The Proof House Part 15

Gorgas straightened his back, pulling a face. 'We'll knock in the axe-heads as wedges,' he said, 'that'll get these two out. We'll get there, don't you worry.'

Several hours later, when it was getting dark, they gave up for the day. They'd got the wedges out, and the froe (which they'd put back in, jammed solid and got back out again by bas.h.i.+ng it to and fro with a hammer) but the axe-heads looked as if they'd never budge. 'What we need,' Gorgas said as they trooped back into the house, 'is a saw-pit. Then we could saw our planks instead of trying to split them.'

Neither of his brothers said anything. They kicked off their boots and sat down on either side of the table, clearing a s.p.a.ce to lean on with their elbows. Curious, Gorgas thought, they're Loredans too; but of course, they've never been away from the farm. They were the lucky ones.

'We could build one down by the river,' he went on, 'near the ford, where the banks aren't too steep. Then we could have a water wheel driving a mechanical saw. I've seen them, in Perimadeia. Wonderful things, but it should be easy enough to make one.'

Clefas looked up at him. 'Down by the river,' he said.

'That's right,' Gorgas replied. 'Where Niessa used to do the was.h.i.+ng. You know the place I mean.' Of course they do.

'I reckon so,' Zonaras replied. 'But we don't need a saw-mill. What'd we want one of them for?'

Gorgas frowned. 'I'd have thought that was obvious,' he replied. 'To saw planks, of course, instead of wasting three days bas.h.i.+ng lumps of iron with hammers.'

'But we don't need planks,' Zonaras pointed out. 'Except a few now and then. And we buy them.'

'Waste of money,' Gorgas said impatiently, 'when we've got perfectly good timber on the farm. Besides, if we set up a powered saw-mill, we'd be able to supply planks for all the neighbours, at only a fraction of what they're paying now. It's a good business proposition.'

Clefas shook his head. 'And who's going to work it?' he asked. 'Zonaras and me, we've got our hands full just managing the farm. Are you going to drop everything and come running every time someone wants a few bits of wood cut up? Don't see it, myself.'

Gorgas waved the objection aside. 'As well as planks,' he went on, 'we could make our own fenceposts, gateposts, rafters, weather-boards, the lot. We could even build a s.h.i.+p if we wanted to. Yes, I think a saw-mill's a d.a.m.ned good idea. First thing in the morning, I'll get some of the men on to it. It'll give them something to do, at any rate.'

Clefas and Zonaras looked at each other. 'Well,' Clefas said, 'if you're going to do that, there's no point us killing ourselves tomorrow trying to split that log. When your mill's running, we'll get it sawn up there.'

'That's right,' Zonaras added. 'I mean, it's not like there's any rush. We don't use the long barn any more, anyhow.'

That night, Gorgas dreamed he was standing outside the gates of a city. It was dark, and he wasn't sure which city it was - could've been Perimadeia, or Ap' Escatoy, Scona even; any one of a number of places. The gate was barred, immovable, so he was trying to break it up by splitting it, using wedges and an axe. The wedges, he somehow knew, were his brothers; he was the froe, and the axes too, both when they were driven into the split as wedges or swung as hammers. He could feel the hammer-blows on the polls of the wedges (the hammer falls, the steel is compressed, and where does all the force go, pinched between steel and steel?) as surely as he could feel the tommy-bar twist in the socket of the froe. He could feel the un-sustainable stresses in the wood, as the fibres of the grain were wrenched apart - wood's not like steel: if you torture it, eventually it fails and bursts. But steel, the more you hammer it, the more you compress and work-harden it, the harder and stronger it gets. And that, logically enough, is why the Loredan boys aren't like other people . . .

Well, it was dream-logic, the sort that melts away as soon as your eyes open.

Gorgas woke up, realised he didn't stand a chance of getting back to sleep, and resolved to do some work instead. He'd insisted on having the one working oil-lamp in the place, and after a good deal of fumbling with flint and rather soggy tinder, he had light. He also had paper - a few sheets he'd brought with him, and the back of the letter he'd had about the refused treaty, quite serviceable once he'd smoothed it out over the table. He sat down and wrote three letters; one to his niece, one to an employee, giving him further orders, and one to Poliorcis the Son of Heaven, which he managed to make polite and friendly in spite of everything. After all, there was still time for them to change their minds, no point alienating them by being petulant just because it'd feel good to vent his anger. Keeping his personal feelings out of the way of his business decisions had brought Gorgas all the success he'd ever managed to achieve, after all. It was a rule he'd only ever broken where Bardas was concerned, and that one exception had cost him dearly enough, G.o.ds know. But Bardas was different; Bardas was his brother, Bardas was the only failure in a life full of remarkable achievements. And very few failures are definitely final, provided you're level-headed enough to keep your feelings at bay.

