The Folding Knife Part 37

I have no excuses, nothing left to say except, I'm sorry. I loved him so much, and my love killed him. You were right about me all along. It'd have been so much better for everybody in the world if I'd never been born.

Ba.s.so * * *

The guards were a problem. They still had their orders: the First Citizen wasn't supposed to leave his house without a full escort. Ba.s.so tried sending them away, gave them a direct order; the sergeant mumbled something about the chain of command and looked away. Ba.s.so went back inside.

"How do you feel about climbing out of windows?" he asked her.

"Depends."

He couldn't remember if he'd told them how he'd escaped, the night Ba.s.sano went away. But he couldn't have; straight out into the street with no problems. "Pretend we're having an argument," he told her. "People tend to look away when they see married couples arguing in public."

She nodded crisply, then launched into a loud and bitter tirade about how he'd spent the rent money at the dog races. He looked away and quickened his pace; she was trotting along behind him, calling him names. As far as the people they pa.s.sed were concerned, they were invisible.

In an alley off the Portway, they stopped to plan their next move. "We can forget about a ship," Ba.s.so said. "You can bet anything you like there'll be a crowd down at the docks, offering silly money for three square feet of deck s.p.a.ce. We can't afford what the captains'll be asking."

She nodded. "What about jewellery?" she said.

He thought for a moment. "Keep it," he said. "This isn't a time for extravagance."

"So what do you propose?"

"We walk out," Ba.s.so replied. "The Westgate, for choice. There'll be crowds on the road we can hide in."

"Will the gates be watched, do you think?"

He shrugged. "For all I know, I'm still First Citizen," he replied. "Besides, they won't be expecting me to run just yet. They a.s.sume I'll stay and fight, since I've got so much to lose. Hence the need to hurry."

"Are you sure?" she asked him. "About running, I mean. You're a.s.suming every man's hand's against you, but..."

He shook his head. "If it was just the Bank going under and the defeat, I might stick it out. But the Empire's coming. I really don't want to be here when they arrive."

She nodded; fair point. "So," she said, "once we're out through the gate."

He frowned. "I haven't thought that far ahead, to be honest," he said. "One place is pretty much like another. So long as it's somewhere they won't expect us to go, and where I'm not known."

"Is there anywhere?"

"Must be," he said. "Ready?"

There was a huge crowd in Portway Square, where all the banks had their offices-hundreds and thousands laying siege to the closed doors, and n.o.body even trying to restore order. It was so long since a Vesani bank had failed, n.o.body knew what to do any more. The general consensus seemed to be to break down the doors and get inside, but there was no method or organisation. No looting of shops as yet; at least, not in the centre of town. They couldn't call out the Guard, of course. The City division had been sent to Mavortis, and there were only half a dozen platoons left.

"What do you think the Empire will do?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Nothing too drastic, I hope," he replied. "I don't think they'll burn the place down or allow the soldiers to loot. After all, as far as they're concerned it's their property, they won't want it damaged."

"And the people?"

"Also their property. Dead men and beggars can't pay taxes."

At the junction of Coppermarket and Long Lane there was some kind of hold-up. The people in front of them were trying to get through, but couldn't. Ba.s.so and Melsuntha elbowed their way to the front of the crowd, and saw that two coaches had met head-on in Coppergate, unable to pa.s.s each other because of the streams of pedestrians, and now both streets were comprehensively jammed. One of the coaches was the City mail; he recognised the other.

"My sister," he said. "On her way to call on me, I imagine."

Melsuntha looked at him. "She can't have got your letter already," she said.

"Not with all this traffic," Ba.s.so said. "Presumably she wanted to have a final yell at me, before the guards arrive to take me away." He shook his head. "I love her dearly, but she's always had a fatal weakness for making scenes, and if there's one thing I can't be doing with, it's melodrama."

Melsuntha was pulling on his sleeve. "We don't want her seeing us," she said.

"That's all right," Ba.s.so replied. "She never looks out of coach windows. She gets travel-sick. Come on," he said, "we'll cut through the Poultry and come out on Long Lane further up."

By the time they came in sight of the walls, the streets were hopelessly clogged with carts and wagons, all ridiculously overladen with people, furniture, sacks, crates and boxes. Children and young lads were darting along the immobilised rows, s.n.a.t.c.hing anything they could reach; their victims didn't dare get down off the carts to chase them, for fear of losing their places. n.o.body was making any attempt to direct or unsnarl traffic; not a guard to be seen anywhere.

