The Proof House Part 16

Tamin raised an eyebrow. 'I didn't know you read books, Eseutz,' he said. 'Come wrapped round something, did it?'

'Oh, very funny,' Eseutz replied, spitting out an olive stone. 'I'll have you know I've got a whole box of books in my warehouse. This big, it is. And even now I can't shift them,' she added wistfully. 'Hey, Ven, I don't suppose you'd be interested-'

'No.' Venart swirled the last of his wine round the bottom of his cup. 'But I suppose you're right,' he went on. 'No, not you, him. About the Empire. I haven't got a clue how big it is. I just know it's - well, big.'

'It's that all right,' Tamin said. 'Too big, if you ask me. I've been hearing stories about a civil war, even.'

'Really?' Eseutz lifted her head. 'Oh, wait. Do you mean the Partek rumours? Because I happen to know for a fact . . .'

Tamin shook his head. 'I mean a real civil war,' he said, 'not just random acts of meaningless violence by a bunch of pirates. No, this is supposed to be a show-down between the Imperial family and some warlord or other, far away to the south-east. The whole thing's probably been exaggerated way out of proportion, but I do believe there's at least a small grain of truth in it. And that's my point, you see,' he went on. 'I simply don't know how these things work. If there's a civil war, a real one, will they suddenly put everything else on hold and hurry back home to take part? Or do things like that happen every day?'

Venart shrugged. 'Does it matter?' he asked. 'One thing we can all be sure of, the Empire's never bothered us. And I don't believe it ever will.'

'Oh, yes?' Tamin enquired. 'What makes you so sure?'

'Well,' Venart said, 'for one thing they don't have a fleet, and this is an island after all. Or had you always a.s.sumed we were on a mountaintop and it'd been raining a lot?'

'They do have a fleet, though,' Eseutz put in. 'Ours.'

'All right, but they're hardly likely to use our own fleet against us.'

'Oh, I don't know. More to the point, they don't need a fleet to use against us if ours is out of the running.'

'And how are they going to get here without any ships? Walk?' Venart shook his head. 'The point is, I can't see the Empire ever attacking us. It doesn't make any sense. It's not how they go about things.'

'As far as you know. And, as I think we've all agreed, we know spit about the Empire.'

Venart sighed patiently. 'They're only interested in securing their borders,' he said. 'We're in the middle of the sea. End of story.'

'Maybe you're right,' Tamin said. 'I just feel we ought to know more about them, that's all. For example, the amount of business we do with them is pretty well negligible - and that does concern us all right. We could be missing out on some amazing opportunities.'

Venart scratched his ear. 'My guess is, they don't need anything we sell. They can get everything they want from inside the Empire. And I'm not sure I'd be all that keen to trade with them anyway. I don't know what it is, but they give me the creeps.'

'Ah,' Tamin said, 'that's more like it. We don't do business with them because we're afraid of them. Or we just don't like them, whatever. That's a pretty juvenile att.i.tude for a trading nation, don't you think?'

'I don't know,' Venart replied. 'Maybe it's just me. But they're so big, and-'

'Scary?'

Venart nodded. 'All right,' he said, 'scary, yes. I feel on edge dealing with them. I can't help it, it's just the way I feel.'

'Because you don't know about them,' Tamin said, smiling. 'I'm sure if you understood them better, you wouldn't be so apprehensive.'

'Quite,' muttered Eseutz. 'I bet they're really sweet once you get to know them.'

Gannadius?

Gannadius sat up. It was dark; he was faintly aware of Theudas, stirring in his sleep in the bed next to him. Someone had called his name.

Gannadius. It's me.

'Oh,' he said aloud; then he closed his eyes.

He was back in the City (oh, not again), in the ropewalks this time; on either side of the enormously wide street, houses and warehouses were burning, brightly enough for him to be able to see as if it was daylight. He was standing in the middle of the road, which was fortunate; all the fighting and killing was taking place on the edges, under the eaves of the burning buildings.