When he'd finished writing the letters, it was still dark, too early for anybody else to be up and about, so Gorgas decided to fill in the time with one other minor ch.o.r.e, a task he'd neglected for the past couple of days. In the corner of the room stood a fine embossed-leather bow-case. He opened it and took out his bow, the rather special bow his brother had built for him three years before. People who knew the circ.u.mstances behind the making of the bow were amazed, even horrified, to find that he still had it. They'd a.s.sumed that he'd got rid of it - burned, buried, thrown into the sea - long before. They couldn't understand how he could even bear to look at it, let alone touch it. But the fact remained, it was a very fine bow; and since it had cost him so much, the least he could do was use it and look after it - otherwise everything that had gone into making it would be wasted, all to no purpose.

First, he went over the back with a fine, stiff brush that lived in a pocket under the flap of the case, to remove all the loose dirt, mud and other rubbish. Then he sprinkled on to it a little of the special oil that he'd had specially mixed for this job, just enough to cover the fingernail on his left index finger; oil that kept the wet out and the sinew in. The oil had to be rubbed in until every last trace of it was gone, a job that called for thoroughness and patience. Finally, he waxed the string with a small block of solid beeswax. By then it was dawn; no sooner had he pushed the bow back into its case than the sun came up. Gorgas washed his hands carefully (the oil he'd used for the bow was poisonous), pulled on his boots and went to look for some more work to do.

An hour or two after Gorgas cleaned his bow, a s.h.i.+p limped into Tornoys harbour.

It had taken a pounding from a freak storm, the sort that added an unwelcome degree of uncertainty to navigation at this time of year. The s.h.i.+p had coped pretty well, all things considered; it had taken on rather more water than was good for it, and the wind had damaged the rigging and put a crack in the mainmast that would have caused real havoc if the storm had lasted much longer. But she was still afloat and n.o.body had been killed or badly hurt. It was as much as anybody had a right to expect, fooling about in those seas at that season.

Because it was still early, there was n.o.body much about. The fis.h.i.+ng fleet had already left, of course, apart from a few lazy oyster-boats, and the bigger s.h.i.+ps that were due to leave that day wouldn't be ready to sail for another hour or so. They'd taken their cargoes on board the night before, so that the men could get a good night's sleep before catching the tide. One or two of Gorgas' men were hanging around the quay, but they weren't on duty; it was still the last knockings of the night before, and they were hanging around waiting until the taverns started breakfast, hoping that the cool dawn breeze would help clear their heads.

Pollas Arteval, the Tornoys harbourmaster - he was the nearest thing to an official that Tornoys had, and even then he was really nothing more than a chandler who kept a register and collected contributions from the waterfront traders' a.s.sociation - leaned on the gate outside his office and tried to figure out where the s.h.i.+p was from. It was old but soundly made, clinker-built, unlike the majority of the Colleon and Shastel sloops and clippers; certainly not from the Empire, with those sails. From the Island, possibly - they'd use anything that could float and a few that couldn't - but the rigging wasn't Island fas.h.i.+on somehow. He stared for a little longer, and realised what was bothering him. It was nothing really, a trivial detail of how the tiller bars of the rudders were socketed into the upper part of the loom, but he had an idea he'd seen something like it before, a long time ago. Still, he'd seen a lot of s.h.i.+ps from a lot of places, with every possible contrivance for steering as for every other function. He made a note in his mind and started thinking about warm, fresh bread dunked in bacon fat instead.

The s.h.i.+p nuzzled up to the quay (if it'd had a face it'd have grinned with relief; Pollas fancied he could hear it sighing) and someone jumped down with a line and made her fast while others put out a gangplank. The men were like the s.h.i.+p, unfamiliar but faintly evocative of something he'd seen - what, twenty-five, maybe thirty years ago. Quite possibly, they were from some far-flung place that used to send s.h.i.+ps here and then stopped doing so for some reason - war or politics, or just because there wasn't enough in it to justify such a long haul. Reasonably enough, the men looked tired and fraught - so would anybody after a long night in the squalls off Tornoys - but they didn't look like men who were expecting a well-earned rest. Rather, they had the resigned look of people who had most of their work still to do.

