The Two of Swords: Part 14 Read online

  “Take six cards off the top,” Myrtus said, “and lay them down on the floor, face upwards. Face means the picture.”

  Chanso did as he was told. “That’s odd,” he said.

  Myrtus was watching him like a hunter watching a skittish deer. “What?”

  “You remember I said they did this when I was born? Well, there weren’t any pictures then, of course. But these—” He pointed. “With just the markings. They’re the same ones.”

  Myrtus looked as if he was about to be sick. “Is that right?” the sergeant said.

  “Yes. Eight of Spears, Two of Wheels, Four of Cups, Nine of Spears. My mother told me, and my uncle. That’s weird.” The way the two of them were looking at him made him feel uncomfortable; he wished he hadn’t agreed to it. “All right, then,” he said. “What does it mean?”

  Myrtus pulled himself together with an effort. “Well,” he said. “It means you’re going to go back to your own country one day, and you’ll be rich and happy, and you’ll have four wives and nine sons. Lucky you,” he added.

  “Really?”

  Myrtus shrugged. He seemed better now. “That’s what it says.”

  “Four?” Chanso scowled. “What happens to them? Do three of them die or something?”

  “It could mean daughters,” the sergeant said quickly. “Four daughters and nine sons. I thought you people had more than one wife.”

  “No.”

  “Then it’s daughters,” Myrtus said firmly. “There, isn’t that nice?”

  “How do you know it says that?”

  “Divine insight,” Myrtus said, sweeping up the cards and cramming them back in the box so hard he made a small split in the lid. “Actually, there’s a handy crib you can buy for a stuiver, tells you what they all mean. Thank you, Sergeant. And for pity’s sake buy yourself a decent pack, those are a disgrace.” He stood up. He seemed to be fizzing with energy, though not particularly happy. “Time we made a move,” he said, “before the road gets clogged up with bloody wagons.”

  For the rest of the journey, Myrtus and Teucer were rather more distant, if no less friendly. They answered questions pleasantly enough, but offered no unsolicited information, and most of the time the troop rode on in silence. Chanso was slightly surprised by this but he didn’t really mind. It gave him time to think about what he’d already been told, and other things. The conclusion he reached was that he was in no danger while he was with these people, whereas his chances of getting home, alone, were more or less zero. He got the impression it would be different once he’d done what they wanted him to; once he’d been to the teaching place, and then the place where he had to carve roof timbers. After he’d done that, presumably, they’d have no further use for him and he could go; and nothing had been said about it, but he was fairly sure he’d get paid for his work, because that was how things were done in the empires, and these people seemed to be honourable and decent. The money he earned would get him home, quite possibly with something left over. Four wives and nine sons, or four daughters. He hoped it wouldn’t be wives. How could anyone expect to find the girl of his dreams four times in a row? Better odds playing knucklebones.

  He was terrified on the boat, just like the last time. How anybody could think it was a good idea to float across an infinity of restless water in a small wooden box defeated him entirely.

  The courier they’d handed him over to was a large, cheerful grey-haired woman who laughed at all sorts of things, not all of them funny, and beat him four times at arm-wrestling. She spoke no Vei with a strong nasal accent and only ever used the present tense. He asked her if it was usual in the empire for women to work at jobs on their own, away from their homes and families. She laughed; no, it was highly unusual, only the Lodge allowed it, because the Great Smith made us all useful, even thieves and arsonists and lepers and women. And just as well, or when her husband died in the war she’d have been eating turnip tops and sleeping under bridges, and thank God they’d never had kids. All that was changing, though, because of the war, and so many men getting killed. Some places she’d been, she’d seen women ploughing, carting, mending roads, even a woman cooper, and another one apprenticed to a tinsmith. It was like the draught stock shortage, she said; if you couldn’t get horses to pull your cart, then you used oxen, and very glad of them, even if they take three times as long and eat twice as much.

  He beat her the fifth time, but he was sure she’d let him win.

  A white island in a dark blue sea.

