Part 24 (2/2)

They quickened their pace; but by the time they reached the bakers' arcade, the pyramids of warm, pristine loaves were already looking battered and worn, like the walls of a city bombarded by heavy engines. 'When we rebuild Perimadeia,' muttered the administrator, scowling, 'we'll have at least five bakers' arcades, all baking at different times. That way, we won't have to be so very critical in our timing.'

The prefect grinned. 'But if you do that,' he said, 'you'll spoil the whole experience. If you guarantee satisfaction, you deprive yourself of the joy of uncertain attainment.'

'If you say so,' the administrator said, sounding less than convinced. 'Personally, all I want is to be sure of getting really fresh bread.'

'Of course. What on earth could be more important than that?'

The post-coach was running late; an extraordinary thing, only partly accounted for by the increased volume of traffic on the road caused by the war. In the back among the luggage, and feeling remarkably like a sack of turnips, Niessa Loredan nursed a bad headache.

She neither knew nor cared where she was. It was far too hot, the coach had managed to find every last pothole and rut with a diligence that would have been admirable in some other context, and her bladder was making her feel distinctly uncomfortable. As if that wasn't bad enough, she was cursed with a travelling companion who simply wouldn't stop talking, or rather shouting. It was enough to make her wish she'd stayed in Scona and taken her chances with the halberdiers.

The annoying woman had managed to get the impression, G.o.ds know where from, that Niessa wanted to know her name. 'You may find this rather complicated, ' she was saying, 'being an outlander. 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.'

Niessa grunted and turned her head, trying to give the impression that she found the view (sandhills topped wth scruffy tussocks of dry white gra.s.s) unbearably fascinating. The annoying woman didn't seem to have noticed.

'Now I expect you're wondering,' she went on, 'what I'm doing hitching a ride on the post-coach; well, it's the last thing I ever imagined I'd do, but ever since my son - that's my middle son; my eldest is at home, of course, he inherited the estate when my husband died and he's a musician, people are beginning to think quite highly of him, and my youngest son's in the army, still quite junior, of course, he's aide de camp to this Colonel Ispel everybody's talking about as the new commander-in-chief in the west; but my middle son, Poriset, he's the chief administrator of the arms factory at Ap' Calick - not a particularly interesting job, as he's the first to admit, but he's the youngest man ever to be appointed to a position of such seniority so I suppose it's quite a feather in his cap, and if he does well there, increases output or cuts costs or whatever you're supposed to do if you run a factory, he did explain it to me once but I'm such a scatterbrain - and so of course he can arrange for me to ride on the post-coach whenever I go to visit him and his wife - did I mention he's only just got married? Quite a nice girl, though I don't really think he's ideally suited to someone that quiet; still, it was his choice and he's such a serious young man, I'm sure he gave it an awful lot of thought and weighed up the pros and cons-'

Niessa closed her eyes and tried to block out the noise. It was all wasted on her, of course; she'd been in the banking business long enough to recognise a spy when she saw one. The duty spy, presumably; doomed to bounce up and down this hateful road day after day, year after year, as a matter of standard operating procedure. She really wasn't very good at it; somebody's aunt, at a guess, for whom a job had to be found. For want of anything better to do, Niessa spent a few minutes a.s.sessing the feasibility of pus.h.i.+ng her off the coach under the wheels - she ought to have enough physical strength to manage it, but making it look like an accident was problematical, at best. Telling her to shut up would be more straightforward, but she'd learned enough recently about the Sons of Heaven to know that offending any of them was a bad idea. When I was afraid they'd torture me, I had no idea they could be so insidious. Or so d.a.m.ned thorough.

'I need a p.i.s.s,' she growled. 'Do you know how to make them stop the coach? Otherwise I'm just going to have to pee all over the floor.'

That shut her up, the miserable b.i.t.c.h. Niessa felt better already. If only they could have discussed things openly at the start, she could have pointed out that the homely woman-to-woman-chat approach was going to be counterproductive in her case; they could have chosen something far less tiresome from the woman's repertoire of personas, and it might even have been mildly entertaining.

'I'm afraid not,' the spy replied in a little muted voice that barely rose above a shriek. 'It's dreadful, the way they just don't think about such things. I mean, it wouldn't kill them to have a jerry or even just an old jar or something. I think I'll get my son to do something about it.'

In spite of herself, Niessa couldn't help admiring the fluency of her recovery. Maybe they did have something in common, professional to professional. Now if only they could talk on that level, one woman of the world to another, it might be quite interesting.

'So tell me,' Niessa said. 'How long have you been a spy?'

The woman stared at her, then shook her head. 'What an extraordinary thing to say-' she began, but Niessa was gazing straight into her eyes. 'You must be Niessa Loredan,' she said. 'I was told you'd be coming through at some stage.'

'You know about me, then.'

The woman laughed. 'The notorious witch of the outlands? I should say so. Not that I believe in all that stuff myself, but there are plenty who do. Outlanders, of course,' she added quickly. 'You're much older than I'd expected; I suppose that's what put me off.'

'Thank you very much,' Niessa replied. 'And for the record, I'm not a witch, I'm a banker. There's no such thing as witchcraft, as you well know.'

The coach went over a particularly deep pothole, and Niessa felt her teeth crash together. 'You must have offended somebody, to be given this job,' she said. 'Getting shaken to bits like this has got to be some kind of punishment.'

The woman shrugged. 'You're not that far off the mark, actually,' she said. 'Promoted sideways, at any rate. And to answer your question, five years. Before that I was an office manager in the prefecture at Ap' Escatoy. That was a good job, I didn't mind it at all, but I'd been in it too long; wouldn't do for a Daughter of Heaven with my seniority to be in a job where I might have an outlander for a superior. So here I am.'

