The Two of Swords, Volume 2 Read online

  So, come to that, were the twelve gold angels, which was where Musen had made his mistake. Even so, it took Axio four days to find him.

  He got lucky at an inn, miles off the main road, where there were still people. At the time he was the aggrieved master of a runaway servant. Ungrateful bastard cleaned me out, he explained to a sympathetic innkeeper, money, my horse, even took my best boots, left me tied up in my own root cellar, if he wasn’t so useless at tying knots I’d have starved to death. And all because I caught him fooling with the dairymaid and gave him a fat lip.

  The innkeeper looked up. “Man came in here with a split lip the day before yesterday,” he said.

  “Tall man?”

  “Like a tree. Had a meal and a night’s sleep, tried to pay me with a bloody great gold coin, size of a cartwheel. I said to him, where’s an honest man like me supposed to get change for that? He was on about hacksawing a bit off it, but I told him to forget it and get lost. Bloody joker. I knew he was no good.”

  Naturally the innkeeper had no map, but he gave a clear enough account of the local geography that Axio was reasonably sure in his own mind where Musen would go next. Sure enough, late the next afternoon he met a farmer who’d sold a tall man a donkey for a gold angel.

  “That was my money,” Axio said. “Didn’t you think there was something wrong?”

  The farmer shrugged. “I didn’t ask to sell it him. He kept on and on about it, and I just wanted shot of him.”

  A very tall man riding a donkey gets himself noticed. “Kids dragged me out of the house and made me look,” a farmer’s wife said the next day. “Daftest thing I’ve seen all year. Tried to buy a loaf off me but all he had was some big brass buttons.”

  “You might want to count your chickens,” Axio said. The woman turned white as a sheet and ran off across the yard.

  Having established a likely speed and direction, Axio considered what the innkeeper had told him about the layout of the countryside and decided on a suitable point for interception. The donkey proved to be a stroke of luck; a heavy man on a donkey would take the slow, easy road up the hills on to the moor, whereas a man on foot in a hurry could scramble up the shale outcrops and get there ahead of him. On the moor, of course, neither of them could hide from the other; but that’s why the Great Smith made the night dark.

  The donkey nearly ruined everything, braying and kicking up a fuss; but by then he was close enough, and he’d come prepared. As Musen sat up, he threw the heavy stone he’d picked out earlier and caught him on the side of the head. He went straight down, and a moment later Axio was sitting on Musen’s chest, with his thumbs digging into his windpipe.

  “The point is,” he said (he was panting slightly, which spoilt the effect), “I don’t need you any more. You’ve done your part of the job, and it only takes one of us to fetch the stuff home. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

  Musen opened his mouth but of course he couldn’t speak. Axio maintained the pressure but didn’t increase it.

  “Put yourself in my place,” Axio said. “If I think there’s the slightest chance of you doing anything like that again, I’ve got to kill you now, it’s my duty. I can’t jeopardise ninety thousand lives just for sentiment.” Musen’s face was dark red and he’d stopped struggling. “God knows I’ve done enough stupid things in my life. I can’t afford any more.” He let go with both hands. Musen started choking and spluttering. Axio got to his feet, kicked him hard in the ribs once, then reached down and hauled him to his feet; Musen staggered and dropped back on to his knees, wheezing helplessly. Axio dragged him back up again, just long enough to find the box in the pocket of his coat, then let him drop. “Just because I crack jokes sometimes doesn’t mean I’m a clown,” Axio said. “I’m sticking my neck out for you, letting you live. I don’t think a tiny bit of gratitude is too much to ask.”

  He tied Musen up with the donkey’s bridle, then sat down and took out the box. He stared at it for several minutes before tucking it down the front of his trousers—not an ideal arrangement by any means, but he defied Musen to get it out of there without him knowing.

  When he woke up, the moment his eyes were open, he ran the checklist. He was still alive. His hands and feet were free. The box was still where he’d put it. Musen was lying where he’d left him, tethered by the reins to the donkey’s hind leg. He flexed his hands, which were stiff and sore from all that throttling. “Good morning,” he called out. “What’s for breakfast?”

