – and he slid it into the sheath behind his back, promising himself as he did so to fit a new spring to it, first thing tomorrow.

Yes. Well.

The judge raised his hand, savouring the drama of the moment, and called on the advocates to approach the bench. As he took his place under the raised platform, Loredan felt his leg brush against the other man’s knee. He winced. It would be particularly unfortunate to die in a shipping case, at the hands of a tall blond bastard. All the more reason, therefore, not to.

As the other man handed his sword up to the judge for inspection, Loredan couldn’t help noticing the flash of light on gilded inlay just above the hilt. A Tarmont, only a year or so old, scarcely used by the looks of it. There were hardly any stone marks to mar the deep polish of the blade; sharpened four, five times at most from new. Oddly enough, the sight raised his spirits a little. An expensive sword, crafted by one of the five best living makers, but new and untried. It suggested overconfidence, a tendency to assume that things will be as they should be. Ten years’ call had taught him that assumptions like that can kill a man, if correctly exploited.

Having handed his own sword over and received it back after a perfunctory glance which he found mildly offensive, he made his usual neck-bob of a bow and walked to his place in the middle of the floor. Under his feet the flagstones felt firm, with just the right amount of sawdust and sand for the best purchase. He was wearing his oldest pair of pumps, long since moulded to his feet, the fairly new soles lightly scuffed with a rasp. Athli took his gown from his shoulders, and he shivered slightly in the chill. One close shave long ago had taught him to fence in nothing but a linen shirt, loose across the shoulders and arms, tightly laced at the sleeves, and a comfortable pair of breeches with no buckles to snag or catch at the wrong moment. He’d watched men die a sword’s length from his face because they’d put on a heavy woollen shirt against the autumn chill. Ten years’ call, and you learn that everything matters.

When the order came he was ready, and just as well. The other man was quick and obviously strong; the trick would be to stay alive for the first half-minute, and then for the three minutes after that. The first thrust came high, and wasn’t at all what he’d been expecting. He was forced to parry high, and the weight behind the other man’s sword was almost too much for him to deflect with only the strength of his arm and wrist. He managed it somehow, but he had to step one back and two right, opening his chest; no chance of a counterthrust. The next attack, predictably, was low, but none the less awkward for being what he’d expected. Two quick steps right got him out of the way, but his guard was still too high, and a cut to his unprotected right knee would have settled the matter.

Fortunately, his opponent went for another high thrust. Two steps back gave Loredan the room to parry forehand, his bodyweight behind the blade to push the other man’s sword wide right; then he dropped his wrist for a short jab, more of a heavy push with the wrist turned over, straight for the stomach. The other man stepped back, but not quickly enough; the point of the sword went in maybe half an inch before Loredan snatched it out and, taking the risk of a cut across his right shoulder, threw himself down and forward for a sprawling lunge. His knee and left hand hit the ground together and he felt a twinge of pain as a ligament protested. The other man parried wildly, deflecting the thrust but not far enough, so that the first nine inches of the blade sliced into his right hip. Good work so far; but probably not good enough. Not yet, at least.

Loredan, kneeling on the ground, pushed hard with his left hand and leg to regain his feet; but his left knee didn’t seem to work – cramp, of all the wretched ways to die! But the other man was too preoccupied with the sight of his own blood to notice Loredan’s difficulties, and he somehow managed to force himself vertical on his right leg and fall back into a ragged imitation of a guard. Not a good time to try moving his feet; he’d fall over as sure as day. Everything depended on the other man, and how well he was able to handle being hurt. Waiting for him to move, Loredan cursed all shipping cases, all actions based on the laws of contract and all tall blond fencers ten years his junior. A lot of cursing to get through in less than a heartbeat, but speed is something that comes with long practice.

