The Proof House Page 3

  ‘Don’t patronise me, Gorgas,’ Bardas warned. ‘I’m a whole lot better at this than you are.’

  ‘Of course you are, Bardas. I have complete confidence in your abilities. We wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t.’

  Bardas riposted, turning his wrist so as to lunge low, but Gorgas made the parry in plenty of time. His handspeed had never been this good.

  ‘I’ve been practising,’ he said.

  ‘Obviously,’ Bardas replied. He watched the blade come on as Gorgas lunged back, read the feint early and compensated, drawing his parry wide to cover the full zone of possibilities. Once he’d made the parry, he stepped across and back with his right foot to change the angle and flicked a short, powerful lunge at his brother’s face. Gorgas only just parried in time, and the needle-sharp point of the Guelan nipped a small, thin cut just above Gorgas’ ear.

  ‘Very stylish,’ Gorgas said. ‘You’re seeing it well today. By the way, did I tell you, Niessa died? My daughter Niessa, I mean, not our Niessa.’

  ‘I never met her,’ Bardas replied. ‘Only her brother.’

  ‘Pneumonia, of all things,’ Gorgas said. ‘She was only nine, poor little devil.’

  ‘Did no one ever tell you it’s bad form to talk while you’re fencing?’

  Gorgas disengaged and swished a diritto at the side of Bardas’ head. Bardas took a standing jump backwards to get out of the way. ‘Relax,’ Gorgas was saying, ‘this isn’t real, you’re imagining the whole thing.’

  ‘That’s no excuse for boorishness. If you’re going to fight in my imagination, you’ll abide by the house rules.’

  ‘You were always a terror for making the rules up as you went along,’ Gorgas said with a sigh. He was clear for a counterthrust to the groin; if he’d made it, Bardas would have had terrible trouble stopping it. But he held back, giving Bardas the time he needed to adjust his guard. ‘It’s just like when we were kids,’ Gorgas went on. ‘The moment you realised you were losing, suddenly there’d be this brand-new rule.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Bardas protested. ‘I may have made the odd professional foul, but I never ever cheated. More hassle than it’s worth, trying to get one past you. The tiniest least thing and you’d go running off to Father sobbing, “It’s not fair, it’s not fair.” And he’d always take your side against me.’

  ‘You think so? I reckoned it was generally the other way round.’

  Gorgas lunged. It was a short, quick lunge, opportunist, made en passant as he recovered from the last parry. There wouldn’t have been anything Bardas could have done about it under any circumstances. He felt –

  - He felt a slight vibration running through the cross, and opened his eyes sharply. Someone coming up the gallery, moving fast. Damn, he thought. However ready you think you are , it isn’t something you could ever prepare for.

  He fished in the top of his boot for his knife, but it wasn’t there. He smiled. Three years in the mines and he’d never lost a knife before. Coincidence? And the rest.

  He closed his eyes and concentrated. Whoever they were, they were making good speed up the gallery, trundling along on hands and knees as if they were in some sort of bizarre novelty race. It occurred to him that if they were coming up the tunnel simply in order to kill him, they were going about it in a decidedly clumsy way. No cavalry charges in the mines; if the job’s done properly, the first the dead man knows about it is the gratitude of his killer. Now then; if they weren’t coming for him, why would they be coming this way at all? If they were this shift’s relief, they wouldn’t be racing up the line as fast as they could go. Maybe, then, they weren’t hurrying towards him but away from something else – such as a raiding party, or a cave-in about to happen.

  Be that as it may; they were on their way here, and when they found him they’d kill him. He felt for the nearest of his seven dead friends, found the man’s knife and took it for himself. Under normal circumstances, robbing the dead was slightly bad manners, but in this case he was confident they’d see their way to making an exception.

  ‘Look out!’ someone yelled – it was either Alexius or one of the seven dead men, he couldn’t tell which – just as the whole gallery jolted, as if it had been dropped. Dust filled his nose and mouth, as a second tremor jostled him on to his knees, and a third brought the roof down on top of him.

  Camouflet, someone said. Big, big camouflet. We’ve undermined their gallery, hooray!