'Sorry,' Alexius was saying. 'I don't like it here much, either; it's just where I happened to be.'

Gannadius shivered; he couldn't feel the heat from the fire all around him, although he knew he ought to. 'Charming place you've got here,' he said. 'Actually, I haven't been here before, I don't think. And I've been to most parts of the Fall at one time or another.'

Alexius pointed, though Gannadius couldn't quite make out what he was supposed to be looking at. 'Over there,' Alexius was saying. 'See that man there, the plainsman with the long hair? Any moment now the roof of that shed's going to slide off, and he'll be trapped under it and killed. That's the point of all this, why it's important. There it goes, look,' he added, as a small building collapsed in a shower of sparks, and someone Gannadius couldn't see screamed. 'It took me ages to work out what was important about this, but finally I tracked it down. If he'd lived, he'd have taken part in an archery contest; he'd have shot an arrow that bounced off the edge of the target frame - real million-to-one stuff - and hit Temrai's wife in the eye. Well, not his wife then, and she never would have been his wife; instead he'd have married someone else, and things would have been a whole lot different.'

'I see,' Gannadius said, inaccurately. 'And that's what you wanted to tell me, was it?'

Alexius shook his head. 'Good G.o.ds, no. Like I said, this is just where I've been spending time lately. No, it's much more important - for you, that is. I need to warn you-'

'Excuse me,' Gannadius said. He'd just noticed that he'd trodden on a dying man. He knew, of course, that there was nothing he could do to help, since all this had already happened and besides, he wasn't really there. But it went against the grain just to walk on.

'I'm sorry,' he said, kneeling down, but the man didn't show any signs of having heard him. His wounds were spectacular - a deep slicing cut running diagonally from the junction of the neck and shoulders, following the line of the collar-bone, and a ma.s.sive stab-wound, as broad as Gannadius' hand, just under the arch of the ribs.

'Halberd wounds,' Alexius remarked, above him and out of sight.

'Halberds? I didn't know the plainsmen used them.'

'They don't,' Alexius replied; and when Gannadius looked up, he realised that he wasn't in Perimadeia any more. 'Scona?' he asked.

'That's right,' Alexius confirmed. 'What you're seeing is the sack of Scona by the Shastel Order.'

Gannadius frowned. Behind him, though he couldn't see it, all the warehouses that lined the Strangers' Quay were on fire, and people were fighting each other to get to the head of the line to board ships that had already left, and been sunk in the harbour by the catapults mounted on the decks of the Shastel barges. 'But that never happened,' he said.

'Strictly speaking, you're right,' Alexius said. 'Bardas Loredan prevented it; he put Gorgas out of action, making him give up the war, so there never was a siege, or a sack. Nevertheless, this is here. Ask your friend there if you don't believe me.'

'You're saying that this is what should have happened. '

'Good G.o.ds, no. You've been reading too much Tryphaenus. I never could see any sense in dragging value judgements into the study of the Principle. It's like saying the sun rises in the east because it's a better neighbourhood. All I'm saying is, this happened too. In a sense.'

Gannadius stood up. 'You've lost me,' he said. 'And please, don't try to explain. My thirst for pure knowledge isn't what it was, I'm afraid. What were you about to say? About a warning?'

'Oh, yes.' Alexius pointed. 'There, look.'

Somehow, while Gannadius wasn't looking, Scona had gone. Instead, they were standing in the middle of what Gannadius a.s.sumed was a plains encampment; a large one, with tents and temporary stockades all around them in every direction. Someone was attacking it; many of the tents were on fire, and there were hors.e.m.e.n riding up and down between the rows, setting light to the waxed felt or hacking at random at the people trying to slip past. Directly ahead, Gannadius saw a wagon. The felt cover had almost burned away, leaving the hoops sticking up like ribs, and underneath it, Gannadius could see the face of a boy peeping out between the spokes of the offside front wheel at a horseman, who was looking back at him. Because of the angle, and because the horseman's visor was down, Gannadius couldn't see his face . . .

