The Left Hand of God

15

Whenever we meet,” said IdrisPukke, “it seems to be in unhappy circumstances. Perhaps we ought to change our ways.”

“Speak for yourself, Granddad.” Cale sat down on the wooden bed and pretended to ignore his fellow prisoner. It was too much of a fluke, meeting up with IdrisPukke again.

“Bit of a coincidence, this,” said IdrisPukke.

“You could say.”

“But I do say.” There was a pause. “What brings you here?”

Cale thought carefully before replying.

“Got into a fight.”

“Getting into a fight wouldn’t bring you into Vipond’s personal jail. Who were you fighting with?”

Again Cale thought about his reply-but what did it matter? “Conn Materazzi.”

IdrisPukke laughed, but the delight and admiration were clear, and while Cale tried to resist the flattery, he was hardly able to.

“My God, Goldenbollocks himself. From what I’ve heard, you’re lucky to be alive.”

Cale should have realized he was being provoked, but for all his unusual gifts he was still only young.

“He’s the one who’s lucky. He should be coming round about now, and with a nasty pain in his head.”

“Well, you’re full of surprises, aren’t you?” He said nothing for a moment. “Still-none of that explains why you’re here. What’s this got to do with Vipond?”

“Maybe it was because of the sword.”

“What sword?”

“Conn Materazzi’s sword.”

“Why would his sword have anything to do with this?”

“It wasn’t exactly his sword.”

“Meaning?”

“It was really Marshal Materazzi’s sword. The one they call The Edge.” The silence was much deeper this time.

“After I dropped Conn, I jammed it between two stones and snapped it.”

The silence from IdrisPukke was deep and cold. “A particularly mindless act of vandalism, if I may say so. That sword was a work of art.”

“I didn’t have time to admire it while Conn was trying to use it to cut me in two.”

“But the fight was over by then-that’s what you said.”

The truth was that Cale had been regretting his impulse from the moment he snapped the sword.

“Do you want my advice?”

“No.”

“I’ll give it to you anyway. If you’re going to kill someone, then kill them. If you’re going to let them live, then let them live. But don’t make a meal of it either way.”

Cale turned his back on IdrisPukke and lay down.

“While you’re sleeping, dream on this: everything you did, particularly breaking the sword, means you should be in the Doge’s hands. None of it explains why you’re here.”

Half an hour later the sleepless Cale was disturbed by the sound of his cell door being unlocked. He sat up to see Albin and Vipond entering. Vipond looked at him balefully.

“Evening, Lord Vipond,” called out IdrisPukke cheerfully.

“Shut up, IdrisPukke,” replied Vipond, still looking at Cale. “Now tell me-and I want the whole truth, or by God I’ll hand you over to the Doge this minute-tell me exactly what happened; and when you’ve finished, then tell me exactly who you are, and how it was possible that you beat Conn Materazzi and his friends so easily. I mean it-the truth, or I’ll wash my hands of you as quick as boiled asparagus.”

Cale did not, of course, know what asparagus was. The only difficulty was going to be in deciding how much he would have to tell Vipond in order to persuade him he was being completely honest.

“I lost my temper. That’s what people do all the time, isn’t it?”

“Why did you break the sword?”

Cale looked awkward. “That was a stupid thing to do-it was in the heat of a fight. I’ll apologize to the Doge.”

Albin laughed. “Oh well, as long as you’re sorry.”

“Where did you learn to fight so well?” said Vipond.

“At the Sanctuary-all my life, twelve hours a day, six days a week.”

“Are you telling me that Henri and Kleist can fight like that?” This was awkward for Cale.

“No. I mean, they’re trained to fight, but Kleist is a zip… a specialist.”

“In what?”

“The spear and the bow.”

“And Henri?”

“Supply, mapmaking, spying.” This was true, but not entirely true.

“So neither of them could have done what you did today?”

“No. I told you.”

“Are there others with the same skill as you in the Sanctuary?”

“No.”

“What,” asked Vipond, “makes you so special?”

Cale paused in order to give the impression he was reluctant to answer.

“When I was nine years old I was good at fighting-but not like now.”

“So what happened?”

“I was in a training fight with a much older boy-no holds barred, real weapons, except the points and edges were blunted. I got the best of him, got him down on the ground-but I was too cocky and he managed to pull me down. Then he hit me on the side of the head with a rock. That was that. The Redeemers pulled him off me, which is why he didn’t beat my brains out. I woke up a couple of weeks later, and two weeks after that I was back to normal except for a dent in my skull.” He reached up and pointed with one finger to the left side of his skull toward the back. Then, again, he stopped as if reluctant to go on.

“But you weren’t like before?”

“No. At first I couldn’t fight as well as before. My timing was all wrong, but after a while whatever happened when he cracked my skull open, I got used to it.”

“Used to what?” asked Albin.

