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  'He failed, of course, but by then everything had come loose, so to speak. Cordomine found you, purely by chance, at an inn in Sansory, but he didn't know that you'd lost your memory; he merely thought you were playing some new game, and before he could find out the truth or take effective action, the Amathy house caught up with you. Cordomine's guards stopped them from catching you and you escaped. In the meantime, the savages were blundering wildly through the countryside. For my part, I had no choice but to use the few resources I had to make an overt bid for the throne. I thought I could rely on the Amathy house. I was wrong. A few government soldiers joined me, but very few; I lost a battle, was captured and sent to Torcea to explain myself and be executed. Quite brilliantly, I managed to elude my guards, steal a horse and escape. But, just when I thought that for once luck was on my side, my horse was startled by a rocketing pheasant in the woods; I was thrown and broke my leg. And who should find me but you.' Tazencius shook his head sadly, as if trying to express his disappointment with Fortune, from whom he'd expected better. 'It was a pretty charade we all played out that night. The members of my escort were under orders to make it seem as though I was a noble prince returning home on state business: the government believed I enjoyed far more support than I actually had, and thought that if I was seen being dragged away in chains, loyal peasants would abandon the plough and the hoe and rescue me. I was desperate not to let my guards find out that I was on speaking terms with the notorious Feron Amathy (they didn't even recognise you in the event, but by then it was too late), and of course I didn't know that you'd lost your memory and didn't have the faintest idea who I was. Finally I managed to escape, though I had to cut your colleague's throat first, and the guards came after me, though I shook them off quite easily. After enormous hardship and suffering I reached the Amathy house camp; and your replacement immediately sent me to General Cronan, as a peace offering.

  'Things looked bad for me. True, the savages destroyed Deymeson. But then Cronan caught up with them and cut them to pieces, and I thought I was done for. It was sheer good luck that he blundered into them after the battle, and that they killed him and (thanks to you) allowed me to escape. I suppose I should be grateful to you for that, but I'm not. If it wasn't for Lysalis here, I'd have you hung up in one of those frames and smash every bone in your body with my bare hands. Instead,' and he took a deep breath, 'I'm obliged to forgive you, as your former colleagues in the House have done. We are prepared to trust you, simply because you have nowhere else to go, nobody left to betray us to; and because we still need you, God help us all.'

  Poldarn looked at him. 'Why?' he said.

  Tazencius sighed, as though he was dealing with a particularly stupid child. 'The savages,' he replied. 'They've been shown the way to the dairy, so to speak. We need to make sure the attacks will cease, for ever, which presumably means buying them off; and, tragically, you're still the only man in the Empire capable of talking to the horrible creatures. It changes one's perspective somewhat,' he continued mildly, 'actually getting one's heart's desire. True, I only wanted the Empire so that I could punish Cronan Suilven; after his death, I needed it because it was the only hope I had of staying alive. But now, here I am; all that blood and burning and waste was to get me here. In return, I suppose I have some sort of moral obligation to be a good Emperor, to protect the best interests of the people. One thing I can do is make sure the savages don't come back; also, I can pay off the Amathy house. Creating all the problems makes it easier to solve them. And you,' he added, with resigned distaste. 'You as well. Since I can't kill you, I shall have to pay you off too.'

  Poldarn managed to raise a smile. 'How do you plan to do that?' he asked.

  Tazencius shrugged. 'Tell me what you want, it's yours.' He waited for a reply. 'There must be something you want,' he added. 'Everybody wants something.'

  But Poldarn shook his head. 'Not really,' he replied. 'This man you've been telling me about, this man I was supposed to have been once, I'm sure there must've been something he wanted. You've all been telling me I was in love with Copis-with her,' he amended, not looking round. 'I'll have to take your word for it. Your daughter reckons I may have been in love with her-as well as or instead of. You also said that I wanted to be forgiven by that man I just killed. For a while I kidded myself into thinking that what I wanted was a quiet life in a place where nobody knew me, because whatever I might've done in the past, as long as I'm alive and breathing I can change, turn into somebody I could bear to live with. And there was another part of me that reckoned what I really wanted was the truth.' He shook his head. 'I don't think so,' he said. 'There's nothing I want, but my instincts won't let me roll over and die, I'm too well trained for that. I can't go back home, I screwed up too badly for that. I can't go away, and I can't stay here. And I've come to the end of the road now: I've got to do something about me, before I make things worse still.' He felt an urge to stand up, but he fought it. 'You don't need to worry about my people,' he added. 'I don't think they'll be back in a hurry. In any case, there's not much I can do about them-they won't listen to me any more.'

