Sharps Read online

  “Let’s just be sensible and get out of sight,” Suidas said. His voice was quiet and harsh, like a fine saw cutting slowly. “No, leave the weapons,” he added sharply, as Addo moved towards the packing case. “If it’s who I think it is, it’s quite important that we’re just civilians. Come on.”

  They followed him to the bank and lay down, as they’d done the previous night. Giraut couldn’t see the road from where he was. The light was still good, although the sun was just about to set. There can’t be another war, he thought.

  He heard someone close to him catch his breath, and a moment later a horseman appeared, roughly level with where Giraut lay. When the horseman was no more than five yards away, he stopped and shifted a little in his saddle, turning his head and shoulders to face the bank.

  He rode a black mare with a single white star on its forehead, bigger than any horse Giraut had ever seen before. He was fully armoured – not the chainmail shirt and breeches that the Republic issued as standard, but the laced-together small steel plates of the Eastern Empire, flexible as linen, reckoned to turn arrows at point-blank range. On his thighs and knees he wore steel splints, with articulated steel shoes. At his cuffs and neck, Giraut could see the pale yellow fur lining of his coat, teased out to keep the steel from chafing; he also had a red wool scarf up to his chin. His tall conical helmet was made from a single piece of steel – too difficult for the smiths of the Republic, who riveted four smaller plates to a frame – and the edges were rolled and roped; the rivet heads that secured the lining were gilded, and he wore a foot-high plume of white horsehair that nodded gently even when he was still. He shivered slightly, and with his free hand pulled his scarf a little tighter round his neck. The small part of his face that was still visible between scarf and helmet was dark brown, the colour of polished and waxed mahogany; he had a thin line of moustache on his upper lip, and a small, neat black tuft on his chin. He was a Blueskin.

  Well, Giraut thought, so we’re at war after all. At least it wasn’t the Aram Chantat, who never took prisoners. He felt like a child who’s inadvertently wandered into a room where the grown-ups are sitting, and they break off their serious, mysterious conversation and look at him. The saddlecloth was green velvet, he noticed, worn and dirty but fifteen nomismata a yard in the Cloth Market, if you could find any. In his left hand he held a long spear, with a blue-painted shaft.

  The Blueskin was looking straight at him.

  Giraut realised he was paralysed. It wasn’t fear of death; he knew what that felt like now, and the symptoms were subtly different. Besides, he’d faced death in the bell tower, and it hadn’t affected him nearly as strongly as the Blueskin’s stare. It was more the way he imagined he’d feel if he’d woken up and found an angel standing over him: awe and wonder and a kind of terror that wasn’t anything to do with possible harm to his body. He couldn’t move, because to move in the presence of such an entity would be an abomination, unless he was ordered to, in which case refusal would be an equally appalling sin. He felt as though he was waiting for a verdict.

  “Excuse me,” the Blueskin said.

  Nobody moved, though Giraut could feel a massive build-up of furious energy, like the air just before a thunderstorm, -somewhere to his right. The Blueskin frowned slightly.

  “Excuse me,” he repeated, a little louder and slower, “but would you gentlemen happen to be Jilem Phrantzes’ party?”

  He spoke in the most beautifully clear, pitch-perfect upper-class accent, the sort you only hear on the stage, or in a country castle. Well, of course he did. That was the accent of the Empire, which the nobility preserved as jealously as a saint’s shinbone in a gold casket. The voice itself was remarkable enough. The words simply didn’t make sense.

  “Get down,” he heard Suidas hiss; but Phrantzes was getting to his feet, looking mortally embarrassed. “I’m Phrantzes,” he said.

  “Thank goodness for that,” the Blueskin said, a puzzled frown on the small patch of his face still vulnerable to the cold. “We’re here to find you. I’m Lieutenant Totila, Diplomatic Escort Corps. Look, why don’t you fellows get up off the ground? It must be terribly uncomfortable.”

  There were nine of them in all, lancers, seconded to the civilian authorities to escort the honoured guests from halfway into the Demilitarised Zone to the Permian border. Lieutenant Totila produced his diplomatic credentials, which Tzimisces, suddenly reappearing, confirmed were entirely in order.

