The Proof House Part 14

Coincidence, she thought; apparently Bardas has been posted to the armoury at Ap' Calick. Hey, why don't I just go to Ap' Calick and ask him about all this stuff, instead of killing myself trying to understand it from a book? What a good idea. No, thank you. Not even if he knows what a pauldron is, or whether it's a good thing or a bad thing to have with a cuira.s.s.

Who could she think of - who else could she think of who'd be likely to know what a pauldron was? On the Island, armour came in barrels stuffed with straw and sealed with the factory seal, and it stayed there until it was offloaded on the customer's dock and paid for. What was inside the barrel, n.o.body knew or cared. The Islanders knew a lot of things - they had a library, after all - but technical military information wasn't the sort of thing that interested them. Chances were, she could find ten people who could tell her how much a pauldron was worth, twenty who happened to know where there was a consignment of best-quality pauldrons, cancelled order, virtually at cost; forty who were crying out for pauldrons to meet an order, cash on the nail, good customer, but the stuff's never about when you want it. Show them a pauldron and they'd probably try to poach an egg in it. She shuffled the counters up and down the lines and wrote the result on the wax tablet next to the board. Good, solid, meaningless data.

Armour, she thought. Was there really going to be a war? Everybody seemed to think so; they were counting on it, planning ahead for it, stockpiling and getting rid - Maupas is buying arrowheads and selling paintbrushes, because n.o.body's going to want to buy brushes when there's a war on; Ren is buying Maupas' brushes, because the price is right and after the war is over, people will want brushes again; but in order to pay for the brushes, he's got to sell the two hundred thousand copper rivets he got cheap in Aguill all those years ago - but that's all right, because they use rivets to make armour, soon people will be crying out for rivets because of the war, so wouldn't he be better off keeping the rivets and pa.s.sing on the brushes? It was an odd way to look at a war, purely in terms of all the things needed to make it work - all the arrows that would be shot off, armour that would be bashed up and mangled, all the hundreds of thousands of pairs of shoes and miles of strap leather, all the belt buckles and whetstones and cartwheel spokes and nails and pickaxe handles and parchment-roll covers and stockings and planks and feathers and axle pins and water bottles. You could take away all the people, and still a war is a ma.s.sive thing, a vast collection of goods, an endless supply and demand of materiel, all being crammed into the mouth of the war; such a displacement of things. And why? Because war is inevitable. Fancy you needing to ask.

Perimadeia, displaced. The war had been inevitable. Likewise, presumably, the fall of Ap' Escatoy, brought low by one Bardas Loredan. Such a displacement of people; but things were easier to deal with, things were her business now. If I knew what a pauldron was, would it all suddenly become clear, would I truly understand? Possibly. Possibly not.

Once the fire has been lit, it must be kept burning to maintain the necessary level of heat. She pulled a face; read that bit already. Why couldn't these people want to make something she knew a bit about, like carpet?

The counting-house door opened; Sabel Votz, her chief clerk, in a hurry and a fl.u.s.ter.

'Visitors,' she said, as if announcing the end of the world. 'From the provincial office. Downstairs, in the hall.'

If Athli had taken her cue from her clerk's tone of voice, she'd have been in two minds whether to send for wine and cakes or barricade the doors. Fortunately she was used to Sabel by now. 'Really,' she said. 'Well, it's about time. Bring them up, wait two minutes, then fetch in a tray.'

Sabel looked at her disapprovingly. 'All right,' she said. 'And no interruptions?'

'Exactly.' Sabel went away again, and Athli looked round instinctively to make sure the place was tidy. A silly instinct, that; she wasn't a housewife suddenly descended upon by her husband's mother, she was the Island agent for the Shastel Order, and as such a person of consequence. At the last moment she caught sight of a pair of shoes, lying under the table where she'd kicked them off the night before. She just had time to scoop them up and hide them behind a cushion before the door opened, and Sabel ushered in two Sons of Heaven and a long, thin, pale clerk, who looked as if he'd been put out in the sun to dry and forgotten about.