A crowd of them were ash.o.r.e now, some fifty-five or sixty of them (a big crew for a s.h.i.+p that size, or maybe they were pa.s.sengers). Then, in the time it took for Pollas to turn his head to smell the bread in the oven and then look back again, they'd drawn swords and axes and bows, put on helmets, uncovered s.h.i.+elds. Suddenly Pollas knew where he'd seen a s.h.i.+p like that before. They were Ap' Olethry pirates, runaway slaves and deserters from the Imperial army who infested the southern coastline of the Empire, and the chances were that they hadn't come here for a hearty breakfast.

Pollas Arteval stood with his mouth open, horribly conscious that he hadn't the faintest idea what to do. The pirates were splitting up into three groups, about twenty in each party; all he could think about was his own house, his wife opening the door of the bread oven, his daughter slicing the bacon. He couldn't protect them, he didn't own any weapons and he didn't know how to fight. It wasn't a required skill in Tornoys, where there wasn't anything to fight about. He watched the small knot of soldiers to see what they were prepared to do about it, but they didn't seem to have realised what was going on. Maybe, he thought, it isn't really happening; maybe they're just wearing their swords and s.h.i.+elds and helmets, rather than getting ready to use them.

Not wanting to turn away, he stepped backwards into his porch, still watching. Be logical, he told himself: they're here to steal, they won't hurt anybody unless anybody tries to fight them, and n.o.body would be that stupid- It would have been some misinterpreted nuance of body-language, a movement just too quick, a gesture that reminded someone of something he'd seen before. In all likelihood, it was glimpsed out of the corner of an eye, acted on with instinct rather than thought. It can't have been an intentional act, for one of Gorgas' soldiers to draw his bow and shoot an arrow into a pirate, for the simple reason that contingents of six men don't pick fights with forces ten times their number, not even if they're heroes. If the arrow had missed, even if it had glanced harmlessly off the angled side of a properly contoured helmet or breastplate, things might have been different. But it didn't. The pirate was on his knees, screaming in terror, and instead of trying to help him, his friends were closing with the soldiers in a short, predictable melee. If they'd managed to kill all six of the soldiers it might not have been so bad, but they hadn't. One man got away, ran up the hill much faster than anyone would have expected just from looking at him in the direction of the billets where Gorgas had stationed a half-company of men to make his presence felt in Tornoys. Pollas could see how the pirates felt about it all by the way they moved into action. They were unhappy but resigned, as you'd expect from men who've just seen a simple job turn into an awkward one. More fighting, they were saying. Oh, well, never mind. They formed their s.h.i.+eld-wall like weary hands in a factory who've been told they're having to work late.

They're coming, Pollas realised; but there still wasn't anything he could do other than get himself and his family out of the way; and he knew without being able to account for why that he'd left it rather too late for that. It was too difficult to accept the reality of the situation. A few moments ago, less time than it took to boil a pot of water, everything had been normal. He could see people he recognised, shopkeepers and dock hands and quayside loafers, running away from the s.h.i.+eld-wall or stumbling and falling; but he'd seen roughly the same sort of thing in dreams before now, when the nameless-familiar enemy or monster was chasing him along an alley or searching for him in the house - there had been this same illogical sense of detachment (it's all right really, you're asleep), this feeling of being an uninvolved spectator- Someone was tugging at his arm. He looked round and saw his wife. She was pointing with one hand, pulling at him with the other, and he couldn't make out what she was saying. He allowed himself to be pulled, and looked back as she hustled him away; they were using the bench from in front of the Happy Return to bash in the doors of the cheese warehouse. They were inside Dole Baven's house, because there he was, with no clothes on, scrambling out of the back window, but he hadn't looked to see what was underneath. He'd dropped down right in front of one of the other parties, and a pirate stuck him under the ribs with a halberd.

'Come on,' his wife was shrieking (basically the same intonation she used for chivvying him in from the barn when dinner was on the table, going cold), and he could see the sense in that; but they were killing his friends, the least he could do was watch. It would be terrible if n.o.body even knew how they'd died.