Mercifully, the other man seemed to have lost his nerve. Instead of lunging, as Loredan would have done in his position, he rocked back and went for a sideways slash at elbow level; as effective a way of killing yourself, Loredan reflected as he turned the blow neatly aside and leant into the inevitable lunge, as jumping off a high tower. He felt the point of the blade encounter bone, saw it bend-

– and snap, clean as the stem of a wine glass, ten inches or so from the point. Disgusted, he turned the thrust into a short-arm cut, wrist power alone, that slit the other man’s throat as neatly as a sheet of parchment. There was a clatter as his sword fell – that extravagant, ill-fated Tarmont; never could see the point in buying new – and a soft wheeze as the other man tried to draw breath down a throat that wasn’t there any more. And lots of blood, of course, and the usual heavy thump as he hit the ground.

Damn all shipping cases.

The judge rapped with his little hammer and gave judgement, rather superfluously, for the defendant. A round of applause from the spectators – somewhat muted, it had been a very short fight with no really memorable strokeplay – followed by the shuffling of feet, the resumption of interrupted conversations, some laughter, a sneeze at the back. The other man’s clerk gathered up his papers, tucked them under his arm, in no hurry to reach his clients at the back of the gallery. Athli had picked up the Tarmont – Loredan’s property now, by ancient custom; worth ten times his fee but its value wouldn’t buy another Guelan, even if he could find one. An unsatisfactory day, except that he was still alive.

‘What happened to you?’ Athli asked. ‘I thought you’d had it there for a moment.’

‘Cramp,’ Loredan replied. He wanted to retrieve the front end of his blade, but he wasn’t keen to get that close to the body. There’d be blood everywhere as soon as he pulled it free, and he wasn’t in the mood. ‘Look at that,’ he muttered, staring at the broken sword in his hand. ‘Looks like I’ve just acquired one very expensive carving knife.’

‘I told you that thing had had its day,’ Athli said. ‘If you’d sold it, like I said-’

She held out the velvet bag, and he dropped the hilt-end in. She tied the cord and stowed it in the kitbag. ‘How’s the knee?’

‘Better, but it’ll need resting for a week or so. When’s our next one?’

‘Four weeks,’ said Athli, ‘and it’s a divorce, so it ought to be all right. I’ll let them know, though, just in case they want to instruct someone else.’

Loredan nodded. Divorce, being an ecclesiastical jurisdiction, wasn’t supposed to be to the death, although death didn’t invalidate the judgement if it turned out that way. Nevertheless, it was only fair to warn the client if you were carrying an injury, particularly in a case where substantial marriage settlements were riding on the issue.

‘I could always cut it down, I suppose,’ Loredan mused. He was aware that he was hobbling, and the distance to the courtroom door seemed much longer than usual. ‘Short blades are quite fashionable in some courts at the moment.’

‘Not that short,’ Athli said. ‘Have it ground down for a second dagger. You could do with a spare.’

‘Sacrilege.’ A couple of porters were carrying the other man away, a sack thrown over him so as not to distress the public. ‘Talking of which, since when have I been doing divorce work?’

‘Since you started having trouble with your knee.’ Athli looked up at him, frowning slightly. ‘No offence,’ she said, ‘but have you given any thought to when you’re going to retire?’

‘As soon as I can afford to,’ Loredan replied, feeling something bitter in his throat. ‘Or when they make me a judge.’

‘I thought you’d say that,’ Athli said.

Punctual as the mailcoach, the shakes came after the second bottle, just as he was about to open the third. Without saying anything, he handed it to his clerk.

‘You ought to go easy on this stuff,’ she observed, filling his cup. ‘For one thing, it’s expensive.’

Loredan scowled at the distorted image of himself reflected in the cup’s polished side. ‘Tradition,’ he replied. ‘It’s a mark of respect.’ He remembered something. ‘Did we buy his clerk a drink?’ he asked. Athli nodded.