Exceedingly polite, these Sons of Heaven (they were called Iqueval and Fesal, and both of them were lieutenant commanders in the Imperial Navy; this came as something of a surprise to Athli, who wasn't aware the Empire had a navy). Even sitting down, they seemed to loom over her, the way the towers of Commercial Hall looked down on all the houses in her street. Both had white hair and short tufts of beard on the points of their chins; but she could tell them apart because Iqueval's collar b.u.t.tons were black lacquered horn, and Fesal's were silver plate.

'Yes,' she said, when they'd explained the purpose of their visit, 'I have two ships, and I'd be perfectly happy to-'

Fesal cleared his throat. 'Unfortunately,' he said, 'that's no longer the case. You now have only one ship. I'm sorry to have to tell you the Fencer ran aground on a reef while apparently trying to slip past an Imperial blockade. She broke up before salvage was possible, and sank. I do hope for your sake she was properly insured.' The Son of Heaven smiled consolingly, then added, 'If it helps at all, I can provide you with a certificate of shipwreck to prove the loss, in case your insurer makes difficulties over the claim. After all,' he added with a smile, 'knowledge is one thing, proof is another.'

'Thank you,' Athli said. 'Do you happen to know if there were any survivors?'

'Regrettably, we have no information one way or another,' Iqueval replied, 'beyond a report from one of our patrols in the vicinity who encountered unauthorised foreigners in a restricted area shortly afterwards. One of our men was killed in the encounter, I believe. The intruders escaped north, towards Perimadeia.'

Athli nodded. 'Thank you for letting me know,' she said. She felt slightly numb and rather dizzy, as if she had a bad cold; just disorientating enough to make communication tiresome. 'Well then, I've got one ship. I imagine you know all about that one, too.'

'Indeed,' Iqueval confirmed. 'The Arrow; sixty foot, two hundred tons burden, twin mast square-rigger, under the command of Captain Dondas Mosten, a Perimadeian; presently at anchor here, due to sail the day after tomorrow for Shastel with a cargo of mixed luxury goods, books and furniture. We would very much like to charter your ship, at a quarter per ton per week plus wages, provisions and damages.'

Athli thought for a moment. 'Starting when?' she said.

'That hasn't been decided yet,' said Fesal. 'Our intention is to start the charter, at full hire except for wages and provisions, some time before we actually start our work; this will be necessary to ensure that all the ships we're chartering will be available when we need them.'

'I see,' Athli said. 'And what would this work of yours be?'

Fesal smiled tightly. 'That's restricted, I'm afraid,' he said.

'Oh.' Athli looked him in the eye, but saw nothing there. 'I'm only concerned in case there's an element of risk. To be perfectly straight with you, I don't want to get involved in anything that would leave my ship at the bottom of the sea, particularly,' she added, 'now that it's the only one I've got. I do have certain commercial interests quite separate from the Bank, you see, and I need my ship-'

'In the event of damage,' said Fesal firmly, 'or indeed outright loss, we will pay you compensation in full, in accordance with the market value of the ship as at the date of the charter, such value to be fixed by an independent local valuer. This will be a term of the charter. So really, you needn't be concerned.'

Athli frowned. 'What about lost earnings?' she said. 'Between you losing my ship and me getting another one, I mean. Is that included?'

Fesal was obviously impressed. 'I believe we can come to some agreement on that score,' he said. 'For example, we might take out insurance to cover such losses, in your name, of course. But we feel sure that loss and serious damage are unlikely to occur.'

'That's something, I suppose,' Athli answered. 'I don't suppose you'd care to comment about these rumours flying around, that you're hiring a fleet to carry your army to war against the plainspeople?'

'Is there a rumour?' Iqueval said.

Athli smiled. 'Oh, there's always a rumour,' she replied. 'But some rumours are more believable than others. Still, it's good money - well, you know that, I'm sure you're completely up to date on charter tariffs. You aren't about to tell me how long this job of yours is expected to take, are you?'

