Colours in the Steel

CHAPTER FOUR

‘What are you staring at?’ demanded the engineer.

Temrai stepped backwards. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I was just looking.’

The engineer scowled, and spat into the sawdust. ‘Haven’t you got any work to do?’

‘I finished it. I’m waiting for the next batch of blanks. So I thought I’d just look around.’

The engineer muttered something and went back to what he was doing. He was working on the frame of a small trebuchet, the kind that threw a hundredweight stone. Using a chisel and a beech mallet, he was cutting dovetails in a thick twelve-foot-long plank; earlier, he and another man had sawn it out of a massive billet of seasoned ash, using a ten-foot saw.

‘Is that for the main frame?’ Temrai asked. The engineer looked up, surprised.

‘Left-hand A-frame,’ he replied. ‘Already done the right one. How come you know so much about engines?’

‘I’m interested,’ Temrai said. ‘I’ve been watching.’

The engineer, a man of about sixty-five with shaggy white hair on his chest and arms like a bear, nodded. ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘You’re the offcomer kid, the plainsman.’ His mouth twitched into a small grin. ‘Bet you ain’t seen anything like this up on the plains.’

‘Oh, no,’ Temrai said. ‘I think it’s fascinating, seeing all the different machines.’

This time the engineer actually laughed. ‘There ain’t much to these buggers,’ he said. ‘Trebuchet’s a very basic design; you just got a bloody great big heavy weight on one end and a sling to put the stone in on the other, and it pivots around a pin supported on two A-frames. So you hoist up the weight with a winch, load your stone and let go. The weight goes crashing down again, and the stone gets slung out. Piece of cake. Compared to some of the machines we make here, there’s nothing to it.’

‘Oh,’ Temrai said. ‘I thought they were quite good.’

The engineer shrugged. ‘Oh, they work all right. We got trebuchets’ll throw a four hundredweight stone three hundred an’ fifty yards, straight as a die. This here’s just a baby; got the same range but only takes a quarter of the load.’

Temrai nodded appreciatively, and the engineer was secretly pleased to see the light of enthusiasm in his eyes. All true engineers are enthusiasts; they value admiration and respect every bit as much as painters and sculptors do, and they know they deserve it even more. All a sculpture need do is look a certain way. A machine has to work.

‘How do you know how big to make it?’ Temrai asked.

The engineer laughed again, not unkindly. ‘That, my son, is a bloody good question. Some of it you can work out by figuring; there’s what we call formulas. The rest just comes by trial and error. You make one, you see if it works; if it doesn’t you make it again a different way, and you keep on over and over till you got one that does work. That’s what we call prototypes.’

‘Ah,’ Temrai said.

‘F’rinstance,’ the engineer went on, carefully marking out the rectangle he was about to cut with light taps of the chisel, ‘the Secretary of Ordnance comes to me and he says he wants ten light trebs to cover the angle of the sea wall just along from the Chain, where they’ve just put in them five new bastions. So he tells me what he wants these trebs to do and I go away and I have a think. Now, I know that we built a treb once that had a beam thirty-three foot long, with a counterweight of a hundred hundredweight, and we found it could chuck half a hundredweight a couple of hundred yards. Now that ain’t much for a treb, more like a kiddie’s toy, but it gives me somewhere to start. So I reckon, if I can sling fifty pounds two hundred yards with a hundred hundredweight off thirty-three, maybe if I want to sling a hundred pounds three hundred and fifty yards, I could start with maybe a forty-foot beam and fifteen hundred hundredweight. And then I think, hang on, a fifty-foot beam and two and a half hundred hundredweight’ll chuck three hundredweight two hundred an’ seventy-five yards, ’cos I made one that did. So I try a hundred hundredweight off forty foot of beam, and if that busts the beam, I know forty’s too long with a hundred, so next time I try thirty-six. But I’ve made the beam shorter now, so I gotta up the weight on the other end; so we up the counterweight to a hundred an’ seventy. Now if it breaks, I gotta make the beam stronger, and that throws out all the other measurements.’ He paused for breath. ‘Not a quick job,’ he said,‘making engines.’

‘It sounds really complicated,’ Temrai said. He sounded so downcast that the engineer smiled at him.

‘It is complicated,’ he said, ‘making things that work. Any bloody fool can make things that don’t work. No offence, son, but that’s what you foreigners do. You see a machine and you think, that’s a good idea, we’ll make one of them; but you never stop to think about how long it ought to be or what it ought to be made out of, and then it don’t work and you say the hell with that, alas, the gods are angry, and you pack it in. That’s the difference, see,’ he added, tapping his forehead. ‘Up here.’

‘I can see that,’ Temrai replied. ‘That’s what makes you all so very wise.’ He surveyed the various finished and half-finished parts of the engine standing against the wall in order or cradled on specially built jigs, and his lips moved as if he was counting under his breath. ‘And I suppose it’s not just the arm and the weight,’ he went on. ‘I suppose it’s important to get the frame the right size, too.’

