The Proof House Part 22

'We could try the Honour and Glory, I suppose,' Eseutz Mesatges suggested. 'Shouldn't be too crowded at this time of day, and they do a pa.s.sable fish soup.'

Vetriz nodded. She wasn't particularly bothered where they sat down so long as they sat down; she'd made the mistake of wearing her new sandals (hard leather straps and two-inch heels, as required for the nomad-caravan look) before breaking them in properly, and the straps were cutting into her like a bowsaw.

The fish soup turned out to be mediocre, not helped by the fact that the cooks had left the mussels and oysters in their sh.e.l.ls - 'Which is supposed to denote freshness and back-to-essentials simplicity,' Eseutz commented, ducking a floating mussel under the surface of her soup and watching it bob up again, 'but as far as I'm concerned it means the cook thinks sc.r.a.ping sh.e.l.lfish out of their armour is a rotten job - a view I wholeheartedly share, let me tell you. The really sordid part is, you end up with a great big trash-heap of bits of discarded sh.e.l.l on the edge of your plate, which really isn't the sort of thing you want to be looking at while you're eating.'

Vetriz smiled distractedly; she had something of a headache, and she wasn't really in the mood for Eseutz Mesatges. 'Leave them, then,' she said. 'Just eat the soup.'

'What, and waste stuff I've paid good money for? Not likely.' Eseutz grimaced and ripped apart a mussel. 'Worst of all is those little pink beetle-things, all curled up in a ball like a dead woodlouse. I defy anybody to prise one of those things open without a crowbar and a big hammer.'

Somebody Vetriz thought she knew had just walked in; she caught sight of the back of a bald head, a pair of broad shoulders. 'You know,' she said, 'I'm really not hungry. I think I'll go home now.'

'Oh, don't be silly,' Eseutz said. 'Look, if you really don't like the fish soup, we'll order something else. What about the curried mutton?'

'Really,' Vetriz said, rather more loudly than she'd intended to, 'I'm not hungry.'

Several people looked round, including the man with the bald head and the broad shoulders. He looked at her for a moment, grinned, and walked away towards the table under the window. Vetriz sat back in her chair, feeling rather sick.

'It's not the fish soup, is it?' Eseutz said.

'No,' Vetriz replied. 'It's not the fish soup.'

Eseutz studied the retreating back for a moment. 'It's none of my business, right?'

'You're right,' Vetriz said. 'It's none of your business.'

'Fair enough. If you're really not hungry, do you mind if I pinch your bread?'

Gorgas Loredan stopped and looked round until he saw what he was looking for. No mistaking those thin, hunched shoulders. He stepped up close and put his arm round them.

Iseutz Loredan squirmed like a fish, then saw who it was and relaxed a little, though not completely. 'Uncle Gorgas,' she said.

'I got your letter,' he said, straddling the bench and sitting down beside her. He looked too big in such an ordinary place. 'In fact, it reached me just as I was setting off for a meeting here. So naturally, I thought I'd offer you a lift.'

Iseutz smiled at him. 'That's wonderful,' she said. 'Thank you.'

'My pleasure,' he replied. 'Really, I ought to have invited you over long before this, but I wasn't sure how things stand with your mother and me. That soup looks good.'

'You have it, then,' Iseutz said. 'It's disgusting.'

Gorgas shrugged. 'By the way,' he said, 'is it true you nearly killed that soldier? Left-handed, too. You really do have a gift for this swordfighting stuff, don't you?'

'Must run in the family,' she said, expressionless. 'So you know all about that, do you?'

'Mphm.' Gorgas had his mouth full of soup. He opened his lips and fished out two mussel sh.e.l.ls, which he dropped on to the table. 'Dirty trick, if you ask me. You see, I've got something they want, but they don't want to pay my price - stupid if you ask me, because they really need what I've got and what I want will cost them nothing, but there you are. I imagine you and your mother were going to be their counter-offer. It's a sad thing when you can't try to do business with people like the provincial office without having your family kidnapped and held to ransom. If it wasn't for the fact that they've still got your mother, I'd scrub round the whole deal and let them go to h.e.l.l.' He picked up the soup-plate and tipped the rest of the soup into his mouth.

