The Folding Knife Part 18

"There's monks and monks," Ba.s.sano said. "These monks were from the porter's lodge. I knew them; they usually do security. Beating up poor people who sneak in looking for food and throwing them out. Not your usual messengers."

"When was this?"

"Late," Ba.s.sano replied. "After midnight prayers. Most people are asleep by then, but I don't need that much sleep, and it's a nice, quiet time to catch up on your a.s.signments."

"Go on."

"Well," Ba.s.sano said, "they took me to the Patriarch's office. Never been there before, but I knew where I was going; there isn't anything else down that end. I asked the monks what was going on, but they just said, 'You'll see,' which didn't sound promising."

"And?"

"Basically," Ba.s.sano said, "he'd called me in so he could have a go at me. I have no idea why. He started off by saying I was the most useless student they'd ever had there, which is simply untrue; I've been doing really rather well, and all the tutors seemed very pleased. I couldn't make head nor tail of that, so I just stood there looking blank. Then he told me I was idle and arrogant and various other things, some of them perfectly true; then he accused me of making advances to the novices, which wasn't true at all; then he started going on about my father."

"I see. Saying what?"

"This and that," Ba.s.sano replied. "Mostly, how he deserved everything he got." Ba.s.sano shrugged. "I just stood there thinking, this is really strange. It didn't bother me."

"And?"

"Then he started talking about you."

"Really," Ba.s.so said quietly. "What did he-?"

"Lots," Ba.s.sano said. "How you were a disgrace to your family and your cla.s.s, how you'd betrayed the purity of our race for a few easy votes; political stuff."

"Did you say anything?"

Ba.s.sano shrugged. " 'I'm sorry you think that way,' or words to that effect. I was embarra.s.sed more than anything else."

"Then what?"

Ba.s.sano pulled the rug across his chest. "Then he told me you were getting married. It was the first I'd heard of it. I a.s.sumed he was lying."

"Actually-"

Ba.s.sano nodded. "I asked, afterwards. And I remembered, my mother's clever idea and all that. Uncle-"

"He told you about the betrothal. And?"

"I said I didn't believe him, and he got quite worked up. Started shouting, instead of drawling. I'm afraid I shouted back."

"And?"

"And then I hit him," Ba.s.sano said. "With a candlestick. It seemed to be the only way to make him shut up."

Ba.s.so sighed. "You couldn't have just left the room."

"I know," Ba.s.sano said. "Violence is an admission of failure. It didn't occur to me to walk out. I think I thought I couldn't, because it wasn't allowed."

"Your logic-"

"I wasn't thinking straight," Ba.s.sano said. "He said it was really just as well you were marrying your foreign wh.o.r.e-he didn't say foreign, he used a different word-because when you went crazy and cut her throat, it'd be no great loss."

"So you broke his arm."

"I was aiming for his head," Ba.s.sano said. "But he moved."

Ba.s.so clicked his tongue. "Antic.i.p.ate your opponent's reactions," he said, "it's the first rule of hand-to-hand combat." He paused, then said, "Your mother-"

"Won't be happy, no."

"She'll blame me."

Ba.s.sano frowned. "How? It was nothing to do with-"

"Don't be stupid," Ba.s.so said. "A senior cleric doesn't just take it into his head to pick a fight with a student. Volusiano is an Optimate, his brother's the shadow chancellor. Obviously this was about me. Your mother will blame me, and she'll be quite right."

"Oh." Ba.s.sano looked down at his hands. "I'm sorry."

"So you should be." Ba.s.so poured him another brandy. "There's a jar on the floor. Honey-cakes."

"But why?" Ba.s.sano said. "Why would getting me thrown out of the Studium affect you?"

Ba.s.so gave him a mildly contemptuous look. "Although," he said, "it's an odd way of going about things. A bit limp-wristed, if you follow me."

"Sorry?"

"First, an a.s.sa.s.sination attempt. Then, when that fails, they have my nephew thrown out of college. It's hardly an escalation of terror."

"You think it was-"

"Yes," Ba.s.so said. "But that's beside the point." He paused, and thought for a moment. "I'm guessing," he said, "that they're trying to get at me through your mother. Her deal with me about Olybrias must be common knowledge in the Optimate inner circle. Presumably, they want to get your mother really mad at me, so she'll forget about our deal and marry Olybrias to punish me. That'd account for the timing," he went on. "They'll have heard that I'm keeping my side of the bargain, so they decided to push her hand."