'Who's that?' he asked, redundantly.

'Guess.'

'I see,' Gannadius said. A man was trying to sneak past the horseman, squeezing himself against the side of a row of barrels. The horseman caught sight of him and leaned forward in the saddle, bending from the waist. His blow landed on the flat top of the man's head. 'So this is how it all started, I suppose.'

Alexius smiled. 'There's more to it than that, I'm afraid. You're a.s.suming that this is one of Maxen's pre-emptive raids against the tribes, the one in which young Temrai saw his family killed. Yes?'

Gannadius nodded. 'Isn't that him under the cart?' he said.

'Of course. But,' Alexius went on, 'this is also what's going to happen. Observe the armour and kit the hors.e.m.e.n are wearing.'> Gannadius looked annoyed. 'I'm sorry,' he said, 'I'm not what you'd call a military buff. What's so special about the armour?'

'It means they're Imperial heavy cavalry,' Alexius said. 'What you're watching is the annexation of what used to be Perimadeia by the provincial office. And yes, the man on the horse over there is Bardas Loredan; and yes, the boy under the cart is King Temrai. Of course, boy is stretching it a bit now, he must be twenty-four or five by now; but he looks young for his age, especially when he's terrified. And the cart helps, too, putting him in shadow.'

Gannadius looked round again. 'All right,' he said, 'if that's so, how come I can't see the City? Or the ruins, at least.'

Alexius smiled. 'King Temrai decided it would be suicide to stay put and fight the Empire,' he said, 'particularly when he heard who was nominally in charge of the army. If they want Perimadeia, he said, they can have it; he ordered his people to pack up their things and led them back to the plains, where they'd come from. But the provincial office wasn't impressed. If they can go away, they argued, they can also come back. Best to deal with them now. So they sent Bardas and the army out into the plains, relying on Bardas' local knowledge and long experience. Sure enough, he led them to where he reckoned the tribes would set up camp as soon as they felt they were out of danger and could relax. There was a b.l.o.o.d.y ma.s.sacre - exhibit one - and thousands of the plainspeople were killed. Thousands weren't, however. So Bardas spent the rest of his life hunting them, until he died of pneumonia and his second in command - a man called Theudas Morosin, if that rings any bells with you - led the army home. By then, the Empire had rebuilt Perimadeia, and Morosin settled down there, although he didn't have much of a life, poor fellow. Then one day the tribes suddenly appeared on the border, led by a strong young king who'd been no more than a boy on the day Bardas burned the camp and killed his family. He knew there'd never be peace so long as the City stood. Fortuitously he was some kind of military genius; Theudas Morosin, hastily recalled and put in charge of the defences, did an outstanding job in the face of f.e.c.kless-ness and apathy unusual even by Imperial standards, but the City fell, and Theudas was one of only a handful of survivors . . .'

Gannadius was clapping his hands, slowly. 'Very good,' he said. 'A splendidly neat and well-crafted piece of work. I don't believe a word of it.'

'You don't?' Alexius raised an eyebrow. 'Oh, come on, Gannadius, since when were you so critical? Look.' He pointed, and Gannadius was back where he'd started, in the burning ropewalks of Perimadeia; only this time he could see himself, a very old man with a dazed, sleepy expression on his face, being hustled down the street by- 'Theudas Morosin,' he said, in the tone of voice of a conjuror's stooge who's just had a bunch of roses pulled out of his ear. 'And yes, I'll grant you, he looks just like Bardas in all that gear.'

'It's even the same sword,' Alexius said. 'The Guelan broadsword Gorgas gave Bardas the day before the sack. Bardas gave it to Athli Zeuxis to keep for him. Athli gave it to Theudas when Bardas died. Here it is again - they really made them to last in those days. It's that kind of attention to detail that really impresses people.'

