The Proof House Part 7

So you keep saying. '. . .' he said, then realised he'd forgotten the rest.

She was a round-faced, stocky woman in her late forties, with short grey hair, bright black eyes and a prominent double chin. 'You've been very sick,' she went on, 'but the doctor's given you something that'll sort you out, just you wait and see.'

Gannadius felt annoyed at that; b.l.o.o.d.y doctor's been using me to try out his lethal new remedies, he wanted to say. Dangerous clown, he shouldn't be allowed near a patient. 'Thank you,' he croaked. 'Where . . . ?'

The woman smiled. 'This is Blancharber,' she said. 'Have you heard of it?'

Gannadius thought for a moment. 'No,' he said.

'Ah. Well, it's a little village about half a day's walk inland from Ap' Amodi'. She p.r.o.nounced the name as one word, not two. 'Roughly the same distance from Ap' Amodi and the old City.'

'Where . . . ?'

'Perimadeia. You're in King Temrai's country,' she added. 'You're safe now.'

Eseutz Mesatges, free trader of the Island, to her sister in commerce Athli Zeuxis; greetings.

This is a horrible place, and the people are loathsome. On the other hand, they surely do have a lot of feathers.

Which is where you come in. I'm now in a position to supply, FOB the Market Forces, sixty-seven standard volume barrels of premium white goose-wing feathers, all graded by wing polarity - to be precise, thirty-five barrels of right-wing, thirty-two of left-wing - suitable for fletching all standard-spine military arrows, at the ridiculously low price of twelve quarters (City) per barrel - well, almost. There's just one trivial shard of detail standing between me and this fantastic opportunity. I'm as broke as a dropped pot.

But I wouldn't be, beloved sister in commerce, if you supplied me with a letter of credit drawn on that bank of yours in the paltry sum of 268 quarters (City); then I'd have my feathers, you'd have your usual one-third cut, these people here would have an incentive to set up a regular, ongoing deal and everybody would be happy. Except the geese, of course; but I don't think they were planning on going anywhere.

Now then: if the Squirrel gets in as per schedule, you should be reading this on the sixth - plenty of time for you to scribble out the magic words and send the letter round to the master of the King of Beasts, which I happen to know is expected here on the seventeenth (so presumably it's not leaving the Island till the eighth at the very earliest). Provided you do your stuff with all due diligence, I can close the deal on or before the twentieth and be home on the Market Forces, with feathers, by Remembrance. As simple as that.

Well, that's it, really; but there's still plenty of s.p.a.ce left on this sheet of high-quality paper, so I might as well fill it with something.

Let's see; what sort of thing do you want to know? Of course, you've actually been here, as I recall - didn't you come here with your friend the fencer, before the coup and all? I don't suppose it was much better then; worse, probably. Say what you like about the military regime and Butcher Gorgas, they give every impression of being good for business. If they made or grew anything at all worth selling (except, of course, for these utterly magnificent feathers you're getting a vicarious slice of), there'd be some nice opportunities here in the import/export line, since there's basically zip local compet.i.tion; no merchant venturers, no producers' cartels, no aristocratic or royal monopolies, and even the government tariff is only two and a half per cent. It's what comes of having a government run by amateurs, I suppose.

It makes me wonder, though. Why did Gorgas Loredan go to all the trouble of taking the place over if he's not going to do anything with it now he's got it? After all, it's such an extreme thing to do, steal a country from the people who live there. Usually, of course, it's pretty obvious - someone wants the iron ore, or the warm-water port, or the osier beds, or the growing timber or the saffron plantations, or to stop someone else having it, or just so as to be able to draw a nice straight line down the map, or to have the complete set of islands. And when it isn't something blindingly obvious like that, you can bet it's a steady source of revenue - poll taxes and sales taxes and import taxes and road taxes and spice taxes and wedding taxes and taxes on every third heifer and scutage and heriot and t.i.thes in ordinary. There's always a reason - except in this case, and it's bothering me to bits trying to figure it out. For one thing, a cool, calculating type like Gorgas Loredan doesn't do anything without a reason. What's he up to, Athli? You know about this sort of thing. Won't you let me in on the secret?

Anyway; 268 City quarters on the King of Beasts and that'll be the feather trade sewn up. Best investment you'll make this year, and that's a promise.