'Mavaut, come back!' His wife's voice again; she was watching their daughter sprinting away on her own, terrified, going the wrong way. Belis wanted to go after her, but he grabbed her wrist and wouldn't let her (she didn't like that). He watched as Mavaut bundled down the hill in a flurry of skirts, suddenly came up against the s.h.i.+eld-wall, spun round and came scampering back.

They were coming up the hill now, this way. If they ran, they might still get out of the road. 'All right, I'm coming,' he said, and an arrow appeared in the air above him, hanging for a very brief moment before dipping and falling towards him. He could see it quite distinctly, down to the colour of the fletchings, and he watched it carefully all the way down and into his stomach, where it pa.s.sed at an angle through him and out the other side, leaving six inches of shaft and the feathers still in him. Belis was screaming but after the slight shock of impact he couldn't feel very much, except for the strange and disturbing sensation of having something artificial inside his body. 'All right,' he snapped, 'don't fuss, for G.o.ds' sakes.' Time to be sensible, he decided, and led his family up the hill, then at right-angles along Pacers' Alley. As he'd antic.i.p.ated, the pirates carried on up the hill. They had better things to do than break order to go hunting stray civilians.

He sat down on the front step of Arc Javis' house and looked at the arrow. There was blood all over his s.h.i.+rt, soaking into the broad weave of the cloth. There would be no point trying to stand up again now; his knees had failed completely, even his elbows and wrists felt weak and he was confused now, distracted, unable to concentrate his mind. The best thing would be to lean his head against the door and close his eyes for a while, just until he felt a little stronger.

His wife and daughter were arguing again - well, they always argued, Mavaut was at that age - and they seemed to be arguing about whether they ought to pull the arrow out or leave it in there. Belis was saying that if they took it out now it'd make the bleeding worse and he would die; Mavaut had to know different, of course, and she was nearly hysterical. With what was left of his consciousness, Pollas hoped his wife wouldn't give in, the way she usually did when Mavaut worked herself up into a state, because an overindulged child would be an awful thing to die of.

He must have been asleep for a while, though it hadn't seemed like it; he'd just closed his eyes for a moment. But he could hear different sounds; shouting, men shouting information backwards and forwards, like dock hands loading an awkard cargo. Orders; he could hear a man's voice telling someone to keep in line, another voice shouting, Dress your ranks, raise your halberds, or something along those lines. He raised his head - it had got very heavy - but there was n.o.body in the alley except Belis, Mavaut and himself; the battle, if that's what it was, seemed to be happening fifty yards or so away, on the main street. He applied his mind, trying to work out what was going on just by listening, but without seeing he had no idea which lot of foreigners were the pirates and which were Gorgas Loredan's men. Of course he knew nothing about the shape of battles, about how they worked; it was like trying to work out where the hands of the town clock were just by listening to it ticking. More orders, a lot of shouting; it hadn't occurred to him how busy the sergeants must be in a battle, how many things they must have to think about at once; like the captain of a s.h.i.+p, or the master of a work crew. He couldn't make sense of the orders, though; the technical stuff was outside his experience - port your arms, dress to the front, wheel, make ready at the left there. He could hear feet shuffling, the nailed soles of boots sc.r.a.ping on cobbles, a few grunts of effort, the occasional clatter of a dropped weapon; but not the ring of steel or the screams of the dying, the sort of thing he'd been led to expect. It was remarkably quiet, in fact, so presumably they hadn't started fighting yet.

He remembered something, and glanced down. The arrow wasn't there any more, and once he saw that he started to feel an intrusive ache, like the worst kind of bellyache. d.a.m.n, he thought, they pulled the arrow out after all. They were sitting quite still beside him, holding on to each other as if they were afraid the other one would blow away in the wind.

Then the noise started; and yes, a battle was pretty loud. It was the sound of a forge, of metal under the hammer, not ringing but dull pecks and clunks and bangs - he could almost feel the force of the blows in the sound they made, unmistakable metal-on-metal, force being applied and resisted, thumping and bas.h.i.+ng. They were going at it hard all right, if the noise was anything to judge by. There was effort behind those sounds; it must take an awful lot of effort to cut and crush helmets and breastplates and armour. He closed his eyes, trying to concentrate, isolate sounds so as to interpret them better, something which is of course much easier to do in the dark. It was hard work, though; the shouting of the sergeants got in the way, drowning out the nuances of the metal-on-metal contact, blurring his vision in the darkness. Typical, he thought. First time I'm ever at a battle and I can't see a b.l.o.o.d.y thing. Fine story this'll make to tell my grandchildren.