Gannadius closed his eyes; which was a mistake, because now he was in the mines under Ap' Escatoy, undoubtedly his least favourite hallucination of all- 'Not a hallucination,' Alexius corrected him. 'Not an optical illusion, trick done with mirrors, anything like that, as you know perfectly well. Whatever you see is real; the only thing here that isn't real is you.'

Gannadius opened his mouth to object, then hesitated for a moment. 'That sack of Scona we saw,' he said. 'That's in the future too, isn't it?'

'Ah!' Alexius beamed. 'Eventually, after all this time, you've got there. I knew you would. Exactly so; it hasn't happened yet. Just because you haven't read the last page of a book, it doesn't follow that the story hasn't been written.'

'Actually,' Gannadius confessed, 'I always read the ending first. I find it helps me to appreciate the nuances. You're saying that just because none of this has happened here yet, it's already happened -' He paused, frowning. 'Somewhere else?'

Alexius leaned his back against the panel wall of the gallery. He smelt of coriander. 'Now you're getting somewhere,' he said. 'Now, at long last, you're beginning to see how simple the Principle really is. I can't really blame you for not understanding before, I suppose. It's taken me this long to work it out for myself, and you simply won't believe the trouble I've had to go to . . . You remember how we used to speculate whether we could find a way to use the Principle to see into the future? We should have realised, only we were too criminally stupid to understand the painfully obvious - we can see the future because it's all already happened.'

'You've lost me again,' said Gannadius sadly.

'Oh, for pity's sake.' Gannadius could feel the whole gallery shaking, and the air was thick with loosened dust. 'We can watch Theudas killing the tribes because we can watch Bardas doing the exact same thing. We can watch the fall of Imperial Perimadeia because we've already seen Perimadeia fall. We can see everything that way, because it's all the same event. We can even see our own deaths, if we're that morbidly inclined. Of course, it's customary to die first . . .'

The roof collapsed, filling the gallery with dirt. It was like being inside an hourgla.s.s as it's turned upside down. Gannadius choked, felt a timber crash into the side of his head and opened his eyes.

'Uncle?'

'Theudas,' he said. 'What's going on? Where are we?'

'You were having a nightmare,' Theudas said, bringing the lamp close. 'It's all right. We're with the plainspeople, remember? Temrai's summoned us, and he's going to send us home.'

Gannadius sat up, shaking his head. 'He was wrong,' he said. 'You can change it, if you find the right place and sort of push. We did it ourselves, with Bardas and that girl.' He looked up at Theudas' face, as if examining whether it was genuine. 'Coriander,' he said. 'Doesn't that mean the enemy?'

Theudas put down the lamp. 'Stay still,' he said, 'I'm going to see if I can find that lady doctor. You'll be just fine, you'll see.'

Gannadius sighed. He'd woken up with a splitting headache. 'It's all right,' he said, 'it was just some leftovers from the dream I was having, I haven't gone mad. Sorry, did I frighten you?'

Cautiously, as if afraid of an ambush, Theudas came back. 'It was another one of those dreams, was it?' he said. 'I thought the silverwort tea had sorted them out.'

'Not really,' Gannadius said. 'But it tasted so disgusting I stopped telling you about them, so you wouldn't make me drink it any more.' He breathed out and lay back on the bed. 'Now that I think of it, I seem to remember reading somewhere that silverwort's a slow poison. Well, it's bad for you, at any rate. Does things to your kidneys.'

Theudas scowled. 'Go back to sleep,' he said. 'We've got a long day tomorrow, and you need your rest. In fact, I'm going to have a word with the drover; you can't be expected to rattle along in a cart all day at your age.'

'Oh, I wouldn't fret about it.' Gannadius smiled bleakly. 'I happen to know that I survived to a ripe old age, all my hair fell out and half my teeth as well. So did you; survive, I mean. Probably you died of pneumonia, but don't hold me to that; I'm extrapolating from a.s.sociated data.'

'Uncle-'

'I know, I'm talking crazy again. I'll stop.' Gannadius yawned conscientiously and turned over, his eyes still open. 'Put out the lamp,' he said, 'I promise I'll try to get some sleep.'