  “You were late showing up,” Totila explained, “and we were a bit concerned, because we’d heard rumours of bandit activity on your side of the line from your chaps at the frontier station. They were going to come out and see what’d happened to you, but I sort of volunteered, because, well, no offence, but we’re a damn sight faster than your people. I get the impression we were right,” he added, looking pointedly at a decapitated corpse lying a few yards away. “Though you seem to have coped perfectly well without us. Well, of course you would. It must’ve come as a bit of a shock to them, when they found out who they were up against.”

  The lancers had a beautiful foldaway grill, on which they were cooking a complicated-looking mixture of dried fish, sausage and rice in a copper pan. They didn’t seem inclined to hurry, and the smell was driving Giraut out of his mind. “Oh, just field rations,” Totila had said, when asked, as the lance corporal measured wine out of a flask with a little pewter cup, to add to the sauce. “But I imagine anything’ll taste all right if you’ve been stuck out here for a day without any grub.”

  There was also fine soft wheat bread, which was all Iseutz would accept; she sat on the edge of the circle, trying very hard not to enjoy it. Tzimisces sat next to Lieutenant Totila, balancing a tin plate on his cupped left hand, exactly like the lancers were doing. The wine from the flask made the best stuff they sold in the Republic taste like brine.

  “Everyone’s terribly excited, of course,” Totila said. “Actually, I don’t follow the fencing as closely as the Permians do; I did a bit at the Academy, and you’ve got to study form if you’re posted in Permia or you’d be left out of all the conversations. But it’s been all they’ve been talking about for months, this tour of yours. There’s pictures of you up all over the place.”

  “Pictures,” Giraut said. “That’s crazy. How do they know what we look like?”

  “They don’t,” Totila said, with a faint smile. “They’re not what you’d call wonderful likenesses, but that’s the Permian artistic tradition for you. What you ought to look like, not what you actually do, if you see what I mean. You wait till you see them. But do try not to laugh, they’re a sensitive lot.”

  “It’s a Permian tradition,” Tzimisces said with his mouth full. “A sort of sideshoot of religious icons. Always full-face, and wearing clothes five hundred years out of date.”

  Totila laughed. “You’ve got it,” he said. “Really rather beautiful in their way, once you get over the not looking a bit like what they’re supposed to be. They reckon they paint the soul, not the body.”

  There was a thoughtful silence; then Addo said, “Are there any of me?”

  “Of course,” Totila said. “In full armour, naturally, since you’re a longswordsman. Actually, yours are pretty much like you.”

  “I take after my father,” Addo said.

  “Quite,” Suidas said. “I don’t suppose they’ve forgotten what the Irrigator looks like in Permia.”

  Totila looked down at his hands. Iseutz said, “Please don’t tell me there’s any of me.”

  “You’re very popular,” Totila said cheerfully. “Although,” he went on, as Iseutz drew breath for a reply, “they paint you as a man, of course.”

  Everyone except Suidas managed not to laugh. Iseutz opened her mouth, and for once nothing came out.

  “Artistic conventions, you see,” Totila went on, carefully not looking at her. “All swordsmen in Permian art are, well, men. Women are angels or abstract personifications, usually,” he added blithely, “with no clothes on. But the
aspect of you they want to portray is you as a fencer, so they have to make you into a man. You’ve got a wonderful big red beard, practically down to your waist.”

  Even Suidas had more sense than to make a sound. Totila went on: “The paintings are only the start of it, actually. There’s specially written lives of all of you – entirely made up,” he added, as Giraut winced violently, “since they don’t actually know anything about you. There are ever so many ballads celebrating your glorious deeds; you pay a street singer a couple of coppers and he sings them to you, right there in the road. I gather there’s a blank-verse drama in the works. Someone told me rehearsals were just starting when I left Joiauz about ten days ago. You’ll be expected to go to that. It’s a great honour.”

  “I never realised they were such a creative people,” Phrantzes muttered.

  “Oh, they aren’t,” Totila said. “At least, the painters are home-grown, but the poets and musicians are generally from the Empire. Anything Eastern is the height of chic, so they tell me. There’s a certain amount of local talent as well, of course. They black up their faces with walnut juice to perform, but nobody’s fooled by that.”