Quite suddenly, the battle moved on. The likeliest thing Pollas could think of was that one side or the other had given ground or run away, because the noise was m.u.f.fled and distant, but whether it was up the hill or down he couldn't make out. Down the hill was what he wanted, presumably, Gorgas' men driving the pirates back into the sea (unless they'd somehow changed places, so that Gorgas' men were attacking up the hill - all he knew about tactics was that they were complicated, like chess, and he couldn't even beat Mavaut at chess these days). Besides, he couldn't concentrate properly any more, the bellyache got in the way of his hearing and pretty well everything else, and his head was spinning as badly as if he'd just drunk a gallon of cider on an empty stomach. All in all, he didn't feel very well, so he was probably excused observing battles for now. Oddly enough, though, the pain didn't get in the way of falling asleep; so he did that - - And then he was in a bed, his own; the room was dark and there was n.o.body else there, so he couldn't ask if he was dead or alive (and he had no way of knowing for himself). It followed, though, that his side had won; so that was all right.

CHAPTER NINE.

In the courtyard below the prefect's office, a madman was reciting scripture. The words were right, as accurate as any scholar could wish, but the madman was howling them at the top of his voice, as if uttering curses. The prefect frowned, disturbed by the inconsistency; here was everything that was beautiful and good, unmarred by error or omission, and yet it was utterly wrong.

The district administrator paused in the middle of his summary, aware that his superior wasn't paying attention. Being slightly deaf, he hadn't found the distant noise intrusive, but now he could hear it too. The two men looked at each other.

'Shall I send the clerk for the guard?' the administrator asked.

The prefect shook his head. 'He isn't doing anything wrong,' he replied.

The administrator raised an eyebrow. 'Disturbing the peace,' he said. 'Loitering with intent. Blasphemy-'

'I didn't say he wasn't breaking any laws,' the prefect replied with a smile. 'But it's every man's duty to preach the scriptures. It's just a pity that he's choosing to do it at the top of his voice.'

(But it wasn't that, of course; it was the tone of voice that was so disturbing, the savage anger with which the fellow was reciting those calm, measured, impersonal statements of doctrine, those elegantly balanced maxims, so perfectly phrased that not one single word could be replaced by a synonym without radically altering the sense. It was like listening to a wolf howling Substantialist poetry.) 'Sooner or later,' the prefect went on, 'someone else will call the guard, the wretched creature will be taken away and we'll have some peace again. Until then, I shall pretend I can't hear it. I'm sorry, you were saying-'

The administrator nodded. 'The proposed alliance,' he went on, 'is of course out of the question; this man Gorgas Loredan is nothing but an adventurer, a small-scale warlord who's set himself up in a backwater and is desperately trying to enlist powerful friends against the day when his subjects get tired of him and throw him out. Doing anything that would appear to recognise his regime would reflect very badly on us. Quite simply, we don't do business with that cla.s.s of person.'

'Agreed,' replied the prefect, trying to concentrate. 'But there's more to it, I can tell.'

The administrator nodded wearily. 'Unfortunately,' he went on, 'the confounded man has had a quite extraordinary stroke of good luck. Two days ago, the small port that lies on his border - Tornoys, it's called - was raided by a pirate s.h.i.+p. One s.h.i.+p, fifty or so men; they were after the dispatch clipper from Ap' Escatoy, which they'd been stalking all the way up the coast until it was driven into Tornoys by a sudden storm on the previous day. They followed it in, got badly knocked about by the storm themselves, and spent the night riding it out before coming into harbour just after dawn. Now I'm not sure what happened after that, but Gorgas Loredan and his men arrived before they could do anything about the clipper and engaged them in battle; half of the pirates were killed, and Gorgas has the survivors locked up in a barn somewhere. He's also holding on to the clipper, though he hasn't given any reasons.'

The prefect was scowling. 'It's Hain Partek, isn't it?' he said.

