Part 36 (1/2)

'No,' Iseutz said. 'Loredans don't kill family. Uncle Gorgas, now; you murdered his son and he forgave you. You had a chance to kill me, but you didn't. Mother could've had me put down any time she chose, but she didn't. It's not our way.' She laughed. 'The more I think about it, the more I get the impression I'll be doing you a kindness. Come on, Uncle Bardas, what possible reason could you have for wanting to stay alive? If I'd done half the things you've done, I'd die of exhaustion through never being able to sleep. Your life must be really horrible; I mean, mine's bad enough and I've hardly even started.'

'What a thing to say,' Bardas replied. 'Consequences aside, I can't think of a single thing I've done that I didn't do for the best.'

'That wasn't a very sensible thing to say, in the circ.u.mstances. '

'Really?' Bardas was just about able to keep himself from shaking like a dog that's just climbed out of a pond, but it was hard work. 'I don't think so. You aren't really going to kill me. If you were I'd be dead by now.'

'You reckon?' Iseutz said, and jammed the knife home.

Later, Bardas decided that it made up for all the mistakes he'd made that day, that one deftly planned tactical success. By provoking her so skilfully, he'd at least known exactly when the thrust was going to happen. This made it possible for him to jerk his head forward and sideways - he still got a horrendous gash across the base of his scalp, but it wasn't enough to die of - while simultaneously shoving hard with both feet to slam the back of the chair into where he hoped her solar plexus was likely to be. With the same impetus he threw himself to the ground, rolled and grabbed at the place where (provided n.o.body had moved it) Theudas' penknife ought to be, in his writing-tray on the floor. After three years in the mines it was second nature, easier to do in the dark by feel and memory than if he were in the light and able to see. The knife-hilt found his hand and the act of throwing it was a continuation of the retrieve - economy of movement, an essential in the mines. He heard the impact and the gasp of pain - bad, because if she could cry out, he'd missed - but he was already reaching for the scimitar he'd left lying on the map-table.

She said, 'Uncle Bardas, no . . .' Then he heard the wet crunch of steel cutting flesh and sinew, the sharp edge compressing the fibres and shearing them. 'Thank you,' he said instinctively, and waited (always count to ten before moving; another valuable lesson he'd learned in the mines) before lowering the scimitar, getting up and groping for the tinder-box and the lamp.

She was dead by the time he had a light; cutting the neck vein is messy but quick. There was fear in her eyes too, probably that last-second realisation that she had wanted to live after all (he'd seen it so often). Her mouth was open and she'd thrown the knife away; but in the dark, of course, he couldn't have been expected to see that. Theudas' penknife had slit her cheek open, a gaudy but trivial flesh-wound like the one she'd given him. He stood and looked at her for a while. One less Loredan. Well.

So it goes on, he thought, so it goes on. And now I've got a dead girl in my tent. She'd fallen, needless to say, across the bed, which was now fairly comprehensively saturated with blood. So he slept in the chair instead.

Away from the fighting, in peace and quiet; he felt like he couldn't remember a time when there hadn't been dust and the constant pounding of the trebuchets.

He remembered this place from years before. He'd been about ten years old, the whole family had gone off for the day after a distant, unconfirmed rumour of geese on the flooded levels; there weren't any geese, of course, but they did find wild strawberries and some mushrooms that Uncle maintained were edible. As was usually the way on these occasions, they brought more food with them than they took back, but that wasn't really the point. Though n.o.body would have put it in quite those terms, it was about getting away from the rest of the clan for a while, a token act of separation. They were the only family he knew who did such things; it was regarded as a rather quaint eccentricity, and n.o.body ever asked if they could come too.

He remembered the cave; well, cave was an overstatement, the sc.r.a.pe under a rock where there'd been plenty of room for a ten-year-old to crawl in and imagine he was living in a house, one of those strange, non-mobile dwellings the Enemy lived in, when they weren't being the enemy.

He remembered it because of the strange feeling of security it gave him; walls that were rock and clay, not felt. One day, he thought, I'd like to live in a house. And so he had, years later, until the Enemy (another Enemy, but the same one) came to Ap' Escatoy and pulled his house down into their cave.

He remembered it also because while they were away from the clan, the Enemy had raided the camp; it was the day they killed Temrai's mother and rode off most of the herd, causing the famine that killed off so many people that winter. He remembered what it had been like riding back into the camp, seeing the sc.r.a.ps of burned felt flapping from the charred poles, the bodies left lying because there were so many of them it would take a whole day to clear up - he frowned, superimposing that memory on what he'd just seen.