Yours in friendship and fair dealing, ESEUTZ.

'To summarise-' he was saying.

Alexius stopped and blinked, as if he'd just emerged into the light after a long time in pitch darkness. Oh, no, not again, he thought.

Old age, just old age; a tendency to wake up, as it were, to find that he was in the middle of doing or saying something but couldn't remember how he'd got there or what he'd said. A dreadful handicap for a lecturer, suddenly finding yourself standing in front of a thousand reverently silent young faces, without a clue as to what you were saying or what you're going to say next.

(Before that, he'd been in a dream, a daydream about a long, dark tunnel full of strange noises and smells, where people were killing each other by feel and instinct. Why he had to keep going there he didn't know, and no amount of speculating would make it any easier to stop.) 'To summarise,' he could hear himself saying, 'if we truly understand the nature of the Principle, we cannot fail to have our doubts about the existence of death. It becomes a shadowy, almost mythical thing, something we used to believe in when we were very young and impressionable, when we still believed in dragons and the Remembrance Fairy. If we truly understand the Principle, and the way its operation affects both the world about us and our perceptions of the world, we are led to the inescapable conclusion that death as we are taught to understand it is, quite simply, impossible. It can't happen. It's against all the rules of nature. If we choose, in spite of all the scientific evidence, to persist in believing in it - well, that must be a matter for faith and conscience, which have no place in scientific argument. But if we confine ourselves to those things which are susceptible to proof - and what is science, what indeed are learning and understanding and knowledge but those things which can be put to proof? - if we restrict ourselves to those things which have pa.s.sed proof and not been found wanting, we must put aside this notion of death as, at best, not proven and not capable of being proved, with the overwhelming probability that there's no such thing. The Principle, on the other hand-'

('How is he? Can I talk to him? ' ) 'The Principle,' Alexius heard himself continue, 'is proven, beyond any shadow of a doubt. The Principle, in fact, is proof; it's the very process by which we test those things that we do not already know, when we wish to come to the truth of a matter. And, if anything of what I've told you today has made an impression on you, if you even begin to understand-'

('You can try. But I don't think you'll get much sense out of him. Later on, maybe; he's better in the afternoons.') Alexius opened his eyes. 'Athli?' he said.

Athli smiled at him. 'h.e.l.lo, Alexius,' she said. 'How are you feeling today?'

'Fine.' Slowly and painfully, Alexius sat up. 'I was dreaming,' he said.

'Nice dream?'

He shook his head. 'Not really,' he replied. 'More of a nightmare, really. It was the one where I'm standing in front of a crowded lecture hall and I've forgotten the lecture.' He smiled. 'The good doctor Ereq would like me to believe it's because I will insist on eating cheese, in spite of his dire warnings. I'm inclined to look for a rather more metaphysical explanation,' he went on. 'But only so as to be able to carry on eating cheese.' He lowered his voice. 'It's the only food in this place they don't boil to a mush.'

Athli frowned. 'I don't think you can boil cheese,' she said, 'it'd melt.'

Doctor Ereq gave his patient a ferocious medical scowl and left, whispering in Athli's ear as he went. When the door was shut behind him, Alexius asked, 'What was all that about?'

'I'm to call him if you get upset and start talking nonsense. Oh, and I'm not to overtire you.'

Alexius shrugged. 'It's a bit hard if I've got to give up eating cheese and talking nonsense. I've been doing both ever since I was a little boy, and I'm far too old now to change.'

Athli perched on the edge of the bed. Outside, the rain was tapping against the shutters. 'You're not too old to fish for compliments, though, are you? We both know that talking nonsense isn't a fault of yours. Talking, yes; but you generally make sense, at least when I'm around. You don't like Doctor Ereq, do you?'

'No,' Alexius admitted. 'Which is wrong of me, I know; he's an excellent fellow, wonderfully good at his job, and when I think of how much all this must be costing you-'

'Oh, don't start,' Athli said. 'And besides, I write it all down to expenses in the accounts, so really it isn't costing me anything.'

Alexius looked intruiged. 'Expenses?'

'Oh, yes. You're employed by the Bank as a technical consultant; didn't I tell you? Well, you are. Valued member of the team.'

'Really?' Alexius raised an eyebrow. 'Am I any good at it?'