There were quite a few spectators from the court in the taproom, and several of them were nudging each other and pointing. Loredan didn’t like that much; on the other hand, there was always a chance of picking up work in the tavern immediately after a hearing. He’d got the Khevren brothers that way, and the cinnamon-merchants’ cartel. Several of the leading families sent men to all the hearings on the lookout for good advocates, usually bright lads talented enough to survive but still young enough to be cheap. Ten-year men were well enough known to potential clients, but there was the risk of pricing yourself out of the market; and lowering the fee was as good as admitting you were past it. The same went for taking divorce work; for a ten-year man, tantamount to a confession of decrepitude, loss of nerve or both. It’d be different, Loredan reflected, if I was getting better as I get older. But I’m not.

‘Well,’ Athli was saying, ‘you’ve done the easy part. Now I’ve got to get the Dromosil boys to pay up.’

Loredan grunted. ‘Tell ’em we’ll sue,’ he said. Athli sniggered; professional debts, for example advocates’ fees, were a personal action, fought between the litigants themselves with no legal assistance allowed. In practice, however, advocates with a reputation of suing for their fees tended to find work hard to come by. ‘You’ll manage,’ he went on. ‘Not a bad day for you, with the sword money.’

Athli shrugged. Her ten per cent would be a tidy sum, but she’d never admit to being pleased. ‘And every penny of it hard-earned,’ she said. ‘Drink up. We’re meeting the charcoal people in an hour.’

Loredan groaned. ‘Have I got to?’ he said. ‘Can’t you say I’m still recovering or something?’

‘That’d sound good. I’ve had to sweat blood persuading them you’re not a doddering old ruin who needs help going to the privy. And for pity’s sake don’t limp. You look about a hundred and six as it is.’

Defiantly, Loredan refilled his cup. ‘Where am I going to get another Guelan from?’ he asked gloomily. ‘Of all the bastard things to happen.’

Athli frowned at him. ‘Next thing you know you’ll be getting superstitious,’ she said. ‘Which is a dangerous hobby for a man in your line of work.’

Loredan growled. ‘Proper tools for a proper job,’ he replied. ‘Nothing superstitious about that. And I think it’s about time tools and equipment came off the gross. Other clerks do it,’ he added defensively, before Athli had a chance to speak. ‘They accept that it’s an essential expense of the business.’

‘No chance.’

‘Athli, it’s my life…’ He stopped, painfully aware that he’d broken the rules. Between advocate and clerk, the possibility of death was never recognised. He slumped forwards a little, ashamed of himself. ‘When did you say we’re meeting the charcoal people?’

Athli was looking at him. She’d been doing it a lot recently. Another unbreakable rule was that clerks didn’t worry about advocates. They found them work, the best quality they could get; the fact that too high a class of work could get a man killed quicker than a lightning strike was strictly outside the terms of the relationship. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’ll say you had to go on to a victory party.’

‘With the Dromosil brothers? Do me a favour.’ He finished his drink and turned the cup over. ‘I’d better come with you,’ he sighed. ‘Can’t really trust you to handle difficult clients on your own. And then,’ he added ferociously, ‘we’ll go out and get drunk. Agreed?’

‘After an hour with the charcoal people,’ Athli replied gravely, ‘agreed.’

‘This Principle,’ said the Patriarch gravely, ‘which of course we do not name, provides the power that makes these things possible. Never forget how limited it is, or how little it can actually do.’

He paused and looked round the hall at the packed benches. Five hundred eager young students, every one of whom had no doubt sworn a childhood oath to be a magician when he grew up. Alexius was a cynical man by nature, and achieving the Patriarchate had ground away what little idealism he had left, but even he admitted that he had one serious – even sacred – responsibility to each year’s intake of novices. He must make them understand, as soon as possible, that they were not going to be taught how to be wizards.

‘Fundamentally,’ he continued, ‘the Principle can be used as a shield; and, to a much lesser extent, as a sword. That is all; defence and offence. Its virtues cannot heal the sick or raise the dead, change lead into gold, make a man invisible or attractive to women. It cannot make anything, or change anything already made. It can deflect curses, and it can curse; and even these things are largely incidental to the true purpose for which the Principle exists. The power is a by-product, as leather, bonemeal and glue are by-products of pig-breeding.’