  “Anybody dressing up and pretending to be me is going to wish she’d never been born,” Iseutz said icily. “That I can promise you.”

  “Actually, it’d be a man,” Totila said. “No women on the stage in Permia. And please, I must ask you most sincerely not to make any sort of fuss about it. That would be taken as a most serious insult. You’d be rejecting a special honour, you see. They wouldn’t like that at all.”

  “She’s only joking,” Tzimisces said firmly. “She knows perfectly well how important this project is. Don’t you?” he added, and his voice was quite quiet and very intense, like a lover’s. Iseutz hesitated, then nodded briskly. “There you are, then. And thank you for forewarning us. It’s just as well you told us, or we’d have been taken by surprise.”

  “Anyway,” Totila said – gratitude seemed to make him uncomfortable – “it’ll be the best of everything for all of you once you get there, which I hope will make up for the frightful time you’ve had so far. Talking of which,” he added, sitting up a little, “I don’t know what you had in mind for continuing your journey, but if you haven’t got any hard-and-fast plans” (Suidas made a sort of grunting noise, which Totila didn’t seem to hear), “then might I suggest that you ride on with us? I’ve already taken the liberty of sending back to our post for a fast chaise, which ought to be here by morning—”

  “That’s not possible,” Suidas interrupted. “Here to the DMZ, it’s thirty miles.”

  Totila smiled. “We can move quite quickly when we want to, you know. It’d be quicker if I’d sent for saddle horses rather than a vehicle, but I honestly couldn’t recommend riding them, not if you aren’t used to them. I don’t think you’d be in any fit state by the time you got to Joiauz.”

  Phrantzes said, “We’ve already sent back for a carriage.” Nobody heard him, because at the exact same moment Tzimisces said, “Thank you, that’d be perfect, if it’s no trouble.”

  “That’s settled, then,” Totila said. “With any luck, if you don’t object to forcing the pace a bit, we can make up some of the lost time. Naturally I’ll send ahead to let them know you’ve been held up. Might have to bring the first bout forward a little, though. It really wouldn’t do to disappoint all those people. I gather a lot of the miners are coming into town specially for the match.”

  The troopers gave them their blankets – thick, soft wool, dark blue – and broke up the stalls in the stable for firewood, which they hadn’t dared do, since it was government property. They slept in the stables, with the Blueskins standing guard outside in case the robbers’ friends came back. Giraut was just falling asleep when Suidas came across and sat down beside him.

  “Nice enough people, don’t you think?” he said.

  Giraut nodded. “They’ve gone out of their way to be nice to us, anyhow,” he said.

  “Oh, they would do,” Suidas said quietly. “They don’t do anything by halves, the Blueskins. You’ve seen what their kit’s like, and they’ve got the most amazing medical support for their men in the field. There’s a doctor with each company, and you should see their field hospitals. You wouldn’t believe what they can do. Our so-called doctors killed more of our boys than the enemy ever did, but the Blueskins’ll sew you back together and have you back on your feet in a few weeks. I knew a man who’d been picked up off the battlefield three parts dead. The Blueskins found him and took him to one of their hospitals, and he was good as new.”

  Giraut frowned. “One of ours?”

  “Sure,” Suidas said. “And they look after their prisoners really well; better food and clothes and shelter than they’d have got from their own units, that’s for sure. They’re remarkable people, the Blueskins, in many respects they make us look like kids, or savages.”

  “I thought you hated them.”

  “Ah well.” Suidas yawned, and lay on his back. “The thing is, they obey orders, immediately and without question. That’s what makes them such good soldiers, of course. So, if they’re told to look after you and treat you right, that’s what they do. But if orders come down to kill all the prisoners, they don’t stop and think, they do it. Burn the town, rape the women, kill the children; it’d never cross their minds to disobey an order. And you can see how it’d be no problem to them. After all, they’re so much better than us. To them, it’s just like pouring boiling water on an ants’ nest.”

  Giraut propped himself up on his elbow. “I couldn’t imagine Lieutenant Totila killing civilians,” he said.