‘You’re getting the idea. We might make an engineer of you yet.’ He patted the timber in front of him, which was secured by broad iron cramps to a substantial trestle. ‘I been thinking, and I reckon if I make the frame twelve by eight by twelve, I won’t be too far out; it’s not like I was trying to mount a sixty-foot beam with clearance for three an’ a half hundred. The more weight, see, the more clearance you need, so the taller the A-frame’s gotta be. But the more acute you make the angle, the likelier they are to bust under the strain, so you gotta beef them up, and then some prat from Ordnance comes along and tells you to lose twenty hundredweight off it or it’ll be too heavy for the tower they want it on.’ The engineer rolled his eyes dramatically. ‘See what I mean?’ he said.

‘I think so. What else do you make besides trebuchets?’

‘You name it,’ the engineer said proudly. ‘This year so far I’ve made catapults, oistoboles, onagers, scorpions, mangonels, all that sort of bloody stuff. Doing a nice simple treb’s a pleasant change, I can tell you.’

As he sat at his bench, carefully wiring hardened edges to a soft steel core, Temrai couldn’t help thinking of his uncle Tesarai; how once, many years ago, he’d managed to capture a Perimadeian artilleryman, and set about torturing him with tremendous ingenuity and enthusiasm in an attempt to wring from him the secrets of building war engines. The harder Tezarai tried the less he achieved, until the time came when the prisoner died with his secrets intact, leaving the clansmen with a deep sense of baffled respect. At this point Tezarai declared that it was plainly impossible for the city ever to be taken, since its people were prepared to face the ugliest forms of death rather than betray it. Whereupon Temrai, who was twelve at the time and only just old enough to be allowed to attend councils, tentatively suggested that they’d gone about it in the wrong way. Trying to extort information out of these people was obviously futile; wouldn’t it have been a good idea simply to have asked nicely? To which he’d added quickly (for fear of being sent straight to bed) that these people who were so puffed up with pride in their city that they preferred to die rather than let it down might very easily tell an enquirer everything he wanted to know, so long as he asked the questions in a way that allowed the Perimadeians an opportunity of showing off in front of ignorant savages.

And now, five years later, here he was; and it was proving even easier than he’d imagined. He now knew the dimensions and construction details of the siege tower, the long ladder, the scorpion, the gravity-operated ram and the trebuchet. He’d learnt the art of sapping and undermining walls simply by going to the library and reading a book. He’d been given a tour of the walls and watchtowers by a member of the guard he’d met in a tavern, and had sat drinking with him while he timed the intervals of the watch and counted the number of men on duty. His job in the arsenal meant that he knew more about the city’s stocks and production capacity of arrows than the guard commanders. There was even a book, which the librarian had promised to find for him, that described ten perfectly feasible ways of breaching the defences and storming the city; it had been a prescribed text at the military academy twenty years ago, and since then had been largely forgotten about. It was wonderful; like everything about the city, wonderful, unsettling and deeply sad.

He finished wiring up and put the assembly into the fire to heat up for brazing. He’d make a good job of it, never fear; the least he could do, in the circumstances, was make sure that they had a few decent swords to defend themselves with when the moment came.

Among the large crowd who paid their copper quarter and stood in line to see the Alvise-Loredan case were a tall, thin young man and an equally tall, rather more rounded girl. They were wearing matching cloaks of an unfashionable colour and cut-

(‘How was I supposed to know? The last time I was here was five years ago.’

‘And it didn’t occur to you that fashions might have changed?’

‘To be honest, no.’

‘Men!’) -and when they whispered together, their dialect, although more quaint than barbarous, was enough to make the people behind them in the queue nudge each other and wink. Islanders, they muttered to each other, and made a show of checking that their purses were still there.

‘I’m not sure I want to see this,’ the girl muttered as the ticket clerk took from her the little bone counter she’d been handed at the door. ‘Where on earth’s the fun in seeing two grown men killing each other?’

Her twin brother shook his head. ‘They probably won’t do that,’ he said. ‘Extremely difficult, for one thing. Much more likely that one’ll kill the other and that’ll be that.’

‘Don’t be obtuse,’ his sister replied. ‘You know perfectly well what I mean. And I think it’s barbaric.’

Her brother shrugged. ‘I’m not defending it,’ he said, ‘it’s just something you ought to see if you ever hope to understand these pazze.’

‘Shh! They’ll hear you.’

‘Ah, but they don’t know what pazze means. Look, you want to join the firm and do business here, one thing you’ve got to get your head round is their paz ’ legal system. Which is,’ he added, ‘the finest in the world if anyone asks you, all right?’

The girl nodded. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But I still don’t see-’

‘Shut up. Here’s the judge. Stand up when I do.’

‘Barbaric,’ the girl sniffed.

Three days in the Triple City had cut a huge swathe through the fine romantic notions that had filled her head when the white crown of Perimadeia had poked up above the sealine. The smell still bothered her, and she definitely didn’t hold with the streets. It was one of the crazy contradictions that made up this place; every market stall seemed to offer ever more astoundingly lovely clothes and fabrics, with colours and textures beyond the dreams of the Island, but if you wore them in the street they’d be ruined inside five minutes. The buildings, even in the lower city, were as tall and majestic as the Prince’s own lodgings back home, but the streets outside were squelchy with mud and muck, the roadways rutted and crowded with carts and wagons that splashed the passers-by with foul water and tried to run them down even if they stayed inside the gutter-lines. Everyone she saw in the streets looked prosperous and well-dressed, but she noticed that her brother wore his sword openly on his belt all the time and avoided doorways and dark alleys. It was a fine place to visit, she’d decided, but you wouldn’t want to live here.