"The h.e.l.l with this," Ba.s.so said. "We should cut across town to the Southgate. There won't be so many people there."

But the Southgate was just as bad; Southgate Street and the Linen Yard were irrevocably clogged with carts, and the watergate was firmly shut. "This is starting to get on my nerves," Ba.s.so said. "Let's get off the street for a while and see if things calm down."

They went to the Memory of Heroes, a big inn on the outskirts of the cattle-market. It was empty, apart from a handful of the sort of men who never really left. Ba.s.so went to the bar and asked for a pint of rough cider; two bits.

"Here, I know you," said a man at the bar.

"I doubt it," Ba.s.so said, trying not to sound nervous.

"I do know you." The man was scowling horribly at him. "You're him, aren't you? The big boss."

Ba.s.so put his gla.s.s down, so his hands were free. "Think about it," he said. "If I was the First Citizen, would I be in a place like this?"

But the man's mind was made up. "You are him," he said. "I know your face, off the money. I got a bone to pick with you."

Ba.s.so tried to see over the top of his head. Luckily, the man was the sort n.o.body ever listened to. "All right," he said quietly. "Just for the sake of argument, I'm Ba.s.sia.n.u.s Severus. What about it?"

"You owe me."

Oh well, Ba.s.so thought, and looked for an escape route, once he'd smashed the gla.s.s in the man's face. But the man was still talking.

"You don't know me, do you?"

"Sorry, no."

"I'm Bevennius," the man said. "Bevennius the barber. It was me told your General Aelius about the stolen money. Well? Remember me now?"

"Vaguely."

The man nodded firmly: vindicated, before the whole world. "I was supposed to have a pension for life," he said. "It was decreed by the government."

"I remember," Ba.s.so said. "So?"

"They won't f.u.c.king pay me," the man said furiously. "Went down the paymasters' to collect, they told me to p.i.s.s off. No money left, they said, which is bulls.h.i.t. Course the government's got money. But they said no, no money; if I want my pension, they said I should go and ask the b.l.o.o.d.y First Citizen. So that's what I'm doing," the man went on. "I want my money."

Ba.s.so grinned at him. "Very sorry," he said. "I can't give you anything. I'm broke."

"Bulls.h.i.t."

"Believe me," Ba.s.so said, with a great big smile. "You go out in the street, you can see the queues outside the Bank. I spent my last coppers buying this drink."

The man frowned. "Is that true?"

"Yes."

"Oh. f.u.c.k you, then," he said, and walked away.

The traffic didn't clear; if anything, it was getting worse. At noon every day, four hundred carts brought fresh vegetables into the City from the farms and market gardens outside the walls-four hundred carts trying to get in, three times as many trying to get out, and all wanting to pa.s.s under the same four archways. The crowd of people on foot who were also desperate to get out of town finally lost their patience and swarmed up onto the carts, picking their way none too lightly over the heaped-up luggage and the pa.s.sengers. Ba.s.so and Melsuntha joined the stumbling, hopping stream. It took a long time.

An inbound carter asked: "What's going on?"

"The City's gone bust," Ba.s.so told him. "No money."

The carter stared at him, then past him, ignoring his existence. The City couldn't go bust; there had to be money. Ba.s.so jumped down off the cart, then helped Melsuntha. They were out. People were swirling past them, arms full of bundles and baskets. I did this, Ba.s.so thought.

They walked for an hour, by which time the crowd had thinned; then they stopped and sat under a tree. "Decided where we're going yet?" she asked him.

"Hardly matters," he replied. "Our chances of being able to buy food within ten miles of the city are pretty slim. As for sleeping in a bed or under a roof, forget it." He thought for a while, then said: "North, I suppose. Keep going till we're the only ones on the road."

"I brought some biscuits," she said.

He raised his eyebrows. "Biscuits?"

"All I could find," she said. "I think the servants must've looted the kitchen before they left."

"Biscuits will do just fine." He took one, then said, "We'd better ration them. G.o.d only knows when we'll find anywhere with any food to sell."

He looked around for the first time, interested in where he was. The country had never interested him-too few people, too few things, nothing going on. He looked back up the dusty road. In the distance, he could just make out the City, on the fold between the sea and the sky.

"Maybe I should've stayed," he said.

"They'd have lynched you."

