The Two of Swords: Part 15 Read online

  The Two of Swords: Part 15

  K. J. Parker

  www.orbitbooks.net

  BY K. J. PARKER

  The Fencer trilogy

  Colours in the Steel

  The Belly of the Bow

  The Proof House

  The Scavenger trilogy

  Shadow

  Pattern

  Memory

  The Engineer trilogy

  Devices and Desires

  Evil for Evil

  The Escapement

  The Company

  The Folding Knife

  The Hammer

  Sharps

  The Two of Swords (e-novellas)

  BY TOM HOLT

  Expecting Someone Taller

  Who’s Afraid of Beowulf?

  Flying Dutch

  Ye Gods!

  Overtime

  Here Comes the Sun

  Grailblazers

  Faust Among Equals

  Odds and Gods

  Djinn Rummy

  My Hero

  Paint Your Dragon

  Open Sesame

  Wish You Were Here

  Only Human

  Snow White and the Seven Samurai

  Valhalla

  Nothing But Blue Skies

  Falling Sideways

  Little People

  The Portable Door

  In Your Dreams

  Earth, Air, Fire and Custard

  You Don’t Have to be Evil to Work Here, But It Helps

  Someone Like Me

  Barking

  The Better Mousetrap

  May Contain Traces of Magic

  Blonde Bombshell

  Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages

  Doughnut

  When It’s A Jar

  The Outsorcerer’s Apprentice

  The Good, the Bad and the Smug

  Dead Funny: Omnibus 1

  Mightier Than the Sword: Omnibus 2

  The Divine Comedies: Omnibus 3

  For Two Nights Only: Omnibus 4

  Tall Stories: Omnibus 5

  Saints and Sinners: Omnibus 6

  Fishy Wishes: Omnibus 7

  The Walled Orchard

  Alexander at the World’s End

  Olympiad

  A Song for Nero

  Meadowland

  I, Margaret

  Lucia Triumphant

  Lucia in Wartime

  Copyright

  Published by Orbit

  ISBN: 978-0-356-50622-7

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by K. J. Parker

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Orbit

  Little, Brown Book Group

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DZ

  www.orbitbooks.net

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Title Page

  By K. J. Parker

  Copyright

  The Angel, Reversed

  The Cherry Tree

  About the Author

  The Angel, Reversed

  Major Genseric opened the door and looked inside, but it was only someone’s study. There was a boy, sitting behind a desk, probably a student or a servant. Not a threat. He looked petrified, and faintly comic.

  “Where’s the library?” Genseric asked.

  The boy stared at him; scared, half-witted, maybe both. “The library,” Genseric repeated slowly. “Big room full of books. Well?”

  The boy struggled for a moment, then said, “Sorry, don’t know.”

  Didn’t know or wasn’t telling; actually, didn’t know was entirely possible, given the look on his face. Not just gormless; rather, a bottomless pit into which gorm falls and is utterly consumed. “Oh, for God’s sake,” Genseric snapped, and slammed the door.

  There were three more doors in that section of wall. One opened on a steep staircase and the other two were locked, and there simply wasn’t time— Come on, Genseric told himself, the most famous library in the known world, it’s got to be somewhere. Damn this place to hell. Why couldn’t someone have dug up a floorplan? Why couldn’t there be any signs?

  He was standing in the middle of the quadrangle feeling helpless and annoyed when Captain Sirubat turned up. “We’ve found it,” he called out.

  “Hoo-bloody-ray,” said Genseric. “Where? No, don’t point. Tell me, in words.”

  “Through that door there,” said the captain, “up two flights, turn left down a corridor, third door on your right, brings you to some more stairs—”

  Genseric held up his hand. “Anyway,” he said, “you found it. Right, now we can get on. Where’s the head man?”

  “In the gatehouse,” the captain said. Pause. “Through that arch there, left, you can’t miss it.”

  The head man, Genseric reminded himself, was the Principal; not just the chief administrator of what was probably – grey area – a sovereign nation, but also a considerable scholar and the greatest living authority on metallurgy. He took several deep breaths to calm himself down, sheathed his sword and went in.

  The gatehouse must’ve taken a direct hit from the mangonel, because half of it wasn’t there any more. Most of the roof was on the floor, and the furniture was smashed under fallen rubble. The man he’d come to see was sitting on the only survivor, a small gate-leg table. He was dirty and covered in dust, but apparently otherwise unharmed. He looked stunned, as if he was trying to figure out if all this was real or just an elaborate practical joke.

  “Principal Ertan,” Genseric said. The wretched man looked up at him. “I’m Major Genseric. Your people are in my way.”

  The Principal opened his mouth but said nothing.

  “You’ve got a hundred students crowded up the staircase to my lady’s chamber,” Genseric said. “Human shield, presumably. I really don’t want to hurt them if I can help it.”

  No answer. Why do we have to do this, Genseric thought, it’s so pointless, and these people aren’t the enemy. They’re just— He sighed. “So here’s the threat,” he said. “Clear them out of there, or my men will burn down your library.”