Athli waggled her hands in an equivocal gesture. 'I've come across worse,' she said. 'Seriously, though,' she went on, frowning a little, 'you shouldn't kid about with the doctors. They haven't got senses of humour like normal people do, and they'll a.s.sume you've gone funny in the head. Doctor Ereq's convinced already.'

'Oh, him.' Alexius pulled a face, like a little boy. 'What it was, I tried to explain to him about the Principle and being able to talk to people who aren't necessarily there. He wasn't listening, of course; he'd made his mind up I was off my head as soon as I mentioned the subject. You'd think a Shastel man'd know better.'

Athli grinned. 'Between you and me,' she said, 'I don't think he's from Shastel at all. Oh, he says he studied there, but I asked and n.o.body remembers him. He's colonial Shastel all right; I think he's third or fourth generation Colleon. Actually, that'd make him a much better doctor, even if it does sound a bit hayseed. The Colleon medical schools teach a lot of Imperial stuff.'

'Oh, well,' Alexius said. He tried to stretch, but a sudden cramp caught him and made him wince. 'Anyway, enough about him. How are you? How's business?'

'Could be worse.'

'I see. Is that could be worse meaning awful or could be worse meaning you're making money hand over fist?'

'A bit of both,' Athli replied. 'Things are terribly quiet still, but the ventures that are going out are doing quite nicely.'

'Such as?'

Athli thought for a moment. 'Well,' she said, 'the Squirrel's due in any day now from the Mesoge with blueberries and honey; that'll tie in very nicely with the Molain people having landed a big order from the Bathary-'

'The who?'

'The Bathary. They make uniforms for the Shastel army, who (as I'm sure you know) wear dark-blue great-coats. '

Alexius nodded. 'Which are dyed with blueberry juice. I see. Very clever.'

'Fortuitous,' Athli replied. 'And honey's fetching a good price, now that none of it's coming in from the Empire. For once, I think Venart Auzeil may have stumbled across a good solid proposition.' She frowned. 'With a little help from Gorgas Loredan,' she added. 'n.o.body'd heard of the Mesoge three years ago, and now here we are looking at sourcing two staple commodities there. I just wish I could believe it's a solid place to do business.'

Alexius was silent for a while. 'The Loredan boys again,' he said. 'They do tend to crop up all over the place, don't they?'

Athli looked at him. 'You want to know if there's any more news about Bardas, don't you?' she asked.

'Yes.'

'Well.' She put her hands on her knees and looked at the shuttered window. 'I did happen to run into Lien Mogre this morning, and her brother's on the staff of the Shastel trade delegation that's just got back from the latest round of talks with the provincial office-'

'You mean he's a spy? That sounds promising.'

Athli nodded. 'Yes,' she said, 'but not a very good one. That's the trouble; the Shastel people are such very bad spies, they make it so painfully obvious what they're about. But I know for a fact that they do get fed lots of unimportant stuff just to keep them happy, so there's a good chance it might be reliable information. Anyway, he told me Bardas has been posted to a nice, quiet administrative job somewhere inland; production manager at a factory, he seemed to think.' She smiled. 'Well, you can't get more prosaic than that, can you?'

'Depends,' Alexius replied. 'There's factories and factories.'

'Yes, but even so.' Athli stood up and crossed to the window. 'I know you have this theory all about the Loredans and the Principle and how everything's tied up together in knots; but I don't really see how he's going to divert the tide of history sitting behind a desk cutting tallies and balancing ledgers.' She sighed. 'And if it keeps him out of harm's way, I think it's just fine, for all of us.'

A heavy gust of rain shook the shutters, rattling the catch. 'You're angry with him, aren't you?' Alexius said. 'Are you ever going to tell me why?'

'I'm not angry at all,' Athli answered, with her back to him. 'These days I don't give him a moment's thought from one day's end to the next. I'm pleased to say I've moved on since I was a fencer's clerk; I've made something of my life, thank you very much, and I've done it without hurting anybody or causing any fuss. I reckon that's something I can be proud of, don't you?'

Alexius lay back and closed his eyes. 'Of course,' he said. 'When I think of all the people you've helped and looked after since you first came here - me, Gannadius, his nephew; Venart and Vetriz-'

'Oh, that's all right,' Athli said quietly.