  Tazencius looked at him. 'Very nicely put,' he said, 'but what do you want?'

  Poldarn grinned. 'I'd like to go now, please.'

  Long, awkward silence; then Tazencius said, 'Fine. Can't say I'll be sorry to see the back of you. Do you want to take that woman with you?' He made a vague gesture in Copis's direction. Poldarn shook his head. 'No, thank you,' he said. 'I suppose I ought to care what becomes of her, but I don't really.' He hesitated, frowned. 'I'll tell you what, though,' he said. 'If you want an intermediary between my people and yours, you could send her and-' He paused, trying to shape the words, like an engineer struggling to work from a vague verbal specification of something he'd never seen and couldn't understand. 'Her and our son,' he said. 'Send them home to my country. The boy's the rightful heir to Haldersness-you don't know where that is, but it doesn't matter, my people will know. You want to know what I want? That's it. The boy's still young enough to be raised as one of them. The thought of the poor little bastard growing up here makes me feel sick. Will you do that for me?'

  Tazencius smiled. 'Actually, I will,' he said. 'I have scholars who know your language, I'll find a way. After all, I did it before, when I restored you to your doting grandfather. Is he still alive?'

  Poldarn shook his head. 'I haven't got a clue who's in charge there now,' he said. 'But send them to Asburn the smith, in the Haldersness region. He'll see them right.' He frowned, as if making sure that there wasn't anything he'd forgotten; then he realised what he was doing, and smiled at the irony. 'That's all,' he said. Then he turned his head a little. 'Sorry,' he said, to Noja or whatever her name was. 'One thing I can guarantee, you'll be better off without me.'

  'I know,' she said. 'But that's no consolation.'

  He turned away from her-easily, as if from a stranger-and scanned the Amathy house people for someone who looked like a leader. But they all looked the same, like crows in a flock. 'Sorry,' he repeated. 'You'll have to find someone else. You couldn't have trusted me, in any case. Believe me; I've known myself for over three years now, and I wouldn't trust me further than I can spit.'

  Nobody said anything. He got the impression that they were glad he was leaving, though on balance they'd have preferred it if he'd been lying on the floor with his neck cut through. But they were pragmatists-they knew they couldn't always have everything they wanted. One of them did call out, 'Where will you go?' but Poldarn didn't answer. Only because he didn't know. He picked up the backsabre, backflipped it absent-mindedly a couple of times, and walked towards the door. All the way there, across a desert of black and white marble tiles, he waited for the pressure on the perimeter of his circle. But it didn't come. No more guards wanted to die, nobody hated him enough to risk the moment of religion as the curved blade swung. It's a special kind of hate, he told himself, when they don't mind letting you live just so long as you go away for ever, so they can pretend yo
u never existed; so they can cut you out of memory, like a child making dolls from folded paper.

  When he got tired of walking the streets (the ludicrous luxury shoes rubbed his toes until he pulled them off and threw them away, leaving him a clown in red velvet and cloth of gold, barefoot on the sharp cobbles) he flopped down under the eaves of a shuttered workshop. Above his head he could see a thin plate sign swinging wearily, a black shadow of an anvil against the dark blue sky; his instincts had led him to a smithy, as befitted a hereditary Master of Haldersness. He laughed and stretched out his sore feet, wishing the smith was there so he could beg leave to soak his poor toes in the black, oily water of the slack tub. He closed his eyes, daydreaming about the morning: the smith finding him there asleep, taking pity; casual conversation between strangers, a chance remark-I used to be a bit of a smith myself back home-leading to an offer of work, at least until after the fair, when the rush dies down; work, a livelihood, a home. He was, after all, a skilled man. Give him a good fire, an anvil and a hammer and there wasn't anything he couldn't make.

