The Proof House

CHAPTER THREE

‘So you’re him, are you?’ the clerk said, looking sideways along his nose. ‘The hero.’

There was a scorpion on the window-ledge; a female, with her newly born young clinging to her back. Bardas counted nine of them. She skittered a few steps, stopped and froze, her pincers raised. The clerk either hadn’t noticed or wasn’t bothered.

‘That’s me,’ Bardas said. ‘At least, I’m Bardas Loredan, and I’ve been called a lot worse.’

The clerk raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, now,’ he said. ‘A sense of humour, too. You’ll get on all right with the prefect, he’s got a sense of humour. At least,’ he added, ‘he makes jokes. More a producer than a consumer, if you take my meaning.’

Bardas nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

The clerk dismissed the thanks with a small gesture of his long, elegant fingers. ‘We’ve heard all about you,’ he said. ‘Of course, you’re an interesting man.’ He swatted at a fly without looking at it; got it, too. ‘The prefect collects interesting men. He’s a student of human nature.’

‘It’s an interesting thing to study,’ Bardas said.

‘So I’m told.’ The scorpion set off again; but the clerk spotted her out of the corner of his eye, picked up a half-round ebony ruler from the folding desk in front of him, leaned across and dealt her a devastating smack with the flat side, crushing her and her nine children into a sticky, compacted mess. ‘It’s all right,’ the clerk went on, flicking the remains off the ledge, ‘they’re not nearly as dangerous as people make out. Sure, if they sting you, chances are you’ll swell up for a day or so, and it hurts dreadfully. But it’s quite rare for anybody to die.’

‘That’s good to know,’ Bardas said.

The clerk wiped the ruler against the wall-hanging and put it back on his desk. ‘So you used to be a law-fencer, ’ he said. ‘I’ve heard about that. You used to kill people to settle lawsuits.’

‘That’s right,’ Bardas said.

‘Remarkable. Well, I suppose there’s something to be said for it, as a way of dealing with these things. Quicker than our way, probably fairer, undoubtedly less painful and gruelling for the participants. Not how I’d choose to earn a living, though.’

‘It had its moments,’ Bardas replied.

‘Better than digging mines, I expect.’

‘Most things are.’

‘I believe you.’ The clerk picked up a short, thin-bladed knife and started trimming a pen. ‘You’ll find the prefect is a pretty fair-minded sort of man; remarkably unprejudiced, really, for an army officer. You play straight with him and he’ll play straight with you.’

‘I’ll definitely bear that in mind,’ Bardas said.

Through the window came the scent of some strong, sweet flower – a pepper-vine, at a guess; he’d noticed that the walls of the prefecture were covered in them. There was also a lingering smell of perfume, the sticks they burned here to mask out the other strong, sweet smells. A bird of some description squawked on the parapet above the window.

‘Of course, most of the senior officers-’ The clerk never got to finish his sentence, because the door opened and a man in uniform (dark-brown gambeson, steel gorget, dress dummy pauldrons, vambraces and cops) walked past without looking at either of them. ‘He’ll see you now,’ the clerk said, and turned his attention to the papers on his desk. Bardas got up and walked into the office.

The prefect was a big man, even by the standard of the Sons of Heaven; darker than most of those Bardas had come across at Ap’ Escatoy, which suggested he was from the inner provinces, a man of consequence. His head was bald and his beard was cropped short and close. The top joint of his left little finger was missing.

‘Bardas Loredan,’ he said.

Bardas nodded.

‘Sit down, please.’ The prefect studied him for a moment, then nodded towards the empty chair. ‘Presumably you have a certificate from your commanding officer at Ap’ Escatoy.’

Bardas pulled the little brass cylinder out from his sleeve and handed it over. Carefully the prefect popped off the caps and poked the curl of paper out with the tip of his mutilated finger.

‘Please bear with me,’ he said as he unrolled it, and as he read it his face was a study in concentration.

‘A fascinating career,’ he said at last. ‘You were second in command of Maxen’s army.’

Baras nodded.

‘Remarkable,’ the prefect said. ‘And then your years as a law-fencer – a most intriguing occupation – followed by your brief service as colonel-general of Perimadeia.’ He looked up. ‘I’ve read about it, of course,’ he said. ‘A fine defence, under the circumstances. And the final assault really only made possible by treachery, so hardly your fault.’

‘Thank you,’ Bardas said.

‘And after that,’ the prefect went on, ‘a somewhat shadowy role in the war between the Shastel Order and Scona; well, we won’t go into that, it was a most unusual sequence of events by all accounts.’ He paused, but Bardas didn’t say anything, so he continued, ‘After which you enlisted as a private soldier with the provincial office and spent – let’s see – three years, give or take a week, in the saps at Ap’ Escatoy, a most distinguished tour of duty by any standards.’ He looked at Bardas again, with no perceptible expression. ‘Very much the stuff of legends,’ he said.

‘It didn’t seem that way at the time,’ Bardas said.

The prefect considered for a moment, then laughed. ‘No, of course not. Now then, what else have we got here? Ah, yes, your brother Gorgas; the same Gorgas Loredan who staged the military coup in the Mesoge. Clearly soldiering runs in the family. Another remarkable career, by all accounts. And very shrewd, strategically speaking. The importance of the Mesoge as a potential theatre of confrontation has been sorely underestimated, in my opinion.’

Bardas thought for a moment. ‘That’s Gorgas for you,’ he said. ‘Though my sister’s the smart one in our family.’