As he’d intended, the homely image caused a mild ripple of disgust among the members of his high-minded young audience. This wasn’t the way they expected the Patriarch to talk. They had come here to be let in on a magnificent secret, the best and most profitable guild mystery of them all. With any luck, there would be twenty or so fewer ardent young faces gazing up at him by this time tomorrow, as the younger sons who wanted to learn how to turn their brothers into frogs, and the merchants’ sons who’d been sent to learn how to raise favourable winds and summon genies for the purpose of bulk-freight carriage, packed their bags and went home again. If he did his job properly, he’d be rid of half of these young fools before the term ended.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘I will explain to you the four great assumptions on which the Principle is founded. Once you have grasped these – if you manage to grasp them, which is by no means guaranteed – you will be in a position to decide which of the six aspects of the Principle to study, and we will then be able to allocate you to appropriate classes and tutors. May I also remind those of you who still have fees to pay that you cannot be allocated until all sums due have been received. You are dismissed.’

So much for the education of the young. Back in his own cell, a square stone box with a plank bed, a massive oak book box and the most dazzling mosaic ceiling in the city, he shrugged off his robes of office and his ridiculous purple boots, sat on the edge of the bed and patiently struggled with flint and tinder until his lamp reluctantly gave him some light.

Directly below his cell they were setting up the evening meal in the refectory. Fairly soon, the hall steward would knock on his door, asking permission to untie the knot that anchored the great chandelier that hung over the high table, so that it could be lowered and filled with the evening’s candles. The Patriarch couldn’t help resenting the intrusion, even though it was part of the daily ritual; the noise of the evening meal disturbed his reading, and scarcely a day passed when he didn’t stub his toe on the damned anchor-post as he pottered about in the gloom of his cell.

He had insisted on a room with no windows; lamplight, reflected in the thousands of gilded tesserae that made up the legendary mosaics, was good enough for a man to read by, provided that he leant close to the flame and held the page a few inches from his nose. Alexius knew that he was fatally prone to distraction. If he had a window, he’d look out of it instead of reading his book. If there were tapestry hangings or frescos, he’d sit gazing at them instead of applying his mind to the dense arguments of the Fathers. And if he went down to dinner in the refectory, instead of making do with a loaf of coarse bread, a jug of water and an apple, he’d do no further work that day, or the morning of the next.

In consequence, he was held to be a great ascetic and given honour accordingly. He was – a good joke, this – probably the most deeply respected Patriarch the city had known in a hundred years. Not bad for a man who moved his lips when he read, and made no effort to conceal the fact. And if it took him twice as long as his colleagues to master each new development and hypothesis in the orthodoxy, at least he did master them. Lazier, more gifted men who didn’t bother to read the actual text, relying instead on someone else’s summary, made mistakes and could be confounded by a painfully learnt quotation.

Some of them even liked him. He had no idea why.

The source of tribulation he had set himself to read this evening was a new discourse on the nature of belief; a short monograph apparently flung together in an idle moment by the young Archimandrite of one of the city colleges, a man who had more intuitive understanding of the Principle in his toenail clippings than the Patriarch had in his whole body, but who devoted most of his waking hours and a considerable proportion of the income of his House to the trotting races. In his treatise, the dashing young sportsman proposed that belief acted as a focus for the Principle in the way that a prism of crystal or glass can concentrate the light of the sun. The Principle, he argued, was as universal as light and as diffuse. Only when filtered through the willing mind could it become strong enough to illuminate subterranean darkness or burn a hole.