  ‘Wonderful,’ Bardas said aloud, and the falling dirt filled the space like an hourglass.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Garlic.

  ‘. . . Glorious bloody genuine hero of the war. Dug the bugger out like a truffle, we did. Thought he was one of them till someone noticed the boots.’

  Bardas Loredan opened his eyes, and the light hit him. He closed them again, but not quickly enough. The pain and fear made him cry out.

  ‘He’s coming round, look,’ said a voice from the light. Unbelievable, that living things could survive in that scorching, agonising glare; couldn’t be real, had to be a hallucination. ‘Absolutely fucking amazing. No way he should have survived that, should have been killed instantly.’

  Shows how much you know; can’t kill a man who’s dead and buried. He tried to move, but his body was all pain. The light was burning its way through his eyelids.

  ‘Sarge? Sarge, can you hear me?’ The voice was vaguely familiar, which was odd. What were those funny little lizard things that lived in fire? Salamanders. Where on earth would he know a salamander from, and why would it be calling him Sarge?

  ‘It’s quite normal,’ another voice said. ‘He’s just had a city fall on his head, it’s hardly surprising he’s feeling a bit groggy.’ That voice was familiar, as well. Two salamanders.

  Alexius? Alexius, is that you? Stop playing silly buggers and put that fucking light out.

  ‘Sarge? Here, he’s coming round, look. Who the hell’s Alexius?’

  Who are you? I can’t see you so you must be real. Did I kill you just now, in the gallery?

  ‘Dear gods,’ said yet another salamander, ‘he’s well away. Crazy as a barrelful of ferrets.’

  ‘Like I said, he just had Ap’ Escatoy land on his nut, what do you expect? He’ll be right as rain in a day or two.’

  There was no getting away from it, he was going to have to open his eyes sooner or later. The light was seeping in under his eyelids anyhow, getting into his brain. Did I die and turn into a salamander too, Alexius? You should have warned me. He opened his eyes.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ he asked, blinking.

  All he could make out at first was a shape: a big brown oval, looming over him. This is how humans must look to a carp in a fish-pond. No wonder the buggers swim away.

  ‘Sarge?’ said the oval. ‘It’s me, Malicho. Corporal Malicho, you remember?’

  Loredan shook his head; painful operation. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘You don’t look anything like him.’

  ‘It’s me, Sarge, straight up. Here, Dollus, tell him it’s me.’

  There was another oval, on the edge of the salamander pool. ‘Think about it, Malicho. He’s never seen you before. Never seen any of us, come to that. And we’d never seen him before now, if you think about it.’

  ‘Then how do we know it really is him?’ someone else asked. ‘Maybe he really is one of them. Hey, don’t look at me like that, I’m just saying it’s possible.’

  ‘It’s him,’ said the salamander Malicho, firmly. ‘I’d know that voice anywhere. Sarge, wake up. It’s all right, it’s us. It’s seventh shift, what’s left of us. You’re going to be all right. We dug you out after the camouflet went up. The war’s over. We won.’

  The strain of keeping his eyelids open was unbearable; he could feel the muscles tearing like cloth. ‘We won?’

  ‘That’s right. We brought down the bastion, the gate fell in, we stormed the city. We won.’

  ‘Oh.’ What war would that be? I don’t remember anything about any war. ‘Th
at’s good,’ he said. ‘Well done.’

  ‘He hasn’t got the faintest idea what you’re talking about,’ a salamander said. ‘Come on, Malicho, let the poor bugger get some rest.’

  The legate could recognise cinnamon, and cloves, of course; a trace of ginger, oil of violets, the tiniest savour of jasmine. The one special ingredient eluded him, however. It was infuriating.

  ‘The family,’ the colonel was saying, ‘is quite well known, apparently. There was a sister who ran the bank on Scona—’

  ‘Scona.’ The legate carefully put down the tiny silver cup. ‘I think I’ve heard that name somewhere. Wasn’t there a war?’

  ‘Very small-scale,’ the colonel replied. ‘But it caused a brief flutter on the exchanges. There’s also a brother who’s some sort of minor warlord in a place called Mesoge. And of course, our man was in charge of the last defence of Perimadeia.’