  Musen was in better shape than he had any right to be. The bruises came right up to his chin and he rasped and rattled when he breathed, and there was a lump the size of half an apple where the stone had hit him, but there didn’t seem to be any evidence of concussion or a broken rib. Axio leaned over him and smiled. “If I untie you, are you going to make trouble?”

  Musen didn’t answer. “Oh, come on,” Axio said, and kicked him on the thigh, hard but not hard enough to hurt anything. “Either we make up and we’re friends again or I’ll leave you here for the crows. But I won’t have you sulking at me the rest of the way home, and that’s final. I’ve had about enough of this job.”

  Musen blinked at him; weary, dying cow eyes. “I promise,” he said. “No trouble.”

  “I hope you’re telling the truth,” Axio said, stooping to untie the knots. “For your sake. I don’t think you can take much more persuasion.”

  Musen had damaged his knee in the fight and could barely hobble, so Axio put him on the donkey. He could see why the sight had amused the farmer’s wife’s children so much. “Why’d you do it?” Axio asked, after they’d travelled in dead silence for a couple of hours. “You must’ve known I’d find you.”

  Musen closed his eyes. “What do they want it for?” he asked.

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Tell me.”

  “All right,” Axio said. “You’re not supposed to know, but I guess you have the right. Actually, I’d sort of assumed you’d figured it out for yourself. After all, it was you who brought the Sleeping Dog pack to Mere Barton in the first place.”

  Musen looked at him. “They’re going to sell it to the Eastern emperor.”

  “Sort of.” Axio reckoned he understood now. “You don’t think he should have it.”

  “He just locks them up in cabinets,” Musen said. “He’s not a craftsman; he doesn’t understand what they mean.”

  “Better him than the Western emperor, surely. The only reason he valued it was because his uncle wanted it so badly. That’s no reason at all.”

  “Oh, he shouldn’t have had it either. It should go to the Lodge.”

  Axio grinned. “That’s exactly where it’s headed.”

  “Yes, to sell it. That’s not right.” Musen massaged his throat; talking must be very painful for him. “It wasn’t right for either of them to have it. Disrespectful.”

  “Actually,” Axio said, “I don’t entirely disagree with you. I read about these silver packs: apparently there’s every reason to believe they go right back to the very beginnings of the Lodge, so if you believe in relics and icons and sacred images and all that sort of thing, I guess they’re about as fundamental as you can get.”

  “Well, then.”

  “Oh, quite. On the other hand, this little trinket is probably the only remaining hope for saving ninety thousand civilians in Rasch Cuiber. A substantial number of whom, don’t let’s forget, are craftsmen.”

  “You keep saying that,” Musen said. “I don’t understand. What’s a pack of cards got to do with Rasch?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? You know about Glauca. Of course, I keep forgetting, you’ve actually met him. You know what he’s like. A straight swap. The pack for Rasch.”

  Musen looked stunned for a moment. Then he said, “He’ll never go for that.”

  “Don’t you believe it. Did you know, he made a formal offer: the silver pack for Beloisa and the mines? When that got turned down, he said he’d throw in two provinces on top, his nephew�
�s choice. And he meant it. He was furious when the West wouldn’t play ball, said they were only doing it out of spite. Which was true, of course. No, this little silver box can achieve what forty thousand soldiers have died failing to do. And, yes, I know it’s insane, but that’s absolute monarchy for you. The worst possible form of government, apart from all the others.” He paused, then said, “So, how about it? If it saves all those lives, does that make it all right for Glauca to get the pack?”

  Musen didn’t answer. It was a stupid question anyway.

  All twelve angels, the donkey and the silver-backed hairbrush bought them a pony and trap from three elderly sisters who kept geese and who claimed not to have heard there was a war on. They also said that the nearest village was Poitin, which Axio remembered as being about as far from a military road as you could get in the Western empire; but two miles south of Poitin ran the Green River, which meandered in the general direction they wanted to go, and had broad grassy banks used by carters trading south. Musen made no further attempt to steal the box; partly because Axio tied him to the back wheel of the trap every night and slept a dozen yards away—but that wouldn’t have stopped him, Axio was sure, if he’d really wanted the thing.