The prefect smiled again. ‘Do you really think so?’ he said. ‘To build up a thriving business and then lose it so quickly, over such a trifling series of incidents? Well, of course I can’t claim to know all the facts.’ Again he paused, then continued, ‘All in all,’ he said, ‘an impressive resume for a sergeant of engineers. I confess, I’m curious as to how you came to join the provincial office, a man with your talents and experience. I’d have thought you’d have found something rather more challenging.’

‘Well, you know how it is,’ Bardas said. ‘Wars seem to follow me about, whenever I get myself settled. So I thought this time I’d go and find one, before it found me.’

The prefect looked at him as if he hadn’t quite understood. ‘An interesting perspective,’ he said. ‘In any event, your service in the siege of Ap’ Escatoy certainly merits a tangible reward, and the provincial office knows the importance of looking after its own. It ought to be possible to find a situation that will prove rewarding to you and which makes rather better use of your talents than the mines.’ He glanced back at the paper in front of him. ‘I see you have practical experience in manufacturing,’ he said.

‘I used to make bows,’ Bardas replied.

‘You were good at it?’

‘Fairly good,’ Bardas said. ‘A lot depends on getting the right materials.’

The prefect frowned, then nodded. ‘Quite right,’ he said. ‘Our procurement office takes particular care to ensure that all our specifications are properly met. And of course,’ he went on, ‘we’re equally thorough when it comes to quality control. Which is why the proof house is such an important part of our manufacturing procedure.’

‘Proof house,’ Bardas repeated. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what that means.’

For some reason, that seemed to amuse the prefect. ‘There’s no reason why you should,’ he said. ‘It’s a rather specialised department. Essentially, the proof house is where we test the armour we issue to our soldiers. It’s a subdivision of the district armoury at Ap’ Calick, although we test samples from provinces all over the western Empire.’ The prefect drummed his fingers on the desktop in a quick, orderly rhythm. ‘There’s a vacancy for a deputy inspector at Ap’ Calick. The post is equivalent in rank to sergeant-of-fifty, so it would represent a significant promotion; obviously it’s not a combat assignment, but I venture to suggest that after such a protracted tour of front-line duty, the change would not be unwelcome. Mostly, though, the combination of proven administrative skills and considerable first-hand combat experience that your record suggests make you a thoroughly logical choice for this duty. Provided,’ the prefect added, with a smile, ‘it meets with your approval.’

Bardas looked up. ‘Oh, absolutely,’ he said. ‘Anything that doesn’t involve killing people down dark tunnels will do me just fine. Thank you.’

The prefect looked at him, his head slightly on one side, with the air of a man reluctantly giving up on an insoluble problem. ‘My pleasure,’ he said. ‘If you’d care to call back tomorrow, any time after midday, my clerk should have your certificate and transit documents ready. You can use the post to get there; not that there’s any immediate hurry, but it can be an awkward journey by conventional means.’ The prefect stood up, indicating that the interview was over. Bardas followed suit. ‘Good luck, Sergeant Loredan. I’m sure you’ll do an excellent job in Ap’ Calick.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ Bardas replied. He opened the door, then hesitated. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘just one quick question. How do you go about testing armour?’

The prefect spread his hands. ‘I really don’t know,’ he said. ‘I assume by simulating the sort of strain and damage it’s likely to undergo in actual combat.’

Bardas nodded. ‘Bashing it with swords,’ he said. ‘That sort of thing. Should be fun. Thank you.’ He closed the door behind him before the prefect could say anything else.

Of course, Bardas knew all about the post. Everyone in the Empire had come across it at some time, usually in the context of scurrying out of its way. The post-horses, as everybody knew, stopped for nothing; they were explicitly allowed to ride down anybody who couldn’t get out of the road quickly enough, and the post-riders seemed to delight in taking every opportunity they could to exercise this privilege.

‘Three stops a day to change horses,’ the master courier told him cheerfully, ‘and two more at night; we take our food and water with us, and if you want a pee, you do it over the side of the coach. This all the stuff you’re taking?’

Bardas nodded. ‘Just the kitbag,’ he said.

‘No armour?’

‘Sapper,’ Bardas explained. ‘We never bothered with it in the mines.’

The courier shrugged and signalled to the outriders to mount up. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘Just for once there’s a bit of space on the coach; nothing much going up the line today. You can sit on the box with me, or lie down in the back if you can find room; your choice.’

Bardas climbed up, stepping on the horizontal spoke of the front wheel as he’d seen the courier do. ‘I’ll ride up front to start with,’ he said, ‘it’ll give me a chance to admire the scenery.’

The courier laughed. ‘You’re welcome,’ he said. ‘Hope you like rocks, ’cos that’s all you’ll see till we’re past Tollambec.’

The coach was a wonderful piece of work; wide and low at the front, enormous back wheels with thick iron tyres fitted front and back with sheaves of steel springs the size and thickness of crossbow limbs to float the chassis off the axles. ‘Corners a treat,’ the courier told him. ‘Next best thing to impossible to turn it over, unless you’re really trying hard. Built to last, too,’ he added, giving the side of the box a meaty slap with the side of his hand. ‘Well, they need to be, the amount of work they do. Bloodstream of the Empire, they call us.’

Bardas nodded. In the back he could see jars of wine with fancy designs on the seals, bales of various expensive-looking fabrics, some pieces of furniture vaguely recognisable under the cloth they were wrapped in, one barrel of civilian-made arrows and three or four sealed wooden chests. ‘Essential supplies, that sort of thing,’ he said. ‘I can see the need for a system like this.’