‘There’s the advocates, look,’ her brother hissed, jabbing with the knuckle of one finger-

(And that was another thing; at home it was rude to point; but here, everyone did it. She’d spent the first day and a half with her face permanently red with embarrassment.)

‘That’s the plaintiff’s man, and that’s the defence,’ her brother continued. ‘I think the famous one’s the plaintiff.’

‘I shan’t look. You’ll have to tell me when it’s over.’

‘Please yourself.’ He leant back, trying to find a comfortable place on the stone bench, and looked around to see if he could spot anybody he recognised.

It hadn’t been his idea bringing Vetriz on this trip; but now she was here and had proved not too much of a liability, he had changed his mind. True, it made the evenings rather dull; but in consequence he was saving money hand over fist, in spite of having Vetriz’s expenses to pay, so that was all right. It was also undeniable that she was good for business. Back home a pretty face got you precisely nowhere, but for all their vaunted canniness the Perimadeians could be snared by a smile and a flash of ankle as easily as hungry pigeons with grain in winter. Not a tactic he’d ever consider using at home; there was a word for men who didn’t immediately cut the throats of strangers who ogled their sisters, and it wasn’t very polite. Different here, of course; and fairly harmless too, provided Vetriz didn’t find herself getting used to it…

At this rate, he’d be all done here in record time. Four-fifths of the wine and oil had already gone, and for good money. The flax, timber and spices had made nearly half as much again as he’d expected (which more than made up for his embarrassing mistake with the two thousand oil lamps in the shape of hedgehogs; might as well dump those in the harbour and make space for more return cargo). As for buying, he had pretty well everything he’d wanted, and the prices hadn’t gone up too much. The only commodities he still needed were padlocks and threaded bolts; just his luck to make the trip at a time when there was a freak shortage of both…

‘What’s happening?’

‘Hm? Oh. Sorry, miles away. This bit’s called the pleadings, it’s where the-’

‘Ssssh!’

He cringed, turned his head and apologised. ‘This bit,’ he went on in a low whisper, ‘is where they go through the facts of the case. It’s usually a bit technical-’

‘Why?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Why bother? I mean, if it’s going to be decided on the basis of who can bash whose brains out first, how can going through the facts help?’

Venart shrugged. ‘I don’t know, it’s not my legal system. Look, I’m not asking you to approve of it, just to know how it works. You want to be in business, you’ve got to know at least the basics of commercial litigation.’

Vetriz sniffed. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I think it’s silly.’

‘Ssssh! ’

Eventually the pleadings ground to a halt and Vetriz, who would probably have fallen asleep if the stone seat had been slightly less uncomfortable, yawned and squinted down at the two men in white shirts who were now tentatively dancing round each other in the centre of the courtroom floor. The tall blond one was, apparently, the favourite; accordingly, she decided she wanted the other one to win.

He’d be short if he was an Islander, she decided; about average for these people. From what she could see this far back, he was older than the other man, shorter and slighter; but she still couldn’t understand why everybody thought he was going to lose. As far as she could judge, it was the other way about. Not, she reassured herself, that she knew the first thing about all the technical stuff – Venart had tried to explain some of it; she’d put up with a few minutes of fleches and mandrittas and Zweyhenders and the like before announcing that it all sounded rather like hockey, only sillier and slightly more dangerous. No; if she was going to place a bet it’d be on the shorter man. She asked herself why, and finally decided that it was because the other man looked brash and arrogant, which meant he was more likely to get careless.

I hope the short man wins, she said to herself. Because.

Then it all started to get rather violent; they stopped dancing round and began lunging at each other, and in the excitement Vetriz forgot for a while how silly it all was and leant forward in her small seat. She wanted to shout encouragement, as if it was a horse race; but everyone else was sitting absolutely still and quiet. A strange lot, these; where’s the fun in going to a show and not being allowed to yell?

‘Won’t be long now,’ Venart whispered, with the calm assurance of an old hand. (He’d been to precisely three of these performances, as she well knew, but that was Venart for you; probably what made him such a good merchant.) ‘He’s getting tired, look.’

Vetriz looked, and briefly wondered if they were watching the same fight. Not that she knew or cared to know the first thing about it; but she guessed that what her brother took for exhaustion was actually the short man cleverly moving into the centre of the floor, making the other fool do all the moving about. That, she reckoned, was experience over arrogance. The tall man was also starting to slash with the edge rather than lunge with the point, which she took for desperation. Yes, she agreed; probably won’t be long now.

The tall man aimed a terrific blow at his opponent’s head, which the other man blocked neatly and with a graceful economy of movement. Vetriz decided that she approved of the man; in a silly situation he was trying to be sensible. Now, wouldn’t it serve the other idiot right if, next time he tried one of those melodramatic slashes, his sword were to snap in two?