The administrator nodded. 'And Gorgas knows precisely who it is he's got hold of,' he went on. 'Well, he'd have to be singularly ill-informed not to; after all, we've been offering large sums of money for him and posting his description up all over the province these past ten years; and of course it's wonderful news that he's been caught, I suppose. I just wish, though, that it had been somebody else and not this Gorgas person.'

'Quite.' The prefect leaned back in his chair. 'Had we told him we weren't interested in his alliance?'

'Unfortunately, yes,' the administrator said, picking up a small ivory figure from the desk, examining it briefly and putting it back. 'The timing couldn't have been worse. As soon as he got our response, he sat down and fired off a reply; most extraordinary letter I've read in a long time, a thoroughly bizarre mixture of obsequiousness and threats - you ought to read it yourself, if only for the entertainment value. My a.s.sessor reckons he's off his head, and after reading this letter I'm inclined to agree with him. Apparently, when the letter telling him we didn't want the alliance reached him, he was in a farmyard splitting wood.'

'Splitting wood,' the prefect repeated. 'Why?'

'I get the impression he likes splitting wood. Not per se; he enjoys making believe he's a farmer. He comes from a farming family, apparently, though he had to leave home in something of a hurry. So far, the only possible explanation I've heard for what he's done in the Mesoge is that it was the only way he could ever go home.'

'He does sound deranged, I'll admit.' The prefect made a slight gesture with his hands. 'Insanity isn't necessarily an obstacle to success in his line of work, though,' he observed. 'Frequently, in fact, it's an a.s.set, if properly used. Has he said what he wants from us yet?'

The administrator shook his head. 'All we've had is a terse little note saying he's got Partek in custody and would like us to send someone to discuss matters with him. I imagine he'd far rather we made the opening bid; which is reasonable enough, I suppose, from his point of view. I mean, all he knows is what we've said openly, he's got no way of knowing how important to us Partek really is.' The administrator hesitated for a moment, and then went on. 'To be honest,' he said, 'I'm not entirely sure myself. What's the official line on that these days?'

The prefect sighed. 'He's important enough,' he said. 'Not as important as he was five years ago, but he's still a d.a.m.ned nuisance; not because of anything he's done or anything he's capable of doing, it's more the fact that he's still out there, and we haven't been able to do a d.a.m.n thing about it.' He frowned, and scratched his ear. 'It's amusing, really; the less he actually achieves, the more his legend grows. In some parts of the south-eastern region, they're firmly convinced he's in control of the western peninsula and he's raising an army to march on the Homeland. No, we need to be able to point to his head nailed to a door in Ap' Silas; if we could do that, it'd be a good day's work.'

'Which means,' said the administrator, 'we have to give Gorgas Loredan what he asks for?'

'Not necessarily.' The prefect paused for a moment. He couldn't hear the madman any more; someone must have come and dealt with him. 'There's no reason why we should necessarily replace a big problem with a smaller one. Now then,' he went on, 'if I remember correctly, this Gorgas Loredan's the brother of our own Bardas Loredan.'

'The hero,' replied the administrator with a grin. 'That's right. Extraordinary family; if only the Mesoge produced more men like that, it might be - well, interesting to have an alliance with them. They're both barking mad, of course, but you can't help but admire their vitality.'

'I can,' the prefect said, 'when it causes me difficulties. Let's see, then. We need Bardas Loredan to be the figurehead against the plainspeople, so presumably we can't play rough with Gorgas Loredan, for fear of offending him-'

'I don't know about that,' the administrator interrupted. 'By all accounts, Bardas hates Gorgas like poison - there's a really wonderful backstory to all that, by the way, remind me to tell you about it when we've got five minutes - so I wouldn't worry too much about that. But Gorgas, apparently, dotes on Bardas-'

The prefect held up his hands. 'This is all a bit much,' he said. 'I'm sorry, please go on. I just find all this a trifle bewildering, that's all.'

'So do I,' the administrator replied with a smile. 'But you must admit, it's rather more intriguing than the quarterly establishment returns.'

The heavy clouds that had been masking the sun lifted, and a blinding beam of amber sunlight dazzled the prefect for a moment. He s.h.i.+fted his chair a little to avoid it. 'At my time of life I can manage quite well without being intrigued, so long as I don't have to deal with messy little people living in obscure places,' he said grimly. 'On the other hand,' he went on, lightening up a little, 'I must confess, Bardas Loredan was something of a collector's item. He obviously didn't have a clue who he was talking to, which was really quite refres.h.i.+ng. Anyway, where were we?'