Once they’d cleared the camp, the courier whipped the horses up into a swift canter, which soon made the coach too noisy and uncomfortable for anything except sitting still and quiet. The scenery was, as promised, an endless array of rock faces. Just occasionally the coach would hurtle past groups of men and donkeys ostentatiously pulled in to passing places; they looked away and tried to flatten themelves against the rock as the coach went by, like sappers laid up in the mines.

‘You’re the hero, right?’ the courier shouted.

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘What? I can’t hear you.’

‘Yes,’ Bardas yelled. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Ah, well. Each to his own, I suppose,’ the courier roared, and the rocks bounced his voice backwards and forwards like children playing catch. ‘Wouldn’t suit me, all that crawling about in the dark.’

‘Nor me.’

‘What?’

‘I said it didn’t suit me either,’ Bardas shouted. ‘Not my idea of fun.’

The courier pulled a face. ‘You’re not supposed to say that,’ he roared. ‘You’re a bloody hero.’

Bardas didn’t have the energy to rise to that. ‘I think I’ll lie down in the back,’ he shouted.

‘Suit yourself.’

It was delicate work, edging down from the box and crawling across the cargo until he found a man-sized niche he could crawl into. Amazingly, in spite of the noise and the jarring movement of the coach, it wasn’t long before he was fast asleep.

When he woke up, the courier was standing over him, grinning. ‘Wake up,’ he said. ‘First change. I’d stretch your legs if I were you; long haul, the next stage.’

Bardas grunted and tried to stand up, something that proved to be harder than he’d expected. By the time he’d got back enough feeling in his legs to scramble down off the coach, the stagekeepers had already out-spanned the old horses and were spanning in the replacements, identical-looking animals with nondescript dun coats, their manes and tails docked short. Each one was branded with the provincial office’s mark and a serial number, large enough to be legible from some way off.

The courier was splashing his head and shoulders with water from a leather bucket. ‘You want a wet?’ he called out. ‘Wash some of the dust off.’

Bardas looked down; he hadn’t noticed how dusty and grimy he was. ‘All right,’ he replied, and the courier dipped the bucket in a water-butt and passed it to him. The water was slightly cloudy with disturbed sediment.

‘Time to go,’ the courier told him, then turned round to shout a message back to one of the outriders; Bardas didn’t catch what he was saying. The stagekeepers had finished changing the horses and were crawling about under the coach, painting grease on the axles from large clay tubs and checking the cotter pins. ‘You’d better climb up,’ the courier went on. ‘We leave as soon as they’ve done, whether you’re on board or not.’

Bardas hauled himself up over the box. He was only just in position in his valley in the cargo when the coach started to move.

As the courier had promised, the next stage seemed to go on for ever. Imperial roads were famous for being straight and, where humanly possible, flat; the provincial office’s engineers thought nothing of hacking a high-sided cutting through a substantial hill for no other reason, or so it seemed, than to prove that they could. Bardas considered the cargo piled up around him; jars of dates, figs and cherries preserved in honey, foot-stools and hat-boxes, book-boxes (a lot of those) and brass tubes that held rolled-up silk paintings; it seemed a lot of effort to go to, slicing the middle out of a mountain just so that a prefect could have fresh grapes and the latest anthology of occasional verse; but the Empire could do that sort of thing, so why not? It wasn’t as if they were particularly attractive hills to begin with.

At the third stage of the day, the coach took on another passenger. ‘Shift over,’ she said. Bardas looked at her, and shifted.

‘I brought my own food,’ she went on, burrowing into a huge wickerwork basket that only just fitted into the gap between the piled and roped-down boxes. ‘I’ve been on this run too often to poison myself with government rations.’ She emerged, like a rat from a hole in the wall, with a squat, flat packet made of vine leaves. Honey oozed out between the folds. ‘Of course, you need a digestion like a compost heap to keep anything down on a post coach,’ she went on. ‘All that bumping and lurching on a full stomach; it’s far worse than being on a ship, I can tell you.’

She was small, grey-haired and dark-eyed, bundled up in a thick woollen coat with a high fur collar, secured at the neck with a huge, vicious-looking brooch. Bardas, who was already down to his shirt because of the heat, couldn’t help staring; she wasn’t sweating at all.

‘You think I’m overdressed,’ she said without looking up, as her small, bent fingers picked at the string of her packet. ‘You wait till you’ve spent a couple of nights on the road, you’ll wish you’d brought something a bit warmer than that. Military?’ Bardas nodded. ‘Thought so. Well, it doesn’t take a great analytical mind to come up with that one, why else would – well, one of your lot be on a government coach? Not that it bothers me, needless to say. There just isn’t any room for those kinds of attitudes now, not if we’re really serious about being one Empire and all that sort of thing. I dare say in twenty years or so’s time, people just won’t think about it any more. And quite right too, if you ask me. It’s like this whole Sons and Daughters of Heaven thing; we don’t believe it any more, you don’t believe it (or if you do, you’re a sight more gullible than I gave you credit for) so really, where’s the point? People are people, and that’s all there is to it.’ She stripped away the vine leaves to reveal a golden-brown slab of cake, dripping liquid honey and scattering crumbs of nut. ‘There really isn’t a polite way to eat this stuff,’ she said, ‘so the hell with it. Here goes.’ She opened her mouth as wide as it would go, stuffed about a quarter of the cake into it, and bit hard. ‘Not bad,’ she went on, as soon as her mouth was clear enough of cake to let her speak, ‘though I do say so myself. Properly speaking, that was meant for my son in Daic, but what he wasn’t expecting he’ll never miss. Don’t talk much, do you?’