Loredan felt his chest tighten, and knew it could only be a matter of time. He sensed that Alvise had already won the fight in his mind; his intellect had lost interest in the matter, and he was no longer bothering to fence, relying on his superior speed, reach and strength and using the edge rather than the point. Quite safe; he knew as well as Loredan did that his opponent was too tired to do much by way of a convincing counterattack. It had all been over from the moment Loredan had allowed himself to be forced into the centre of the floor.

He wasn’t even reading the cuts any more, he realised; instead of anticipating them and trying to work out where the blow was going to fall, all he had time for was the instinctive parry, too much of a reflex after so many years to fail him completely, but merely prolonging a fight that could only have one outcome. Sooner or later Alvise would deceive him with a feint, and that would be that.

Alvise feinted high left, drawing Loredan into a backhand parry off the back foot. As he moved into position, he knew he’d got it wrong; the true blow would be directed at his knee and he didn’t have the time to do anything about it. Damn, he thought calmly, observing Alvise’s sword move as if he was watching from up in the gallery and not down here on the floor. A despairing reflex jerked him round, his left shoulder going forward as his right leg scraped back. The sword missed his knee by the thickness of a shoe-sole; and ten years in the business made him realise that Alvise was now out of position and vulnerable. He couldn’t spare the time to look where he was hitting; he cut at where he remembered Alvise’s neck to have been, and hoped he wasn’t making an even bigger mistake himself.

He hit something.

First, get out of danger – footwork, body movement, distance between him and the other man, sword back into guard, and then spare the time to see if the other man’s still got his head on.

Yes; but there was a fat bubble of blood swelling out of the side of his jaw, and he was stepping back, making time and distance. Immediately, Loredan lunged; a defensive move, more a prod than anything else, just to push him back a little further. Alvise turned the blow, but clumsily. He doesn’t like the pain, Loredan realised. Fancy that. He lunged again, this time rather less half-heartedly. The reply was somewhat more proficient, but still defensive. Alvise was now in the middle of the floor.

Quite suddenly, Loredan saw how it might be done. He lunged a third time, deliberately opening his left side by leaning his left shoulder over. He lunged low, so that Alvise would counterthrust high, and when the other man’s lunge came, Loredan quickly crossed his back foot behind his front and swayed right, dropping his sword under Alvise’s and hoping he’d done enough to get out of the way. He felt something touch his flank, ignored it and swung his arm for a short cut.

And realised he’d been tricked.

Alvise had circled too, and here was his blade coming straight down, with nothing between it and Loredan’s skull except the possibility of getting the basket of the hilt in the way; pointless, because the next cut…

Never came.

There was a crack, not a loud one, and the topmost eighteen inches of Alvise’s sword flew past Loredan’s cheek. As he followed through, probably only half-aware that his sword had broken, Loredan turned his wrist and poked a short, weak thrust at Alvise’s face. A rather feckless and silly stroke, if Alvise had had a sword to parry it with. Since he hadn’t, the point of Loredan’s sword hit him in the eye, killing him instantly.

‘Do we applaud, or what?’ Vetriz hissed.

‘No.’

‘Oh.’

It hadn’t happened the way she’d expected; the other man’s sword breaking like that made it look like pure luck, which she was sure it wasn’t. No doubt all that meant was that he’d forced the other man to do something which was bound to break his sword, or else he’d have killed him anyway with the next thrust. She relaxed, and reached into her pocket for an apple.

The sight of a man being killed before her eyes hadn’t disturbed her, she realised; probably because she was too far away to see facial expressions or blood. From up here it was a game, and the dead man might just as easily not be dead at all, only shamming or acting. It had been exciting, she had to admit, and it was good that she’d spotted the winner from the very start. Nevertheless; she’d seen a Perimadeian lawsuit now, which meant that with any luck she wouldn’t have to see another one. As a means of settling a dispute over the late delivery of four tons of charcoal, it seemed excessive and in poor taste.

‘Can we go now?’

‘We should wait for the verdict.’

‘Verdict? But he’s…’

‘Well?’

Athli’s face, staring up at him out of a bloated dream of horror and incongruous detail. She looked as white as snow.

He didn’t reply. As he handed her the sword, he realised that he hadn’t wiped it. So what?

‘Well? ’ she repeated.

‘Well what?’

Athli swallowed hard. ‘What happened?’ she demanded. ‘I thought-’

‘So did I,’ Loredan replied, collapsing into his seat. ‘Do you mind if we don’t talk about it? And for pity’s sake keep those bastards away from me. If they come over here, I swear I’ll kill them.’

Athli gave him a horrified look, and hurried away to fend off the charcoal people. Probably come to complain about the stress of watching him nearly get killed; good reason for docking twenty per cent off the bill.

He thought about Alvise’s sword breaking. Just my luck, he reflected; two-thirds of the takings were now just so much scrap metal, just as their owner was so much meat. Who’d have thought the hilt of an old army broadsword could snap the blade of a top-quality law-sword? It only went to show something he couldn’t currently be bothered with.

Interesting, though; a tiny flaw in the steel, a bubble or a speck of grit or crap that had somehow been missed by the smith’s hammer, can reverse the outcome and overturn justice. He could feel that there had been something there that shouldn’t have been; something small and not accounted for, something somehow unfair.