'I'm sure it is,' Alexius went on, 'but you didn't have to, and you did. But it's almost as if you've taken it on yourself to go around - well, tidying up after him, I suppose you could say. Here are all these people who've been left behind in his wake, and here you are, trying to give them back some semblance of a normal life. I find that interesting.'

'Really?' Athli carried on looking at the shutter. 'Well, it's a funny way of looking at things.'

'That's my job,' Alexius replied, with a hint of amus.e.m.e.nt.

The night after the fight in the bar, as he bounced and b.u.mped about between the packing-cases and barrels in the back of another post coach, Bardas remembered the mines for the first time.

It began as a dream; but he got out of it as quickly as possible, wrenching his eyes open and hoping to see light. There wasn't any; there was a heap of roped-down luggage between him and the courier's lanterns, and it was a dark night. He could hear the crash-b.u.mp of the coach blundering down the rutted road. He could smell rosemary- Rosemary? That's not right. He reached out to feel open s.p.a.ce, but he'd slipped down into a crack between two large boxes, and all he could feel on either side was a rough wooden wall (been here before, then) and an obstruction against his feet. He kicked, heard and felt something splinter and crack. Of course, he knew he wasn't in the mines any more, but that didn't help a great deal; he'd known all sorts of things while he was down there, and very few of them had been true. He kicked again, and the world was flooded with the smell of roses.

The movement was all wrong, though. The mines didn't b.u.mp up and down and jar your spine (wonderful; I've managed to find somewhere that's worse than the mines) and the smell was wrong and there was way too much air. He was on a cart, or a ship. Alexius? No, then; not in the mines, at any rate.

He was on a coach, on the road from Sammyra to Ap' Calick; he was going to the proof house at Ap' Calick, where he was going to learn how to kill armour, suits of armour with n.o.body in them. It was all right; he wasn't in the mines any more (except that once you've been in the mines, you'll always be in the mines). He was going to be all right. He was deep inside the territory of the Sons of Heaven. He was safe.

It's customary to die first, but in your case we've made an exception.

Feeling a little foolish about the panic attack, he braced his hands against the sides of the coach and shoved himself up into a sitting position, his back to a tall barrel. The smell of roses was horribly strong; he'd put his foot through something fragile, broken something containing essence of roses. That might prove embarra.s.sing in the morning, when the coach made its first stop. He leaned forward and sniffed; his legs reeked of the stuff, as if he'd died and been embalmed - (That was what they used the stuff for; he remembered now. Strong essence of roses - it was so overpowering that it could even mask the smell of a body that's a week late for its funeral. He remembered the stink at Sammyra, when they'd taken the body of the dead corporal to the camp mortuary. They used a lot of rose essence there; burial detail was once a week, if you missed the detail you had to wait for the next one.) - and rosemary; they used that for flavouring and preserving meat. They were clever that way, the Children of Heaven; give them something dead and they could keep it sweet for ages, with herbs and spices and perfumes and essences. They could make rotten meat taste better than fresh; they'd hang up perfectly good carca.s.ses and wait till maggots formed in them, just so they could get that perfect flavour. There was life after death in the Empire; of a sort.

Thinking about such things, he fell asleep. The courier woke him with a gentle nudge from the toe of his boot. It was broad daylight.

'Melbec,' he said, as if that meant anything. 'You can stretch your legs if you want to.'

Bardas stood up; pins and needles in both legs. He sat down again.

Change of horses at Melbec; another at Ap' Reac, where they parted company with the outriders. Ap' Reac was too small to be Ap' now; once, according to what the courier told him when they stopped there, it had been a city 'twice the size of Perimadeia', but that was before the Empire extended this far. When the frontier reached Ap' Reac there was a great war, a long and terrible siege. No more Ap' Reac.

That prompted Bardas to ask a question that hadn't occurred to him before: how old was the Empire, and where did it start?

The courier looked at him as if he was simple. 'The Empire is one hundred thousand years old,' he said, 'and it started in the Kingdom of Heaven.'

'Ah,' Bardas said. 'Thank you.'