Ba.s.sano looked at him. "Do people really do things like that?"

"Politicians do," Ba.s.so replied. "I tend not to, but only because I've never been on the losing side and therefore desperate." He shook his head. "On balance, I'd rather they'd had another go at killing me. Still, I imagine they took that into account."

"I'm sorry," Ba.s.sano said.

"Not your fault," Ba.s.so replied crisply. "Though smacking the Patriarch of the Studium around with a candlestick wasn't perhaps the brightest act on record. Still, I'm hardly in a position to lecture anybody about losing one's temper. Did you know they tried to press charges?"

Ba.s.sano looked scared. "Tried to?"

"Oh yes." Ba.s.so nodded. "The first I heard of all this was General Aelius banging on the door in the early hours of the morning. Pure luck. Because the Studium's privileged ground, the Guard can't execute an arrest warrant there unless it's signed by the military prefect. The prefect had the wit to see there was something funny going on, and went to Aelius, as Commander-in-Chief. Aelius told me, bless him, and I was able to put a stop to it then and there. You've been granted a prerogative pardon, by the way; first time in eighty years, but luckily Sentio found the precedent in some book. There'll be fun and games in the House about that, I expect." He grinned. "If it hadn't been for Aelius, you'd probably be in jail right now, and we'd have a devil of a job getting you out."

"Jail." It was the first time he'd heard fear in Ba.s.sano's voice. Of course, it was the first time he'd had anything to be afraid of. "But that's..."

"You did break his arm," Ba.s.so said.

"I didn't mean to."

"I know. You said. Anyway, that's all dealt with." He paused, then said: "Where do you want to go?"

It hadn't occurred to him that he was now homeless. He didn't know what to say.

"Your mother's, presumably," Ba.s.so went on. "Though I don't suppose she'll be overjoyed to see you. Getting expelled for violent a.s.sault; she has a wonderful turn of phrase when she's angry. With me, of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if she took it out on you. Not the clearest of thinkers, somehow."

Ba.s.sano shivered. Ba.s.so said, "You can stay with me if you like."

"But Mother..."

"Won't know," Ba.s.so replied. "Send her a letter, say you're staying with friends till you find a place."

Ba.s.sano hesitated, then nodded. "If that's all right with you," he said.

"Of course. Stay as long as you like. At least," he added quickly, "until the wedding."

The carriage stopped, and Ba.s.so quickly leaned forward and twitched the curtain aside. "We're here," he said, and Ba.s.sano noticed he'd been suddenly tense, until he saw why they'd stopped moving. He wondered: will that stay with him for the rest of his life? "We've got to wait for the guards to open the door," he said, in a rather self-consciously long-suffering voice. "They have to make sure there's no a.s.sa.s.sins hiding behind the flowerpots before we're allowed to get out."

"About the wedding," Ba.s.sano said.

"Yes. Thought you'd ask. Well, you can meet her for yourself. I'd like to know," he added, in a voice Ba.s.sano hadn't heard before, "what you think."

(And Ba.s.sano realised, with a shock like twisting your ankle: I could put a stop to it, with just a few words. If I said no, you can't possibly marry this woman, he wouldn't.) "I'm hardly an authority," Ba.s.sano said.

Ba.s.so gave him a scowl. "I'm not asking you to field-test her for me," he said, "just give me your opinion."

"I didn't..."

Ba.s.so laughed. "Of course you didn't," he said. "I just want to know if you like her, that's all."

"What do the twins think?"

"They have no opinion," Ba.s.so said.

"Have they met her?"

"No."

"Really? Why not?"

Ba.s.so shrugged. "They haven't asked to meet her, I haven't suggested it. That would imply that all three of us think it's not really any of our business."

"Ah," Ba.s.sano said; and then the guard knocked on the door of the carriage, which meant they could leave.

Eight.