Probably, he decided, I cheated.

‘I got rid of them,’ Athli said, flopping down beside him. ‘They said-’

‘I don’t want to know.’

Athli nodded. ‘Quite right. Large drink?’

Loredan shook his head. ‘I think I’d like to go somewhere and lie down,’ he replied. ‘And then I’m quitting the business. Permanently.’

‘Large drink.’

‘Oh, all right then, large drink. And then I’m quitting the business.’

‘You know,’ Athli said, pouring wine out of the pewter jug, ‘for a moment there I really thought you meant it.’

‘I did,’ Loredan replied. ‘And I do.’ He shifted his hand on the pad of wool he was pressing against his side. The bleeding had stopped long since, thanks to a smear of brandy and a few winds of cobweb from the rafters of the tavern, but for some reason he didn’t want to stop the pressure on the cut, as if he felt it ought to be far worse than it was. ‘Too old and not enough natural ability. I think it’s high time I did something else.’

Athli looked at him over the rim of her cup. ‘Such as what?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Loredan carefully nipped a small fly out of his wine. ‘The obvious thing would be to start up a school.’

‘You could do that, certainly,’ Athli replied. ‘Mind you, there’s a difference between knowing the moves and being able to teach them to other people.’

‘Well, it’s that or setting up as a clerk. Would I make a good clerk, do you think?’

Athli shook her head. ‘You’d be hopeless at it,’ she said. ‘You’d insult all the clients, for one thing. Also, you don’t realise how much hard work’s involved. Take me, for instance. I was up an hour before dawn, dictated twelve letters before breakfast, then out to meetings till it was time to come and collect you. And this afternoon I’ve got more letters to write, accounts to do, pleadings to draft-’

‘All right, you’ve convinced me. All that reading and writing’d drive me mad, not to mention the getting up early in the morning. If I’d wanted to get up early in the morning, I’d never have left the-’

He broke off, clearly embarrassed. Athli was intrigued.

‘Go on,’ she said. ‘If you’d wanted to get up early you’d never have left the farm. Am I right?’

Loredan grimaced and nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Horrible life, glad to be rid of it. So-’

‘Well, well,’ Athli purred, amused. ‘So you’re a farm boy really, are you? Honestly, I’d never have thought it. I’d have been prepared to bet money you’d never been outside the walls in your life.’

Loredan kept his face completely blank. ‘Once or twice,’ he said. ‘My father had a small manor in the Mesoge. He was only a tenant, of course. Do you mind if we change the subject?’

Athli shrugged, slightly offended. ‘If you like,’ she said. ‘I was just interested, that’s all.’

Deliberately, Loredan refilled his cup and drained it, letting a few red tears trickle down his chin. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘that’s enough about that. So if you reckon I couldn’t make a living as a clerk, it looks like it’ll have to be teaching.’ He sighed. ‘It’d have been nice to have had an option or two which weren’t something to do with this loathsome profession,’ he said. ‘Trouble is, I can’t do anything else.’

‘Open a tavern?’

‘Too much like hard work.’ He smiled. ‘Plus I don’t actually know how you go about innkeeping. Isn’t that what old time-served soldiers are supposed to do when they retire from the wars?’

‘In theory, yes, though generally it’s their wives and daughters that do the work.’ Athli grinned. ‘My uncle ran an inn for a while after he retired from the sea. He did very well, got bored, sold the place at a profit and bought another ship.’

‘Is that a hint? I’ll have you know I can’t swim.’

‘Neither could my uncle. The general idea is to avoid putting yourself in a position where you have to.’

Loredan shook his head. ‘Too dangerous,’ he said. ‘You’d have to be out of your mind to spend your life entirely surrounded by water.’

Athli wasn’t listening, being too busy eavesdropping on the conversation at the table behind them. Loredan scowled, then tried to listen too.

‘Don’t be so obvious,’ Athli hissed at him. ‘It’s embarrassing. ’

‘Look who’s talking. Go on, then, what’re they talking about that’s so interesting?’

‘You, actually. They’ve just come from the court.’

‘Oh.’

‘Foreigners.’

‘Ah. That would explain it.’

Loredan craned his neck and took a closer look. He saw a long, skinny man with a thin face and high cheekbones, and a girl who was almost certainly his twin sister. On her, the shared features looked rather better.

‘Don’t be silly,’ the man was saying. ‘If his sword hadn’t snapped like that he’d have carved your man up like a roast hare. Never seen a bigger fluke in all my born days.’

‘Venart-’

‘Not to mention a miscarriage of justice,’ the man continued. ‘He was totally outclassed in every department. The other man was just playing with him, could’ve finished it long before if he’d wanted to. Serves him right for taking pity on the old buffer, I suppose.’

‘Venart-’

‘Amazing, really, that he’s still fighting at his age. I mean, it’s supposed to be a highly competitive business, only the best survive and all that. Dammit, I could’ve made a better job of it than he did with one hand tied behind my-’

‘Venart, he’s sitting behind you.’

The man froze as if he’d just put his foot in a trap. Loredan found that he was looking the girl straight in the eyes. He turned away.