'I know about the deal,' Iseutz said. 'I wasn't sure we'd be worth that much to you.'

Gorgas frowned. He chewed for a moment, making a loud crunching noise, then swallowed. 'Don't be ridiculous, ' he said, 'you're family. Nothing's more important than family. But I got the better of them in the end - or I thought I did. I gave them the Mesoge.'

Iseutz opened her eyes wide. 'You did what?'

'I handed it over to them, free, gratis and for nothing.' He grinned. 'The look on that oily b.a.s.t.a.r.d of an envoy's face - well, he looked just like you look now, like he'd swallowed a doughnut and found it was a hedgehog. On reflection,' he added, 'it may be that they tried to grab you as security for the deal, in case I changed my mind. Anyway, whatever they did it for, it isn't on. If they want their d.a.m.ned pirate they'll have to give me Niessa and what I originally asked for. In fact,' he added, frowning a little, 'you've just given me an idea. This trip might turn out to be more useful than I'd thought.'

Iseutz smiled. 'Glad to have inspired you,' she said. 'Look, I don't want to rush you or anything, but is this business of yours going to take awfully long, because I'd really like to be on my way as soon as possible. I'm sure all these soldiers have much more important things on their minds than stray prisoners, but they make me nervous.'

Gorgas nodded. 'You'd be surprised,' he said. 'If there's one thing the provincial office truly despises, it's losing a prisoner. No, you're right to be worried. The best thing would be to get you safely on board my ship and off this island. I'll tell them to come back for me.'

'Are you sure? I don't want to be a nuisance or anything. '

Gorgas looked at her. 'There's no need to overdo it,' he said. 'Come on, you can be straight with me, I'm your uncle. I'm the one you spat at when you were in that prison on Scona. That's why we get on so well together; we haven't got any illusions about each other. It's how it should be, between family.'

Iseutz scowled at him, then shook her head. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I didn't mean to be insulting.'

'Ah well, I'm insult-proof,' Gorgas replied with a smile. 'Look, I'll be straight with you, the way I want you to be with me. I want you somewhere safe where the prefect's bogies can't get to you, because I don't want to let them have another hostage. If that means I've got to spend five days here instead of two, that's no big deal; it'll give me time for this other little job I've just thought up for myself. You're doing me a favour - two, actually, because you gave me that idea - and I'm doing you one in return. And we're both happy, and that's good. Now then, you've had your dinner, so let's get you down to the dock. If there anything you want to take with you, or are you ready now?'

'Ready as I'll ever be,' Iseutz replied. 'I don't suppose you're going to tell me what this great idea is, are you?'

'No, I'm not. Come on, let's be on our way. Actually, the soup wasn't half bad, I must remember this place. We'll go out the back way.'

As they pa.s.sed the table where Vetriz was sitting, Gorgas stopped, nodded politely and went on.

'Who was that?' Iseutz asked.

'Friend of your uncle Bardas.'

'Oh,' Iseutz said.

Meanwhile, Eseutz Mesatges was leaning forward and asking, 'Come on, who is he?'

'Like I said,' Vetriz replied angrily, 'none of your-'

'You're upset,' Eseutz went on, 'because he had a girl with him. Young enough to be his daughter, too. You're well rid, if you ask me.'

'I don't,' Vetriz said, 'so shut up.'

'Not another word. But I thought you were still hung up on this Bardas Loredan character; you know, the one who made a hero of himself at Ap' Escatoy-'

'Eseutz.'

'Sorry.' Eseutz grinned and held up her hands. 'Change subject. Didn't mean to pry. Only you're no fun at all in that direction, you're never interested in anybody, so you can hardly blame me if - all right,' she added, as Vetriz glared at her. 'Completely different subject. Did you buy those shoes you were telling me about? Only I tried a pair of them myself and they cut my heels to ribbons. Talk about an instrument of torture - forget your red-hot irons and your thumbscrews, five minutes in those sandals and I'd tell you anything.'