The Patriarch scowled. It was a succinct and accurate way of saying what he’d always felt about the Principle but had never been able to clarify properly in his own mind; clearly the boy had an exceptional gift, and this was only the first chapter of the text, the part usually reserved for stating the blindingly obvious premises of one’s argument. The startlingly new hypothesis that had been recommended to his attention lay in the seventy-eight chapters that followed. It was going to be a long night.

He was just starting to develop a headache (it didn’t help that his copy was vilely written on thrice-used parchment) when he heard the knock at the door he’d been expecting this past half-hour. He grunted, and a blade of light appeared in the doorway.

‘Sorry to trouble you, Father.’

He grunted again, trying not to look up from the book. For some reason it wasn’t the hall steward tonight; he hadn’t recognised the voice, but it was young and female, one of the housekeeper’s girls presumably, and if he was to stand any chance of wrapping his slow brains around this confounded hypothesis-

‘Sorry to trouble you,’ the voice repeated. ‘But if you could spare me a few minutes-’

Damnation, it was a student. ‘I’m reading,’ he growled, bringing the page up against his nose. ‘Go away.’

‘It won’t take long, I promise. Please.’

Alexius sighed. ‘Patriarch Nicephorus the Fifth,’ he said severely, ‘on being interrupted while reading the scripture All Things Shall Cease, let fly such a curse that the unfortunate fool who had disturbed him was at once struck by lightning. Only with great difficulty was the victim later identified as Nicephorus’ own daughter, who had come to warn her father that the house was on fire. I suggest you see me after the lecture tomorrow.’

It is well to avoid distractions; but if distractions refuse to be avoided, far quicker to let them have their way. He picked a rush off the floor and laid it in the book to mark his place, then looked up.

Maybe this wasn’t going to be such a serious distraction after all. She was long and bony, with a thin face and pale blue eyes; fifteen, maybe sixteen years old, wearing her body like an elder sister’s coat she’d be sure to grow into eventually. It’s always the scrawny ones who get pushed off into a trade. He had been just as stringy himself at that age. He relented a little.

‘Hurry it up, then,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’

The girl knelt on the ground; not obeisance, just the instinctive habit of someone who came from a house where they had no chairs. ‘I’d like a curse, please.’

Alexius closed his eyes. It was starting early this year. He was about to say someting fierce and dismissive, but somehow didn’t. There was something appealingly – what was it? – businesslike about the child that almost tempted him to do what she asked.

‘What for?’ he asked.

This seemed to strike her as a silly question. ‘I want to curse someone,’ she said. ‘Could you teach me the right words, please?’

I could explain, Alexius thought. I could start with the four assumptions, work on through the theoretical basis of the Principle, briefly summarise the role of belief (which might be said to resemble a glass used to concentrate the rays of the sun…), explain the reciprocal effect of action and reaction and the futility of unfounded use of the powers, and so make her understand exactly how silly her request has been. Or I could just say no.

‘That depends on who you want to curse and why,’ he replied instead. ‘You see, if a curse is going to do any good – sorry, I didn’t mean it that way – if it’s going to work, it has to have a firm foundation in something the victim’s done. The old saying No one can curse an innocent man, though not strictly speaking true, isn’t so far from the mark-’

‘Oh, he’s not innocent,’ the girl interrupted confidently. ‘He killed my uncle.’

Alexius nodded. ‘That’s a good start,’ he said. ‘At least we’ve got an action on which a curse can be founded. Better if the killing wasn’t justified, but even a man who is in the right can be successfully cursed so long as the act itself is violent or causes damage. Hence my caveat to the maxim I quoted just now about cursing an innocent man.’

The girl thought for a moment. ‘It was legal,’ she said. ‘But not justified. How can you justify killing someone? You can’t, that’s all.’

The Patriarch decided not to pursue that one. ‘When you say legal-’ he began.

‘My uncle’s an advocate. Was.’ The girl smiled. ‘Not a very good one. He never killed anybody in his life. All wills and divorces, you see.’

Alexius suppressed a smile, thinking of the famous statue in the suburb where he’d been born-