‘Shit, Vetriz, why the devil didn’t you say-’

‘I tried to, idiot. You’d better apologise quick.’

‘He can’t have heard me.’

‘Of course he did. You were braying like a donkey.’

‘I do not bray like-’

‘Well, if you won’t, I suppose I’ll have to.’

‘Vetriz! For pity’s sake, what d’you think you’re-’

The girl stood up and walked over to Loredan’s table. Athli put her face in her hands, trying desperately not to giggle, while Loredan suddenly found the toes of his boots irresistibly fascinating.

‘Excuse me.’

Loredan looked up. ‘Yes?’ he said.

The girl smiled sweetly and Loredan, who up till then had found the whole business mildly amusing, started to feel irritated, as he always did in the presence of deliberate charm. ‘I’d just like to apologise for my brother,’ she said. ‘You see, we’re strangers here, and-’

‘Forget it,’ Loredan said. ‘Besides, he was quite right.’ He made a show of turning away and pouring more wine, and effect that was spoilt by the jug being empty. But the girl didn’t seem to have noticed. Foreigners, he thought, and shot a rescue-me glance at Athli, who ignored it.

‘He had no idea he was being so tactless,’ the girl went on. ‘Honestly, I’m ashamed of him sometimes. He’s always doing things like that.’

Loredan gave her an unfriendly smile. Her accent was beginning to grate on him. ‘Really,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t matter. Athli, what time did you say that appointment was?’

‘What appointment?’

‘You know, the appointment on the other side of town.’

Athli made a faint snorting noise and shook her head. ‘News to me,’ she managed to say.

‘The least he can do is buy you a drink,’ the girl said, and waved to her brother, who was doing his best to be completely invisible behind an empty cider jug. ‘Venart,’ she called out, ‘buy these people a drink.’

Venart got slowly to his feet, privately swearing his best commercial oath that this was the last time he took his sister anywhere. She’d never dream of behaving like this at home; the sooner they got back to the Island the better. He shuffled away, ordered a large jug of wine and reluctantly joined his sister.

‘That’s very kind of you,’ Athli was saying. ‘Do please join us.’

Loredan glowered at her and tried to kick her under the table, but she moved her feet out of the way. ‘Yes, sit down, please,’ he grinned in as hostile a tone as he could manage at short notice. ‘My name’s Loredan and this is my clerk, Athli.’

The girl looked slightly surprised. ‘Your clerk?’ she repeated.

‘That’s right. I’m an advocate and she’s my clerk.’ He realised that the girl had assumed Athli was his wife. He wished both of them would go away.

‘I see,’ the girl said, settling herself down opposite him. ‘My name’s Vetriz and my brother’s Venart. We’re from the Island.’

‘Here on business?’

Vetriz nodded. ‘Venart’s showing me the ropes,’ she said. ‘It’s my first time abroad. Our father left the ship and the stock to both of us equally, and I said I thought it was time I started pulling my weight.’

‘Really.’ Loredan did his best to sound bored. He did it very well. ‘I suppose you’ve been doing the rounds of all the sights while you’ve been here.’

‘Oh, yes,’ the girl replied cheerfully. ‘That’s why we were in the court today. Venart said I couldn’t think of coming to Perimadeia and not seeing the courts.’

‘I hope you enjoyed the show,’ Loredan said grimly. The girl’s ability to miss undertones was obviously outstanding, because she nodded enthusiastically.

‘Very much indeed,’ she said. ‘Quite thrilling. Actually, that’s what we were arguing about just now. Venart thinks he knows all about everything, you see, and I was telling him I knew you were going to win from the very start.’

‘You were wrong,’ Loredan said. ‘Like he said, it was a fluke.’

‘Really?’ The girl looked surprised. ‘I’m sure you’re just being modest.’

‘I have a great deal to be modest about.’

Vetriz thought about that for a moment, then laughed. ‘You do surprise me,’ she said. ‘I thought you made it all look very easy, though I don’t suppose it is really.’ She hesitated for a moment, then went on. ‘So the other man’s sword breaking like that was pure chance, then?’

Loredan caught Athli’s eyes; she wasn’t giggling any more. He decided to make her suffer a little by carrying on with the conversation.

‘Pure chance,’ he said. ‘Although it’s something that does happen from time to time with the swords we use in court. The blades are much thinner than ordinary swords – sorry, I’m being technical, but it’s all to do with how the core is tempered and joined to the edges. If the core gets cooked up too much in the brazing, you can get brittle spots. Hit one of those and the blade just snaps off.’

‘I see,’ Vetriz replied. ‘I only asked because just a second or so before it broke I had the strangest sort of feeling that something like that would happen. Odd, don’t you think?’

Loredan shook his head. ‘Like I said, it happens now and again. It’s something you have to learn to expect. Like death,’ he added melodramatically. Athli gave him a come-off-it look, of which he took no notice.

Vetriz’s eyes widened. ‘Are all these duels to the death, then?’ she asked.

‘All except wills and divorce. Strictly speaking they come under a different jurisdiction, though in practice they’re heard in the same court in front of the same judge. Goes back to the time when the priests had their own courts, and probate and family actions were heard there.’

‘I thought you didn’t have any gods,’ Vetriz objected.

