Part 25 (1/2)

”And making cheese, yes. I don't know what you've got in mind, but just think what you could achieve back Home. Think about it, for crying out loud. You want to build factories? Well, fine. You could be the richest man in-”

”You're not going Home,” Gignomai said quietly. ”Not ever.”

Luso was furious. ”You stupid little b.a.s.t.a.r.d, haven't you been listening? I told you, the met'Oc-”

”It's not going to happen,” Gignomai said. ”Trust me.”

”You don't know anything about it,” Luso roared at him. ”Listen to me for once in your stupid life. We're going Home. It's a done deal; it's settled. And I'm d.a.m.ned if I'm going to let your stupid pride get in the way of our family being where it ought to be.”

”Fine. You go.”

”Not without you. Not acceptable.”

Gignomai s.h.i.+vered. The blood from his cut was trickling down his nose, and it tickled. He wiped it away with the back of his hand; there was a lot of it. He could feel the cut throbbing, as if it was keeping time with the rhythm of the hammer, subst.i.tuting for it now that it was silent. ”You really want me to come.”

”Yes.”

”Then I'm definitely not coming.” He wiped his b.l.o.o.d.y hand on the seat of his trousers. ”Just for once, you can't have everything your own way. Interesting new experience for you.”

He watched Luso closely, expecting him to move any moment: a lunge, an attack initiated. Fencing lessons. But Luso didn't move, which surprised him.

”I've missed you,” Luso said.

Gignomai felt a sharp pain in his head; the hammer, extremely strong. ”Is that right?”

”Yes.”

”Afraid you're running out of siblings, I a.s.sume.”

It was a clumsier thrust than he'd have liked, but it made Luso shake. ”That's it?”

”Yes, that's it.”

Luso stood up. ”You're a fool to yourself,” he said. ”I'll expect you to be there. Don't mess me around. Understood?”

”What're you going to do, Luso? Send your men to drag me there? Tie me to a chair?”

”The thought had crossed my mind.” Suddenly Luso sighed. He seemed to deflate a little. ”But I decided against. I thought I'd appeal to your better nature instead.”

”Tell you what.” Finally, he'd found what he'd been looking for. It had slipped through a hole in the pocket and lodged in the lining. He teased it back through the hole with his fingertips and closed his hand around it. ”I may come, after all. But in case I don't, here's my wedding present for my new sister-in-law.”

He started to take his hand out of his pocket. Luso froze, watching the hand, as if he was afraid it'd be a weapon. Except, if it had been a weapon, Luso wouldn't have frozen.

”Gig,” Luso said.

Gignomai removed his hand from his pocket and opened it. On his palm lay a small silver brooch, mounting a single blue stone. ”Go on,” he said. ”Take it.”

He'd waited all his life for Luso to look at him like that. ”Take it,” he repeated. ”After all, it's a family heirloom. She ought to have it, don't you think?”

Luso turned and walked away. Gignomai watched him until the trees swallowed him up, then wrapped the brooch in the foul sc.r.a.p of cloth he used as a handkerchief, oily rag and emergency bandage, and stowed it carefully in his other pocket.

The Calimeo family came to town to buy rope.

Furio, standing on the porch, saw them coming up the street and darted inside. Marzo stopped him before he could disappear into the cellar.

”What?” Marzo demanded.

”They're coming,” Furio said.

Marzo frowned. ”Who? The met'Oc? The government?”

”Worse.”

”Oh.” Marzo somehow managed to slide between Furio and the cellar door. ”Would you mind seeing to them? I've got to fetch something.”

Portly he might have been, but Marzo could be diabolically agile when he wanted to be. Furio addressed his refusal to a closing cellar door, and then the shop door opened. He turned round slowly, and smiled.

The Calimeos were generally referred to as the Summer Cold (annoying and so very hard to get rid of). There were six of them, always together: father, mother, uncle and three juvenile daughters, or it might have been the same daughter projected back in time and observed at eighteen-month intervals. The daughters never, ever spoke. Their elders made up for it.

”What can I-?” was as far as Furio got before the torrent overwhelmed him. All three of them tended to talk at once, all on different, equally fatuous topics, none of them apparently aware that the other two were in the same room. If, as a result of the blended hubbub of their voices, their interlocutor appeared to be having trouble understanding them, they helpfully shouted. Furio fixed a smile on his face, said yes, sure, is that right at fixed intervals, and hoped very much that Uncle Marzo would meet a giant rat in the cellar, which would eat him up.

”d.a.m.nedest thing,” the uncle was saying. ”Them savages.”

Furio blinked. ”Savages?”

Infuriatingly, the uncle chose that moment to pause a fraction of second to breathe in, and Mother filled the empty fragment of time with a question, which he entirely failed to hear. She repeated it at full volume at precisely the same time as Uncle replied to Furio's enquiry.

”What savages?” Furio said.

”At East Ford.” Furio strained his ears to pick uncle's theme out of the fugue. ”Fifteen or twenty. Just sat there. All day. d.a.m.nedest thing.”

East Ford. He tried to picture it in his mind. Seven miles or so upstream from the factory site, a flat, treeless meadow, good grazing, p.r.o.ne to flooding in the spring and autumn. Empty, nothing to see. Flat. You could see, or be seen, for miles.

Fifteen or twenty?

Forcibly, as though dragging a reluctant animal, he pulled the picture of the savages' camp into his mind. ”Did they have livestock?” he asked. ”Wagons, tents, that sort of-?”

Father Calimeo was telling him about an encounter he'd had with the met'Oc raiders, twenty years ago. They'd ridden past him on their way to somewhere else. It had been the standout event of his life. ”Did they have livestock?” Furio repeated loudly. Maybe the other two were talking to people next to him, people he couldn't see. Imaginary friends.

”No, no livestock,” Uncle Calimeo replied. ”Just fifteen or twenty of them, men and women too. Just sat there cross-legged in the gra.s.s like they were waiting on something. Watching me. d.a.m.nedest thing.”

Watching someone who didn't exist. Waiting on something. Mother Calimeo was describing a bolt of cloth she'd seen on the shelf behind his head six years ago. Either her memory was exceptionally vivid, or she could see back through time. Oddly enough, he remembered the exact same bolt: blue cotton, with a faint yellow check. Father had sold it to...

”Geant Poneta,” Mother Calimeo said, a split second before he could. ”She made it up into two s.h.i.+rts for the boys and a working dress for her niece, for her eighteenth. It had a double row of horn b.u.t.tons.”

”Can't think what they were looking at that was so d.a.m.ned interesting,” Uncle Calimeo went on. ”I was just rounding up the stock, moving them up the valley, same as I've done every year for I don't remember how long. Just sat there and watched. You wouldn't credit it.”

”We want to buy some rope,” Father Calimeo said loudly, as if to a deaf man, or a stranger. ”Thirty ells of the hemp three-ply. Rope,” he added, making a coiling round the arm gesture.

”Rope,” Furio repeated. ”I'll see what we've got.”