  Eyes tight shut, he smiled; and in his daydream the fire burst up through the hearth, melting the tue-iron into glowing red slag that gushed onto the floor and filled the city, while the sky clogged with fluttering cinders of black ash, wheeling and screaming to each other as they searched for a place to pitch, a beanfield or a battlefield, somewhere beside a river where the God of Fire and Death was waiting for them, feeder and murderer of crows. He saw himself at the anvil, holding his own shadow down in the fire until it stopped shrieking and struggling, until it glowed cherry red, freed from its memories and ready for the hammer; he saw himself draw it down, jump it up and upset it, flatten and fuller and swage it into shape and then plunge it into the water, a little pool fringed with ferns under a waterfall; he looked down, and saw gripped in the tongs his own reflection, a face melted and cast into a blank; and the blank's mouth opened and said, 'My name is Feron Amathy, among others,' before he let go with the tongs and allowed it to sink.

  But the morning came, the sun came up cherry red out of the Bay (which was wrong, since the sea should have quenched it) and the smith arrived for work and told him to get lost before he had the dogs set on him. He doubted very much whether the smith had a dog, but one thing he had learned was when he wasn't welcome.

  Instead he wandered down towards the docks; and on the way he saw something lying in the street, a bundle of rags and a distinctive broad-brimmed leather hat, and next to it a squashed wicker cage. Two crows were floating overhead. They circled a couple of times, turned in to the slight breeze to slow themselves down, opened their wings and glided in to pitch. He came up close; the crows lifted their heads and looked at him, as though they recognised him in spite of his ludicrously long body and lack of wings; then they hauled themselves sadly into the air and flapped away, like tired men sailing home.

  The old woman was still alive, though not by much. 'Hello,' she said, trying to smile; but he guessed her face was nearly cold by now, as the metal grows cold and becomes too brittle to be worked.

  'What happened?' he asked, kneeling beside her.

  'It was all my own silly fault,' she said. 'I was crossing the road and I didn't look, and a cart ran me over. It doesn't hurt much, though.'

  For some reason, he couldn't begin to understand, he could feel tears on his cheeks; the first time he could remember the sensation since his newly grown skin had become so sensitive. 'Your cage,' he said. 'It's broken.'

  'Oh, it's all right,' she said cheerfully, 'it's quite all right. I let them go, you see, as soon as you very kindly got me out of that dreadful prison. And now they're here, and everything's going to be all right.'

  Poldarn found it hard to breathe. 'Well,' he said, 'I'm glad to hear it.'

  'It's such a relief,' the old woman said. 'I was so worried about them, all the way here from Morevich, such a terrible journey.' With a ferocious effort, like a man drawing an over-heavy bow, she managed to complete the smile. 'I expect you think I'm just a silly old woman, but I won't forget how kind you've been to me. If it wasn't for you, you know, I'd never have made it here, and everything would have been for nothing. But now everything's been put to rights, and that's all that matters.'

  He winced; the pain of not being able to do anything-But she reached out her hand and touched his arm, comforting him. 'I'd like you to know about it,' she said. 'It doesn't matter, of course, because nobody will remember, but I'd like you to know, because you'll understand. It was my son, you see. My poor boy, Elaos. They took him away to be a priest, and then they killed him. Well, that was never right, no matter what they said. So I knew, they had to be punished, and things had to be put right.'

  He wanted to say something; he knew there was something to be said, but he'd forgotten what it was. She went on; 'Of course, the plague isn't nearly as common nowadays as it was when I was a youngster, they've done wonders about keeping it under control down in Morevich, because of course they understand about it there. But up here-' She giggled, like a little girl. 'Up here, they've got no idea, it's been so long since there was a serious outbreak. We know, of course; we've known for hundreds of years-it's the rats that spread it, and once it takes hold it's like lighting a fire in a hayrick: the wind carries it, and birds, and everything. So all I had to do was find them, my darlings, and bring them here, and Poldarn would do the rest.' She sighed. 'Not many people still believe in him, even in Morevich, but that doesn't matter, does it? We know he's real, you and I. Anyway, thanks to you I got them here and set them free, and it'll only be a matter of weeks-apparently it's already started in Tulice, where you very kindly helped me all those times. They do say there's not a soul left alive between Falcata and the sea, thanks to my little loves, and you. It'll all be put right, you see, there's no way of stopping it now. It's such a-'

  She ran out of words and breath, and he stood up. He thought of Tazencius, an honest man in his way, dutifully sending Poldarn's priestess and Poldarn's son along with Poldarn's special salvation across the sea to Haldersness, where they would most certainly put everything right there too. Then he looked up and watched the two crows, still circling, waiting for him to go away.

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