‘I prefer to listen,’ Bardas replied.

‘Very sensible,’ the woman said. ‘One mouth and two ears, like my mother used to tell us when we were children. How far are you going?’

‘Sammyra,’ Bardas said. ‘Apparently I change coaches there for Ap’ Calick.’

The woman was chewing. ‘Ap’ Calick,’ she said. ‘I used to call there when I was younger. The manager of the government brickyard there was a very good customer. Perfume,’ she added, by way of explanation. ‘Twenty years in the trade, either side of when the children were small; took over from my father when I was seventeen, bought out both my brothers by the time I was twenty. I’m hoping my youngest girl will take over from me in due course; she’s very good on the production side, but she doesn’t like the travelling. With me, of course, it’s the other way round, so we work very well together. My son hates me still being on the road, of course; I expect he thinks it makes him look bad, but who the hell cares? Still, I won’t deny it’s a great help having a son in the roads commission. For one thing, I can scrounge a lift on the post whenever I need to, and that’s a real advantage. I’m not sure I’d be quite so keen on the road if I was having to slog across this lot on a mule. Have you been to Sammyra before?’

Bardas shook his head. ‘Just a name to me,’ he said.

The woman sniffed. ‘It’s nothing much, really; been going downhill ever since they lost the indigo trade. The baths are worth a visit if you get time, but I wouldn’t bother too much with the market. You can get exactly the same stuff in Tollambec at about half the price.’

Bardas nodded. ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ he said.

‘Now the best thing about Tollambec,’ the woman went on, ‘is the fish stew. How they ever got a taste for fish living that far from the sea heaven only knows, but the plain fact is I’d rather have salt fish Tollambec style than the fresh stuff any day, and I don’t care who knows it. Do they eat much fish where you come from?’

‘I used to live in Perimadeia,’ Bardas replied.

‘Perimadeia,’ the woman repeated. ‘So, plenty of cod and mackerel, some tuna, eels, of course…’

Bardas shrugged. ‘I don’t know, I’m afraid. We used just to call it fish. It was grey and came in a slice of bread.’

The woman sighed. ‘My son’s just the same,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t know good food if it bit him. That’s such a shame; I mean, so much of life’s about eating and drinking. If you don’t take an interest, it’s such a waste.’

‘I suppose so.’

Just as the woman had said, as soon as it got dark, it got cold. Fortunately, there was a spare oxhide folded up in a corner of the cart, and Loredan crawled into it. The outriders stopped and lit lanterns, then carried on at not much less than the pace they’d set during the day.

‘One advantage of a straight, flat road,’ the woman said. ‘Doesn’t really matter if you can’t see where you’re going.’›

The government rations the woman had spoken so slightingly of turned out to consist of a long, flat coarse barley loaf flavoured with garlic and dill, some strong hard cheese and an onion. ‘They say you can tell someone who’s been on the post from several yards away,’ the woman commented, ‘just from the smell. You’ve got to admit, it’s a pretty obnoxious combination.’

Bardas smiled, though of course she couldn’t see. ‘I like the smell of garlic,’ he said.

‘Do you? That’s – well, each to his own, I suppose. Mind you, in my line of business, you pretty well live and die by your sense of smell.’

‘That must be strange,’ Bardas said.

‘Oh, it is. I find it remarkable how most people just take it for granted. It’s definitely the laziest of the five senses, though that’s nothing a little training won’t cure. My name’s Iasbar, by the way.’

‘Bardas Loredan.’

‘Loredan, Loredan – I’ve heard that name, you know. Isn’t there a bank with that name somewhere in the – out your way somewhere?’

‘I believe so.’

‘Ah, well, that explains it. Does everybody have two names where you come from?’

‘It’s quite common,’ Bardas replied. ‘Does everybody where you come from have just one?’

The woman laughed. ‘Oh, it’s a bit more complicated than that,’ she said. ‘Let me see, now. If I was a man I’d be Iasbar Hulyan Ap’ Daic – Iasbar for me, Hulyan for my father, Ap’ Daic for where my mother was born. Because I’m a woman, I’m plain Iasbar Ap’ Cander; the same idea, but Ap’ Cander because that’s where my husband was born. If I’d never been married, I’d still be Hulyan Iasbar Ap’ Escatoy, which was where I was born. Don’t worry if it sounds confusing,’ she added, ‘it takes foreigners a lifetime to get used to the nuances.’

‘You were born in Ap’ Escatoy?’ Bardas asked.

‘Yes indeed, while my father still had his shop there. I kept meaning to go back, you know, but now of course it’s too late. It was a strange place to grow up in.’

‘Really,’ Bardas said.

‘Oh, yes. They had an absolutely incredible thick soup made with lentils and sour cream; we used to go down to the market with one of those big curvy seashells and get it filled up for a half-quarter, then we’d sit on the steps of the market hall and drink it while it was hot. There was something about it, some special secret ingredient, and I’ve never been able to figure out what it was. Of course, if only I’d thought to ask my mother I’d know what it was, but it never occurred to me. Well it doesn’t, does it, when you’re that age?’

Bardas fell asleep while she was still talking. When he woke up, she wasn’t there any more and the coach was just pulling away from the first stage of the day. She’d left him half a slice of the sticky cake, still in its vine-leaf wrapping; but the jolting of the carriage had knocked it down on to the floor, and it was covered in dust.