'You're quite right,' said Fesal, 'we aren't. That information is, obviously, restricted.' He made a placatory gesture with his long, fine hands. 'It goes without saying that entering into an open-ended arrangement of this sort is both unusual and, potentially, inconvenient. We believe that the level of payment we're offering is more than adequate compensation. Ultimately, the choice is yours.'

'Oh, quite,' Athli said. 'Well, I suppose I'd have to be an idiot to turn down an offer like this. About payment, though - will that be in advance or arrears? I'm sorry if that sounds fussy, but . . .'

'There's no need to apologise for a firm grasp of the essentials of your profession,' Fesal replied. 'In advance for the first month, in arrears after that. We believe that's a reasonable compromise. Is that acceptable?'

'Method of payment?'

'By letter of credit,' Iqueval said, 'drawn on the provincial office, redeemable wherever you choose to specify. In your case, I a.s.sume, in Shastel; you can then write it directly to yourself here.' He smiled. 'I wouldn't be surprised if quite a few of your compatriots elect to have their payments written to Shastel, which ought to be good for business. You may care to put arrangements in hand, though of course it's not for me to tell you how to run your franchise. Still, with the Loredan Bank gone, there aren't that many banks outside the Empire for people to choose from.'

And only one inside the Empire, Athli didn't reply. Instead, she said, 'That'll be fine. And yes, I'll be happy to arrange exchange facilities for anybody else who wants to use us, though with the sort of money you're talking about floating around, it'll be quite an undertaking. I'll probably end up having to lay off some of the credit with other people here on the Island.'

Fesal stood up. 'You're going to be busy,' he said. 'Well, thank you for your time. We'll be in touch when we're ready to make a start. It's been a pleasure doing business with you.'

'Likewise.'

When they'd gone, Athli spent a fascinating few minutes with her counting-board and tablets, first making the calculations and then checking them three times to make sure she wasn't making some elementary mistake that made the sum she'd be due to receive seem much larger than it should be. But it worked out the same each time; good money, indeed.

So they're going to attack Temrai, are they? She should be pleased; delighted, in fact, that the monster who destroyed her home and butchered her people was only a few months away from defeat and death. The good man loves his friends and hates his enemies; wasn't that what she'd been taught as a child? My enemy's misfortune is my good fortune - confound it, if they'd come to her and asked for the loan of her ship, free of charge, for a holy war against the plainspeople, that'd have been straightforward enough; Yes, she'd have said, with my blessing. But this way, revenge and a substantial profit - somehow she wasn't sure the world worked like that.

Not that a substantial profit would go amiss; not if her poor Fencer was at the bottom of the sea, and Gannadius and his nephew with her. Even if they were still alive, lost somewhere between the Empire and Temrai, chances were she'd never see them again. She found it hard, almost impossible, to feel anything about that; not because she didn't want to, but simply because she couldn't. When Perimadeia had fallen and she'd come here, she'd started making herself armour, good armour proof against such things - a helmet of business, a breastplate of friends, pauldrons (whatever they were) of possessions, success, prosperity. When she'd taken Bardas Loredan aboard the Fencer to visit his brothers in the Mesoge, and had come back with his sword and his apprentice but without him, she'd closed up the rivets and planished the exterior, making this armour of hers good enough to pa.s.s any proof; the death of an old friend and the boy Loredan had given her to look after were blows she acknowledged but couldn't actually feel. That's the merit of good armour; the blows either glance off the angled contours or waste their energy against the internal tensions of the metal, which are so much more powerful than any force likely to be applied from the outside. To be good armour, to be proof, it must have its own inner stresses, those of constricted metal trying in vain to push outwards, so that pressure inwards is met, force against force, and repelled. She had those internal tensions, those inner stresses; now here was an act of proof, and look, her armour had turned the blows easily. The prospect of some money, some business, an opportunity to find more clients and increase her prosperity had quite taken away the force of the attack.