Theudas sighed. 'I worry about you, I really do,' he said.

'So do I,' Gannadius answered, trying to sound drowsy. 'So do I.'

'You're cured then, are you?'

Bardas smiled. 'Apparently,' he replied. 'At least, I'm no crazier than I was to start with. Also, I was making the infirmary look untidy, so they threw me out.'

Anax, the ancient Son of Heaven who ran the proof house, nodded sagely. 'It's not the sort of place you'd want to hang about in,' he said. 'What they're best at is sawing off limbs - they make a wonderfully neat job of it, probably because the surgeon used to be the foreman of the joinery shop, until he got too much seniority and had to be promoted. You should see some of the false legs he's fitted; they turn them out of whalebone on the big pole lathe they've got down there. Works of art, some of them.'

'I shouldn't wonder,' Bardas replied.

While Bardas packed his few belongings into a kitbag, Anax sat perched on the end of the bed, reminding Bardas of a pixie in a story he'd heard when he was very young. To the best of his recollection, the pixie occupied its time by making marvellously detailed and complicated lifesize mechanical dolls that were well nigh indistinguishable from real boys and girls, and subst.i.tuting them for the children he stole from poor families in the dead of night. The story had horrified him so much that he hadn't slept for weeks afterwards, and (rather illogically) had got into the habit of tapping his arms and legs to make sure they weren't made of metal.

'So you're off, then,' Anax said, after he'd been silent for a while.

'Apparently,' Bardas replied. 'It's a shame, really. I was getting used to being here.'

Anax smiled. 'Getting used to,' he said. 'That's about the furthest anyone could ever go, unless of course they happened to love bashing sheet metal with hammers. Don't laugh, some people do. Bollo here, for instance; don't you, Bollo?'

Anax's enormous young a.s.sistant pulled a face. Bardas laughed.

'Don't let him fool you,' Anax went on. 'Secretly he loves his work. When he was a child, he was always getting yelled at for breaking things - and something that size in a small peasant cottage is bound to break something every now and again, it's inevitable. Here, he can break things all day long and get paid money for it.' Anax looked down at his fingers, then up again. 'If you're going to the wars, what are you going to do for equipment? You don't seem to have much kit of your own.'

Bardas shrugged. 'They'll issue me with some, I suppose,' he replied. 'At least, I a.s.sume-'

'Seems a bit long-winded,' Anax interruped. 'After all, we make the stuff here. Why take pot luck with some provincial quartermaster's clerk when you can have the pick of the production run? Better still,' he added, hopping down from the bed, 'you could have some made bespoke. At least that way you'd know it was proof.'

'I haven't really given it much thought,' Bardas replied, holding a shirt against his chest to fold it. 'From what they've told me, my main function's going to be to stand up on a high point where Temrai can see me and look terrifying. Which'll suit me fine,' he added. 'G.o.ds know, I'm in no hurry to get involved in any fighting.'

Anax sighed. 'He hasn't given it much thought,' he repeated. 'Deputy inspector of the proof house, or whatever he calls himself, and he's prepared to make do with any old piece of junk off the shelves in the QM stores. We can't have that, can we, Bollo? Imagine how it'd reflect on us if he got himself killed, or lost an arm. Some people just don't think, is their trouble.'

'All right,' Bardas replied, smiling. 'You choose some for me, then I'll know who to blame.'

'We'll do better than that,' Anax replied. 'We'll make it for you, ourselves.'

Bardas raised an eyebrow. 'I thought you only smashed it up,' he said. 'I didn't know you could make the stuff too.'

Anax made a show of looking affronted. 'Do you mind?' he said. 'I was a tin-basher for twenty years.'

'Until you got too much seniority and they had to promote you?'

Anax slapped him on the back. 'It's a pity, you know,' he said. 'The man's just starting to get the hang of how this place works, and he's getting posted. It's a waste, if you ask me.'