‘Temrai?’

He came back in a hurry and opened his eyes. ‘What?’

‘You were dreaming.’

‘I know.’ He sat up. ‘You woke me up just to tell me I was dreaming?’

His wife looked at him. ‘It can’t have been a very nice dream,’ she said. ‘You were wriggling about and making sort of whimpering noises.’

Temrai yawned. ‘It’s about time I was getting up,’ he said. ‘Kurrai and the others’ll be here soon, and I always feel such a fool climbing into that lot with people watching.’

Tilden giggled. ‘It’s quite a performance,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why you bother, really.’

‘It’s to keep me from getting killed,’ Temrai replied, frowning. ‘I don’t wear armour for fun, you know.’ He swung his legs off the bed and hopped across the floor of the tent to the armour-stand.

‘People never used to bother with it,’ Tilden pointed out, ‘not before we came here. Not all that paraphernalia, anyway.’

Temrai sighed. He loathed wearing the stuff at the best of times; it made his movements slow and awkward, and that made him feel stupid. He was convinced he made more mistakes these days just because he was buried under all that metalwork. ‘I don’t know about you,’ he said, pulling on the padded shirt that formed the first layer of his cocoon, ‘but anything that increases my chances of not getting killed is just fine with me. Now, are you going to help me, or do I have to do it all by myself?’

‘All right,’ Tilden said. ‘You know, I’d find it easier to take it seriously if it didn’t all have such silly names.’

Temrai smiled. ‘Now there I agree with you,’ he said. ‘I’m still not sure I know what all the bits are called, either. According to the man who sold it to me, this thing’s a besegew, but everybody else calls it a gorget. Is there a difference, I ask myself, and if so, what is it?’

‘I imagine a besegew’s more expensive,’ Tilden said. ‘And why not call it a collar? That’s all it is, really, it’s just that it’s made of metal. Here, hold still. Why they can’t put bigger buckles on these straps I just don’t know.’

The besegew – or gorget – made it quite hard to breathe. ‘It wouldn’t kill them,’ Tilden observed, ‘to put longer straps on.’ Temrai could have pointed out that if it wasn’t a tight fit there wasn’t much point in wearing it, but decided not to. Eventually he’d be able to take the wretched thing off again, and that would be nice.

Kurrai, the chief of staff, and his fresh-faced young men arrived just as he was putting on his boots (‘But you mustn’t call them that, they’re sabatons’). Kurrai wore his armour as if he never wore anything else; which, Temrai reflected, might well be true.

‘They’re still there,’ Kurrai said. ‘As far as we can tell, they haven’t moved at all.’

Temrai frowned. ‘I still reckon it’s too good to be true,’ he said.

Kurrai shrugged. ‘I guess they’re just refreshingly stupid,’ he replied. ‘Honestly, if it is all a wonderfully cunning ruse, I can’t for the life of me see what it is. They’re in the middle of a plain with no cover, nowhere they can have hidden a couple of squadrons of heavy cavalry or anything else that’s going to put us off our stroke. As far as I can see, they’re just sitting there waiting for us to come and get them.’ He sat down on a chair, which creaked ominously. ‘There’s such a thing as being too cautious, you know.’

Temrai shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘I’ve been trying to figure out what I’d do if I was in their shoes, and I admit, I couldn’t come up with anything clever. Mind you, I hope I’d never have got myself into that position in the first place.’

‘They believe in personal bravery,’ Kurrai said, scratching his nose, ‘and the justice of their cause. We’ll slaughter them, you’ll see.’

Temrai smiled weakly. Somehow, he found it hard to get excited about slaughtering a small band of people who had, until a few years ago, been as much a part of the plains federation as he was. They’d been there with him when he burned Perimadeia; they’d helped build the torsion engines, lost their share of friends and family when Bardas Loredan poured liquid fire on them from the walls. He still didn’t really understand why they’d chosen to turn against him. For all he knew, they were right about whatever it was, and he was wrong. Like so many other things, it had changed once they’d burned the city and settled down on the comfortable pastures opposite the ruins; so it was his fault, when all was said and done. Somehow, that made the prospect of an easy victory rather unpleasant. The bit about the just cause bothered him a little, too; he’d won a great and famous victory a few years ago, and at the time he’d believed he had a just cause. Since then, he’d come to wonder if there was such a thing, and if so, if it had ever been known to prevail.

‘Don’t let’s get cocky,’ he said, standing up and feeling the weight of his armour across his shoulders. ‘The worst words a general can ever utter are, How the hell did that ever happen?’

Kurrai smiled dutifully. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Between over-cautious and cocky, how do people ever manage to win battles?’

‘They don’t, usually,’ Temrai replied. ‘As often as not, it comes down to who loses first.’

Dear Uncle, she’d written. It had taken her a lot of time and effort, gripping the pen between the stumps of her fingers, and the writing looked like a small child’s school exercise.

Dear Uncle. The thought made her smile. Mostly, she wrote to her uncle to annoy her mother, who wanted her to have nothing to do with any of her uncles; not the three recently come into a desperate hand-to-mouth kind of power in that place she’d never been to but which even her mother sometimes absentmindedly referred to as home; certainly not to her other uncle, the one she was still determined to kill one day, when she got around to it. The fact remained: the nearest she’d been to feeling at home anywhere had been her uncle Gorgas’ house on Scona, in that short space of time before everything had inevitably torn itself apart, with a little indirect help from herself.