  “Totila wouldn’t have been in the War,” Suidas replied, “he’s too young. They don’t enlist under eighteen in the Empire. But if he was told to cut our throats, we’d all be dead inside three minutes, you can count on it. On balance, I think I prefer the Aram Chantat. You know where you are with savages. Couple of times in the War, the Aram Chantat were told to massacre a village. They looted everything they could take with them, but they didn’t kill anyone. Too much like hard work, they said, and what’s in it for us? No kudos in killing kids, their knucklebones aren’t worth stringing.”

  “What?”

  Suidas laughed. “That’s how they keep score,” he said. “They cut off the left index fingers and thread the knuckles into a necklace. They wouldn’t want any that’re too small, they’d get laughed at. Of course, nine times out of ten they were told to wipe out a village and they did it. But just occasionally people got lucky, if the Aram Chantat felt they were being asked to do more than they’d been paid for. They have a horror of being exploited, I guess.”

  ***********************************************************************************************

  “Would you two please keep the noise down,” Iseutz called out from the other end of the stable. “Some of us are trying to get to sleep.”

  The chaise arrived while Giraut was still asleep. When he woke up, the stable was empty. He went outside and saw it standing in front of the blockhouse. He’d never seen anything like it before.

  It was smaller than the coach they’d come in, but the passenger compartment was much bigger. It sat up on its springs like an eager dog, and its wheels looked impossibly thin and spindly. There were six horses in the shafts, matched pairs of greys, chestnuts and piebalds. The chaise was painted bright red.

  “We’ll go back and pick up the luggage you had to dump,” he heard Totila saying. “We should be able to get it back to you before you reach Joiauz. In the meantime, you’re welcome to hold on to the blankets and whatever. I’m just sorry you’ve had to rough it like this.”

  “Please don’t apologise,” Phrantzes replied. “After all, we’re still inside the Republic, so if anyone’s to blame, it’s us. Me,” he added, with a sad smile.

  “I think you’ve done remarkably well,” Totila said. “Your makeshift axle’s very impressive. I’m sure I wouldn’t have thought of that, in your shoes.”<
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  “Can we go now, please?” Iseutz interrupted. “The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll get there, and presumably there’ll be somewhere I can wash. I feel like I’ve been buried in a dunghill for twenty years.”

  The seats were amazing: soft, padded, upholstered with some sort of cloth like velvet. Even Addo had enough room for his legs. “It’s just an ordinary post chaise,” Totila said apologetically. “I commandeered it from the courier service. Still, it ought to get you to Joiauz. They’re tough little things, built for bad roads. Once we’re in Permia, of course, we can transfer you over to something a bit more comfortable.”

  “Oh,” Iseutz said. “Don’t they have bad roads in Permia, then?”

  “Built by Imperial engineers,” Suidas said. “Isn’t that right?”

  “Well, quite a lot of them,” Totila replied. “Three-hundred-odd years ago, of course, before Independence. And we patched them up to a certain extent during the War. Enlightened self-interest, you see, so the carts can get to and from the mines.”

  Giraut found it almost impossible to stay awake the next day. The chaise was more comfortable than any bed he’d ever slept in. He could barely feel its motion, and the cushions seemed to mould themselves to the shape of his back, easing away his weight so that he felt like a creature of pure intellect, purged of the gross necessities of the flesh. He felt as though he could write a theological tract, if only he could keep his eyes open.

  “Nobody said anything about pictures,” Iseutz was saying bitterly. “I don’t like these people. Did you notice how he never once looked at me, even when I was talking to him? Like I wasn’t really there.”

  “The Imperials have a rather different attitude to women in their society,” Tzimisces said smoothly. “Tremendous respect, of course; they practically invented the notion of chivalry. But men and women don’t mix much, in everyday life. I expect he was a little bit frightened of you.”

  Iseutz made a sceptical noise, rather like Suidas’ snores (he was fast asleep, wedged into the corner) but a trifle higher and sharper. “They’re certainly different from us in a lot of ways,” Phrantzes said. “I remember when we had a trade delegation from the Eastern Empire, just after the War—”