"Yes," he said. "But out here there's nothing."

"Have you decided where you're going to go yet?"

He looked back the other way. The road was a faint grey scar on the brown hillside. To the north, there was nothing but moor for a hundred miles. Then you came to the border. Beyond that, the land rose slowly, until you came to the desert of coa.r.s.e gra.s.s that stretched away practically for ever. The Hus lived there, somewhere.

"No," he said. "Right now I'm more concerned with not being in the City, if you see what I mean."

"I'm going east," she said.

He looked at her. "Why?"

"I'm going home," she said. "To Mavortis."

That made no sense. "Why the h.e.l.l should we want to go there?"

"You're not coming with me," she said. "You got me out of the City. Now I don't need you any more."

"Oh," he said.

She was looking thoughtful, as if trying to decide what to wear for a reception. "You don't want to go to Mavortis," she said. "And you won't want to go anywhere with me."

Very rarely, Ba.s.so woke up with a headache. He reckoned it came from lying wrong in the night. Nothing could be done about it; it always went away of its own accord in the late afternoon. While it lasted, though, he was always utterly wretched, because the constant nagging pain broke his concentration and made him temporarily stupid; the worst thing he could possibly imagine was being stupid, not being able to think. That was how he felt now.

"Why not?" he said.

She lifted her head and looked straight at him. "I have a confession to make," she said.

Confession. He frowned, trying to make sense of what he was hearing. "Well?"

She'd kicked off her shoes and was lying with her back to the tree trunk, legs stretched out in front of her. She looked like a child. "During the war," she said, "I wanted to help my people. I found out who the leaders of the insurgency were. Turned out they're distant relatives of ours. Of course, in Mavortis everybody's related to everybody else, if you go back far enough."

No sense whatsoever. "You were spying?"

She laughed. "I suppose so, yes. Only I really wasn't very good at it. Nothing I could tell them was any use to them. By the time they heard it from me, they knew it already. And I did so want to help."

He looked at her. "Why?"

"They're my people," she said, as if the question was too ridiculous for words. "And every time you sent more soldiers and more money, I told them and they wrote back: but what can we do? And I couldn't suggest anything. Aelius was going to win, we all knew that. Even when he went into the forest, we knew he'd win. There were simply too many of you and too few of us."

He tried to concentrate, to crack her words and pull out the meaning, but he couldn't get a grip.

"And then there was that dispatch from Permia," she was saying. (Permia? He groped for the name. Somewhere north-east. He'd heard the name recently.) "The outbreak of plague there. Actually, we've got you to thank. All that research you had done about the different types of plague and how they work. I got a copy of the report you had the doctors draw up, and I realised that the plague in Permia was the really bad sort, the one that people catch off each other, and it spreads really quickly and kills you in a few days. Among the case histories in the report were several armies that had been wiped out by that sort of plague; armies besieging cities, mostly, or in places where they were all cooped up together. So I wrote to the leaders back home and told them to send their best men to Permia and get hold of at least a dozen people dying of the plague, and bring them back to Mavortis. Then they'd sneak into the field army's camp and leave them there." She was looking down into her cupped hands. "They didn't want to, but when Aelius went into the forest they did it; just in case Aelius won. Well, it wasn't Aelius, but that didn't matter. They couldn't get close to the camp, so they left the plague victims in a village, along with a load of corn. When the foragers from the army came to get the corn, they caught the plague and took it back with them." She shrugged. "I knew it'd work, and it did."

Ba.s.so knew the feeling. He'd felt it once before. This time, though, it made him numb. "You did that," he said. "You killed Ba.s.sano."

"I suppose so, yes," she said.

He was on his feet, though he couldn't remember having moved. Something was in his right hand, and his useless left hand was fiddling with it, his fingernails picking at the slot on the spine of the blade, for folding the blade out of the handle.

"Oh," she said, looking at him, "I see. You're going to kill your second wife as well."

Was he? He'd managed to get the blade out. He looked at the thing in his hand, the pretty slim gold-handled penknife. He'd brought it because it was worth money.

"No," he said, and tipped his hand so it fell to the ground. "There wouldn't be much point."

"Suit yourself," she said. "I was prepared for it. I wouldn't have blamed you."

He stooped slowly, picked up the knife, folded it, put it away. It was still worth money. "But why the h.e.l.l did you do it?" he asked, quietly, not understanding.

"To save my country," she said.