  Four days along the riverbank they came to a bridge. On the other side of it, the level bank continued; on their side, the ground rose steeply and was covered in heather, gorse and granite boulders. They got down from the cart and inspected the bridge, which gave way in the middle under Musen’s weight. That answered that question. They abandoned the trap, shooed the pony away as far as it was prepared to go and continued on foot.

  “Fifteen thousand angels,” Axio said. “That’s what it costs to keep an infantry regiment in the field for a month, and that’s just pay, supplies and materiel. I mean, you can do the arithmetic for yourself. Ten regiments in an army, fifteen armies on each side, minimum, that’s four and a half million angels this war is costing, every month, excluding cavalry, fortifications, siege operations, maintenance of roads, communications and other infrastructure, death-in-service gratuities, pensions and central command. Fifty-four million a year, at a woefully conservative estimate. Now, you look back to the last general census before the schism, and it’s worth bearing in mind just how much more prosperous the empire was back then; the total combined revenue of the entire empire, that’s East and West, guess what it came to. Go on, guess.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Thirty-seven million angels,” Axio said. “Mind you, that’s the pre-schism angel, sixty grains weight at nine twenty-six fine. For your information, the Eastern angel is now fifty-eight grains at seven forty-six, and the poor bloody Western angel is fifty-two grains at a miserable seven oh-three. So at current values, the pre-schism revenues would be something in the order of sixty million, but let’s not forget the additional expense of two Imperial courts, two Imperial secretariats, not to mention the collapse of east–west trade and the loss of what should’ve been Imperial revenue to foreign trading partners, not forgetting that one angel in twenty presently in circulation is a low-weight counterfeit; that knocks a good ten million off, so even allowing for currency debasements you’re looking at a theoretical total of fifty million, to cover everything, as against military expenditure of fifty-four million plus. So, again being hopelessly conservative, let’s assume an annual deficit of four million, multiplied by twenty-six, that’s a hole in the Imperial economy of one hundred and four million angels, more than two years’ total revenues, which I’m given to believe is rather more gold than has been dug out of the ground in the history of the world. Now, let’s assume that a hundred million is being financed at four per cent compound per annum. Even supposing the war ended tomorrow, that’s an ongoing yearly interest charge of—” He paused. Musen had stopped dead, bent over, hands on knees. “What’s the matter? Not feeling too good?”

  “I’ve got this pain in my stomach,” Musen said. “And I feel sick.”

  Axio frowned, then put his hand on Musen’s forehead. It was hot and clammy. “Where does it hurt?”

  Musen pointed to his right side. “There.”

  Axio prodded him with his forefinger, and Musen howled with pain. “Here, sit down,” Axio said. “Gently,” he added, as Musen stumbled and nearly collapsed; he grabbed his arm and guided him as best he could, to keep him from jarring his back on the ground. “Look, has this been coming on gradually or was it just suddenly there?”

  “Sudden,” Musen said. His face was twisted up. “What is it? Is it bad?”

  “I don’t think so,” Axio lied. “Listen, is it more a sort of stabbing pain, or a dull—?”

  Musen hit him and he fell down. The sky started to fold in around him, as Musen bent over him and hauled the box out of his pocket; the corner must have snagged, because he heard cloth tearing. Then he was alone for a while, in the dark.

  He came round, and his head was splitting, as though he’d been drinking for a week. He felt empty and incredibly weary, but he dragged himself on to his knees; everything went blurry and runny and he threw up. His jaw ached, like bad toothache. “Idiot,” he tried to say, but all that came out was mumbles.

  So he thought it instead. Idiot, fool, moron. How could anyone be so stupid and still know how to breathe? He managed to sit up, and noticed a big red stone about a yard away. He closed his eyes and opened them again. It hadn’t been there a moment ago, not when Musen did his ridiculously obvious fake illness that would only have fooled a really, really stupid person—

  He was going to kill me, Axio thought. And then he changed his mind.

  That makes two stupid people, he decided. He stood up, nearly went over, straightened his back. The fog was clearing and his head was worse than ever. His mouth was dry and full of something like mud but rather worse. He limped to the riverbank, got slowly down on his hands and knees and cupped water into his mouth. It made him feel very slightly better.