  For a moment, Genseric thought the Principal was going to choke to death. He wanted to help, but he wasn’t sure he knew what to do. But then the Principal said, “You can’t.”

  “Yes, I can. They tell me there’s a quarter of a million books in there. I never realised there were that many in the whole world.” He paused, then said, “Up to you. Let us take what we came for and we’ll be on our way, no more fuss, nobody gets hurt, no more damage.”

  He counted to five under his breath. The Principal hadn’t moved.

  “We’ve done our best,” he said. “We haven’t shot a single arrow, and as far as I know, none of your people have been killed. You’ve been doing your damnedest to hurt us, but that’s all right, I understand. But you’ve lost, there’s nothing more you can do, so please be sensible and help me to keep the damage to a minimum.”

  He waited. Maybe the poor fool had lost the use of his tongue. It took some people that way, he’d read somewhere. “Oh, come on,” he said. “Say something.”

  “No,” the Principal said.

  “What? For crying out l
oud, man, you’re talking about several hundred lives. I’m a soldier, not a butcher. Do you understand what I’m saying? First I’ll set fire to the library. Then I’ll send my men in to clear the staircase. It’ll be the greatest crime against humanity in all of history, and all because you’re so damn stubborn. Don’t you get it? It’s over. You can’t stop me. What you can do is help me prevent a fucking disaster. Well?”

  He realised he’d been shouting, which he hadn’t wanted to do. But the fool was just sitting there, understanding and not giving in. Ridiculous. Unbelievable. And then a thought occurred to him, and he thought, Of course, brilliant.

  He turned to the captain, who was right behind him. “Did we get any of this man’s personal staff?”

  “Two, sir. Chief secretary and deputy principal.”

  “They’ll do.” The Principal’s eyes were wide with horror. “Oh, pull yourself together, I’m not going to hurt them,” Genseric snapped. “Right, fetch them in here, quick as you like.”

  Curious specimens: one was a youngish no Vei, the other a middle-aged woman. The no Vei was missing his right thumb; Genseric was pleased to see his people had bandaged it neatly, properly. The woman had blood on her dress, but seemed unhurt. “Names,” he snapped.

  The woman gave him a murderous scowl. “I’m Lonjamen,” the no Vei said quickly. “This is Emphianassa.”

  “Fine,” Genseric said. “Now listen to me. I’ve just told your chief here that if he doesn’t get his human shield off the stairs to the top tower, I’m going to burn the library.”

  The woman yelled something at him that he decided he hadn’t quite heard. “And then,” he went on, “I’ll have no choice but to clear that stair, any way I can. Your chief’s just told me, go ahead. Is that what you want? You two. Don’t look at him, I’m talking to you.”

  The woman had gone white as linen. The no Vei was staring at him as though at an approaching tidal wave. “No,” he said. “I take it there’s an alternative.”

  “Of course there is,” Genseric said. “Seems to me, if your boss here were to see sense, he’d send one of you two to give the order. Well? Yes or no.”

  The woman was in tears. “Yes,” said the no Vei. “That’d be me.”

  “Fine. So it’s not him I need to convince that I’m serious, it’s you. Look at me,” he said, taking a step closer. “Are you convinced?”

  The no Vei nodded quickly. “If I do it, will you let the students on the stairs go?”

  “I promise,” Genseric said. “Soon as we’ve got what we want, we’ll be off and out of your hair before you can say snap. Or the streets can run with blood. You decide. I really don’t care any more. I’ve had about as much of you people as I can take.”

  The Principal jumped up and started yelling; Genseric knocked him to the floor with the back of his hand, skinned his knuckles on the fool’s bony jaw. Trouble with me, he thought, I don’t know my own strength. “Ignore him, he doesn’t matter. It’s all up to you. I’m going to count to five.”

  “All right,” the no Vei said, before he could start. The Principal, on his hands and knees, was mumbling through a mouthful of blood and loose teeth. The woman looked like she was about to start screaming. Civilians, Genseric thought. No more idea than my mother’s cat.

  All but a dozen of the students obeyed the order to evacuate the staircase; the remainder weren’t hard to remove, with a little help from both ends of a spear or two. It was as the last of them were being bundled away that Genseric remembered a story his uncle had told him. He swore loudly, looked round for someone to give orders to, found nobody, broke into a run. This horrible place, all doors and corridors.

  More by luck than judgement he came out in the main quadrangle, where he’d posted two troopers and a sergeant. He was too blown from running to explain, so he grabbed the sergeant by the wrist and towed him like a barge, with the two troopers trotting behind like carriage dogs.

  In the ruins of the gateway he stopped, looked down the causeway, then up and down the rampart. Nothing. “There’s got to be another way on and off this horrible rock,” he said. “Sergeant?”

  He knew the man; smart, reliable. “Only the one place you can put in a boat, sir.”

  “Fine. So there must be another way down to the beach.” He screwed his eyes shut, trying to think. “There isn’t, is there?”

  “Wouldn’t have thought so, sir.”