  The dock was a single narrow wooden jetty, poking out into infinity. Ships didn’t linger at Beal Defoir, and only came in close when the sea was calm. Every so often, she told him, there was a storm and the jetty just snapped off, leaving the island cut off until it could be rebuilt with lumber shipped from the mainland. No trees on Beal, scarcely anything grew there at all. The cliffs ran right around it, and the only way up was a single winding path from the one tiny beach. But you’ll like it once you get there, she added.

  No horses, either. Too steep to get them up there, nothing for them to eat if you could. She gave him a big smile and waved as he started to climb. It took him a very long time, and he had to stop halfway up.

  Incredibly, they’d built a twenty-foot wall all around the top, all gleaming white stone. The path stopped at a gate, whitewashed. She’d told him to knock hard and be patient.

  She’d also given him a piece of paper, folded as small as a dried fig and sealed. When eventually a porter in full Ironshirt armour opened the wicket, Chanso handed it over. The door shut in his face. Quite some time later, it opened again, and a short, slim young man with long hair in braids beckoned to him to follow.

  “You’re no Vei,” Chanso said.

  “That’s right,” the young man said. “That’s why I’m here, to make you feel at home. By the way – and it doesn’t matter a damn to me, but you ought to know for later – I’m actually quite grand and important, and if there’s anyone else around you’ve got to call me sir or your grace. My name’s Lonjamen, by the way. And you’re Chanso?”

  “That’s right. Sir.”

  Lonjamen gave him a mock scowl. “I said when there’s other people about. Come on, I’ll show you what to do.”

  Chanso followed him through the doorway and saw a vast square courtyard, paved with white stone, surrounded on all sides by cloisters; their roofs were green copper, with tall chimneys. In the middle of the square was a statue, gold or gilded, forty feet high; a smith standing beside his anvil, raised hammer in one hand, tongs in the other, and from the anvil rose a fountain. “That’s Old Wisdom,” Lonjamen told him. “You wouldn’t believe the trouble we have keeping that damn fountain going. There’s cisterns deep down in the rock and pipes going right into the sea, and the only place you can see the wretched thing from is inside this quadrangle.” He grinned. “We’re a bit like that generally. But we’re all right really.”

  Beyond the statue was a tall building with a burnished copper dome, and that, it turned out, was where they were going. “We’ll get you signed in and spoken for, and then they’ll find you a place to doss down and keep your stuff, and someone’ll be along to fill you in on the routine and so on. Probably me, actually. All the other no Vei speakers are even grander than I am.”

  There were guards on the gleaming brass doors, twice as high as a man and embossed with the most amazingly lifelike figures Chanso had ever seen. The thought that he’d come here to learn carving horrified him, if they expected results like that. Beyond the doors was a square hall whose roof was the ceiling of the dome. If anything could possibly be higher than the sky, that was it. The floor was, of course, white stone, polished so it looked like it was running with water.

  “Is this the headquarters?” Chanso asked. “Of the Lodge, I mean?”

  “This place? God, no. Far too grand. The higher up the Lodge you go, the less you show off. This is just a school. We inherited it from the people who were before the empire. Bit of an embarrassment, really.”


  Lonjamen marched him up to a desk, over against a far wall. There he spoke to a clerk in the language Chanso couldn’t understand. Then Lonjamen handed over the scrap of folded paper, and the clerk put it between the pages of a ledger, which he then closed.

  “All done,” Lonjamen said, “you’re now official. Means they know you’re here, and it’s somebody’s job to feed you. They may even wash your shirts if you’re lucky. Come on, this way.”

  Chanso, Lonjamen and the clerk appeared to be the only living creatures in the whole vast hall. “Are there many people here?” he asked.

  “About five thousand,” Lonjamen replied, “on average. Now, mind you look about you and take note of where we go. This place is like an anthill.”

  They came to a stretch of wall with dozens of identical doors. Lonjamen opened one and stood back to let him through. Then they were in a corridor, white floor and ceiling, the wall covered with blinding gold mosaic. “First thing you’ll need to do is learn to talk Imperial. Don’t pull faces, it’s easy. After that they’ll put you through the basic catechism, so you’ll understand what we’re all about, and after that you’ll be working on your special skill. Silverwork, isn’t it?”

  “Carving.”

  “Of course, woodcarving. You do realise, every last scrap of wood we use here has to come up that path on some poor bugger’s shoulder. No pressure,” he added pleasantly. “Marble we can just chip off the scenery, it’s the only thing we’re self-sufficient in. That and rainwater, if we’re lucky.”