So that's all right, then. As for her ship, her poor little ship, the Son of Heaven was quite right: it was insured, so heavily that it was a wonder it had ever managed to float under all that weight of money. Once the insurers stopped squirming (only a matter of time, plus a certain amount of effort) she'd do rather well out of the loss of the Fencer.

Well, of course. That's what insurance is for, to turn the blow. And if she hadn't been expecting, deep in the darker galleries of her mind, to lose it some day, she probably wouldn't have called it the Fencer in the first place.

Being an orderly, methodical person (by practice if not by nature) she made a note of her meeting with the Sons of Heaven, filed it in the proper place and went back to reading the report, which was, of course, all about armour. She managed to get to the end of the seventh section before her eyes filled with tears, making it impractical to try to read further.

'Really?' Temrai stopped what he was doing and looked up. 'Perimadeians? I didn't think there were any left.'

'A few, here and there,' the messenger replied. His name was Leuscai, and Temrai had known him for years, on and off. How someone like Leuscai came to be running errands for the engineers building siege-engines down on the southern border he had no idea; chances were that he simply hadn't wanted to get involved. It was a problem with a lot of his contemporaries; though they'd never have considered supporting the rebellion, let alone joining it, they weren't happy with the direction Temrai seemed to be leading the clans in, and they manifested this unease by taking part as little as possible. It was profoundly irritating, to say the least. But Temrai couldn't be bothered to raise the issue with an old friend like Leuscai; it'd probably result in falling out, bad temper and the end of a friendship, and he had few enough of those left as it was.

'Oh, well,' Temrai said. 'Now then, how does this look?'

'Unintentional,' Leuscai replied. 'That is, I wouldn't insult you by thinking you meant it to look like that.'

'That bad?' Temrai sighed. 'I'm getting cack-handed in my old age, that's what it is. It's not so long ago I was able to earn my living bashing metal around.'

'In Perimadeia,' Leuscai pointed out, 'where presumably their standards weren't so high. All right, put me out of my misery. What's it supposed to be?'

Temrai grinned. 'There's a technical term for it,' he said, 'which escapes me for the moment. But basically it's a knee-guard. Or rather it isn't.'

'Not unless you've got really unusual knees,' Leuscai agreed. 'But it's just as well you told me, or I'd never have guessed. To me it looks like a slice of harness leather pretending to be a pancake.'

'Yes, all right.' Temrai let the offending item fall from his hand. 'It's frustrating, really,' he said. 'While I was in the City, I read about how you're supposed to do this, and they made it sound really easy. You just get thickish leather, you dip it in hot melted beeswax, you shape it, and there you are; cheap, strong, lightweight armour, made out of something we've got lots of. I don't know,' he went on, sitting on the log he'd been using to beat the thing into shape over. 'Making things used to come so easily to me, and now I seem to have lost the knack. Anyway, tell me more about these stragglers of yours. Any idea who they are?'

Leuscai smiled. 'You mean, are they spies? Well, it's possible. From what we've been able to gather so far, one of them was a wizard - well, a.s.sistant wizard - and they're both something to do with the Island and the Shastel Order.'

'Really?' Temrai sounded impressed. 'Wizards and diplomats. We're honoured.'

'That's not the best bit though,' Leuscai continued, the smile quickly fading from his face. 'The kid spent several years on Scona. He was Bardas Loredan's apprentice. '

Temrai sat perfectly still for a moment. 'Is that so?' he said. 'Then I think we've met. Briefly, but memorably. How do you know all this?'

Leuscai pulled up a log and sat down beside him. 'Pure chance, really. You remember Dondai, the old bloke who used to make the pancakes?'

Temrai nodded. 'He died a short while back,' he said.

'Apparently. And his nephew, you've come across him? Da.s.sascai, his name is. Doesn't know a lot about pancakes, but he's surprisingly well informed about commercial activity on the Island. Says he has contacts from when he was in business in Ap' Escatoy, though if you ask me that doesn't quite tie up. Anyway, for some reason, this Da.s.sascai-'

'He's a spy.'