When she finally managed to get rid of Eseutz, Vetriz went straight home and put the bolt on the door. It was a pointless gesture, and Venart would be furious when he got home and found he was locked out, but it went a little way towards making her feel better. She went up to the first-floor balcony and sat behind the curtain, watching the street, until it was too dark to see.

For her part, Eseutz dropped in at the wool exchange, where there was nothing doing, called on Cens Lauzeta, the fish-oil baron, who wasn't at home, bought a sea-ba.s.s and an inkstone in the Salvage Market and stopped off at the jeweller's to see if they'd mended her gra.s.shopper brooch yet, which they hadn't. Then she went home.

There were two men sitting in the porch when she got there. One, annoyingly, was Cens Lauzeta. The other one she recognised, though she didn't know his name.

That, however, was quickly remedied, because as soon as he'd chided her for staying out late, Cens introduced him. His name, apparently, was Gorgas Loredan, and he had a business proposition.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

'I'd find it downright funny if I wasn't scared out of my brain,' Temrai said, letting go of the saw-handle and sitting down on the beam. 'Here I am building fortifications for Bardas Loredan to come and lay siege to.' He wiped sawdust out of his eyes, then went on, 'It's like when we were kids and took it in turns to be the good guys and the bad guys. Unfortunately, I seem to have lost count, so I'm not sure which I am at the moment.'

They had almost reached the Grey Slate River by the time the news reached them: Cidrocai's army wiped out, Bardas Loredan in command of the enemy column following the death of the Imperial colonel. ('Just my luck,' Temrai had said when he heard about it. 'We kill a colonel, and look what happens.') Temrai had halted the march immediately (into the jaws of death; yes, certainly. Into the arms of Bardas Loredan; no) and sent out scouts to find a place he could fortify, with extreme prejudice, against the inevitable confrontation.

As it turned out, he couldn't have chosen better if he'd been planning to dig in all along. An hour's march away the scouts had found a steep-sided plateau rising out of a flat, dry plain, with a wood below it on one side and a lively little river curling round it on the other. When he first saw it, Temrai couldn't help grinning; with time and a certain amount of work, it could be made into a fairly pa.s.sable replica of the Triple City.

'At least it gives us a pattern to follow,' he'd pointed out to his engineers. 'We'll just copy what they did as best we can in the time we've got. We should be able to get quite a bit done if we all knuckle down and get on with it.'

No question; one thing the plainspeople did know how to do was work. There had been no complaints or objections when he sketched out the first phase for the council of war - dig a channel to divert the river so that it surrounded the plateau on all sides; fell and dress up all the usable timber in the forest; fetch bastions out of the sides of the plateau to make platforms for the artillery. Effectively he was asking them to rebuild Perimadeia in a month; so far, n.o.body had even suggested it was going to be difficult, let alone impossible.

The man on the other end of the saw (a distant relative by the name of Morosai; elderly, short, bald-headed and with about five times his stamina) yawned and pa.s.sed him the water bottle. 'Going well,' he said.

'Isn't it?' Temrai replied. 'Better than I expected, to be honest with you.'

'They're glad to have something to do,' Morosai said. 'When people are doing something, they don't feel quite so helpless. The harder the job is, the better it makes them feel.'

Temrai shrugged. 'I wish it worked that way for me,' he said.

'Ah.' Morosai nodded, doing his familiar imitation of a Wise Old Man. 'It doesn't have that effect on you because you know the truth.'

'Do I?' Temrai paused to rub sawdust out of his eye. 'First I've heard of it if I do.'

'You know,' Morosai went on, 'that if we go to war with the Empire, we don't stand a chance. Even beating them does more harm than good. It's their policy; kill one of them and they guarantee to send five more in his place. That's why you were all set to run away, until he stopped you.'

'Really?' Temrai said irritably. 'I know all that, do I? Fancy.'

'Of course you do,' Morosai answered, apparently oblivious of how aggravating he was being. 'I wouldn't insult you by suggesting otherwise.'

'Fine. And do I know a way of getting us out of this mess? One which doesn't end with us all being killed?'

Morosai nodded. 'Course you do,' he said. 'You'd have to be stupid not to.'