“Every time you strike a blow it means you’ve already decided where it’s going to land on your opponent. And you always give yourself away-where you’re looking, the turn of your body, how you bend to stop from overbalancing as you strike. All of that tells your opponent where you’re going to strike, and if he reads these signals badly then the blow lands; if he reads them well, he blocks it and avoids it.”

“Any fighter, anyone who plays games, knows that,” said Albin. “A good fighter, a good ball player, they can disguise a strike or a throw.”

“They can’t hide it from me, no matter what they do. Not now. I can always read whatever move someone is about to make.”

“Can you show us?” asked Vipond. “Without hurting anyone, I mean.”

“Ask Captain Albin to put his hands behind his back.”

Albin looked uneasy at this, something not lost on the, until now, silently watching IdrisPukke.

“I wouldn’t trust him if I were you, Captain, darling.”

“Shut your mouth, IdrisPukke.” Albin looked closely at Cale and then slowly put his hands behind his back.

“All you need to do is decide which hand to point at me as quickly as you can. You can do whatever you want to make me guess wrong- feint, move your body, try to make me choose the wrong way. It’s up-”

Before Cale had finished his sentence Albin lashed his left hand toward him, only for Cale to catch it in his right hand as gently as if it were a ball thrown by a clumsy three-year-old. Six more times, try as hard as Albin might, the same thing happened.

“My turn,” said Cale as Albin, peeved but mightily impressed, gave in. Cale put his hands behind his back and they began the same process in reverse. Cale struck out six times and six times Albin made the wrong choice.

“I can read what you’re going to do,” said Cale. “The instant you start to move. It’s just a fraction faster than before my injury, but it’s always enough. No one can read what I’m going to do, no matter how quick or experienced they are.”

“And that’s all there is to it?” said Albin. “A bang on the head?”

“No,” replied Cale, angry and not sure why. “All my life I’ve been trained to do one thing. I could have taken Conn Materazzi anyway, good as he is, just not as easily and not four others at the same time. So no, Captain, that’s not all there is to it.”

“How did the Redeemers react when they realized what had happened?”

Cale grunted, a kind of laugh but without amusement.

“Not the Redeemers-one Redeemer: Bosco, the Lord Militant, responsible for all training in the martials.”

“The martials-like our martial arts?”

Cale laughed, this time genuinely amused.

“There’s no art in what I do-ask Conn Materazzi and his pals.” Vipond ignored the mockery. “This Bosco, what did he do when he found out the result of your injury?”

“He tested me for months, against others much older and stronger. He even brought in five veterans, skirmishers from the wars in the Eastern Breaks under sentence of death, he said.” Cale stopped.

“And what happened?”

“Four days in a row he put me in a fight with them. ‘Kill or die,’ was all he said to both of us. Then, after the fourth day, he stopped.”

“Why?”

“He’d seen enough to be sure about me. A fifth time would be an unnecessary risk.” He smiled, not at all pleasantly. “After all, you never know with a fight, do you? There’s always a chance, isn’t there-a sucker blow.”

“And then?”

“Then he tried to copy me.”

“How do you mean?”

“He spent days measuring the wound in my head and matching it with some skulls he’d taken from the graveyards. Then he made a clay model. Then he spent six months trying to make it happen again.”

“I don’t follow. How?”

“He took a dozen acolytes the same age and size as me and he tied them down and struck a chisel he’d had made the same shape as my wound-he struck it with a hammer into the same point on their skulls. Harder, then softer, then softer again.”

For a moment no one said anything.

“What happened?” asked Vipond softly.

“What happened was that half of them died pretty much straight-away and the rest-well they weren’t themselves afterwards. Then no one ever saw them again.”

“Taken somewhere else?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“And then?”

“Bosco started taking my training sessions himself. He’d never done that before. Sometimes he’d keep me going for ten hours a day-finding any weakness, giving me a good hiding when I failed and then putting it right. Then he disappeared for six months, and when he returned, it was with seven Redeemers who he said were the best at what they did.”

“And that was?”

“Killing people mostly-people with armor, without, with swords, sticks, bare hands. How to organize a mass killing…” Cale paused.

“Of prisoners?”

“Not just prisoners-anybody. Two of them were sort of generals-one did tactics-battles, retreats, big set pieces. The other did the bandit stuff: small groups fighting in enemy territory, assassinations, how to terrify the locals into helping you and not your enemy.”

“And what was all this for?”

“You know, I was never stupid enough to ask.”

“Was it to do with the Redeemer wars in the East?”

“I told you, I didn’t ask.”

“You must have formed an opinion.”

“Formed an opinion? Yes. That it was something to do with the wars in the East.”

Vipond looked long and hard at Cale, who stared insolently back. Then it was as if the chancellor had made up his mind about something. He turned to Albin.

“Bring the other two to my house as soon as possible.”

Albin signaled the jailer and then they were gone.

Cale sat down on his bed, and IdrisPukke moved next to the bars.

“Interesting life,” he said to Cale. “You should write a book.”