'Oh, really? Well, that explains what he was doing snooping round our yard, where we're raising the trebuchets. This Da.s.sascai, he happened to see our two guests, recognised them (so he says) and went to the camp commander about it.'

'Goscai.'

'That's right. Nice enough man, but he worries; and he got into an awful state over this, as you can imagine. First he was going to have them strung up on the spot; then he thought he'd better not, in case he started a war, so he was going to have them put in chains instead; then it occurred to him that they might be our spies (don't know where he got that from) - finally, he got himself into such a tizzy he didn't know what to do, so we said the best thing would be to ask you. He hadn't thought of that; but as soon as we suggested it, he was delighted. So here I am.'

Temrai rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. 'Any idea how they got there?' he asked. 'Or did they just show up, saying, h.e.l.lo, we're spies, mind if we look around?'

'Hardly.' Leuscai laughed. 'Though if they had, I for one would've said, Go ahead, help yourselves. The way I see it, some solid intelligence work by the provincial office might do us a power of good.'

'Quite possibly,' Temrai replied, 'but let's not get into all that now.' He breathed in deeply, then breathed out again. 'How did they get there? Any ideas?'

'Some of our people found them in the swamp,' Leuscai replied, 'when they were out looking for ducks. In a pretty bad way, apparently. The wizard's no spring chicken. If they are spies, they went to a h.e.l.l of a lot of trouble to look like dying men. Their story was that they were on their way to Shastel from the Island, got run aground by the Imperial coastguard and were on the run from the foot patrols. Plausible enough, I suppose.'

'All right,' Temrai said, picking up a bossing mallet and putting it down again. 'You send them here; I'll look them over, frighten them politely for a day or so and send them on their way. If they really are spies, I'll give them the guided tour; that'll confuse them so badly they won't know what to think.' He looked round at the mess left over from his experiment in armour-making. 'You don't happen to know of anybody who can do this?' he asked. 'It's got me beaten, but it can't really be all that difficult. It really annoys me when I know I'm on to something but I can't make it work.'

Leuscai shrugged. 'Can't help you there, I'm afraid. Of course, you could always write a letter to Bardas Loredan, care of the Imperial state armoury service. I'm sure he'd be delighted to help.'

Temrai scowled, then laughed. 'Do you know,' he said, 'he b.u.mped into me in the street once, in Perimadeia. He was drunk, obviously he hadn't got a clue who I was. Everywhere I go, there he seems to be; and I can't figure that out for the life of me. I mean, why should there be this horrible connection between us? He's a farmer's son from the Mesoge; by rights he should be hoeing turnips in the mud right now, not lurking in the shadows everywhere I go, waiting to jump out at me. I wonder, what the h.e.l.l could it have been that tangled our lives up together like that?'

'You make it sound like you're in love,' Leuscai said. 'Star-crossed lovers, like in some old story.'

'You think so? In that case, I reckon it's high time we got a divorce.'

When the messenger eventually found him, Gorgas Loredan was at the farm, helping his brothers patch up the floor of the long barn.

'b.l.o.o.d.y menace,' Zonaras had said in pa.s.sing, when Gorgas asked him why he wasn't using it any more. 'Planks rotten right through. You could break your leg.'

'I see,' Gorgas had replied. 'So you're just going to abandon it, are you? Let it fall down?'

'Haven't got time to fix it,' Clefas had put in. 'It's a big job, and there's only the two of us.'

Gorgas had grinned at that. 'Not any more,' he'd said.

And so there he was, muddy and bad-tempered, standing astride a newly felled sweet-chestnut tree with a hammer in his hand, blood trickling down from his knuckles where he'd sc.r.a.ped them carelessly while manhandling the timber.

'Who are you?' he asked.

'Sergeant Mossay sent me,' the messenger replied defensively. 'Letter for you, from the provincial office.' He held the little bra.s.s cylinder out at arm's length. 'The courier arrived last night at Tornoys.'

'Is he waiting for the answer?' Gorgas asked, wiping his hands on his shirt.