Temrai stood up and took hold of the saw-handle. 'Let's do some work,' he said, 'instead of sitting around nattering all day. We're supposed to be setting an example. '

'You're supposed to be setting an example,' Morosai pointed out. 'I'm old enough to be excused duty, but I could see you weren't going to be able to manage this on your own.'

When he was a boy, Temrai remembered, he'd always hated cousin Morosai. 'Very true,' he said. 'All right, are you ready? From your end, then.'

They worked the saw for a while, until the wood started to clent on the blade. 'Hold it,' Morosai said, frowning. 'You'll break the saw if you try to force it.'

Temrai let go and leaned against the beam. 'All right,' he said. 'So now what do we do?'

'We don't do anything. You hold still while I free up the blade with the bowsaw.'

Morosai started to cut a wedge out beside the cut. Working the saw didn't seem to bother him in the least, whereas Temrai's wrists and hands were hurting. 'Go on, then,' Temrai said. 'What's this blindingly obvious way out we both know?'

'Surrender,' Morosai replied; he was three finger-breadths down into the wood already, and no sign of being short of breath. 'They only want the land; give it to them. Then we go back to the plains, where we belong. Really, it's the same as what you were planning to do.'

Temrai nodded slowly. 'So we pack up and move on again. And Colonel Loredan's just going to stand by and let us go past, without raising a finger. Sorry, but I can't see it.'

The object of the exercise was to convert the corpse of a mature beech tree into a pile of neatly sawn planks, which would form part of the swinging bridge across the river. Temrai's design for the bridge called for about a hundred nine-foot planks. So far, he and Morosai had spent three hours sweating and straining at the big saw, and they hadn't even produced one plank yet.

'Would you rather I came up top?' Morosai asked. He was down in the saw-pit, while Temrai was up top (traditionally the young, fit apprentice went down in the pit, while the decrepit old man stayed topside; the significance of this wasn't wasted on Temrai). 'Better still,' he went on, 'why don't you shove off and find someone else to do this with me. I know you're doing your best, but you really aren't very good at it.'

Temrai sighed. 'All right,' he said. 'Point taken. But just answer my question, will you? What makes you think Bardas Loredan will let us walk peacefully away?'

'Because his superiors will tell him to,' Morosai replied. 'The prefect doesn't want to fight if he doesn't have to; our dead bodies aren't any use to him, unless he's found a way of tanning human skin into usable leather, or gone into the bonemeal business. What he wants is the land. If he can get it with vacant possession, so much the better. And even if Colonel Loredan does want to kill us all - which I doubt, incidentally - if the prefect tells him to let us go, he'll let us go. Simple as that. You were on the right track, young Temrai, and then you had to stop and play at soldiers. Still, you know I'm right.'

'On balance, I think you are,' Temrai said, standing up and dusting himself off. 'But I can't take the risk.'

'I know,' Morosai said. 'A pity, isn't it?'

Having sent Morosai a competent replacement, Temrai walked up to the highest point of the plateau and looked down, trying to visualise what it would all look like if and when it was finished. Here where he was standing would be the citadel, separated from the rest of the plateau by a ditch and a bank topped with a stockade. There'd be another stockade round the whole of the plateau, with towers at regular intervals for archers and catapults. Halfway down the steep sides there'd be the bastions for the big trebuchets, built on top of platforms made from thick piles packed close together and rammed down hard. At the point where the single narrow, winding path reached the plain would be the swing-bridge and the pump - a grandiose name for the array of buckets on ropes that would carry water up to the top. The pump would be housed in a heavily reinforced plank sh.e.l.l and guarded by towers on either side; it was a naturally vulnerable feature, so it made sense to position it alongside the other weak point, the bridge. What he'd really prefer to do, if there was time, would be to enclose the pump and the bridge-house in a brick or even stone tower, thereby making the weakest point into the strongest (just as the head, the most vulnerable part of the body, is protected by the helmet, the most strongly built piece of armour).