  “My Uncle Aimeric,” Genseric said, “had the best collection of early Republican silver in the East. So what he did was, he built this vast, impregnable strongroom, bolts and bars and two-inch-thick doors. And he kept the actual stuff in a couple of apple barrels in the hay barn. She’s not in that damned tower, Sergeant. They’ll have her stowed in some broom cupboard somewhere, and a quick and easy way off the rock in case of trouble. Which means a sally-port and a watergate tucked away round the side somewhere, and hope they can keep us busy long enough for her to get clean away.” He took a deep breath. He was, he realised, utterly exhausted. “Get down to the ship,” he said, “tell the captain. They’re looking for something small and fast, on the shortest course to the mainland.” His mind had gone blank. “Which would be Blemya, God help us, and once she’s there we can’t do a damn thing. It’s probably too late by now, but it’s got to be worth a try.”

  It was the sloop from the main troop carrier that captured the prize, at the very last moment, with the golden blaze from the Blemyan lighthouse roof already in sight. The scholars’ pinnace was fast but the sloop was faster; they managed to grapple at extreme range and winch in close enough to board. There was an ugly little fight – four scholars dead, two marines – but the young lieutenant commanding the sloop found the girl hiding behind some barrels and dragged her out by the hair, whereupon the scholars gave up and were quiet. They scuttled the pinnace to save time, and picked up a fresh breeze back to Beal Defoir.

  Genseric had spent the time waiting for news of the interception exploring the tunnels that led down through the rock to the hidden landing bay, the whereabouts of which he’d extracted from the Principal with eloquent words and the toe of his boot. It was a remarkable piece of engineering; there was a winch-operated lift running up and down a sheer-sided brick-lined shaft (so even if an attacker knew about the watergate, he couldn’t get in to the fortress that way); you could get from the winch-head in the basement of the chapel to the watergate in just under ten minutes, and the whole thing was hydraulically powered by submerged waterwheels; just pull on a lever to engage the gear train and away you went.

  “We ought to clear this lot out and take this place for ourselves, sir,” Captain Orderic said. “It’s the most amazing fortified position, you could hold it indefinitely with a hundred men.”

  Genseric smiled. “They had a hundred. Hundred and twenty, in fact.”

  “I was meaning soldiers,” the captain said. “And you’d need a drawbridge on that causeway, and artillery. But it’s perfect. And just sitting here doing nothing.”

  Genseric considered explaining, but he didn’t have the energy. “Write a report,” he said, “I’ll see it’s passed on.” To join all the other reports, he didn’t add. He’d read them all before embarking on this horrible job. But none of them had mentioned a secret watergate. He felt rather pleased about that.

  All in all, it had gone off well. The scholars and marines on the boat had been the only lives lost; thirty-odd scholars had been injured, and twelve marines, but nothing too dreadful. The gatehouse was a complete write-off and there were a few smashed-up doors and broken windows. For his report, Genseric put the value of the damage at five thousand angels; on the generous side. The Principal had been stunned to hear that he’d be getting compensation. “Who from?” he’d asked, and Genseric had smiled and told him he wasn’t at liberty to say.

  He was marginally less pleased when the captain of the main transport told him where they’d put the girl; in Genseric’s cabin, because it was the only enclosed space big enough and comfortable eno
ugh for honoured guest quarters that could be guarded to the required level of security. Genseric, the captain suggested, might like to bunk in the mess hall, or share with one of his officers. “Couldn’t you put her in the cargo hold?” Genseric said; but, no, there were rats, and women don’t like rats, everyone knows that. So he had them rig him up a tent on the aft deck, and prayed it didn’t rain.

  He wasn’t looking forward to what came next, but it had to be done.

  She was sitting on what had been his bunk, reading the copy of Eleutherius that he’d neglected to take with him, and which he knew he’d never get back. She looked up at him and scowled.

  “Where’s Senza?” she said. “When can I see him?”

  “Sorry.” Genseric braced himself. “Wrong brother.”

  She went completely still.

  “It was your blasted Lodge that gave us the idea,” he explained. “Get hold of something they want, something they’ll give anything for. In their case, some religious artefact for that nutcase Glauca. Then General Belot – sorry, our General Belot, Forza – got to thinking. And of course, we knew exactly where to find you.”

  She looked straight at him. He felt cold all over.

  “The Lodge will crucify you,” she said. “You do know that, don’t you?”

  The same thought had crossed his mind; but it was much harder to dismiss it when she said it. “I obey orders,” he said.

  “That won’t save you.”

  “No, I don’t suppose it will.”

  She was quiet for a long time. Then she said, “Where are you taking me?”

  “Sorry, I can’t tell you.”

  “Do you know?”

  He shook his head. “That’s why I can’t tell you. I hope it’s not far. I’m sleeping in a tent on the deck.”

  Maybe he’d got used to girls laughing at his jokes. Not this one. Not that he’d expect her to. And it’s probably not a good idea to try and raise a laugh from the Angel of Death. “Well,” she said. “Don’t let me keep you.”

  He turned away. She called him back. “You’d have done it, wouldn’t you?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Killed all those people. Just to get to me.”