Dear Uncle. She looked out of the small, narrow window towards the sea. It was getting harder to find messengers to carry her letters, what with her mother’s attitude, various wars and the general stagnation of trade between the Empire and its prospective victims. While he’d lived, the truffle man had been the most reliable courier; but presumably he was one of the however-many-it-was thousand who’d died in the fall of Ap’ Escatoy, when her other uncle, the bad one, tunnelled under the walls like a mole and pulled them down on top of him. Nobody seemed to want to take over the truffle run between the Mesoge and Ap’ Bermidan; the great lords of the provincial office were getting their truffles from somewhere else now, cheaper, bigger and fresher. And without the truffle business, why the hell would anybody want to go from here to there and back again?

Dear Uncle, nothing much has happened here since I wrote to you last. Could she really be bothered to go to all the trouble it would take her to write that? She thought about it, and decided yes, worth it just for that worried sideways look her mother gave her every time she suspected her of having sent a letter (What the hell could be in those letters? The little bitch must be spying on me, sending him secrets; but what could they possibly be? I hadn’t realised I had any secrets he might possibly want, but obviously I do or she wouldn’t be writing him letters…). And besides, it wasn’t as if she had anything at all else to do.

Years and years ago, when she was a little girl, an old man who was a friend of the family (her other family, not this one; this family didn’t have friends) had told her stories about beautiful princesses who were locked up in towers by their wicked stepmothers. Inevitably, as night follows day, there was always a handsome young hero who tricked or slashed his way into the tower and rescued the princess; that was the order of things, and it explained why the princesses stayed calm and stayed put, knowing that sooner or later the prince would turn up and everything would work out as it was supposed to. When she was a little girl, she’d thought to herself how jolly it would be to be one of those princesses, with her own tower (nobody to scowl at her and tell her to get it tidied) and the reassuring knowledge that her own designated prince was probably already on his way.

Stories like that had all died on the same day her bad uncle killed her other uncle, her father’s brother, the man she’d been betrothed to since she was a little girl listening to fairy stories. She’d given them no more thought after that, until suddenly she’d found herself in this tower, a tower of her very own overlooking the dark-blue sea at Ap’ Bermidan. Of course, properly speaking she wasn’t a princess, nothing like; her mother was just another merchant, albeit a very rich one (or she assumed she was rich; she had no way of knowing, cooped up here like a man buried alive). The situation was close enough, however, to put her in mind of the stories, and a make-believe wish that had come horribly true. Perhaps that was why it was so important to write to her uncle; if anybody was going to come to rescue her, it would probably have to be him; and, since she was a realist, she wasn’t holding her breath. Looked at dispassionately, the main motivation was annoying her mother. Anything else was just serendipity.

It was also stretching the point a bit to call Uncle Gorgas a prince. True, he fitted the description in some respects; he was the ruler of the country he lived in (though technically that made him the king, not a prince); but there were a lot of other, nastier words to describe what her uncle Gorgas was. Or what he was to everybody else. Normal people.

She heard footsteps on the stairs, and swore under her breath. With her mutilated hand it was painfully difficult to get the writing stuff out of sight in time; one slip and she’d drop the ink-horn, leaving a tell-tale splodge on the floor, or a pen would fall to the ground – there were any number of ways she could slip up and give herself away, finally give her mother the excuse she’d been looking for to tighten the chain; no more visitors, no more merchants and traders allowed to come to see her – which would mean no more paper, pens and ink, no more books. She’d just managed to get the paper out of the way under her bed when someone knocked at the door.

‘Just a moment,’ she called out. Well, it wasn’t her mother, at any rate. Mother never knocked before barging into a room. ‘All right, come in.’

But it was just the porter; the big, dozy-looking man who sat between her and the rest of the world, when he wasn’t cleaning her shoes or making her soup. He was harmless enough, too stupid to recognise an ink-horn or a penknife if he saw one. ‘What is it?’ she said.

‘Man here to see you,’ the porter replied; and over his shoulder she could see one of Them, the Children of Heaven, in a fancy dark-blue travelling cloak with a gold pin that told you his rank if you understood about such things.

‘All right,’ she said.

The porter got out of the way, and her visitor came in. He was old; long and thin, as many of Them were, with grizzled white hair sticking to his head like bits of cobweb. He looked round without saying anything, then sat down without being asked.

‘Iseutz Loredan?’ he said.

She nodded. ‘And you are?’

‘Colonel Abrain. I have a commission from the prefect of Ap’ Escatoy.’

He didn’t seem in any hurry to let her see it, and she couldn’t be bothered to ask. ‘You’ve come a long way, then. What does the prefect want from me?’ she asked.

Her visitor looked at her again, as if she were a mathematical problem, a complicated diagram in algebra. ‘You have an uncle,’ he said, ‘Bardas Loredan. You’ve repeatedly threatened to kill him. The prefect would like to know more about him.’

She frowned. ‘I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me why,’ she said.

‘I’ll tell you if you want me to,’ the man replied. ‘I assume you know about the fall of Ap’ Escatoy, and the part your uncle played in it.’

‘Of course. Everybody does.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Let’s see,’ she said. ‘Uncle Bardas is now a war hero, and you don’t want me to kill him after all. Am I warm?’

She watched him puzzle out the unfamiliar idiom. ‘The prefect doesn’t see you as a threat, if that’s what you mean,’ he replied. ‘And although it’s true that Sergeant Loredan did distinguish himself-’

‘Sergeant Loredan.’