'My sympathy,' Niessa replied. 'Now then, since you've been straight with me, was there anything specific you wanted to know? I don't suppose there was, since you say you didn't know who I was until just now. Or were you given a set of mission objectives for as and when you came across Niessa Loredan?'

'Only very vague ones,' the spy answered. 'And they're mostly to do with your daughter's escape - was it prearranged, did she have any help from any of our people, that sort of thing. If you'd care to tell me anything about that, I'd be grateful.'

Niessa wriggled her back into a crack between two barrels. 'By all means,' she said, 'but there isn't anything much I can tell you, or at least there's nothing you can corroborate, which is much the same thing. No, it wasn't prearranged - at least, not that I'm aware. You see, my daughter and I aren't exactly friends. In fact, we hate each other. Really and truly. Do you have any children?'

The spy shook her head.

'You're better off,' Niessa said. 'Anyway, it's just possible that Iseutz knew what was going on and cooked up some scheme behind my back, but I doubt it. Have you caught her yet?'

'I don't believe we have. The last I heard was that she was with her uncle in the Mesoge; but you'll appreciate that I haven't got any special clearances for restricted information; that's just the rumour that's going around.'

'I understand,' Niessa said. 'How's the war going, do you know? Where I've been they haven't told me anything. '

The woman narrowed her eyes. 'Presumably you know about your brother Bardas being in command of the field army.'

Niessa shook her head. 'Joint command,' she said. 'Meaning he's only there for show.'

'Not any more. Colonel Estar was killed; your brother's really in charge now. It's a strange thought, an outlander in command of four battalions. No offence, but I'm not sure I like the idea.'

'Given his track record, neither would I,' Niessa grunted. 'They've beaten him once; twice, really, since all he managed to do when he took over from Uncle Maxen was get the army out of there and back home again. He's a competent enough subordinate, our Bardas, but I wouldn't say he had what it takes to be a leader. The same's true of my brother Gorgas, to a lesser extent; he's a good soldier, but he has problems dealing with the larger issues. Basically that's what went wrong on Scona; he couldn't see that the game had stopped being worth the candle. Mind you, Gorgas has never known when to quit; it's his biggest problem, really.'

The coach lurched again, even more fiercely this time, and came to a sudden halt. A barrel of fancy biscuits was dislodged from the top of the stack and fell down, nearly hitting Niessa on the head. 'If I were you, I'd get this driver replaced,' she said; and then noticed that the spy was dead. There was an arrow right through the exact middle of her throat, pinning her to the barrel she'd been sitting against. As Niessa watched, the spy's head toppled sideways and flopped down on her right shoulder, eyes still open.

Now what? Niessa thought angrily, and she looked round to see where the arrow had come from. And what's the point of having an Empire if you can't keep the roads safe? Nothing seemed to be happening; but wherever they were, it was depressingly open and exposed. Trying to run would be suicide, if the bandits were inclined to kill witnesses, whereas staying put wasn't any better. No point trying to hide if they were going to steal the cargo; they'd find her sooner or later while they were unloading. So that's it, then, she thought. All this way for nothing. What a waste of time and energy.

A helmet appeared above the side-rail. Here at least was something she could vent her anger on; she picked up the barrel of biscuits and slammed it down on the apex of the helmet, where the straps that held the plates together met. The result was satisfying, if not downright comic; there was a sigh, and the helmet vanished in a shower of broken slats and biscuits. That's what you get for tangling with one of the Fighting Loredans, Niessa said to herself, grinning. Just because I'm a girl doesn't mean I can't play rough games too.

'Niessa Loredan?' The voice was behind her, and as she spun round she caught her ankle in a niche between two boxes. It hurt.

'Ouch,' she said. 'Yes, who wants to know?'

'We're here to rescue you.' Another d.a.m.ned helmet, with some sort of visor contraption that covered the man's face completely. Was it too much to ask to be allowed to talk to a human being, instead of all this ironmongery?

'What are you talking about?' Niessa said.

'Your brother's orders,' the helmet said. 'We've come to rescue you and take you home.'

Niessa scowled. 'Which brother?' she said.

The helmet looked bewildered; a difficult trick for a piece of iron. 'Gorgas Loredan,' it replied.

'Oh.' Niessa sighed. 'Well, you can jolly well go back and tell Gorgas that I don't need to be rescued, I don't want to be rescued and, if I did, the last person I'd want rescuing me is him. Have you got that, or shall I write it down for you?'

Now the helmet was looking utterly wretched. 'You don't understand,' it said. 'We're taking you back to the Mesoge. There's a s.h.i.+p waiting for us. But we've got to hurry, because there'll be a cavalry column along here in an hour, and-'

'It's all right,' Niessa said, 'I won't tell them which way you went, provided you leave now. Just do me a favour and steal some of this junk; try to make it look like an ordinary hold-up.'

Poor helmet, she thought as she said this. She could hear other voices of other helmets - they all had a booming, resonant quality, like a man down a well, or the way her late husband Gallas had sounded once when he got his head stuck in the whey bucket. The other helmets sounded agitated, which was reasonable enough. 'I'm sorry,' the helmet said, 'but I've got my orders. You're coming with me. Anything between you and your brother is no concern-'

'Hang on,' Niessa said. 'You're a Scona man, aren't you? Well, of course you are. Are you really going to use force to kidnap me? You do know who I am, don't you? Apart from being Gorgas' sister, I mean.'

'Yes,' said the helmet, rather panic-stricken, 'but it's not up to me. I've got to do what I'm told. Now stand up and I'll help you down off the cart.'

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