  Chanso thought for a moment. “Should I be learning stone-carving, then?”

  “Of course not. Fat lot of use that’d be for decorating a wooden roof. No, the point is, while you’re here, you’re the centre of the universe, nothing’s too much trouble. You want it, you ask for it, it comes on a boat and they carry it up the hill for you. Live crocodiles? Of course, sir, how many? Enjoy it while you can,” he added. “Real life on the outside isn’t like that.” He grinned. “So they tell me, anyway.”

  It sounded like there ought to be a but coming; if so, Lonjamen didn’t get round to it. They walked the length of the corridor, through a bronze gate (half the size of the front gate; still massive) and out into a narrow street. The shadows of the tall buildings on either side were so deep it could almost have been night, and the ground was paved with split flints. “Mind how you go,” Lonjamen advised him over his shoulder. “Bloody slippery, have you over. You get used to it in time.”

  It was like walking down the bed of a river, and quite soon Chanso’s ankles ached. The street wound round, a bend every few yards and identical unmarked doors everywhere he looked. It was inconceivable that anyone could ever find his way here or remember where he’d been or where he was supposed to go. Chanso tried counting his paces, but the awkwardness of walking made that pointless.

  “Two meals a day,” Lonjamen was saying – he’d gone on ahead, Chanso couldn’t keep up with him without slipping and falling over, “and if you’re peckish in between, go and be nice to the buttery, they’re the ones with the real power around here. If they like you, this is paradise. If not, probably best to jump off the wall now and save yourself the agonies of frustration. This is your chapter house,” he added, pushing open a door. “Number One Six-Three, in case you haven’t been counting.” He grinned. “Count everything, all the time. Becomes second nature after a while, like with musicians. Up the stairs to the top landing, seventh door on your right.” He paused, then added, “I know what you’re thinking. For weeks when I first got here, I thought I’d go out of my mind, being indoors, under roofs and ceilings. Don’t worry, you’ll adapt. This place grinds you down to begin with, but then you fit in and it’s wonderful. See you later, probably.”

  Chanso had no idea how long it took him to learn Imperial. Afterwards he could remember days of unbelievable effort, when his mind was more utterly exhausted than his body had ever been in his life, followed by nights dreaming in a strange language, where he could make out one word in ten, then in four, then in three; and then there was the morning when he dragged himself up the eight flights of stairs to the rooftop where Domna Herec taught him, and she looked at him sourly and told him to go away.

  He felt as though he’d been kicked in the face. “Why?” he asked. “What have I done?”

  ‘Na Herec was eighty years old and the most terrifying human being he’d ever encountered. She must have been six feet tall when she was younger, and very beautiful. Now she had one appalling eye, sparse white hair scraped back into a bun and a tone of voice like fingernails digging into a burn. He’d spent every waking hour with her for as long as he could remember; ten days, possibly twelve.

  “You’ve finished, that’s what,” she said. “Go away, I’m busy.”

  He felt terrible; all the effort she’d put in, all the patience she’d wasted on him, all the furious anger at his ineptitude she’d bottled up behind that one piercing eye, and finally she’d decided he was hopeless and she’d given up on him. “I’m sorry,” he blurted out. “Please, can’t we try again? I’ll do better, I promise. I’ll try really hard.”

  She gave him that look. “What language are we speaking?”

  “Oh.”

  “Go away,” she repeated, “and come back this time tomorrow, we’ll be starting the next course. Try not to be late, if you can possibly manage it.”

  The next day she told him it was probably because he’d never learned to read. Illiterates (that was him) found it much easier to pick up new languages, because their minds and memories hadn’t been spoiled, they still worked like a child’s. And now, she went on, I’m going to teach you to read.

  Reading was easy; it was like sheep tallies, except that each mark stood for a sound rather than a number or a place or ewe or ram. The hardest part was learning how to hold the stick. To start with, he gripped it so firmly it broke. Then he pressed down too hard, and went right through the half-inch of beeswax and split the wood. For a carver, she told him, he was incredibly cack-handed; is that how he handled his chisels and gouges?