  It was all so much effort. He wanted to lie down and go to sleep, more than anything in the whole world; instead, he tottered backwards and forwards until he found footprints in the soft ground, a big foot, the print of the toe deeper than the heel; that’s someone running. Well, of course. Bet you anything you like he’s a marvellous runner, the sort that can run all morning. Miles away by now. Too much effort. He’d be starving hungry if he didn’t feel so sick. He put one foot in front of the other and started to walk.

  The Thief

  Musen propped himself up on the rail of the bridge and tried to catch his breath. Stupid, to keep running until he was completely worn out. Now he’d have to sit and rest, and that would lose more time than if he’d walked the last mile. He groped at his pocket to make sure the box was still there, then sat down with his back to the rail, looking back the way he’d come.

  He remembered—what was his name? Thin man with a turkey neck, lived outside Lower Town. He ran away with the wife of Rensa the wheelwright, many years ago. They went up on the moors, everybody reckoned he must’ve had some half-baked idea of heading for Spire Cross, but of course Rensa and his brothers caught up with them both and they ended up dead in a bog pool. A bit fairy tale, the doomed lovers running through the heather with Rensa’s hounds at their heels, but when you thought about it clearly, just stupid. They must’ve known they’d never get away with it, but they went ahead anyway. For love. Stupid.

  He pulled off his right boot and shook it out, dislodging a few coins and a small silver brooch. The brooch pin had ripped open his sock and lacerated the front of his big toe. He stuffed the coins and the brooch in his pocket, then eased the boot back on. His foot appeared to have grown in the minute or so it had been exposed to the air; it was now far too big for the boot and he couldn’t get his toes all the way down. He stood up; his shins protested furiously and he sat down again.

  The pony cart, he noticed, was gone. It was only just over a day since they’d abandoned it, but it wasn’t there. Not that it mattered particularly. Even if the cart had still been there, the po
ny would be long gone by now; and even if he’d found them both exactly where they’d been left, even if he then traded the pony trap for a coach and eight and galloped without stopping all the way to Permia or Sashan or the Blemyan desert, it wouldn’t make any difference. Sooner or later he’d be woken up by those fingers round his neck. The longer he postponed it, the angrier Axio would be, the more unpleasant the reckoning. Pointless, the whole thing, just like the wheelwright’s wife and her stupid lover whose name he couldn’t even remember. All for love.

  Even so. He remembered the first time he’d ever killed a chicken. He’d squeezed and squeezed, pinching his thumb and forefinger together on the little thin pipe under the feathers; he’d counted to ten, but the bird just looked at him, opened and closed its beak. He’d squeezed again, counted to twenty-five, and the chicken blinked and screamed without sound and scrabbled with her claws, giving him a scratch that had gone bad and needed a poultice. Life isn’t so easily got rid of, even when the enemy is ten times your size and the hands round your throat are very strong. He’d dropped it in fear and disgust; it lay for a moment then tried to get up, wobbled a few determined steps and then flopped in a heap; and then his mother came and finished it off with a small, quick upward flick of the wrist, like God answering a prayer. Maybe there are people who have the gift of being able to give up and give in when it’s obvious what the outcome must be, but Musen knew he wasn’t one of them. And certainly not while he still had the pack.

  He realised he hadn’t actually looked at them yet, not beyond a brief glimpse or two by lamplight in that weird tower with the painted walls. He reached for the box, stopped, patted his pocket to make sure it was still there. Why in God’s name hadn’t he killed Axio while he had the chance? You may not kill a fellow craftsman—that, of course, but stealing from the Lodge was ten times worse, and that in effect was what he’d done, and he hadn’t thought twice about it. (Oh God, he thought, I’ve stolen from the Lodge: that’s so bad. How could I possibly have done that? Only at the time it didn’t feel like stealing; it was rescuing … ) The Great Smith will forgive you, he remembered, but not in this form; you will be softened in the fire and hammered out until all your shape and memory is gone, and then He will make you again into something new; there is no fault in the material, only in the form into which it is shaped, which is transitory, inconsequential; there is no death, only change of form, there is no evil, only poor workmanship, which can be corrected. He always found that bit comforting, except that it seemed to contradict itself.