(He'd seen a lot over the years, and remembered more of it than he'd have chosen; but that's what a spy does. He sees, and remembers; and then does what he's told.) The sc.r.a.pe was still there (no reason why it shouldn't be); it was smaller than he remembered, but plenty big enough to shelter him for the rest of the night and give him somewhere to work. He tied his horse to the thorn-tree (still there too; but it was nearly dead now), unslung his saddlebag and crawled into the dark tunnel.

The tinder flared at the third attempt (outside it had started to rain). He lit his lamp, then the little oil-stove that had belonged to his uncle. It flickered rather alarmingly, but he had light and enough warmth to keep his hands steady. That was enough.

He took the meat out of the bag and looked at it; then fished in the saddlebag for the little wooden box that held his uncle's most prized and mysterious treasure, the thin-bladed jointing and filleting knife. Think twice, cut once, he thought, then chose his spot for the first incision.

It was important to pace the work, easing the skin back with the forefinger of his left hand, working it off the bone with the flexible, razor-sharp blade in his right. He'd done similar work before, seen similar work done many times, and of course a certain degree of natural apt.i.tude was in the blood. This was, however, an exceptional case, and it would be infinitely easier to avoid mistakes than to make them good later.

It was an awkward joint to skin, because of the curves and angles. Uncle had done harder jobs over the years - he was so good at this sort of thing that people brought him their special trophies of the hunt, their prize bucks and wolves and foxes, to be made into cloaks and rugs and blankets (though how anybody could want a blanket with the head still on he'd never been able to understand). He'd always found the sight fascinating, to see how the skin came off the bone, looking the same but completely different; and in his unformed mind he'd often speculated about that close relations.h.i.+p between the skin and what it covered, how the skin could be part of the whole and yet so easily separated. These reflections had led on to others - the nature of external and internal reality, the way that what lies underneath shapes the surface, the way the surface protects and contains and masks what's inside. One paradox that had always amused him was the cuir-bouilli, thick, supple oxhide stripped off, boiled in wax and moulded to make armour that was nearly as effective as steel plate (because unlike the skin of steel, the cuir-bouilli had a memory; crush it and it flexed and returned to shape). He'd had a fantasy about a man boiled in wax until his skin became armour and no blade could bite him - impractical, of course, to make a defence for the outside that killed the inside. n.o.body would ever try an experiment like that, and so the theory went unproven.

He carried on peeling and shaving until the last pinch of skin came away whole, and he was left with two separate objects; skin and bone. He looked up. The water was simmering in the pot, so he dropped the bone in, to boil out the meat and tissue (the final step would be to bleach the bone and burnish it), then he laid out the skin and reached in his saddlebag for the things he needed: salt, herbs and the pot of honey. The salt he smeared in a thick layer over the raw side of the skin; then he sprinkled on the herbs and rolled the skin up tightly, like a letter. Finally he cut the wax around the neck of the honey-jar, prised off the lid and submerged the roll in the honey. The lid went back, and he melted a little k.n.o.b of wax with the lamp to seal it up again.

He rested for a minute or so, as much from the effort of concentration as the actual physical work, though that had been hard enough, calling for exceptional strength and dexterity of the fingers. To wash his hands, he crawled to the mouth of the sc.r.a.pe and held them out in the rain, then wiped them dry on a tussock of couch-gra.s.s. The last task was cleaning off the knife (Uncle had made him promise faithfully never to let it get rusty; once that happens, he'd said, you might as well chuck it away - you'll never get it clean again).

For a while, he thought about the work he'd done. Then he lay back, stretched out his legs and went to sleep.

Gannadius.

He sat up, his head dizzy with sleep. The room was so dark that he couldn't tell whether or not his eyes were open.

'Alexius?' he said.

- and Alexius stepped out of the darkness and sat down beside the bed. 'Sorry, did I wake you?'

'Presumably,' Gannadius replied. 'But that's all right. How are you?'

Alexius frowned at him. 'Dead,' he replied.

'Sorry, it was just a reflex question, I know you're . . . I'm sorry,' Gannadius added lamely.