  ‘Really.’ Honeysuckle? No, it was a different sort of sweetness; not as dry. ‘Quite an illustrious family, then.’

  ‘Actually, no,’ the colonel replied, smiling. ‘Their father was a tenant farmer somewhere. But that’s all by the by. A remarkable man, for an outsider. We should do something for him. The army would like it.’

  The legate inclined his head slightly. ‘I’ll have to think about that,’ he said. ‘The line between rewarding merit and fostering the cult of personality is painfully thin in these cases. As a matter of policy –’ (Honey; it was honey flavoured with something. No wonder it was so elusive.) ‘- as a matter of policy,’ he repeated, ‘nowadays we prefer to put the accent on team effort and group achievement; and from what I gather, that would be entirely appropriate in this case.’

  The colonel nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘To a certain extent, that’s precisely what we should be doing. But Sergeant Loredan has already become something of a legend in the army. If we don’t recognise him officially, it may prove counterproductive to recognise the unit as a whole. The soldiers are very loyal to their own; that’s what gives them their edge, of course.’

  ‘Indeed.’ The legate didn’t frown, but he didn’t much like what he was hearing. Nevertheless, it was a minor issue. ‘Well,’ he said, lifting the cup again, ‘I don’t suppose it’ll hurt if we give this man his moment of glory. A laurel crown, I suggest, and a prominent place in the triumph, if he’s going to be up to it. And then a promotion.’

  The colonel acknowledged the suitability of the suggestion. A promotion meant a transfer, a transfer would take him away from the soldiers who’d chosen him as their immediate object of loyalty. ‘Citizenship?’ he asked. ‘Or perhaps not. There are precedents, of course.’

  ‘I shall have to refer that back to the provincial office,’ the legate said. ‘A precedent isn’t the same thing as a rule, or even a custom of the service. Just because something’s acknowledged to have happened once doesn’t necessarily mean it has to happen again.’

  The colonel didn’t say anything, but he let the issue lie between them. The legate had his political masters, but he had an army to motivate. And after all, he had just taken Ap’ Escatoy.

  ‘Forgive me,’ said the legate suddenly, ‘but I really do have to know. Is it the honey?’

  The colonel smiled. ‘How extremely perceptive,’ he said. ‘Yes, indeed; it’s quite rare, a speciality of this region. At least, it’s not from here, they import it from away up in the north, but this is the only known outlet for it. It’s the heather.’

  ‘Heather,’ the legate repeated, as if the colonel had suddenly started talking about sea-serpents.

  ‘The bees feed on heather,’ the colonel explained, ‘and that’s what gives the honey its distinctive flavour. On its own it’s nothing special, but suitably blended, the effect is rather fine, don’t you think?’

  Heather honey, said the legate to himself, whatever next? It was almost worth a concession on the citizenship issue; but the provincial office wasn’t that decadent. Not yet. ‘Your sergeant,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Probationary citizenship, conditional on length of service. I’d say that strikes the proper balance between recognition and incentive, don’t you?’

  The colonel smiled. ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘I’m sure it’ll do wonders for morale.’ He lifted the silver-gilt jug and refilled the legate’s cup. ‘It’s very important, I’ve always found, to make sure victory doesn’t get out of hand.’

  The merchants of the Island reacted to the news of the fall of Ap’ Escatoy, after three years of siege and attrition, with characteristic speed and decisiveness. They immediately raised the price of raisins (by a quarter a bushel), saffron (by six quarters an ounce), indigo, cinnamon and white lead. As a result, the markets steadied before they had a chance to go into free-fall, and the base lending rate of the Shastel Bank actually ended the day up half a per cent. More people made money than lost it, and by close of trading it was safe to say that no lasting harm had been done.

  ‘Still,’ said Venart Auzeil, pouring himself another cup of strong wine, ‘I don’t mind admitting I was worried there for a while. We were dreadfully exposed. I suppose we should all be grateful it wasn’t a lot worse.’