The First Citizen's decision to increase the purity of the Vesani nomisma had a number of far-reaching effects. The most obvious of these was an influx of foreign money, as Auxentine and Sclerian bankers sent hundreds of tons of gold, in coin and metal sc.r.a.p, to the Vesani Mint to be exchanged for the new high-standard coins. Ba.s.so had stipulated that the differential should be kept low: five per cent to begin with, rising to five and a half when the mint supervisor complained that his staff were being overwhelmed, and the new dies were wearing out faster than the engravers could cut replacements. Even so, the income generated was far in excess of what had been expected. The whole world, it seemed, wanted to buy and sell in Vesani currency, and those who didn't soon found they had no choice. In Auxentia, it was practically impossible to pay anything other than taxes in Auxentine coin; not that that mattered, since at least two-thirds of the country's circulating medium (according to conservative estimates) had already been shipped to the Vesani Mint, melted down and reissued as nomismata, with Ba.s.so's head on one side and Victory advancing left on the other. The fact that the Victory in question could only be the recent Vesani--Auxentine war didn't seem to bother anybody. The Sclerian government tried to ban the use of Vesani currency; and when the new law was universally ignored, the King made an example of some Auxentine merchants, which prompted the Auxentines to cut off all trade with Scleria for two months, after which hunger riots in the capital induced the King to relent. By then, however, Vesani banks and trading companies had taken full advantage and concluded long-term deals for a number of desirable commodities that had hitherto been staples of Sclerian commerce. The King had his finance minister disgraced and thrown in jail, but for some reason that didn't serve to woo the Auxentines back. Meanwhile, the differential income...

"I don't understand," she said. "How does it work, exactly?"

Ba.s.so smiled. "Simple," he said. "Suppose you're an Auxentine trader. You need to be able to pay for your stuff in Vesani nomismata, because that's all your trading partners are prepared to accept-"

"Why?"

"Because our coins are guaranteed ninety-eight per cent pure gold. Other people's coins have got all manner of old rubbish in them. So a hundred pounds' weight of nomismata is guaranteed to be ninety-eight pounds' weight of good stuff. A hundredweight of Mavortine staters, on the other hand-no offence intended-means you've got about seventy pounds of gold and thirty pounds of copper, tin, zinc and G.o.d knows what else."

"But the Auxentine coins are ninety-six per cent."

"I know," Ba.s.so said. "Really, there's no sense to it, but that's what happens in business. You insist on the best coin available, which now means nomismata." He stopped and flicked the dead head off a flower. "Anyway, the Auxentines and everybody else have been bringing their domestic coins to us; we melt them down, take out the rubbish and mint nomismata, which we give back to them."

"Less five and a half per cent."

Ba.s.so nodded. "For our trouble. It's done on the pure gold content, of course. You're an Auxentine; you bring me a hundred tons of your coins, from which I get ninety-six tons of pure gold. I rake off five and a half per cent-just over five and a quarter tons, which I keep. Then I add two tons of copper to the pure stuff, mint it into coins and give it back. My profit is therefore just under six tons, because I'm not paying you back in pure gold, I'm giving you ninety-eight per cent pure."

"I see," she said, and he thought: yes, she does. He was impressed. "That's a good deal."

"Particularly," Ba.s.so added, "since the bankers organising the exchange-it's all got to be done through banks, of course-take one per cent commission on top of what the government takes."

"That's you."

He smiled. "That's me. May not sound much, one per cent, but it's a lot. Eight hundred thousand nomismata so far. It'll pay for the new shipyard."

She frowned. "With which..."

"With which I'll build a new fleet for the Navy, cheaper than the government yards could do it but still quite profitably."

"With which?"

"With which," Ba.s.so said, "when the time comes, we'll drive the Auxentines out of the White Sea altogether and get a monopoly of the main grain routes to the East."

"Using ships paid for with their money."

"Essentially, yes." He grinned. "The differential income will pay for the ships, so yes, we're getting our new empire for free. Once we've got the monopoly, of course, every Auxentine ship carrying grain from the Auxentine farming colonies to the homeland will have to pay us half a nomisma on the ton, or risk ending up at the bottom of the sea. In due course, when the price of grain in Auxentia gets so high that people can't afford to pay, we'll offer them membership of the Vesani Commonwealth. It's all right," he added, "you don't know about that, because it doesn't exist yet. That's about ten stages down the line."

"An empire."

"An empire, and no stupid great wars of conquest," Ba.s.so said. "Better still, an empire that doesn't feel like an empire, so n.o.body will mind. All they'll see will be the valuable benefits: free trade inside the Commonwealth, Vesani currency, weights and measures, Vesani law, Commonwealth citizenship, a single Commonwealth army-which won't have anybody to fight, of course, so it won't cost a fortune and thousands of young men won't die. All that for a slight increase in taxes, probably offset by lower prices in the marketplace. And all that," he added, "because, on a whim, I wanted to annoy the Optimates."

She looked at him, then turned away and watched the fountain in the middle of the courtyard. "You don't feel apprehensive," she said, "changing the world to suit yourself."