The prefect leaned back, his fingertips pressed against his lips. 'We need Bardas because of Temrai, and now Gorgas has got Partek; but we don't want to be seen to be friends with Gorgas, and Bardas won't mind if we aren't friends with Gorgas . . . What was that you said about the clipper?' he added, leaning forward again. 'He's detaining it, you say?'

The administrator, who had been studying the floral designs carved along the edge of the desk, nodded. 'And that's awkward too,' he said. 'You see, there's quite a lot in dispatches about the Temrai business; all the paperwork for the s.h.i.+ps we've been chartering, letters of credit, signed agreements, draft schedules - put them together and you'd have a fairly clear picture of what we're proposing to do, provided you had the wits to understand it all.'

'Which Gorgas clearly does, even if they're addled,' the prefect said. 'That's awkward. I was considering rattling a sabre at him for detaining our s.h.i.+p, perhaps frightening him into giving us Partek that way. But that would only draw his attention to what he's got hold of.'

The administrator pursed his lips. 'I'd tend to look at it the other way round,' he said. 'How would it look to you if you were illegally detaining the provincial office's dispatches courier, and they didn't make an almighty fuss about it? In fact, I suspect that's precisely why he's doing it, to see how we react. Otherwise, he's got no possible motive for pulling our tails in this way.'

'That's a very good point,' the prefect conceded. 'Oh, d.a.m.n the man, he's giving me a headache. At this precise moment, I think I could easily do without the vitality of the Loredan brothers, thank you very much.'

'Ah.' The administrator smiled. 'That's where we might be able to do something. I'm thinking about the Loredan sister.'

The prefect turned his head sharply. 'Do you know, I'd forgotten all about her. Niessa Loredan, who ran the bank on Scona that so annoyed our friends in the Shastel Order.'

'That's the one,' the administrator said. 'Currently enjoying our hospitality, of course.'

'That's right. Now then, how do the brothers stand as far as she's concerned? They either love her or hate her, I'm sure, but which is it?'

The administrator folded his hands neatly in his lap. 'Gorgas loves her, I think,' he said, 'although she did rather leave him in the lurch at the fall of Scona when she skipped off with all the money and left him to do all the fighting. But I don't think Gorgas holds that against her; he's very forgiving when it comes to family.'

The prefect raised an eyebrow but didn't take the point. 'And Bardas? He loves her too?'

'I don't think so,' the administrator replied. 'I don't think he hates her, either. But her daughter has made a public vow to kill him, if that has any bearing on matters.'

'Oh, for pity's sake.' The prefect shook his head. 'Never mind, I expect it's all in the files somewhere. In fact, I must have read about it all before I interviewed the man. So, I take it you've got something in mind.'

Beautiful, though rare, are the smiles of the Children of Heaven. 'Not really,' the administrator said. 'Little more than a notion that she might come in handy, if the situation looks like getting out of hand. But it'd be as well to secure her - both of them, actually, the daughter as well as the mother. We'll hold them as illegal aliens and leave it at that for now.'

The prefect stood up and walked to the window, under which grew a fine old fig tree. From the window he could almost but not quite reach the topmost fig. 'For now, I'm afraid,' he said, 'getting hold of Partek must have priority. If I lose him now, I'll have some difficult questions to answer. Do what you can; obviously I'd prefer to avoid any kind of alliance with that man, but I'm sure you can find some form of words that'll satisfy him and not commit us to anything. Next priority is the Perimadeia business, though it's not in the same league as Partek, so be a bit careful where Bardas Loredan is concerned. Otherwise, I'm quite happy for you to use your own judgement.' He turned away from the window, so that his face was in shadow, and frowned. 'There's always a danger when we start looking at these sort of people on an individual level of losing our sense of proportion. Aside from Partek, none of the individuals here is even remotely significant at a policy level. It's only when we come down to strategic - lower than that, even; tactical - that they begin to look important.' He shrugged and sat down on the corner of his desk. 'I mean to say,' he went on, 'if you come to the conclusion that the best way to get hold of Partek is to take two divisions and some of these s.h.i.+ps we've been chartering and annex the Mesoge, then by all means do it. I'm not suggesting you should,' he added, before the administrator could say anything, 'I'm just pointing out the need to focus on journey's end, not the scenery along the way. The same goes for Shastel, or any of these petty little kingdoms. If they've got to go, they've got to go. All we're concerned about is cost-efficiency and economy of effort.'