He looked annoyed. ‘That is his current rank in the provincial office, yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose you’re used to thinking of him as Colonel Loredan. Well, now, in the provincial office, rank is earned, not carried forward from an individual’s last employment.’

‘That sounds reasonable enough,’ Iseutz said. ‘So, what do you want to know about Sergeant Loredan?’

He shifted in his chair in such a way as to suggest that he had a bad leg; it could just as easily be arthritis as an honourable war-wound. ‘The prefect would like to find out as much as he can about the relationship between your uncle Bardas Loredan and the barbarian King of Perimadeia, Temrai. He understands that their mutual antagonism dates back to before the Fall of the City. He is also interested in finding out about Bardas Loredan’s service with General Maxen; it seems likely that his experience in fighting the plains tribes might be helpful to the Empire in the event of war between themselves and us.’

Iseutz shrugged her bony shoulders. ‘Why ask me?’ she said. ‘If you think we’ve had long, cosy evenings of niece-and-uncle chats by the fireside with him telling me all about his interesting life, you’ve got the wrong family. I didn’t even find out he was my uncle until after he did this.’ She held up her ruined hand; the Son of Heaven looked at it and frowned a little. ‘Yes, I know he fought against the tribes when he was in Maxen’s army; Maxen did a lot of really terrible things to them, which was why Temrai hated us so much. And yes, I would think Uncle Bardas probably knows more about killing the tribes than anybody else in the whole world. But you knew that before you came here.’

The Son of Heaven nodded. ‘And you have nothing further to offer by way of insights or additional data?’

‘Sorry.’

The small, precise gesture of his hands suggested that he forgave her. ‘I understand that you are on bad terms with your uncle Bardas,’ he said. ‘But I gather your relationship with your uncle Gorgas is rather better. You write to him regularly.’

‘Yes. How did you know that?’

He indicated her hand with a tiny dip of his head. ‘Writing is obviously difficult for you, but you make the effort. Clearly you’re quite close to your uncle Gorgas.’

She smiled. Most people looked away when she smiled at them, but not Colonel Abrain. ‘In a way,’ she said. ‘I’m the only family he’s got, really, since my mother betrayed him and Uncle Bardas murdered his son. Oh, there’s his other two brothers in the Mesoge, of course, I was forgetting them. They’re very easy to forget.’

‘Tell me about him,’ said Colonel Abrain.

Iseutz shook her head. ‘I don’t think I will,’ she said. ‘Not unless you tell me why you’re interested in him.’

‘I find your entire family fascinating,’ the Son of Heaven replied impassively. ‘I’m a student of human nature.’

‘Really.’

‘It’s something of a passion among my people.’ He steepled his fingers. ‘More to the point, he has approached us with a view to forming an alliance against King Temrai. Obviously we would wish to interview as many of his close associates as possible before reaching a decision on this proposal.’

Iseutz thought for a moment. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I don’t suppose anything I can tell you about him can do him any harm. Tell you what; you tell me what you already know, and I’ll fill in the gaps.’

The colonel smiled thinly. ‘As you wish,’ he said. ‘We know that when he was a young man, he prostituted his sister and then murdered his father and brother-in-law when they found out what he had done. He also tried to kill his sister, but failed. In the same incident, he murdered your father; isn’t that so?’

Iseutz nodded. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘What a lot of things you people know.’

‘We pride ourselves on attention to detail. After committing these murders, he escaped from the Mesoge and spent a while as a pirate and soldier of fortune, until his sister – your mother – established the Bank on Scona; he joined her there and worked for her as head of the Bank’s security forces; in which capacity, we understand, he opened the gates of Perimadeia to the forces of King Temrai, allowing the city to be taken and burned to the ground. Three years ago, matters between the Bank and the Shastel Order came to a head; Gorgas Loredan conducted a brilliant defence, considering the disparity in size and quality between the armies of the Order and the forces available to the Bank, but in spite of two remarkable victories in pitched battle, the Order prevailed and Scona was captured. Your uncle deserted the island immediately before its fall, taking with him the remnants of the Scona army; he sailed directly to the Mesoge and seized power there. After a few initial incidents, his regime has apparently become stable, although reliable information from the Mesoge has become rather difficult to obtain.’ He unfolded his hands and laid them palm down on his knees. ‘Is that summary basically accurate?’

‘I’m impressed,’ Iseutz said. ‘You people are good at this, I can tell. Well, you didn’t mention that the reason why he gave up and let Shastel walk right into Scona was because just before he was due to fight their third army – he’d annihilated the other two, as you know – Uncle Bardas killed his son, and my mother skipped out and left him; what with one thing and another, he couldn’t see any point in prolonging the agony.’

The colonel nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Now, what else can you tell me about him?’

Iseutz thought for a long while. ‘I suppose you could say he’s an uneasy mix of idealism and pragmatism,’ she said. ‘The idealism bit is this notion of family that he’s got buried deep down inside; he’s convinced that he believes in family as the most important thing. I don’t think that’s actually the case; what I mean is, I think he’s fooling himself when he thinks that, but it’s what he sincerely believes. I think.’ She paused for a moment, her lips pressed to the back of her hand. ‘The pragmatism bit’s the other side of the coin. His philosophy is, what’s done is done, no point crying over spilt milk, the thing is to make the best of the situation you find yourself in and not to let the past get in the way of the future.’ She grinned. ‘I guess you could say he takes that particular philosophy to extremes rather. But he’s a pretty extreme person.’