‘We don’t. But we used to.’

‘I see. Did you get rid of them, or did people just stop believing?’

Loredan shrugged. ‘A bit of both, I think,’ he said. ‘Religion gradually started being less popular, and that allowed the emperors to step in and confiscate ecclesiastical property when they needed money. And even when they didn’t, as I understand it. Anyway, once they’d lost all their gold and silver and land, there wasn’t much point in being priests any more, so the whole thing just ground to a halt.’

Venart, who had been sitting still and quiet, thought of a way to end the ordeal. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘but didn’t you get hit during the fight?’

Loredan nodded. ‘Nothing much,’ he said. ‘As you pointed out, I was very lucky.’

‘Shouldn’t you get it seen to?’ Venart asked earnestly.

As he spoke, Loredan realised the cut was bleeding again. He looked up sharply, then nodded. ‘You may be right,’ he said. ‘If you’ll excuse us…’

The girl looked disappointed. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it was lovely meeting you. When I get home I shall tell everyone we had a drink with a real Perimadeian fencer.’

Loredan smiled through his cringe. ‘You do that,’ he said. ‘Have a safe journey.’

When Loredan and Athli had gone, Venart took a deep breath. Vetriz forestalled him.

‘It was your fault,’ she said. ‘I tried to warn you, but you wouldn’t listen.’

‘I might have known it was all my fault,’ her brother sighed. ‘Let’s get safely back to the inn before you can do any more damage. And don’t you ever-’

‘It’s strange,’ Vetriz interrupted. ‘I did know he was going to win, honestly. He was quite an ordinary man once we started talking to him.’

‘I don’t know,’ Venart replied. ‘I heard him get at least three words in edgeways. By my reckoning that makes him some kind of hero.’

Vetriz ignored that. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s go down to the cutlery market, and you can teach me how to buy copperware. I thought you said we had a lot to get through today.’

Alexius looked up from his book. ‘Well?’ he said.

‘He won.’

The Patriarch nodded briefly, closed the book and laid it endways on the lectern shelf. ‘That’s all right, then,’ he said. ‘Come in and have a cup of cider.’

At the word cider, Gannadius’ lip curled slightly. ‘Not for me,’ he replied. ‘It was a strange business,’ he went on, sitting down on the cell’s one plain chair. ‘Sheer luck, at the finish. Alvise had him at his mercy, and then his sword just snapped.’

‘We made a good defence,’ the Patriarch replied. ‘I just hope we weren’t too obvious about it.’

Gannadius shook his head. ‘That’s the point,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it was us. Or at least,’ he added, stroking his short beard, ‘not just us. I’ll swear I could feel another signature-’

‘Oh, come now,’ Alexius interrupted. ‘You know what I think about that sort of thing.’

His colleague furrowed his brow. ‘It’s a matter of opinion,’ he conceded. ‘For myself, I’m morally certain I could detect something else there apart from our defences. And before you lecture me about gratuitous mysticism and the doctrine of economy of effect, I’m basing this purely on observation. I think our defences were working on him alone, and as a result he was able to keep hopping about warding off good strokes with bad ones. Alvise’s sword breaking was something quite other.’

Alexius nodded. ‘Well, of course. It affected Alvise, presumably quite drastically.’ He considered for a moment. ‘Somebody else’s curse on Alvise, perhaps?’ he suggested.

‘It’s possible. But maybe curse is putting it too strongly. My sense of it was that it was just a little touch; not because it was a little power, more that it was a trivial application of it. A gentle nudge rather than a sharp blow, if you follow me.’

Alexius leant back against the wall and stared at the mosaics on the ceiling. Without realising, he began to count the stars. ‘That would be a highly unusual phenomenon,’ he said. ‘If this power was as great as you’re suggesting, the reaction must be terrible. Who would risk that for the sake of a gentle nudge, as you put it? If I was letting myself in for a high-level reaction, I think I’d want to slam down on the victim like a sledgehammer.’

‘That occurred to me too. But what if it’s a natural?’

Alexius’ eyes narrowed. ‘An unconscious action,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘It’s possible, I suppose, though the phenomenon is mercifully rare. My ex-student, perhaps.’

Gannadius shook his head. ‘You’d have noticed it in her, surely. You’d never have overlooked a power like that.’

‘It could be very deeply rooted,’ Alexius ventured, rubbing his shin to clear the pins and needles. The bed in his cell was uncomfortable enough when used for its ordained purpose. Using it as a chair was a foolhardy act. ‘But no, I think I’d have noticed. And besides,’ he added as a thought struck him, ‘if she’d had any real power of her own, she’d have stopped me before I got the curse wrong. And there’d have been little telltale traces of her malice already present when I got there. I think we can rule her out. But the idea of a natural at the court today is a sound one. I can just imagine someone in the crowd rooting for the underdog, visualising the sword breaking, the underdog saved and exalted; it would be purely instinctive-’

‘Quite.’ Gannadius stood up, walked a few paces in a circle, and sat down again. ‘In which case,’ he went on, ‘doesn’t it complicate things even more? If we have to go back into your visualisation again, who knows what we’ll find when we get there?’