'No,' the messenger replied. 'No answer expected, he said.'

Gorgas frowned and took the cylinder, flipping off the carefully fitted lid with his thumbs.

They'd started by felling the tree; the last of the stand of chestnut trees that their grandfather had planted shortly after their father was born. It hadn't been an easy tree to fell. The wind had twisted it, so when they tried to saw through, the timber clented on the saw-blade until finally it broke (it was old and rusty, like all the other tools about the place). So they'd got out the felling axes; and after they'd blistered their hands, and Clefas had taken his eye off the cut and knocked the head off his axe as a result, they thought better of it and dug out the other saw, which was even older and rustier. But Gorgas made them rope the tree back, and they used a block and tackle to put some tension on it, opening the cut to allow the blade to move freely. When they were three-quarters of the way through, they realised that if they carried on the line they were following, the tree would drop on the roof of the old pig-house and flatten it. Of course, the old pig-house hadn't been used for years except as a miscellaneous junk store; but Gorgas made them drive in another post and rope the tree back another way so that they could chop a wedge out and alter the direction of the fall. Eventually they cut through and the tree fell; not the way Gorgas had intended, but it nearly cleared the pig-house, only sweeping off a few cracked slates with an outlying branch. It had taken them the rest of the first day to trim the trunk and cart off the loppings to the wood-shed (which was too damp to store wood in now that half the thatch had blown away); now, finally, they were splitting the trunk to make the planks they'd need for the barn floor.

'b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' Gorgas said, scowling and crushing the letter in his fist. 'You know what? That b.a.s.t.a.r.d Poliorcis, he's made them reject the alliance.'

The messenger took a step backwards, trying to look as if he wasn't there. Clefas and Zonaras stood still, apparently unconcerned.

'No material advantage to the Empire,' Gorgas went on. 'Well, the h.e.l.l with them. Come on, let's finish this. You,' he added as an afterthought, as the messenger stood unhappily by, waiting to be dismissed, 'you go back, find that courier and bring him here. I've got a reply all right.'

The messenger nodded doubtfully. 'What if he's already left?' he said.

'You'd better hope he hasn't,' Gorgas replied. 'Because if he has, I might be inclined to ask why it took a day for this to reach me, if the courier got in last night as you just told me.'

The messenger hurried away, his feet squelching on the waterlogged gra.s.s of the yard.

'Clefas,' Gorgas said, 'get the wedges. This stuff's knotted and twisted like you wouldn't believe.'

Clefas stood for a moment, then slowly walked away. Gorgas took a deep breath, then went back to what he'd been doing. He had a froe jammed in a lengthways split down the trunk of the tree, in too far to budge with the tommy bar, which he'd just contrived to break by jerking on it with his full weight.

'You'll never get that out,' Zonaras said.

'Watch me,' Gorgas replied. 'Here, pa.s.s me the side axe. I'll cut the b.l.o.o.d.y thing out if I have to.'

'Suit yourself,' Zonaras said, handing him the axe, which was bevelled on one side only for cutting at an angle. 'Watch the head on that, it's loose.'

'Really?' Gorgas said.

His brother nodded. 'Been loose for years,' he said. 'Needs the head taking off and a new wedge knocking in.'

Gorgas hacked away for a few minutes, trying to cut out a slot beside the jammed tool to free it. He hadn't made any significant progress by the time Clefas wandered back with the wedges. They were heavy and indescribably ancient, and their heads had been smashed into razor-sharp flakes by generations of Loredans pounding on them with big hammers. 'That's better,' Gorgas said. 'Right, Zonaras, bash in a wedge either side; that'll open it up.'

Zonaras picked up a wedge in each hand and nestled them in the crack fore and aft of the froe; then he bashed them home with the poll of the surviving felling-axe. The froe came out easily, but the wedges were stuck fast.

'Marvellous,' Gorgas said angrily. 'Solve one problem, make two more.'

Zonaras sighed. 'Grain's too twisted for splitting,' he said. 'I could have told you that before you started.'