Well; it was all very fine in theory. How well it would do in practice, when it was put to the test, remained to be seen. Morosai was right, of course; pinning their hopes on fortifications, on armour, wasn't the right thing to do. It was the enemy's way of doing things, not theirs; and no matter how strong armour may be, it's bound to fail if it's bashed with a big enough hammer. But the thought of walking towards the enemy, towards Bardas Loredan, and hoping that common sense and expediency would prevail was something he couldn't do - and that was, as Morosai had said, a pity, because the army and the man who'd managed to bash down Ap' Escatoy were unlikely to have much trouble smashing up a few palisades of green timber. Here I am, waiting for Bardas Loredan, Sacker of Cities; only seems like yesterday that I was Temrai, Sacker of Cities, knowing in my heart that even the walls of Perimadeia weren't strong enough for me and my big hammer.

Nevertheless; knowing something is all very well, but it doesn't count for anything until it's been proved, and proof - well, they hadn't reached that point yet. In the meantime, they had plenty to keep themselves amused with.

He wandered back down the path, stopping halfway to watch the men who were digging out the moat and banking up the spoil on the inside to make yet another line of defence. Mostly they were working in silence, which was unusual for plainspeople, but here and there he could catch bits of old songs, concurrent and discordant. They were deep enough down now to need derricks and winches to haul the baskets of dirt out of the ca.n.a.l bed; he could see the occasional group of carpenters shaping them out of springy green timber. Further off he watched the long timber-wagons rolling towards the plateau, ma.s.sive logs stacked unnervingly high and lashed down with miles of the coa.r.s.e gra.s.s-fibre rope that the women (nominally under the command of his wife, although Tilden had never made a rope in her life and didn't care who knew it) were busily plaiting in their improvised ropewalk, a hundred yards or so off the road, opposite where the bridge would be. He could hear the crisp, cold c.h.i.n.k of hammers on steel, steel on anvils, as the smiths bashed out nails by the thousand, mattock-heads, axe-blades, bill-hooks, hammer-heads, shovels, axle-pins, iron bands for barrels and rims for cartwheels. Next to the makeshift smithies he watched the coopers and wheelwrights, busy with drawknives and adzes and froes. Beside them, in a neighbourly sort of way, were the basket-weavers, working quickly and steadily and with no apparent sign of concern, while their children scampered to and from the wood with enormous armfuls of twigs and shoots. Level with where he was standing on the path, they were digging into the side of the escarpment to make the footings for a trebuchet position; one man wielding the big hammer, the other steadying the drill, giving it a sharp twist after every hammer-blow. In the distance, he could see the saw-pits, the repeating flash as the sun glanced off a saw-blade rising on the draw-stroke. So much activity and work and creation and goodwill, so many different things being made by the exercise of so many and such diverse skills; he couldn't help thinking of the first day he'd spent in Perimadeia, a wide-eyed boy walking dazzled through streets alive and pulsating with the activity of countless workshops and factories. One day, he'd thought then, I'd like my people to be like this.

And now, thanks to him, they were.

'Excuse me,' Gannadius said, 'but are you expecting a duck?'

The man turned round.

'You've brought it? Splendid.' He was wearing a hat; that's why Gannadius hadn't recognised him, seen from behind. 'It's Dr Gannadius, isn't it? Of course, I don't suppose you remember me.'

'Gorgas Loredan,' Gannadius replied.

'You do remember me.' Gorgas smiled. 'I'm flattered. Well, this is a pleasant surprise. Please, sit down, let me buy you a drink.'

Gannadius smiled nervously. 'Actually-' he began, but it was too late. Gorgas had already tipped the big cider-jar and was pushing a horn cup across the table at him.

'Not quite up to City standards,' he was saying, 'but palatable nevertheless. You should try some of the stuff we're making in the Mesoge these days, though; it'd bring back pleasant memories, I'm sure.'

'I always thought beer was your speciality,' replied Gannadius, who neither knew nor cared what they drank in the Mesoge. 'Is this an innovation of yours, then?'

Gorgas shook his head. 'We've always made cider there,' he said. 'I remember spreading the cheese when I was a boy; the smell literally made your head spin. But yes, I've been encouraging it; something we can sell abroad, you see. I have a notion there's a lot of City expatriates out there spreading a taste for good cider, and I want us to be the ones who supply it. Your health, anyway.'

'And yours,' Gannadius replied dutifully. The cider was sharp and rancid, like vinegar.