'That's all right,' Alexius replied. 'I always thought philosophy's gain was diplomacy's loss. Think, if you'd joined the diplomatic corps instead of the Order, how many interesting wars you could have started.'

Gannadius clicked his tongue. 'That's something I've noticed, actually,' he said. 'You've got ever so much more sarcastic and waspish since you've been dead.'

'Have I?' Alexius looked concerned. 'Yes, come to think of it I suppose I have, though I hadn't noticed till you mentioned it. I can only a.s.sume it's the result of being filtered through your delightful personality and sunny disposition every time I need to talk to you. Hence also, no doubt, the increased levels of flippancy. Not that I'm complaining; I always felt I was a trifle too dry and bland in my conversation.'

'Glad to be of service,' Gannadius said. 'Now then-'

'The message, yes.' Alexius thought for a moment. 'I'm not sure how to put this without sounding deplorably melodramatic. Goodbye for ever.'

'Oh,' Gannadius replied. 'What's happened?'

'The mess we made has finally put itself right,' Alexius replied. 'Although right isn't perhaps the most appropriate word. Iseutz Hedin is dead. Bardas killed her a few minutes ago.'

'Oh,' Gannadius repeated. 'And that changes things how, exactly? I'm sorry, I don't quite follow.'

Alexius sighed. 'Vegetating here among the intellectual elite of the Shastel Order hasn't done much for your inductive reasoning, I see,' he said. 'Let's see. I suppose you could say that the Principle has a.s.serted itself, or returned to its proper course - that's if we're using the river a.n.a.logy, which I never liked much. If we're using the wheel a.n.a.logy, I'd say it's completed a revolution and returned to top dead centre, though that conveniently ignores the fact that it was off-line for a while. Thanks, I'm sorry to say, to you and me.'

'The curse.'

'Oh dear, that word again. That diversion, or that deflection - or should it be eccentricity? Although on balance I'd settle for that b.l.o.o.d.y stupid mistake.' He shook his head. 'It's been resolved, in any event. In a sense, we're now back to where we would have been if we hadn't interfered - except, of course, that we're nowhere near, because the city that hasn't fallen isn't Perimadeia, it's a fortress out on the plains somewhere that Bardas has failed to capture; and it's Iseutz, not Bardas, who's been killed; and of course, because the wheel's turned an extra turn and covered that much more ground, any number of people have been involved who needn't have been. But it's over, which is the main thing. Now all that's left is for you to write up the experiment as a paper. Not meaning this unkindly,' he went on, 'but I'd get someone to work on it with you, just to add that objective angle that makes all the difference. What about that confounded gifted student of yours, the girl-'

'Machaera?' Gannadius shook his head. 'She changed course last year. She's in Commercial Strategy now, doing rather well.'

'Really? Shame.' Alexius sighed. 'Well, you'll find someone, I expect. And you won't be in a position to start work until everything's calmed down anyway, so-'

'What do you mean exactly,' Gannadius interrupted, 'by ”calmed down”?'

Alexius made a vague gesture with his hands. 'Worked itself out, found its own level. You'll see.' He stood up. 'Well, old friend, this is one of those acutely embarra.s.sing moments we try so hard to avoid; it's been a pleasure working with you, and I've enjoyed our friends.h.i.+p very much (even if the consequences for hundreds of thousands of people were fairly catastrophic). It'd be nice to think we might meet again some day, though I have to say that in my interpretation of the Principle, that's extremely unlikely.' He pulled a face. 'I know that sounds dismally formal, but you and I aren't the sort to make big emotional speeches. More's the pity, probably.'

Gannadius nodded. 'I shall miss you,' he said. 'But I suppose I'm glad, if it really is over; except that I'm not, because things have turned out so terribly badly, and it was our fault-'

'Partly our fault. We didn't make people the way they are, or cause the problems that started it all. In a sense, all this would have happened anyway; because it has happened-' He broke off, scratched his head, and smiled ruefully. 'Do you know,' he said, 'I had hoped that death would clarify my thinking in this area, but I'm afraid it hasn't. I never did understand the Principle, and I don't now.'

'There were two alternative courses, each equally valid,' Gannadius said slowly. 'We chose. But what happened, happened.'

'If you use the river a.n.a.logy,' Alexius said, 'which I've never been happy with. But I don't see how you can fit all this into the wheel a.n.a.logy-'

'Unless,' Gannadius put in, 'you see the Principle not as a wheel but as a camshaft.'