The Son of Heaven stirred a little in his chair; cramp, possibly. ‘Why do you think he seized power in the Mesoge?’

‘Lots of reasons, probably.’ Iseutz sighed and looked out of the window. ‘He saw a good opportunity and took it. The Mesoge was his home; no other way he could ever go back after what he’d done, except at the head of an army, so he took an army. And I expect if you asked him, he’d say he did it for the good of his people. Probably believes it, too, somewhere inside him. That’s another talent he’s got – he can believe almost anything if he has to.’

‘Why would he want to make war on the tribes? He helped them destroy Perimadeia.’

‘Ah.’ Iseutz nodded. ‘That’s a good one, but if you’d been paying attention you’d have figured it out for yourself. Betraying the City was one of the things he did that made Bardas hate him; so he reckons that if he fights the plainspeople and kills Temrai, that’ll make it up to Bardas. At the same time, it’ll please you people, and if he’s serious about being a king in the Mesoge, he’s going to need friends – like you, for instance. But the political stuff is only the trimmings. Bardas is the reason. Bardas motivates most of what Gorgas does, when he isn’t under orders from my mother.’

Colonel Abrain frowned. ‘Explain,’ he said.

‘The two people he hurt most,’ Iseutz replied. ‘Well, three, really: my mother, Bardas and me. In that order. So, he’s been trying to make it up to us ever since; he made it possible for my mother to play God Almighty in Scona, he’s going to kill Temrai for Bardas, and – well, he’ll get around to me later.’ She yawned and stretched like a cat. ‘Really, if you are a student of human nature, he’s a real collector’s item. He’s either an evil man who spends his life trying to do right by his own family, or a good man who did one very evil thing. Or both. Like I said, he feels the greatest obligation to my mother, because she was the one he hurt most (apart from the ones he killed, of course, but they’re dead, so he can’t help them). But Bardas is the one he really cares about.’

‘Even though Bardas killed his son?’

Iseutz shrugged. ‘Uncle Gorgas has an infinite capacity for forgiveness. Which argues against the evil-man hypothesis, just as the killing-and-betraying-cities thing argues against the basically-good theory. We’re a complicated lot, us Loredans. Almost but not quite more trouble than we’re worth.’

The Son of Heaven stood up, slowly because of his bad leg. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You’ve been most helpful.’

‘Oh, that’s all right.’ Iseutz stayed where she was. ‘But do me a favour, if you would. See if you can’t find some way of making life difficult for my mother – currency regulations, customs, import licences, something along those lines. She hates things like that.’

‘I’m sorry,’ the colonel said austerely. ‘The provincial office doesn’t work like that.’

‘Really? Forget it, then. Goodbye.’

When he’d gone, Iseutz sat on the floor, her back against the wall, her arms tight around her knees, thinking about the recurring dream she had in which the Patriarch Alexius told her that, if she wanted, he could take a sharp knife and cut off the Loredan half of her, leaving only the Hedin half behind. Invariably she woke up just before he started to cut. She’d never been able to work out whether it was a nightmare or not.

‘Who was that?’

She looked up. ‘The rat-catcher,’ she said. ‘I sent for him. Place is swarming with rats.’

Her mother sighed impatiently. ‘He was from the provincial office,’ she said. ‘What did he want?’

‘If you’re going to answer your own questions, what do you need me for?’

Niessa Loredan walked over to where her daughter was sitting and kicked her hard in the ribs, enough to wind her. ‘Who was he,’ she asked again, ‘and what did he want?’

Iseutz looked up. ‘He wanted to know if you like mushrooms,’ she said. ‘I said yes.’

Niessa kicked her again, rather harder, and pulled her foot away before Iseutz could grab hold of it. ‘I haven’t got time to bother with you now,’ she said. ‘I’ll send Morz up to take away your books and your lamp, and don’t think you’ll get anything to eat.’

‘Good. I’m sick of soup.’

Niessa bent down. ‘Iseutz,’ she said, ‘don’t be tiresome. What did he want?’

Iseutz sighed. ‘He wanted to know about Uncle Bardas and Uncle Gorgas. I told him – well, all the stuff I knew he knew already. That’s all I could tell him. I don’t know any more.’

‘Well.’ Niessa straightened up. ‘You told him what he wanted, then? We have to co-operate with these people; we depend on their goodwill.’

‘I told him everything I know.’

Niessa nodded. ‘And you weren’t rude or difficult? Well, of course you were. But you didn’t attack him or anything?’

‘Mother!’ Iseutz said angrily. ‘For pity’s sake. You make me sound like I’m mad or something. What do you think I did, chase him round the room on all fours trying to bite his ankles?’

Niessa walked to the door and opened it. ‘We have to co-operate,’ she said. ‘It hasn’t been easy since we moved here; I’ve had to work very hard. I won’t have you spoiling it for me. Understood?’

‘Perfectly.’

That sideways look again – fear, she’s worried. I love it when she’s worried. ‘Iseutz,’ Niessa said, ‘one day, everything I’ve worked for, everything I’ve built, will come to you. You’re my daughter, the only family I’ve got left. Why must you always be trying to spoil things for me?’

Iseutz laughed. ‘You’re going to die and leave me all your money? Fat chance. If I thought you were mortal, I’d have bitten your throat out in the night.’

Niessa closed her eyes, then opened them again. ‘You come out with things like that, and then you wonder why I keep you here. I know you don’t mean it, you’re just trying to shock me. You should have grown out of that when you were ten.’