Alexius lay back on the bed and closed his eyes, trying to clear his mind. Above all, keep a sense of proportion. ‘The consequences,’ he said. ‘Let’s think it through, shall we, before we lose our sense of proportion. The worst that can happen-’

‘Is that the curse will come back directly on you,’ Gannadius interrupted peevishly, ‘with dire consequences for you and, by implication, your colleagues. The Patriarch of Perimadeia, killed by one of his own curses-’

‘How would anyone know that?’ Alexius objected.

‘My dear fellow, perfectly healthy, well-fed men don’t just curl up and die for no reason.’

‘Tell them I’d been ill for some time. Natural causes. A merciful release, in fact.’ He opened his eyes. ‘You really think it might come to that?’

‘My dear fellow-’

Alexius sat up and swung his legs to the floor. ‘I think it’s time I was perfectly frank with you, Gannadius. I don’t understand this.’

‘Alexius, you’re the Patriarch of-’

‘Yes, I am. By definition I know more about the operation of the Principle than any man living. And I don’t understand how the wretched thing works. And neither do you,’ he added, before Gannadius could speak. ‘The sum of our knowledge – our combined knowledge, mind you – is that it does work. It’s taken us our joint lifetimes studying the work of thousands of philosophers and scholars over hundreds of years, but we know that it works. That’s it, the extent of our knowledge. Controlling it’s another matter entirely.’

‘Yes, but-’

‘And now,’ Alexius went on, ‘there seems to be evidence that there’s a natural in the city who can control it. Probably,’ he added bitterly, ‘quite instinctively and possibly without even realising what he’s doing. In addition, just to add a little human interest, there’s a curse of my making charging around the city out of control and apparently hell-bent on attaching itself to me.’ He bit his knuckles savagely. ‘Do you know, if only we’d confined our studies to mathematics and ethical speculation, which is after all what we’re supposed to be doing-’

‘Yes, but we didn’t. Or at least, you didn’t.’

‘You were only too pleased to get involved.’

‘All right.’ Gannadius rubbed his face with his hands. ‘This isn’t helping. If we can’t control this problem, do we know anybody who can?’

Alexius sighed. ‘As you yourself pointed out just now, I’m the Patriarch of Perimadeia. And you’re the Archimandrite of the City Academy. Asking for help’s a luxury we gave up when we accepted the promotion.’

‘The natural,’ Gannadius said suddenly. ‘Maybe he could put it right.’

‘But didn’t we just agree he probably doesn’t even know he’s doing it? Even if we could convince him that he’s got the power, there’s no reason to believe he can do it on demand.’

‘We don’t appear to have any other options.’

‘True.’ Alexius slumped, his chin on his chest. ‘But how do we find this natural of yours? We can’t very well wander through the city until we find a miracle.’

Gannadius thought for a long time. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I don’t see what else we can do.’

‘But that could take years. And I haven’t got…’

‘I know,’ Gannadius said. ‘And there’s more, if you think about it. You’re assuming the natural’s a citizen; what if he isn’t? What if he’s a foreigner, here on business and due to leave in a day or so? Or perhaps he’s already left.’

‘There’s no reason to think that.’

‘Isn’t there? Ask yourself: if he’s a citizen, someone who lives here permanently, why haven’t we come across his work before? The odds must be against this being the first manifestation of his power.’

‘It could be.’

‘Yes, but the odds are against that. A power so strong that it gives effect to a hardly conscious wish-’

‘That was only theorising.’

‘And my observation too, remember. I was there, in the court.’

‘That’s true.’ Alexius groaned. ‘Go on, then, you suggest something.’

Gannadius shrugged his shoulders. ‘Apart from combing the streets, I can’t think of anything. And of course there’s no guarantee whatsoever-’

‘A trap,’ Alexius said suddenly. ‘No, not a trap as such. A lure. Something likely to provoke him into using the power, or make the power happen without him doing anything consciously. Flush it out into the open.’

‘Splendid idea. How do you propose going about it?’

Alexius sniffed, then blew his nose. ‘I don’t know,’ he confessed.

Gannadius leant forwards, his chin cupped in his hands. ‘There must be someone we can ask,’ he said.

‘How many times have I got to tell you-?’

‘It’s a speciality,’ Gannadius replied. ‘We need a specialist. How many students of the Principle are there in this city? Thousands. There must be one of them who’s made a study of this little corner of the subject. Everyone has to study something.’

‘So we hold a conclave, tell all our people we’re in desperate trouble, and ask if anyone happens to know the answer. Please, Gannadius.’

‘Obviously we’d have to be circumspect about it. We could issue a paper full of mistakes and wait to see who takes issue with it.’

‘Fine. Have you any idea how long that’d take? And suppose the natural’s a foreigner, as you suggested, and all set to leave the city. We simply don’t have time to do this properly.’

‘Guess, you mean?’

‘Educated guess. A trap to catch a natural.’ Alexius gazed over his steepled hands at the chandelier moorings in the middle of the floor. ‘Anything’s better than sitting here bickering with each other.’ He smiled painfully. ‘Remarkable, isn’t it? We’re supposed to be good at this.’

‘We are,’ Gannadius replied gloomily. ‘That’s what worries me.’