From Ap' Reac to Seshan (wherever Seshan was), the road went up a steep mountain and down into a deep canyon, with cliffs on either side. It looked for all the world as if the earth had been pulled apart; the road followed the bed of a long-dead river, which had cut the canyon and then dried up. Still thinking about the mines as they rumbled along under the shadow of the cliffs, Bardas couldn't help being reminded of the galleries, the main thoroughfares of the underground city under Ap' Escatoy. That city, with its complex grid of painfully cut roads and alleys, was all gone now; ruined and lost, like Ap' Reac or Perimadeia, except in his memory, where it was still vivid, more real than this improbable and unconvincing place he was in now, which smelt of rosemary and roses and was soaked right through with light.

Absolutely ideal place for an ambush, Bardas reflected. Just as well we're deep inside the Empire; you'd get twitchy in here otherwise.

Up above somewhere, the sun was high and hot. Under the eaves of the cliffs, it was dark and cool. The road seemed to stretch on for ever. There was next to no wind to take away the smell of roses. In a way, it was like being in the mines. In a way, everything would always be like being there.

The coach had stopped. Bardas hauled himself up and peered over the luggage.

'Is this Melrun?' he asked.

'No,' the courier replied.

They were in the ravine. The road ahead was empty. 'So why've we stopped?' Bardas asked.

'This isn't right,' the courier replied, standing up on the box.

'I don't understand,' Bardas said. 'What's wrong with it?'

The courier frowned. 'I'm not sure,' he said; at which point an arrow hit him just below the ear. He fell sideways off the box and hit the ground with a thump.

Oh, for pity's sake. Bardas dropped down, landing awkwardly among the packing-cases. The heart of the Empire; slap-bang in the middle of the shadow of the Children of Heaven, where (as everybody knew) you could leave a cartload of diamonds unattended all night in the market square and be sure n.o.body would steal them.

Whoever the unseen archer was, he was a cautious, methodical type, content to wait until he was sure the coast was clear before giving away his position. Bardas found this degree of professionalism highly aggravating; he was crouched down in a murderously uncomfortable position, from which he dared not move for fear of giving himself away and getting an arrow in his own neck. This is ludicrous, he thought. It's not as if I'm likely to lift a finger to stop the Imperial post being looted; they can have the lot, and welcome, if only I could move my feet. The thought of dying, from an arrow or thirst, or being fried by the savage heat of the sun, for the sake of twelve crates of rose essence and the Imperial mail was little short of insulting.

Nothing happened. He tried thinking it through. When was the next coach due? He ought to know how often they ran along this road. Someone had told him, but he couldn't remember. Presumably the cautious man up in the rocks knew the timetable, he didn't seem the sort to be slapdash about important stuff like that. He'd have to allow enough time to get the coach unloaded and haul off the stuff he wanted, that'd take time (unless he was planning to drive the coach to the end of the ravine, he was going to have to haul it up the sides with ropes). How many friends and relations did he have with him? Most important (and unfathomable) of all, did he/they know he was here, or was a long wait-and-see standard operating procedure when robbing the post?

Just as he was sure he couldn't stand the cramp in his legs any more, he heard the sound of someone scrambling about on loose rocks. Daren't look up, of course, so he couldn't see what was going on, but at least something was happening. No weapons, of course, except a short knife stuck down the side of his boot, as in the mines. Been in worse sc.r.a.pes than this. Really? Name three.

'All right.' A man's voice, badly out of breath. 'You two, start unloading. Gylus, hold the horses. Azes, where's your d.a.m.n brother with those hooks?'

'I don't know, do I?' replied a child's voice, with the eternal put-upon whine of the younger brother.

'Don't be cheeky. Gylus, lend me your knife. Ba.s.sa, for crying out loud be careful with that, it's fragile.'

The family business, obviously. Families that loot together take root together. 'It's not fair,' said another childish voice. 'You said it was my turn to have the boots.'

'You've already got a pair of boots. Why can't you do as you're told, just for once?'

- And there he was, standing on top of the luggage, his back to Bardas, directing his obstreperous workforce. All Bardas could see was the back of a bald head, wreathed with a few wisps of greying hair, and a shabby military-issue coat with a suspicious-looking hole, scrupulously darned, between the shoulders. Go away, Bardas thought, but the man didn't seem to be in any sort of a hurry. 'Ba.s.sa! Ba.s.sa! Put it down, you'll cut yourself and then I'll have your mother on at me. Oh, for-'

He's seen me.