  What are chisels and gouges, he asked.

  This, said Domna Seutz, is a chisel and this is a gouge. You can tell them apart because the chisel is flat and the gouge is half round. And what in God’s name do you carve with where you come from if you don’t know about chisels? What, that?

  There were twenty-six chisels on Domna Seutz’s rack, all different, and sixteen gouges. ‘Na Seutz was younger than ‘Na Herec, a short, solid woman with a man’s hands and a humped back. Her eyes, she said, weren’t what they were, so she had a round piece of glass, flattish, with thin edges and a thicker centre, mounted in a gold setting with wires sticking out of it. The wires fitted into carefully sewn sleeves in the linen band she wore round her forehead, and kept the glass a constant three-quarter inch from her right eye. When Chanso looked through it at his fingernail, it was nearly twice its normal size. No, he couldn’t have one; these glasses had been made in Mezentia, a thousand years ago or something like that. There were only a few left, and nobody had been able to figure out how to make more of them. This one was Lodge property, on loan to her for the rest of her working life. Nobody knew what it was worth, but Emperor Glauca had one like it in his collection, and he’d traded the city of Scand Escatois to the Aelians to get it.

  ‘Na Seutz wasn’t nearly as fierce as ‘Na Herec, but she was much harder to please. She didn’t like the primitive style, she told him. What’s that? It’s what you do, she explained. She preferred Classical and Mannerist, though she didn’t mind Formalism. The idea of art, she explained, is not to show things as they are, but as they could be. Only the Great Smith could make something perfect – everything he made was perfect – but surely it was the duty of his servants to come as close to perfection as they could. Therefore, let every man be handsome, every woman beautiful, every tree and flower gracefully formed, every mountain symmetrical, every dog and squirrel as close to the ideal as possible. Portraits, in her opinion, w
ere an abomination; a deliberate record of human inferiority and divergence from the ideal form. However, she recognised that Chanso had been sent to Beal to learn to be the best possible primitive-style carver he could become, so it wasn’t her place to try and influence him in any way. But if he could possibly make his people’s faces just a bit less ugly, she would take it as a personal favour.

  Chanso reckoned she was probably mad. But she taught him a lot of very useful stuff about using the new, strange tools, and once he’d got used to them he found them quite helpful – if nothing else, they were quicker than gnawing away a flake at a time with a knife, and you could do straight lines and square edges, assuming you wanted to. And she could get an edge on a blade better than anyone he’d ever known, including his Uncle Vastida.

  “You might want to take a look at this,” she said, on the day he finished his first large piece for her. He was proud of it – a stag pulled down by dogs, with the huntsmen closing in; she said it was a bit too busy for her taste, but she was pleased that he’d finally grasped the concept of proportion, and the dogs’ heads were the right size for their bodies.

  He looked at the thing she’d put on the bench in front of him. “It’s a book,” she explained. “You read it.”

  “All of it?”

  She looked at him. “Yes.”

  He picked the book up and opened it. “Both sides?”

  “Give it here.” She took it from him and turned the pages. “All of them,” she said. “Both sides.”

  “My God.”

  He took the book back to his cell that evening, lit the lamp, put the book down on the floor and lay on his stomach, his head propped on his hands. Extraordinary thing; the black letters on the smooth, flat white page were so much easier to make out than the scratches in the beeswax – a clever bit of design, he had to admit – and after a while he found he didn’t have to say the words aloud. They seemed to talk to him inside his head; they sounded rather like ‘Na Herec, but without the seething impatience. He couldn’t actually follow any of it – lots of names of people he hadn’t heard of and words he didn’t know; it was supposed to be about carving, but there was nothing about work-holding or following the grain, or how to get the last little flakes and fibres out of a corner – but that hardly seemed to matter. It was like a vision, or eavesdropping on angels. Sobering thought, that the people who lived in this unbelievable place read books all the time. He carried on until all the oil in his lamp was burned up; then he rolled on to his back (one thing he hadn’t mastered yet was beds; there was nothing to stop him rolling off while he was asleep, and he had bruises he hoped he’d never have to explain) and dreamed of a great voice from heaven denouncing neo-formalism, while the sea rose up and lashed at the white encircling walls.