The administrator stood up to leave. 'A valid point,' he said. 'I'll bring in Partek, have no fears on that score. But you won't object if I try to do it neatly and elegantly, will you? After all,' he added with a grin, 'it doesn't take much imagination to send in an army. It's sending in an army under budget that gets you noticed by the provincial office.'

'This is appalling,' muttered Eseutz Mesatges, easing her shoulder-strap where it was biting into the side of her neck. 'All these people wanting to buy, and nothing to sell to them.'

Another quiet day on the Span. Usually it took half an hour to thread one's way the hundred or so yards across the bridge; today it had taken a few minutes. Hido Glaia, desperate for three bales of green velvet to make up an order he'd a.s.sured the customer he'd dispatched a week ago, nodded sadly. 'If this incredible opportunity of a lifetime goes on much longer,' he said, 'it'll ruin us all. That's if we don't all die of boredom first.' He picked up a sample of cloth, the same piece he'd examined and rejected yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. It was the only green velvet on the Island. 'I'll be so desperate I'll come back for this tomorrow,' he said, 'and by then someone'll have bought it. Come on, let's have a drink. a.s.suming there's still some booze left on this miserable rock.'

In the Golden Palace, they found Venart Auzeil and Tamin Votz, sitting gloomily over a half-empty jug. As soon as they walked in, Venart looked up hopefully.

'Hido,' he said, 'my axe-handles. Have you got them for me?'

Hido pulled out a chair and sat in it, stifling a yawn. 'Oh, come on,' he said, 'what do you take me for, the tooth fairy? Or do you think I was down on the beach at first light, whittling them out of driftwood?'

'I take it that means you haven't,' Venart replied miserably. 'Which means I've now got to go to the Doce brothers and try and explain to them-'

'That my s.h.i.+p and your s.h.i.+p and everybody else's s.h.i.+p is tied up at the quay,' Hido interrupted, 'along with all of theirs. I think they probably already know. Relax, Ven, the Doce boys know the score, you're all right. You're not the one with a ferocious Colleon fabrics cartel breathing down your neck and threatening you with penalty clauses. Talking of which,' he added, 'you wouldn't happen to have such a thing as three bales of green velvet, Island standard fine?'

Venart frowned. 'Not me, no,' he said, 'but you might try talking to Triz. I know she bought a whole load of stuff a few months back - you know, when they sold up Remvaut Jors. I have an idea there was some green velvet in with it, though whether-'

'G.o.d bless you,' Hido said, jumping up. 'You wouldn't happen to know how much she paid for it, would you?'

'Hido! She's my sister!'

'Can't blame a man for trying. Thank you.'

He bustled away. Eseutz emptied his cup into hers. 'Well, you never know,' she explained, as Venart looked at her. 'They may be rationing the stuff tomorrow, if things go on like this.'

Tamin Votz laughed. 'What I don't understand is,' he said, 'I know why none of our s.h.i.+ps are coming in or out, but why aren't any foreign s.h.i.+ps coming here? Do you think the Empire's chartered them too?'

'It's possible,' Venart said. 'Well, it is,' he added defensively as Eseutz giggled. 'G.o.ds alone know how big this army of theirs is going to be, and it goes without saying they've got the money.'

'Really?' Tamin Votz smiled as he emptied the last few drops from the jug into his cup. 'You know, the thing that's come out of all this that I find most interesting is how little we actually know about the Empire. Oh, we think we know, but that's not the same thing at all. It's like looking at the sky. I mean, we all see it every day, it's just there. But we don't know how it works, or what it's really for, or even what it actually is. Same with the Empire, if you ask me.'

Eseutz had found a discarded bowl of olives on a neighbouring table. 'I was reading a book,' she said with her mouth full, 'and it said the sky's really just this enormous piece of blue cloth, and the stars are little holes where the light comes through. And the rain, too, although that bit strikes me as rather far-fetched. Because if that was the case, every time it rains you'd expect there to be dirty great big puddles right under the Pole Star. I wonder if anybody's actually checked to see if they line up. The rain, I mean, and the stars.'