  ‘It’ll get worse,’ muttered Eseutz Mesatges, wiping her lips on her wrist. The new look for lady merchants (basically the year before last’s Warrior-Princess look, but with less gold and more leather) suited her very well, but there wasn’t an obvious place for a handkerchief. ‘There’s absolutely no reason to believe they’re going to stop there. Not unless somebody makes them,’ she added firmly. ‘They’re a damned nuisance, and something’s got to be done. And I don’t know what you’re grinning about, Hido. If the Imperial Army decides to go up the coast instead of down like everybody’s assuming, you won’t be able to give away those pepper concessions we’re always hearing so much about.’

  Venart frowned. ‘That’s not likely, though, is it? I mean, surely the whole object of the exercise is to secure their western frontier. If they go north instead of south, they’ll be extending it, not consolidating.’

  ‘Gods, Ven, you’re so bloody naïve,’ Eseutz said impatiently. ‘Securing frontiers my arse; this is crude old-fashioned expansionism, as anybody with half a brain could have told you three years ago. No, we should have stopped them at Ap’ Escatoy; dammit, we should have stopped them before that even, at Ap’ Ecy or before they even crossed the border. The further they get the harder it’s going to be, and that’s just a plain fact.’

  Hido Glaia yawned and helped himself to another handful of olives. ‘If you’ll just listen,’ he said, ‘you’ll find I’m not disagreeing with you. I think they’re worse than a pest, they’re a serious danger, and thank the gods we live on an island. The comic part is you thinking we could do anything about it.’ He opened his mouth and picked out an olive stone. ‘Now possibly us, and Shastel, and Gorgas Loredan’s merry band of cut-throats down in the Mesoge, and King Temrai’s people – if anybody should be worried right now, it’s them; if I was the provincial office, I know what’d be at the top of my shopping list – if all of us got together, pulled our fingers out, really got behind Ap’ Seny and told them, that’s it, no further—’ He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Well, it could go either way, depending on what other calls the provincial office’s got on its resources right now (and that’s something we just don’t know, though we should, and it’s a scandal we don’t). But face facts, it ain’t going to happen. No, the best thing we can do is start talking very sweetly to the provincials about non-aggression pacts and tariffs and possibly preferred-carrier status. They aren’t savages, you know. If we could learn to love the plainspeople, we can get along just fine with these bastards.’

  Venart’s sister Vetriz, who’d been lying back on her couch pretending to be bored, sat up. ‘You can’t be serious about that, Hido,’ she said. ‘Us, get into bed with the plainspeople? After what they did to the City?’

  Hido grinned. ‘We trade with them. You trade with them. Even the Shastel Bank does business wi
th them, and gods know, if anybody’s got the right to bear a grudge, it’s her.’ He leaned forward and scratched the arch of his foot. ‘Where is Athli, by the way? I thought she’d be here.’

  Eseutz scowled. ‘Oh, she’s off being terribly high-powered somewhere. I don’t know; she runs that office like she owns the whole damn bank.’

  ‘Eseutz tried to get a loan to take up those spice options,’ Hido explained, ‘and Athli turned her down flat, bless her. I could have told you if you’d asked me,’ he went on, treating Eseutz to a warm, patronising smile. ‘Athli may dress like an Islander and talk like an Islander, she’s got a better nose for a deal than most of us who were born and bred here, but when it comes to lending money, she’s Perimadeian to her socks and always will be.’

  Eseutz sniffed and reached across the table for the wine jug. ‘It’s all your fault for bringing her here in the first place,’ she told Vetriz. ‘Well, the hell with that. You can tell her I got my loan, and at only one per cent over base.’

  ‘You had to put your ship up as security,’ Hido pointed out. ‘Definitely rather you than me. I think Athli was doing you a favour, personally. Who the hell’s going to want to pay your prices for peppers and cinnamon once the provincial office starts dumping the stuff on the spot market at half what you’re paying for it now?’

  Eseutz growled and banged the jug down. ‘If that’s your attitude,’ she said, ‘you might as well start memorising the names of the Great bloody Kings right now, so you can reel them off to impress the provincial when he comes stomping in here with a garrison.’

  Hido dipped his head. ‘It might be a sensible precaution, at that,’ he said. ‘If we’re going to have to do business with these people, as seems increasingly likely, it might be sensible to learn how to crawl to their officials.’